Catastrophe and Social Change / Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster

by Samuel Henry Prince

Till steady eyes the exhalations solve

And all to its first matter, cloud, resolve.”

—Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year.

[44] Hart, [op. cit.], ch. iii, p. 31.

[45] For parallel cases of erroneous recognition of the dead, vide Le Bon, Gustave, The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind (London), bk. i, ch. i, p. 51.

[46] Ibid., p. 51.

[47] Thorndike, Edward L., The Original Nature of Man (N. Y., 1913), ch. v, p. 43 et seq.

[48] McDougall, William, An Introduction to Social Psychology (Boston, 1917), ch. iii, p. 49 et seq.

[49] Sheldon, J., The Busy East (Sackville, N. B. Can.), March, 1918.

[50] The judgment of the court of enquiry ran as follows: “The master and pilot of the Mont Blanc are guilty of neglect of public safety in not taking proper steps to warn the inhabitants of the city of a probable explosion.” (Drysdale Commission, Judgment of, sec. viii.)