National Child Labor Committee No. 954. 1-legged boy. Neil Gallagher, Wilkes Barre, Pa. Born January 14, 1891. Went to work at about 9 years. Worked about two years in breaker. Went inside at about 11 years. "Tripper," tending door. 83 cents [a] day. Injured May 2, 1904. Leg crushed between cars. Amputated at Mercy Hospital, Wilkes Barre. "Baltimore Tunnell" - "Black Diamond" D. & H. Co. Thomas Lewellin Superintendent (inside boys); Samuel Morgan, Superintendent. In Hospital 9 weeks. Amputated twice. No charge. Received nothing from company. "Was riding between cars and we aren't supposed to ride between them." No written rules, but they tell you not to. Mule driver (who was on for first day) had taken his lamp and he tried to reach across car to get it. Slipped between bumpers. Been working in breakers since. Same place $1.10 a day. Work only about 1/2 time. Work about 6 hour day. Left 3 months ago. Been in N.Y. - no work. Trying to get work in Poolroom. Applicant at Bureau for Handicapped, 105 E. 22nd Street, N.Y. Nov. 1, 1909. Father living, (Mother dead.) Miner same place. Hurt month ago Rock fall. 2 brothers 25, 27. Home 15 Pennsylvania St. Location: Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Lewis Hine.

"While William Lawler, a D. & H. brakeman, was making a coupling at Baltimore slope yesterday morning, he slipped and fell under the wheels. Both legs were broken, one of his hands was cut off and his back was hurt. He lived only a few hours after the accident. Mr. Lawler was married about fifteen months ago to Miss Kate Lavelle and they had one child. They lived at Mill Creek, but recently removed to Miner's Mills. He was 28 years of age." -Wilkes-Barre Record, February 1, 1896

Hine had spent the previous month taking almost 80 pictures of child laborers in Boston. He was about to head to New Jersey, where he would take 72 more. But on this Monday, the first day of November, 1909, he was back in New York, apparently at the office of his employer, the National Child Labor Committee, which was located at 105 E. 22^nd Street, in Manhattan. The Special Employment Bureau for the Handicapped was located in the same building, and that is where Neil Gallagher had just applied for help.

Like all serious journalists (and photojournalists), Hine could not resist a great picture and a compelling story. He must have seen Neil standing in or near the office building and ran back to his office to get his camera. When he took the picture directly above, he must not have known the boy's name yet, so he referred to him only as "one-legged boy from Pennsylvania Coal Mine," and also wrote down that his home was in Wilkes-Barre. He took a second picture, making sure it was a good one. Curious as to why Neil had come to New York, Hine asked some more questions and hurriedly scribbled down some notes, as Neil spilled out his sad story.

Based on the caption, this is what I knew. Neil Gallagher was born on January 14, 1891, which means he was 18 years old in the picture. His home was at 15 Pennsylvania St, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but he had spent the last three months in New York looking for work. When he was about nine years old, he started working as a breaker boy. Two years later, he was working in the mine as a trapper (not a "tripper," as Hine wrote). Trappers were responsible for opening and closing the underground ventilation doors. They sat all day by a door and opened and closed it when miners passed from one section of the mine to another.

On May 2, 1904, when Neil was 13 years old, his left leg was crushed when it got trapped between two coal cars. He went to the hospital, where part of his leg was amputated, and later amputated again farther up.

The coal company did not pay for any of the bill, so the hospital waived the cost. He returned to work part time, again as a breaker boy, which didn't require him to get up quickly and open a big, heavy door. When Hine took the photos, Neil's mother had already died, and his father had recently been injured in the mine by a falling rock. He had two brothers, ages 27 and 25, back in Wilkes-Barre.

I wanted know more. What kind of a family did Neil come from? How was he supporting himself in New York? Did he finally get a job? Did he ever get an artificial leg, so he could throw away that crutch?

I started with the census, and there he was. On June 12, 1900, James Marsland, a census taker, entered the Gallagher home in Wilkes-Barre at 15 Penn Street (not Pennsylvania Street as Hine had stated). According to Marsland, Neil was living with his father, Patrick Gallagher, his stepmother, Dollie Gallagher, and three siblings, John, Mary and Margaret. Patrick, who owned the home, was employed in the mines, and so was his 16-year-old son John, as a mule driver. Neil was nine years old, and although the census did not list it, he may have already started working as a breaker boy, according to what he told Hine.

His father had been born in Ireland in 1849, and had come to the US about 1868. He had been married before, to the mother of his four children. The youngest child, Margaret, had been born in 1892. Patrick and Dollie married in 1898, so it can be presumed that Neil's mother died between 1892 and 1898. Everyone in the family could read and write.

In the 1910 census, Patrick is listed as living in the same house, and with the same wife, although she gave her name as Florence, not Dollie. Patrick was still working in the mines, so he must have recovered from his injury caused by a falling rock. The only child in the home was Margaret, now 18 and working in a lace mill. Neil is not there. Presumably he is still in New York. But the census does not record him anywhere in the US, thus leading me to guess three possible reasons: He was listed, but his name was terribly misspelled; he was overlooked by the census taker; or he had died.

Then I looked at the 1920 census. Neither Patrick nor Florence (Dollie) are listed, so they probably had died by then. But Neil appears to be living in New York City with his cousin, Joseph Gallagher, and Joseph's wife and children. Joseph is an entertainer and works in the theater. Neil (listed as Neil P. Gallagher) is listed as being born in Pennsylvania in 1891 or 1892, and his father is listed as a native of Ireland. Perhaps the "P" stood for Patrick, his father's name. There is no one else named Neil Gallagher listed in the 1920 census that is a match, so it seems almost certain that he was the same Neil Gallagher as the one in the photographs. He is listed as working...as a truck driver.

