The Effect
It is early in the morning of Christmas Day, in the mid 1880s, and in the town of Flatbush, New York, a gruesome scene has unfolded at the lodgings of Samuel Wardell.
Samuel is a lamplighter, and in an age before electric street lighting, it is his job to ensure the lamps along the roads and lanes are lit for the citizens of Flatbush every evening, and extinguished every daybreak.
Samuel Wardell is a very conscientious lamplighter, who is never late for work. But this …
The Effect
It is early in the morning of Christmas Day, in the mid 1880s, and in the town of Flatbush, New York, a gruesome scene has unfolded at the lodgings of Samuel Wardell.
Samuel is a lamplighter, and in an age before electric street lighting, it is his job to ensure the lamps along the roads and lanes are lit for the citizens of Flatbush every evening, and extinguished every daybreak.
Samuel Wardell is a very conscientious lamplighter, who is never late for work. But this particular Christmas Day, something is different. This particular Christmas Day, Samuel has not shown up for work at all. As the inhabitants of Flatbush make their way to church that morning, the town’s lamps are still burning brightly, even though it has been light for some time. So where is Samuel?
More and more people start to notice Samuel’s uncharacteristic absence, and they begin to grow concerned. Many had seen him only hours before, at a Christmas Eve party he had held in his room. There had been a number of people at the gathering, joining him to toast the festive season, and Samuel and his guests even had to move some of the furniture out of his room to accommodate them all.
But back in Samuel’s lodgings, a gruesome scene awaits. Samuel is indeed still in bed. But he is not asleep. He is lying motionless, a furious red and purple bruise seeping across his swollen face, a considerable depression visible at the point on his head where his skull has been smashed. For Samuel Wardell is dead. And the stone that bludgeoned him to death is lying on the floor by his bed. But just who could have crept into his room in the early hours of that chilly Christmas morning and used that stone to kill him? And furthermore… why?
The Method
Samuel Wardell, as we have heard, was a lamplighter. It was his responsibility to keep the streetlamps of Flatbush illuminated when it was dark and extinguished when it was light. It was not a job with appealing hours, and most of the year Samuel had to be up very early to carry out his work.
Samuel was a diligent and conscientious lamplighter. And he routinely worried about not managing to be up in time to put out the town’s streetlights every morning. He took pride in his job, and didn’t want to lose it.
And so, with incredible homespun ingenuity, Samuel concocted a plan. He took a standard alarm clock and transformed it into an alarm clock on steroids, adding an extraordinary series of embellishments. First, using a length of wire, Samuel connected the clock to a catch he had fitted to an existing shelf in his room. He then balanced a heavy stone on the same shelf. When the clock’s alarm struck, the shelf fell and the stone crashed to the floor, making enough of a racket to wake him up. What could possibly go wrong?
Samuel’s astonishing invention worked perfectly for some time, ensuring he was up bright and early to extinguish the streetlamps. It probably would have continued to work perfectly, too. If it hadn’t been for that Christmas Eve party.
So many of Samuel’s friends turned up to the gathering that, as we know, his room had to be cleared of most of its furniture to make space for them all. When the party was over and Samuel’s guests left, he dragged his bed back into his room. But, tired after a long day and possibly tipsy after a few well-earned Christmas beverages, Samuel didn’t quite manage to put his bed back in the same position.
At five the next morning, the clock’s alarm sounded, the catch engaged and the shelf fell, causing the stone positioned on top of it to tumble directly onto the unfortunate Samuel’s head. If there was any small shred of comfort in this sorry story, it was that, ultimately, he died in his sleep.
In the end, it was Samuel Wardell’s devotion to his job and desire to raise a glass with his friends that fateful Christmas Eve that was to prove his undoing. As the San Francisco Bulletin of January 1886 reported: “True to its perfect mechanical arrangement the bell tinkled; the heavy stone rolled slowly and fell, striking the sleeping man on the skull – the stroke that cost him his life.”
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
