© 2005 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/school-violence/
School violence is not merely the province of modern times. In fact, one of the greatest attacks on American soil can be attributed to violence at school.
In the village of Bath, Michigan, in the year 1926 Andrew Kehoe fought a valiant battle against a tax increase that was levied to pay for the township’s new school. His battle was a noble one, going through the right means of battling government imposed injustice, or it was noble until he lost. He ran for and won a position as treasurer of the school board, but despite his effort the city opted to retain the tax. Kehoe argued, pleading that with the added burden he would lose his farm, but was unheeded. Thus Andrew asked that he be allowed part-time work as the school’s custodian—to make ends meet. The school board agreed.
Then things seemed to lapse into a peaceful state for several months. Kehoe was seen around the school at various times. He was noticed doing electrical work in the building, but this went wholly unremarked for the fact he was an infamous miser—people just thought he was running repairs since he was too tight to hire an electrician.
But this innocuous events culminated on 18 May 1927. Just after morning bell at the Consolidated school, 300 pounds of dynamite wired in the basement exploded.
There were two separate explosions—but no witnesses to say which was the larger. The north wing of the school was entirely demolished. People in the town four miles away reported hearing the blast. People working at farms nearer the school had to follow the columns of smoke to find the epicenter of the explosion. Radios and phones were scarce, and runners had to be sent to fetch help. It was after noon when a full scale rescue effort was underway. A third explosion occurred at Kehoe’s car. He pulled up to survey the scene, and spotted the superintendent, Emory E. Huyck, aiding with the rescue, and called him over. When Huyck neared Kehoe pulled a rifle from his truck and fired into a bundle of dynamite in his truck. The resulting blast killed him, Huyck, and 7 others. At first reporters considered his demise an impulsive act by a deranged man, but a later discovery would revise that opinion.
As rescuers were digging bodies out of the wreckage they came upon a startling discovery: not all of the dynamite had detonated, and what remained was still wired to explode. The rescue was halted while a group of volunteers (they had no bomb squad) raced in and defused what was left of the bomb. It turned out that less then half of dynamite went off; 500 pounds remained.
By the end of the day there were 44 dead. 30 of those were children. Another 50 to 90 were wounded. Not a family in the area was without injury or fatality. The massacre of Bath Michigan made the front page on 20 May, along side news of Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight.
But the story wasn’t ended yet. That day they discovered the Kehoe farm had also been destroyed. Andrew’s wife had been slain. Horses in the stables had been hobbled with bailing wire so they couldn’t escape. There was a sign hung waiting, which read “Criminals are made, not born.” It was at this point that speculation began that perhaps Andrew’s own death had not been impulsive, but rather a part of his plan.
The Bath School Disaster held the title of the worst bombing incident in the US up until 1995’s Oklahoma City bombing, and suffered a small historical revival in the time after the Columbine School incident.
© 2005 All Rights Reserved. Do not distribute or repurpose this work without written permission from the copyright holder(s).
Printed from https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/school-violence/
Since you enjoyed our work enough to print it out, and read it clear to the end, would you consider donating a few dollars at https://www.damninteresting.com/donate ?
Was it TNT or dynamite. There’s a substantial difference, and the article seems to confuse the two.
Dave
Fascinating. The man made his point.
-L.
This is the foundation of American history. Everyone has limits. You can only push people so far and then they rebel. You see similar incidents all throughout history and immediately accuse the person of being mentally unstable in order to try and make some sense out of all the death and destruction. In most cases this assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. Unfortunately this is going to be a fact of life. It’s just too bad that a lot of innocent people get caught up in it and end up paying the price with their lives.
I can’t agree with Arcangel’s supposition that this is the foundation of American History. The difference between Kehoe’s acts and, for instance, the Revolutionary War, are as different as possible. Kehoe didn’t rebel, unless you are speaking from a context of religion or morality. Koehoe wrought revenge on the innocent. Kehoe was a terrorist, plain and simple. His actions did not right a wrong. His actions did not bring attention to his need. He is murderer of children and innocents, including his own family. What a pathetic person.
Dave said: “Was it TNT or dynamite. There’s a substantial difference, and the article seems to confuse the two.
Dave”
He blew the building up with TNT and himself up with Dynamite.
Just because something’s driving you over the edge is no reason to kill a bunch of innocent people. The town needed a school, so they taxed people and got one. Just because one guy’s going broke doesn’t mean you stop something that is going to be good for the community. Everyone else was paying taxes happily, weren’t they? Kehoe was just being selfish. They even gave him a job in the school because of the loss it caused him. He wasn’t even broke anymore. But still, he wanted to act tough.
Alright. You baited me and I’ve gone hook, line and sinker for it.
Josh Harding said: “I can’t agree with Arcangel’s supposition that this is the foundation of American History.
alipardiwala said: “Just because something’s driving you over the edge is no reason to kill a bunch of innocent people.
