Episode 10: The Mines Open

Episode 10: The Mines Open

Arc 3: The Industrial Revolution — Premiere Episode

How did a 'miracle fix' for deadly boiler explosions become a century-long catastrophe? In 1880, 159 boilers exploded in a single year—killing workers and bystanders with scalding steam and flying metal. Asbestos insulation solved the problem. But boiler explosions killed dozens per year. Asbestos would kill hundreds of thousands. The cure was worse than the disease—by orders of magnitude.

Episode 10 marks the premiere of Arc 3: The Industrial Revolution. After nine episodes covering 4,500 years of asbestos as rare curiosity, we examine the century (1828-1900) when it became cheap enough to wrap every steam pipe in America—and deadly enough to kill the founder of the American asbestos industry.

In this episode:

• The 1836 Patent Office fire that erased the identity of America's first asbestos patent holder—the fireproof mineral, lost to fire

• Quebec's production explosion: 50 tonnes (1878) to 10,000+ tonnes (1890s)—and zero worker injury records for the entire century

• Thomas Reily: killed by flying boiler metal while walking home in 1853, his death blamed on 'a man in Canada'

• Henry Ward Johns: founded the American asbestos industry, died in 1898 from breathing his own product

• The 1899 Charing Cross case: a textile worker who knew all 10 of his coworkers had died—and became the first documented victim

• Why corporate origin myths always involve blueberries and tea kettles, never 'dust and coughing'

Who this episode is for: Anyone researching asbestos industry history, families tracing occupational exposure in mining or manufacturing, historians interested in Industrial Revolution workplace safety, and listeners following the series from ancient origins into the modern conspiracy.

Expert perspective: "The conspiracy doesn't start with what companies knew—it starts with who they didn't bother counting," notes Paul Danziger, founding partner of Danziger & De Llano and a mesothelioma attorney with over 30 years of experience. "The bodies were always there. Someone just had to decide they mattered."

Resources:

→ Asbestos Exposure Pathways: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Attorney Rod De Llano: https://dandell.com/rod-de-llano/

→ Mesothelioma Compensation Options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/

→ Free Consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

About this series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making traces the full history of asbestos—from 4700 BCE Finnish pottery to the 2024 EPA ban—revealing how corporations suppressed evidence while workers died. Produced by Danziger

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Lost Patents, Lost Origins
• 1:10 A New Arc And The Map
• 2:05 Ancient Myths Debunked
• 4:40 From Curiosity To Industry
• 6:10 Steam, Pressure, And Explosions
• 8:10 Quebec’s Boom And Missing Records
• 11:00 Johns’s Patent And Death
• 13:20 The First Documented Case
• 15:30 Numbers Kept, Lives Ignored
• 18:30 Origin Myths Vs. Hard Ledgers

Transcript

Episode 10: The Mines Open — Transcript

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making

Episode: 10 of 52 | Arc: 3 — The Industrial Revolution (Premiere) | Runtime: ~20 minutes

Key Takeaways

1. The cure was worse than the disease — Boiler explosions killed dozens per year; asbestos insulation adopted as a solution would kill hundreds of thousands over the following century.

2. The documentary void is the first conspiracy — For the entire 19th century, no wage rates, working hours, or injury records exist for asbestos miners. Companies counted tonnes meticulously but not the workers who moved them.

3. Henry Ward Johns died from his own product — The founder of the American asbestos industry died in 1898 of probable asbestosis. The company merged with Manville and got bigger.

4. Origin myths obscure industrial reality — The blueberry discovery story and tea kettle origin have no contemporary documentation. Like Apple's garage and Amazon's basement, they romanticize industries that caused harm.

5. 1899 marks the first documented case — Dr. H. Montague Murray documented a 33-year-old textile worker at Charing Cross Hospital—the sole survivor of 10 coworkers. All died in their thirties from asbestos exposure.

Episode Summary

Episode 10 marks the premiere of Arc 3: The Industrial Revolution. After nine episodes covering 4,500 years of asbestos as rare curiosity, this episode examines how asbestos transformed from luxury item to industrial commodity in less than a century (1828-1900). The episode reveals a dark irony: boiler explosions killing dozens annually led to widespread asbestos adoption as insulation—trading visible, immediate deaths for invisible, delayed ones that would claim hundreds of thousands.

Quebec production exploded from 50 tonnes in 1878 to over 10,000 tonnes by the 1890s—a 200-fold increase. Yet while companies kept meticulous records of production volumes and shipping manifests, no injury records, wage rates, or newspaper accounts document worker conditions for the entire 19th century. Henry Ward Johns, founder of H.W. Johns Manufacturing (later Johns-Manville), died in 1898 of probable asbestosis—killed by his own product. The company's response: merge with Manville and expand.

The episode closes with the first documented medical case: a 33-year-old textile worker who walked into London's Charing Cross Hospital in 1899. He told Dr. H. Montague Murray that all ten of his coworkers had died in their thirties—all previously healthy, all the same symptoms. He knew something was killing them. A year later, he was dead too. Murray's autopsy found asbestos fibers embedded in scarred lung tissue. For the first time, someone with medical authority wrote it down.

Resources mentioned:

• Asbestos Exposure Information
• Mesothelioma Compensation
• Attorney Rod De Llano
• Free Consultation

Full Transcript

Cold Open: The Fireproof Mineral Lost to Fire

Host: The fireproof mineral. Lost to fire.

Cohost: Run that back.

Host: 1828. Someone—we don't know who—files the first American patent for asbestos insulation. Wrapping steam engines in rock that doesn't burn. Brilliant idea. Changed everything.

Cohost: And we don't know who.

Host: Because in 1836, the U.S. Patent Office burned down. Nine thousand, nine hundred fifty-seven patents. Eight years of American invention. Gone.

Cohost: Including the asbestos guy.

Host: History remembers the product. Not the person.

Cohost: That's going to become a pattern.

Host: It is.

Cohost: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm. For over thirty years, they've helped families facing an asbestos diagnosis understand their options and find answers. If you or someone you love is dealing with mesothelioma, visit dandell.com.

Series Recap: Introducing Story Arcs

Host: Before we go further, I want to do something we haven't done before.

Cohost: Which is?

Host: Step back. Show you the map. Because this episode—Episode 10—marks a turning point. Not just in the story, but in how we're telling it.

Cohost: A milestone.

Host: If you've been with us since Episode 1, you've now heard nine episodes spanning forty-five hundred years. And if you're just joining us—welcome. You can start here. But I want to show you where we've been.

Cohost: The full picture.

Host: We've been telling this story in arcs. Each arc covers a different era. Each arc asks a different question about how asbestos went from geological curiosity to industrial catastrophe.

Cohost: Arcs. That's new.

Host: Arc One was "Ancient Origins." Episodes 1 through 6. The question: Did the ancients know asbestos was deadly?

Cohost: Spoiler: they didn't.

Host: They couldn't have. But that's the conclusion. Here's how we got there. Episode 1: Finnish pottery fragments from 2700 BCE—the oldest evidence of humans using asbestos. Episode 2: The ancient Greeks encounter a rock that doesn't burn. Pausanias describing a golden wick that never needs replacing. Episode 3: Religious uses. Temple lamps. The idea that something fireproof must be holy.

Cohost: The beginning of the myth.

Host: Episode 4 was the big myth-bust. Everyone cites Pliny the Elder—"Roman workers wore bladder masks because they knew asbestos was deadly."

Cohost: Pliny.

Host: We went back to the Latin. He was describing cinnabar workers. Mercury miners. Different mineral, different chapter, wrong citation repeated for a century.

Cohost: Same with Strabo.

Host: His "sickness of the lungs" was about arsenic mines. Not asbestos. Episode 5: Why did asbestos stay rare for 4,000 years? Trade routes. Luxury pricing. A Roman text comparing asbestos prices to exceptional pearls.

Cohost: Too expensive to kill people with.

Host: Exactly. And Episode 6: The archaeological record. No mesothelioma in ancient remains. The evidence for what they actually knew—which wasn't much.

Cohost: Arc One's conclusion.

Host: The ancients couldn't have known. The exposure was too rare. The latency period—20 to 50 years—was too long. Their lifespans were too short. You can't connect cause and effect when everyone dies of something else first.

Cohost: And then we jumped forward. Medieval.

Host: Arc Two: "Medieval Myths and Renaissance Confusion." Episodes 7 through 9. The question: How did asbestos become wrapped in legend? And who profited? The Letter of Prester John—a twelfth-century forgery. Con artists selling holy relics. The Charlemagne tablecloth story.

Cohost: Which turned out to be completely fabricated.

Host: First appears a thousand years after Charlemagne died. No contemporary source mentions it. Episode 8: Marco Polo. 1298. He actually visits an asbestos mine in China. Explicitly writes: this is a rock, not a salamander.

Cohost: And nobody believes him.

Host: Because he was a merchant. And the encyclopedias were written by scholars who'd never left Europe. Episode 9: Thomas Browne finally kills the salamander myth. 1646.

Cohost: "It dieth immediately therein."

Host: You love that line.

Cohost: I really do.

Host: Three hundred fifty years after Marco Polo said the same thing.

Arc Three Begins: The Industrial Revolution

Host: So that's nine episodes. Forty-five hundred years of asbestos as curiosity. Rare. Expensive. Wrapped in legend. And then—

Cohost: And then we get to Arc Three.

Host: Arc Three. "The Industrial Revolution." And this is where everything changes. We spent nine episodes on forty-five hundred years. The next five episodes? About a hundred years. 1828 to the 1920s.

Cohost: Tighter focus.

Host: Much tighter. Because in that century, asbestos goes from rare enough to fool medieval royalty to cheap enough to wrap every steam pipe in America.

Cohost: The mines open.

Host: Quebec. Russia. South Africa. Production explodes. By 1900, Quebec alone is producing 10,000 tonnes a year.

Cohost: From how much?

Host: 1878? Fifty tonnes.

Cohost: Two hundred times. In twenty-two years.

Host: In twenty-two years. And for the first time in human history—large numbers of people start breathing it. Every day. For decades.

Cohost: So we have better records now. Industrial age. Paper trails.

Host: Yes and no. We have meticulous records of production volumes. Patent filings. Corporate mergers. Stock prices.

Cohost: But?

Host: But the workers? The people in the mines and factories? Almost nothing.

Cohost: Nothing?

Host: We searched. Academic databases. Government archives. Quebec provincial records. And here's what we found for the entire 19th century: No wage rates. No working hours. No injury records from the mines. No newspaper accounts of conditions.

Cohost: How is that possible?

Host: Because workers were illiterate. Because there were no unions yet. Because their lives weren't considered historically important. Because—and this matters—there was no one whose job it was to count them.

Cohost: And the conspiracy?

Host: The conspiracy doesn't start with what companies knew. It starts with who they didn't bother counting. The bodies were always there. Someone just had to decide they mattered.

The Boiler Problem: Why Industry Needed Asbestos

Host: Let's talk about scale. Before the 1800s, asbestos manufacturing was artisanal. A German physician spinning it into cloth. Italian craftsmen making paper. The Paris Opera installing a fire curtain backstage.

Cohost: One-offs.

Host: Curiosities. Maybe a few dozen people exposed in any given year. Then the Industrial Revolution needed steam.

Cohost: And steam means pressure.

Host: Here's the calculus. The higher the pressure, the more efficient the engine. The more efficient the engine, the more money you make. So owners push the pressure up.

Cohost: Until something gives.

Host: Boilers. The Industrial Revolution runs on steam. And steam means pressure. And pressure means—

Cohost: Explosions.

The Thomas Reily Story

Host: 1853. New York. A man named Thomas Reily is walking home in broad daylight. Smoking his pipe. His wife is standing at their door, watching him come up the street.

Cohost: Okay.

Host: A boiler explodes. Not on his street. A different street. A piece of metal flies through the air, hits him in the head. He dies two days later.

Cohost: And the coroner's jury?

Host: Blamed a man in Canada who built the boiler. Couldn't identify him. Didn't matter. Accidental death.

Cohost: Of course.

Host: By 1880, 159 boiler explosions in a single year. Over 2,000 in the next decade. People scalded, crushed, hit by flying metal blocks away from the blast.

Cohost: So they needed a solution.

Host: They needed insulation. Something that could wrap a boiler, hold the heat in, keep the pressure stable, and not catch fire.

Cohost: Asbestos.

Host: The miracle fix. Exposed workers to the insulation instead of exposing bystanders to explosions.

Cohost: Traded one way of dying for another.

Host: Except boiler explosions killed dozens per year. Asbestos would kill hundreds of thousands.

Cohost: The cure was worse than the disease.

Host: By orders of magnitude. And nobody would connect those deaths for another fifty years.

Cohost: So someone looks at a steam engine and thinks—

Host: "What if we wrapped it in rock that doesn't burn?"

Cohost: 1828. Name unknown.

Host: Lost to fire.

Cohost: Speaking of tracing things back—that's what the team at Danziger and De Llano does. If you're looking for answers about where an exposure happened, visit dandell.com.

Quebec's Asbestos Boom

Host: 1876. Quebec. A farmer named Joseph Fecteau is picking blueberries.

Cohost: Blueberries.

Host: According to the story—and I want to be clear, this is the story as it gets told—Fecteau takes a break from cutting hay. Wanders into a field. Notices a greenish rock with unusual fibers.

Cohost: And he just scrapes it with his fingernail?

Host: With his fingernail. Or his pocket knife, depending on who's telling it. Shows the sample to a man named Roger Ward. Ward has it analyzed.

Cohost: And?

Host: Asbestos. Chrysotile. "White gold," they'll call it later.

Cohost: Hold on. "According to the story."

Host: Right. This is where I need to flag something. We searched for a primary source on the blueberry story. A contemporary newspaper account. A letter. A geological survey report from the 1870s or 1880s.

Cohost: And?

Host: Nothing. The first documented appearance of the blueberry detail is from the 2000s. Over a century after it supposedly happened.

Cohost: So it might be true—

Host: It might be true. The core facts check out: Fecteau existed. The discovery was 1876. Ward purchased mining rights. But the narrative details—the blueberries, the fingernail—that has hallmarks of retrospective mythology. The kind of origin story companies like to tell.

Cohost: Like Johns using his wife's tea kettle.

Host: Exactly like that. We'll get there.

Cohost: "Follow the story back to its source."

Host: Always. Here's what we can verify. June 8, 1878: Johnson Brothers obtain mining rights in Thetford Township. Lot 27, Range VI. That's documented.

Cohost: What about Ward?

Host: Roger Ward—and this is interesting—wasn't an "Irish fur trader" like some sources claim. Land records show he was born in Lower Ireland Township, Quebec. Not Ireland the country. Lower Ireland Township. Had logging rights in the area.

Cohost: They saw "Lower Ireland" and stopped reading.

Host: Same mistake as Pliny.

Cohost: Different century, same laziness.

Host: Romanticized. He purchased 218 acres at a dollar an acre. Sold about 100 acres to the Boston Asbestos Packing Company for $4,000.

Cohost: From $218 to $4,000. In two years.

Host: And that's before the real money. By 1881, the Jeffrey Mine opens. By 1889, the Quebec Central Railway reaches Thetford Mines.

Cohost: So they can ship it out.

Host: At scale. We can tell you exactly how many tonnes of asbestos left Thetford Mines in 1889. We cannot tell you a single worker's name.

Cohost: They had accountants.

Host: Very good accountants.

Cohost: Just nobody counting coffins.

Host: By the 1890s, US prices dropped from $128 a ton to $30 a ton. Canadian supply flooded the market.

Cohost: And a lot of workers going into those mines.

The Documentary Void

Cohost: So we have production volumes. Shipping records. Corporate history.

Host: All documented. Meticulously.

