Oaklawn Station vintage postcard

Throughout time, addiction has proven to be a devastating force that causes the addict to lose parts of their lives and, in the case of one Rhode Island man, pieces of himself.

At about 9:30 on the calm, summer evening of July 29, 1908, a train was pulling up to Oaklawn station in Cranston. The freight was a double-header, possessing two locomotives at the front end in order to increase its pulling power. The train slowed as it made its way onto the siding, the short track that veered off the main track. After it stopped, the men employed by the railroad came down off of it and saw a horrible sight before them. A man was laying there on the ground bleeding profusely. In a nightmarish fashion, both of his feet had been completely cut off.

Help was immediately sought for the unconscious victim. No one knew whether he had been walking on the track and was knocked down by the train, or if he had jumped aboard to obtain a free ride and then fallen off. Either way, two feet had been his sacrifice.

Medical assistance soon arrived and the man’s wounds were being attended to when he slowly regained con-sciousness. “May I have a cigarette?” he asked. Someone in the crowd that had gathered around the scene passed a cigarette to him and he calmly smoked it down, showing no display of the horrific pain he must have been suffering. He then asked for another cigarette and smoked that one as well before being taken to the hospital. There, doctors determined that his case was a critical one due to the amount of blood which had been lost as well as the shock his body had endured. He ended up losing portions of both legs.

It was eventually learned that the man’s name was Richard Joseph Hennessy and he was 32 years old. A print shop employee at Mason Box Company in North Attleboro, Mass., he had lodged around Rhode Island at different board-ing houses with Emma (Francis), his wife of eight years, before relocating to Mass. It was also learned that Hennessy had mysteriously collapsed on the ground in Haymarket Square in Providence just two years earlier and had been hospitalized at that time as well.       

Hennessey survived the shock and the blood loss. Twenty-one years later, in 1929, he and his wife were still living in North Attleboro when he turned up in Providence on Sept. 29 and was arrested for being intoxicated. He admitted to the court that he was a common drunkard and bluntly asked if he could be lodged in a cell. The judge granted his request, sentencing him to serve one year at the Providence County Jail. It was noted that he had only been let out of prison a month earlier after having served six months on another charge.

Saying good-bye to the restricted type of freedom that addiction allows, 53-three-year-old Hennessey returned to the confinement of a cage, taking nothing with him but the clothes on his back and two wooden legs.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.