When the 13 colonies decided to go their own way instead of the British way, I’m sure that the collateral damage involved lots of innocent people including children. War of 1812 and Civil war stories tell of murder, rape and killing of innocent people. Something more up to date maybe. How about the KKK and racial riots? Still not recent enough? Ruby Ridge, Waco (okay that one is religious based), Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing just to mention a few. The fact that this little story you pulled up, a story that I didn’t even know about (makes it damn interesting) is just the icing on the cake so to speak. Likely many more events similar in one way or another to this one. You need go no further then your local federal prison (records or present day) to get more events like this one. Some of these people were idiots while others just wanted to, like in the words of thatsmyname says
“The man made his point.”
American history is full of these things, hence, is built on them. The fact that Americans are loosing more and more rights will be the fuel to fire up more of this kind of uncivil action. It’s just unfortunate that the innocent have to pay the price.
There is still a very major difference here. You used it yourself in the use of the word collateral. The main drive behind the revolution was freedom, not murder or collateral damage. The War of 1812 and the Civil Wars were not driven by the desire to rape or kill innocents, but by the desire to keep the nation together and free the slaves (and to be truthful, money). The KKK’s agenda IS to kill, rape, murder, drive out anyone not fitting in their racial definition of perfection. The agenda of a racial riot is to sew chaos and destruction. Do they change things? Not really. Not in the long run. I guarantee you the school was rebuilt and very few people remember Kehoe and even less remember his agenda.
I realize I am entering into this argument late, but I’d like to be on the record taking issue with the moralist, Josh Harding’s attempt to differentiate between terrorist tactics of bombers like this Kehoe fella and McVeigh and the tactics of early colonial subjects in the American War for Independence. The British Army called the minutemen of the colonies “terrorists” for their tactics of engaging the army with guerilla tactics and refusing to volley with the British in ranks as was the common way of infantry fighting in the 18th century between European armies. How does their agenda change anything related to the moral qualities of their actions??? You say “the main drive behind the revolution(a mischaracterization of the War for Independence) was freedom, not murder or collateral damage.” Do you really think that in what are now the American cities of Boston or Philadelphia that high level British loyalist officials weren’t murdered by colonists, whose main drive was murdering officials of the empire, as a product of the insurgency against the British Empire? Read more than just high school textbooks about the nature of tactics in these early american wars or any wars of insurgency/counterinsurgency before making simplistic judgments. If you are a young man, it is understandable and I should be less severe…if you are older than 25, you are naive. One government’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.
And remember children: Stay in school. Unless some psycho tax-avoider has stuffed TNT in the basement. Then, you run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why couldn’t this jerk just burn the school building down in the middle of the night? Or better yet, just off himself quietly like the coward he was. I find it amazing that no one noticed 800 pounds of TNT over a period of months. Not to mention, “Hey, there’s that crazy old farmer doing electrical repairs on the school again. No need to check it out.” By the way, I never heard of this incident during the media feeding frenzy surrounding Columbine.
sh0cktopus said: ” By the way, I never heard of this incident during the media feeding frenzy surrounding Columbine.”
They also didn’t bring up Patrick Purdy’s shooting school kids from that tower in Stockton, Ca, either. Then again, he only killed 35. The reason is that in Columbine it was students that were doing the killing, not some outsider (by that I mean non-student). And since the Bath-Kehoe incident took place about 70 years earlier, the number of people that would remember from when it happened would be pretty small.
So when Jason says “a small historical revival” (note the word “small”), he and a few historians that have come across it made the connection and mentioned it.
Let’s face it – standing on a field and shooting at each other until one side or the other runs away is one of the dumbest tactics ever conceived.
It is only useful if your side has better weapons or outnumbers the enemy – which is probably why the english were so keen on using it. I can’t really blame the rebels for not playing along, and I think other armies saw the advantage in more differentiated tactics as well. I don’t think anyone used it a few years later.
Anyway in my opinion there is still a big difference between using guerillia tactics against combattants as opposed to schoolchildren.
I went to school at Michigan State, which is only about ten miles south of Bath. I have been to the bath memorial, a nice little historical marker and gazebo type deal. I tended bar at one of the local watering holes and one of the regulars owned a house in Bath directly across from the old school building. Every year he would still pull up bricks in his front yard which had been buried in the explosion and slowly worked there way out.
Actually, Purdy killed five. He wounded another 30, but never climbed a tower during his assault.
As for Columbine, there were a number of people who countered the claims being made at the time of the worst school massacre in U.S. history by pointing to Bath.
I, too, am entering this discussion fairly late. Years, in fact. However, I could not help but find Comment #9 a terribly disingenuous post.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the moral perspectives surrounding the American Revolutionary War (and you would be surprised to hear that both the traditional as well as the revisionist views have relevant things to say), it’s a bit narrow-minded to insult Mr. Harding’s perspectives as “moralist” and “naive,” while ignoring the most basic moralist and naive fallacies in your own post.
