Christopher Donnegan

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Operating pneumatic drill with air tube.

No one had a brain in his or her head in 1900. How else to explain the story of a Philadelphia boy who was killed after an older boy inflated him with air? In addition to this report of remarkably dumb and bizarre behavior, this story features the word “skylarking,” which long ago passed into disuse. It meant “to frolic.” There must have been a lot more than frolicking going on, however. An excerpt from an article titled “Inflated a Boy with Air,” which ran in the May 9, 1900 edition of Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Jospeh Currier, aged 16 years, who worked in the Cramps’ shipyard under the name of John Frier, was to-day committed to prison on the charge of being partly responsible for the death of Christopher Donnegan, the 13 year old who was pumped full of wind on Monday afternoon. Currier said he was merely skylarking with Donnegan and had no vicious intent.

Donnegan’s death was due to an unnatural inflation of the body caused by the inhalation of air through a tube attached to a pneumatic drill. Before his death the victim accused Currier and other boys at the shipyard of being the cause of his condition. The coroner is investigating.”

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