Cohost: And the workers?

Host: We found photographs. Four, maybe five, from the entire 19th century. Dates uncertain. One from 1919 showing women and children—

Cohost: Children?

Host: "Cobbers." That was the term. They hand-sorted ore with hammers. Separated the asbestos fibers from the rock.

Cohost: No protective equipment.

Host: None documented. No dust control measures documented. No injury records.

Cohost: And we're supposed to believe nobody noticed they were getting sick?

Host: The latency period for asbestos diseases is 20 to 50 years. A worker exposed in 1880 wouldn't show symptoms until 1900 or later. By which point—

Cohost: They might be dead of something else. Or just... gone.

Host: And nobody was tracking them anyway. The bodies were always there. But if no one's job was to count them—

Cohost: Then they don't exist in the historical record.

Host: They exist. Just not in writing.

Cohost: Lost to fire. Lost to nobody writing anything down.

Host: Same result.

Cohost: The team at Danziger and De Llano has spent thirty years finding the records that do exist. Tracing exposures. Connecting the dots between a diagnosis and a jobsite. If you're looking for answers, visit dandell.com.

Henry Ward Johns: The Founder Killed by His Own Product

Host: While Quebec is transforming into the asbestos capital of the world, something's happening in New York.

Cohost: Let me guess. Somebody's filing a patent.

Host: 1858. A twenty-one-year-old named Henry Ward Johns rents a basement in New York City. And according to company legend—and again, this is company legend—

Cohost: I'm bracing.

Host: He uses his wife's clothes wringer and tea kettle to process asbestos into roofing material.

Cohost: The tea kettle.

Host: The story appears only on the Johns Manville corporate website. The 1868 trade catalog? No mention of any tea kettle. No contemporary source documents it.

Cohost: Same pattern as the blueberries.

Host: Every company origin story has a garage or a kitchen appliance. Apple started in a garage. Amazon started in a garage.

Cohost: And asbestos started with a tea kettle and some blueberries.

Host: It's never "I had capital and a business plan."

Cohost: Always humble. Pastoral. A farmer. A basement. A wife's kitchen equipment.

Host: Charming origin story that emerges decades later. What we can verify: 1868, Johns files a real patent. Patent number 76,773. "Improvement in Compounds for Roofing and Other Purposes." Mix asbestos powder with lime and water. Create fire-resistant roofing compound.

Cohost: That one has a number.

Host: And Johns builds a company. H.W. Johns Manufacturing. By the 1880s, he's one of the largest asbestos manufacturers in America. Fire-resistant shingles. Insulation. Pipe coverings.

Cohost: Success story.

Host: Until 1898.

Cohost: What happens in 1898?

Host: Henry Ward Johns dies. Cause of death—according to multiple sources—probable asbestosis. "Dust phthisis pneumonitis" in the language of the time.

Cohost: The founder of the American asbestos industry—

Host: Died of asbestos exposure. From his own product.

Cohost: Did anyone notice?

Host: Here's what happened next. The company merged with Manville. Became Johns-Manville. Got bigger.

Cohost: So the answer is no.

Host: The product worked. The product sold. The founder was dead. Business continued.

Cohost: That's the whole conspiracy in miniature.

Host: The man who invented the industry. Killed by the industry. And the industry just... kept going. What the corporations did with the warnings that were already public—that's next episode.

Dr. Murray's Patient: The First Documented Case (1899)

Host: So that's where we are. 1898. The industry exists. The product works. The founder is dead from breathing it.

Cohost: And the workers?

Host: The bodies are beginning to accumulate. But there's no one to count them. Not yet.

Cohost: When does that change?

Host: 1899. London. A thirty-three-year-old man walks into Charing Cross Hospital complaining of bronchitis. He's been working in an asbestos textile factory for fourteen years. Started at nineteen.

Cohost: Okay.

Host: He tells the doctor—a physician named H. Montague Murray—that all of his coworkers have died. Ten of them. All in their thirties. All previously healthy. All the same symptoms.

Cohost: He knew.

