Grover Shoe Factory disaster
Following a boiler explosion, the four-story wooden building collapsed and the ruins burst into flames, incinerating workers trapped in the wreckage.
Early that cold damp Monday, he fed its coal fire and put the boiler to work heating the building for arriving day-shift workers.
High winds helped spread the fire to nearby storage sheds and neighboring buildings including a hardware store and a rooming house.
The Campello neighborhood's district firehouse shared a city block with the factory and its firefighters arrived quickly, as did many local citizens.
[6] Barrels of naphtha, a volatile industrial solvent related to gasoline, were stored in a wooden shed directly behind the boiler house.
The shed was set afire by the burning coals and the naphtha exploded, throwing sheets of flame onto the wreckage and driving rescuers away.
Police later related the story of a worker so dazed that he left the scene, applied for a job at another shoe factory, worked all day, then went home to find his family mourning him.
A search of the boiler house the next day turned up a charred body, a bent watch, two rubber heels and a torn piece of clothing identified by Mrs. Rockwell as belonging to her husband.
As families arrived looking for missing workers, grief-stricken relatives ran back and forth between reading the latest survivor lists and watching the recovery of bodies.
[5] Civic leaders created the Brockton Relief Fund, which collected and distributed nearly $105,000 in cash assistance to the families (equivalent to $3,560,667 in 2023).
Factory owner Robbins Grover worked for the rest of his life to secure financial aid for the families of those who died.
On March 29 the district attorney stated that the accident was due to a hidden defect in the boiler and that no criminal charges would be filed.
The R. B. Grover Company declared bankruptcy and assigned its remaining assets, more than 30 Emerson shoe stores scattered around the country, to its creditors.
[12] The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) had been founded in 1880 in response to the boiler explosions that had become common as the use of steam power expanded during the Industrial Revolution.
[13] The Grover disaster, coupled with another fatal Massachusetts shoe factory boiler explosion the following year in Lynn,[14] brought new cries for improved industrial safety.
After the ASME helped overcome manufacturer objections to "needless government interference", Massachusetts passed "An Act Relating to the Operation and Inspection of Steam Boilers" in 1907.