This appears to answer three of the four questions I initially asked: "What kind of a family did he come from?" (Now we know.) "How was he supporting himself in New York?" (He was living with his cousin.) "Did he finally get a job?" (Yes, he's a truck driver). But it doesn't answer the final question: "Did he ever get an artificial leg, so he could throw away that crutch?" That brings up another question: With one leg, how did he manage to drive a truck? More about that later.

I tried to check out Neil's story about the accident, and I quickly found a list of mining accidents in Pennsylvania from 1899 to 1918, which are posted on the website of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. They confirm two of the claims made by Neil in his conversation with Hine: his accident, on May 2, 1904; and his father's accident, on October 9, 1908.

They misspelled Neil's name, and incorrectly gave his age as 16, rather than 13. Of the 1,684 accidents listed in these records, only two victims under the age of 14 were listed. Both were listed as 13. At that time, the Pennsylvania child labor law prohibited children under the age of 14 from working inside coal mines. Given the thousands of young children working in the mines at that time, it is hard to believe that only two children under 14 were accident victims. Were some of the children in this list younger than reported, or were accidents involving victims under the legal age usually not reported at all?

I could not find Neil in the 1930 census, the last one currently available to the public. Nor could I find a death record for him listed in any sources on the Internet. The death records for New York State and Pennsylvania are closed to the public, except to authorized family members. I tried tracking him down by searching for his siblings, but I finally reached a dead end.

So I returned to the question, "With one leg, how did he manage to drive a truck?" The answer may lie in this, which appeared in a 1907 report by the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York. It described the work of the Special Employment Bureau for the Handicapped, where Neil had applied for help.

"To study the abilities of persons handicapped physically, mentally, or socially; to find work adapted to their powers which would enable them to be wholly or partially self-supporting; to persuade employers to accept a responsibility toward them, were the tasks which had to be faced in establishing this Employment Bureau. There were no precedents for method, as this was the first attempt of the kind ever made, and the early months were necessarily experimental."

"The methods which are now being pursued by the Bureau include keeping an accurate record of each applicant's qualifications, frequently with a physician's opinion as to what kinds of work are permissible, and of the Bureau's experience with him; patiently building up a list of employers whose assistance can be counted on; finding among the applicants persons who can fill positions offered, actively seeking positions for the others; providing training for some, and medical assistance for others in order that they may become qualified for new tasks."

"During the eighteen months since the Bureau began work 1,137 applications have been registered and 450 placements made, a ratio of two placements to five applications. Considering the character of the labor offered and the prejudice of most employers against an employee in any capacity who is not able to work at full speed, the results are very encouraging."

"A descriptive analysis has been made of the 596 new applications and the 314 placements of the seven months ending September 30. The largest group among the new applicants was of those disabled by some crippling disease, generally rheumatism, numbering 125; 120 were convalescents; 94 were handicapped by age; 56 were in an early stage of pulmonary tuberculosis and 17 more were suffering from other forms of tuberculosis; 25 were partially blind, two totally blind; 20 had lost a hand, 17 a foot, and two more than one limb; 17 were mentally diseased and four were mentally defective."

Two quotes stood out: "20 had lost a hand, 17 a foot, and two more than one limb," and "providing training for some, and medical assistance for others in order that they may become qualified for new tasks."

Did the agency find a way to get him trained to drive a truck? Did they pay for an artificial leg? Did they place Neil in a good job, making it possible for him to afford an artificial leg? Or perhaps his cousin paid for the leg. But with no further information about him - no death record and no family members to talk to - those questions cannot be answered.

I tried one more thing. On Ancestry.com, you can enter the date of birth, if you know it, when searching someone in the Social Security Death Index. Neil told Hine that he was born on January 14, 1891, so I entered that date, and Gallagher as the last name, but no other information. This is what I found.

Is this him? I think so. How many male Gallaghers would have been born on that exact date? His legal name was probably Neil Patrick Gallagher, or Patrick Neil Gallagher. Unfortunately, the record does not specify what city or town he died in, or the day of the month he died. Without that information, I can't look up his newspaper obituary or ask a library to do it. And New Jersey's death records are also closed to the general public. So I tried something else.

I searched the New York Times archives for "Neil Gallagher," and came up with one item of interest, an article which appeared August 31, 1937:

"Benjamin Alix, 33 years old, of 976 Tintin Avenue, the Bronx, was freed yesterday by Magistrate William Klapp in Yorkville Court after a hearing on a charge of disorderly conduct. Alix was arrested at the Grand Central station of the Lexington Avenue subway last Friday after Neil Gallagher of 2397 Grand Avenue, the Bronx, accused him of annoying his son, Bernard, 9, on a train."

Assuming that this is the correct Neil Gallagher, and that his son might have already died, I searched the Social Security Death Index for Bernard Gallagher, born about 1928, and found this:

I requested Bernard's obituary from the library in Staten Island. When I received it, I was disappointed to find that he was not Neil's son.

Then I discovered that I can request a copy of the original application for a Social Security number. Remember the Social Security Death Index record for Patrick Gallagher, who was born the same day and year as Neil? I was almost convinced that he was Neil. I figured that maybe the information on his Social Security application would confirm if he was really Neil. So I filed a request, which cost me almost $30. It took two months to get an answer. Unfortunately, the only new information was that the name on his card was Patrick J. Gallagher. No mention of the name Neil. Does that mean I have the wrong guy? Not necessarily, but at this point, I have run out of ideas.