DISTILLER
1811–1841
Interment unknown
An Irish immigrant named Richard Seavy, age thirty, was burned and scalded at the Scribner & Hitchcock distillery September 9th, 1841 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “While drawing liquor from the receiving box into hogsheads,” wrote the Evening Post, “some of the liquor splashed out.” Some of the spirit splashed on a lamp, whereupon the flame traveled to the receiving box, setting the clothes of Seavy and another man on fire. Seavy “wrapped in flames, ran out and jumped into a kettle of boiling water to extinguish the flames, from which he was taken out, partly burnt and partly scalded, and died at 4½ o’ clock yesterday morning.”