The Introverted Detective: lighthouse keepers and mercury poisoning

Lighthouse keepers were known to go mad quite often, but it wasn't just being alone too long. No, it was the mercury. There are some horror stories out there.

4th order (mercury floated) Fresnel Lens
Photo Courtesy of TripAdvisor

In this blog today we're going to be talking about the perils of lighthouse keepers, people who had a hard job to begin with - even without the mercury poisoning that happened. It wasn't out of the question to have a lighthouse keeper go mad every once in a while. Go mad, in this instance, is not rage; it refers to someone going crazy. There are even stories of a man being trapped with his dead fellow lighthouse keeper because of a storm not allowing authorities to come closer. Even worse, the arm slightly outside the coffin seemed to wave at him in the wind. It was bad. Suicides were also common occurrences here.

What was it like keeping a lighthouse? Lonely, that's what. You are at the beck and call of keeping the lights on and everything functioning - not a shocker - but you also are isolated by the sea and must be a jack-of-all-trades to make it work. Some lighthouses are actually reported to be haunted, too, much like any space that wasn't good for mental health (cough cough, asylums, cough cough). Modern lighthouses are usually automated fully, which is probably for the better. While it is an adventurous job some loved, it was also a place mercury poisoning was common (after 1860).

How To Run A Lighthouse

These beacons of light were vital. Sailors reaching land needed to not crash onto the rocks. I think this concept is quite self-explanatory, so I'm focusing on how you ran a lighthouse. First, assuming it was not the modern lighthouse, you lived there sometimes. Yep, this required you to move homes (and you could bring your family). This is 1800s -ish, just to clarify the time period. The 1960s began the automated lighthouses. Women keepers were rarer, but not uncommon, especially if the man running it had a family and died, leaving the woman to inherit the duty. Black people also ran lighthouses in some places, many places in fact after the Civil War.

Courtesy of CADENAS PARTsolutions

Here's where it all gets quite suspicious. Fresnel lenses created more light and rotated. To keep that light rotating like it should be you had to lubricate it or crank it every once in a while (before mercury). It was lubricated on a track of liquid mercury at one point. This began in the 1860s. Alarm bells should be ringing in your head if you know how "mad as a hatter" became a common phrase. Breathing that in was toxic. Touching it was toxic. Part of your job as a keeper would have been to strain out impurities in the mercury. Ouch. They were poisoned the same way hatters had been. Confusion, depression, hallucination, memory loss, and erratic behaviors were common to lighthouse keepers.

Oh, and you had to take care of the occasional shipwreck and weather storms (in which one led the three keepers to evacuate and then die in the water, at least they think they died). Until the lightbulb, flames could be perilous. Henry Hall (94 years old) discovered one day the tower had been ignited by the lantern flame. To his horror and peril, molten lead poured over his face and throat before he could throw water on the fire. He somehow lived 12 days. He had 200 grams of solid lead in his stomach when they did the autopsy.

Only one lighthouse remains manned at this point. Boston Light in the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is the only one. I'm guessing that they no longer use mercury. The Coast Guard has taken over most of the duties a keeper would, for the most part. Weather is still an issue, obviously, as a modern lighthouse keeper. The modern keepers are ones that love adventure, not surprisingly. They plant gardens, write, and keep their wits about them.

Boston Light and Keeper -
Courtesy of USA Today

When Things Go Wrong and General Madness

I will have the video that was the source material for the Smalls Lighthouse in the sources (because Kaz Rowe did a lot of research and has already done some of my work for me) if you want even more info. I'll give you the lowdown on one of the worst stories here.

Smalls Lighthouse off the coast of Wales was particularly cursed. This is 1776, for time period reference. The structure needed repair and the keeper left someone else in charge to go get those parts. A message was thrown into the water and received later on. It said they had next to no water or fire left and were doing quite badly. They wanted to get out of there by next Spring or they thought they'd die. Fortunately, all survived. But that wasn't the only ordeal.

Smalls Lighthouse
- Courtesy of factsrepublic.com

Fast forward 25 years and two keepers were put there. Thomas Griffith and Thomas Howell were put on duty. There was a distress signal at the lighthouse. The sea conditions made it impossible to get there right away. Yes, the lights were still on, but the distress signal remained. Griffith was feeling unwell and they needed help. No help came in time and Griffith died. Throw the body? No, Howell could not do that unless he wanted to be thought a murderer. Instead, the body decomposed in the lighthouse. He made a coffin since he had the skill. For three weeks the coffin with the body was secured to the railing. After that, the storm passed and they could take both the live and dead keeper away from the lighthouse. Some accounts say the arm was out and the wind made the hand look like it was waving at Howell. They'd been there four months. The keeper number was then upped to a three-person crew until the automation of lighthouses.

In 1860 mercury began being used for the lenses, because before they used other means to keep the lens rotating. This was so much easier, they said, even though soon after keepers kept going insane. Suicide rose like the high tide. Drinking and psychological troubles? That rose, too. Keepers began thinking the lamp was cleaning and filling itself. Someone drank methyl hydrate, went into the bushes, came back into the radio room naked, and screamed while swinging an ax. And this wasn't only the keepers that started going a little off their rocker; the families shared the symptoms. Mercury wasn't such a great idea and no one knew the perils of it at that time. Whoops.

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