First off, you consider the American colonial forces a “terrorist” organization because they, according to the British, didn’t fight fair according to the unspoken gentleman’s standard of the age. Ironically, just a few centuries earlier, the French considered the English dishonourable because at Crecy, they chose to use terrain, superior-ranged arms, revolutionay (at the time) tactics, and simple common sense to their advantage in order to overcome an overwhelmingly superior foe. This is precisely what the Americans did to the British, no more, no less–something the Brits themselves did long before they called themselves British. It also bears mentioning that the Americans *did* field a true European-style army, in the same fashion as the British, as the war went on. This is because the skirmishers who the British called “terrorists” lacked the firepower, and manpower, to capture and hold ground. They were effective at harassing and disrupting enemy positions, but had little staying power. However, these skirmishers remained useful all throughout the war, remaining as dense-terrain support troops for the open-field armies they would later fight alongside.
Also, if you were not aware of this, I should probably inform you: The British made use of these same skirmishers you call “terrorists,” in the form of the Queen’s Rangers. They were, in fact, a very effective British-Loyalist regiment, and used the same fighting tactics as the colonial skirmishers–the so-called “terrorists.” And the rest of the world adopted skirmishing tactics as well. For the next decades on, however, the American skirmishers–especially the Longriflemen–would retain their reputation as the world’s best. Even among the British, who weren’t as simple-minded as your portrayal of them implies.
You would have learned this had you chose to actively research the American Revolutionary War, instead of merely simplifying the moral complexities of the conflict in order to meet your simplistic moral code. Instead of choosing to objectively view history through the perspectives of both sides, you chose only one as the basis of your opinion–the British. The irony of it all should escape no-one at this point.
Phaedrus, if you are a young man, it is understandable that you should seek simple and moralizing answers to the world’s issues and I should be less severe. If you are older than 25, however, then you are naive.
And to Comment #13:
Mirage_GSM, I’ll agree with your practical assessment except on one point–the “stand there and shoot” tactic actually *was* very effective in the age of inaccurate firearms. Muskets were notoriously inaccurate, and short-ranged. However, accuracy matters little if enough muskets are directed in the same general direction. In effect, a line of musketmen acts as a giant, organized human shotgun/scattergun. And when standing in those lines, while rotating out with reserves behind them in rhythm, they could maintain a relatively fast rate of fire. The British redcoats were the most disciplined of their time, and could reload and fire faster than any other standing army. Against another an army on the open field, they could, and did, cut their enemies down with terrifying speed.
The reason they viewed the American skirmishers with such loathing was because the skirmishers used tactics that could effectively counter them. Frankly, they were just being prissy over the fact that their enemies used tactics that counteracted theirs and they didn’t want to adapt in turn. After they lost, though, they began to see the point of a non-regimented light infantry force.
When the Prussian “needle gun” was developed in the 19th century, guns became fast-reloading and very accurate. For a while, it was a closely guarded secret that made the Prussians nearly unstoppable. Naturally, this made the “firing line” tactic obsolete. From then on out, militaries didn’t have to treat entire units as “walking shotguns,” instead each man was a potentially dangerous combatant on his own. Like the sharpshooting skirmishers of the American Revolutionary War, come to think of it.
You refuse to see the point. School children were not the enemy here for Kehoe yet they were the ones who paid the price (their lives). The city government is who he should’ve been terrorizing not the school. Early Americans fighting against the British who murdered “high level British loyalist officials” killed those whom they had identified as the enemy. This guy was a terrorist and could in no way be considered a freedom fighter because he instigated the fight against people who had nothing to do with his cause, they had no power over him, the government did. As you said “If you are a young man, it is understandable and I should be less severe…if you are older than 25, you are naive.”
Umm . . couldn’t this man have used his extra p/t cash to keep his farm, rather than blow up the school?
wow. what an ASSHOLE.
@ Dorian Cornelius Jasper #16
The poster you are replying to wrote;
“The British Army called the minutemen of the colonies “terrorists””. I do not believe Phaedrus was attempting to make a moral judgement on the American Revolutionaries, he was making a very valid point, that “One government’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”.
The Boston Merchants et. al. were fighting principally for freedom from British taxes. Words like “freedom” and “equality” had only a very limited meaning at the time, especially to slave-owners.
Also, the main war-winning tactic employed by the Colonists was forming an alliance with the French.
Yeah. Guy blows up school. Blows up self. Kills wife. Destroys farm and injures horses. Just your average normal guy. No mental health problems evident at all.
One little thing no one seems to have brought up yet. Though before I say this I probably should say that the value of lives lost is far more important then mere property damage.
That being said, one of the first things the government was obligated to do in the aftermath would be to raise funds to repair/replace the school or at the very least expand other schools enough to cover the surviving children.
In other words, his solution to the government spending to much on schools was to force them to spend more on schools.
Last.
What would the tax amount to in today’s money, $5 a week? I find it hard to believe that would be enough to cause a farmer to lose his farm, and I think everyone back then knew it too (he’s called a notorious miser in the article).
This paltry amount was enough for him to off his wife, himself and a bunch of innocents?
If he was trying to make a point he succeeded and the point is clearly that he was a selfish jerk.