“Runaway!” That shout sent terrified Bangoreans diving for doorways and ditches a century ago. A series of spectacular downtown sleigh accidents during the winter of 1908 demonstrated that while speeding automobile drivers might be a growing menace in warm weather, spooked horses and careless horsemen remained the No. 1 threat to life and limb on the road at all seasons of the year. While these pell-mell flights of equine fancy sound almost humorous today, they created unforgettable danger and pandemonium.

Mrs. George H. Babbitt was driving a sleigh that also contained her two daughters, Frances and Virginia, down Ohio Street on Jan. 17 when the horse became frightened and started to run for its life. At the junction of Ohio and Union streets, the sleigh overturned when its runner caught in the trolley tracks. Mrs. Babbitt, who was the wife of the manager of the Howland Pulp and Paper Co., and her daughters were tossed out, bruised and shaken, but otherwise uninjured, according to accounts in Bangor’s two daily newspapers.

The horse continued racing madly down Union Street, “through Independent [Street], and ’round into Haymarket Square, [where Key Plaza is today].” By this time, the animal had cleared itself from the sleigh and was running blind. “It seemed a wonder that the horse didn’t become tangled up with the farmers’ and butchers’ wagons, which crowded the square,” said the Bangor Daily News.

At the junction of Water Street and Pickering Square, which was adjacent to Haymarket Square, the horse took to the sidewalk. Bystanders dodged out of the way, but George W. Baker was not so lucky. The butcher and driver of a meat wagon was leaving M.C. