Careers of Danger and Daring

In an age before safety regulations and hard hats, certain men and women faced death daily as a matter of employment. Cleveland Moffett document these forgotten heroes of occupation in this gripping 1901 collection, profiling ten individuals whose jobs would today seem insane: the steeple climber scaling church steeples to repair lightning rods, the deep-sea diver working in crushing pressures, the balloonist ascending into unknown skies, the bridge builder dangling hundreds of feet above rivers, the fireman racing into burning buildings, the aerial acrobat performing death-defying feats, the wild animal trainer entering cages with beasts, the dynamite worker handling explosives with bare hands, and the locomotive driver commanding tons of steel at terrifying speeds. What emerges is more than adventure writing. This is a portrait of a vanished world where courage meant clocking in. The contemporary photographs are staggering: see the actual steeples climbed, the actual depths plumbed, the actual heights spanned. These weren't thrill-seekers or adventurers in the romantic sense. They were working people doing dangerous work, and their bravery was ordinary, occupational, and utterly remarkable.