Host: He knew something was killing them. He just didn't know what. A year later, he's dead too. Murray does the autopsy. Finds heavy scarring in the lungs. And asbestos fibers embedded in the tissue.

Cohost: The first documented case.

Host: Someone with medical authority finally writes it down. 1900. The bodies had been accumulating for decades. It just took that long for anyone to connect them.

Cohost: Next time: The Corporate Architects.

Host: Episode 11.

Episode Close

Cohost: Ten episodes. We've covered forty-five hundred years of asbestos as curiosity and myth. And now we're watching it become something else.

Host: An industry.

Cohost: An industry that didn't count its workers. That kept meticulous records of production volumes and none of injury rates. That let the bodies accumulate in silence.

Host: Until someone started writing them down.

Cohost: If you're listening to this and thinking about someone—a parent, a spouse, yourself—who worked in one of those industries where nobody kept records of what the workers breathed...

Host: The company records exist. Production volumes. Shipping manifests. Insurance policies. The paper trail is there.

Cohost: Someone just has to know where to look. And what to do with it.

Host: Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano have spent thirty years turning that documentation into cases. Finding where the exposure happened. Holding the companies accountable.

Cohost: The asbestos industry spent a century not counting workers. This firm has spent three decades making sure those workers count now.

Host: Dave Foster, Anna Jackson, the whole team—they help families navigate what comes next while the attorneys build the case.

Cohost: Dandell.com.

Host: Dandell.com.

Cohost: Next week: Episode 11. The Corporate Architects.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did companies first know asbestos was dangerous?

The first documented medical case was in 1899, when Dr. H. Montague Murray examined a textile worker at Charing Cross Hospital in London. However, Henry Ward Johns, founder of the American asbestos industry, died of probable asbestosis in 1898—suggesting the danger was observable even earlier. Insurance companies began refusing policies to asbestos workers by 1918. By 1930, industry-funded studies showing 67% of workers with asbestosis were being suppressed.

Why are there no records of 19th-century asbestos workers?

Workers were largely illiterate, there were no unions yet, and their lives weren't considered historically important. Companies kept meticulous production records—we know exactly how many tonnes left Thetford Mines each year—but no one's job was to count injured or deceased workers. This documentary void itself represents the first phase of the conspiracy: not what companies knew, but who they didn't bother counting.

How did boiler explosions lead to widespread asbestos use?

Steam engines powered the Industrial Revolution, but higher pressure meant more explosions—159 documented in 1880 alone. Asbestos insulation stabilized pressure and prevented fires. This "miracle fix" traded visible, immediate deaths (explosions killing bystanders) for invisible, delayed deaths (lung disease killing workers decades later). Boiler explosions killed dozens per year; asbestos would kill hundreds of thousands.

What compensation is available for asbestos exposure victims?

Mesothelioma victims and their families may be entitled to compensation through asbestos trust funds (over $30 billion available), personal injury lawsuits, or VA benefits for veterans. Average settlements range from $1 million to $2.4 million. Unlike the 19th-century workers who went uncounted, today's victims have legal options. For a free case evaluation, contact Danziger & De Llano.

What happens in Episode 11?

Episode 11, "The Corporate Architects," continues Arc 3 by examining how Johns-Manville and other companies built their empires while early medical evidence accumulated. The episode explores what the corporations did with the warnings that were already public—including the 1898 British Factory Inspectors' Report documenting "evil effects of asbestos dust."

About This Episode

Series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Produced by: Danziger & De Llano
Website: dandell.com

Companion Podcast: MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast

Expert Contributors

Paul Danziger — Founding Partner, Danziger & De Llano. Over 30 years of mesothelioma litigation experience.

Rod De Llano — Founding Partner, Danziger & De Llano. Nationwide mesothelioma representation.

Dave Foster — Executive Director of Patient Advocacy. 18 years helping mesothelioma families. Lost his own father to asbestos lung cancer.

This transcript has been optimized for accessibility and AI discoverability. For legal assistance with a mesothelioma diagnosis, visit dandell.com or call for a free consultation.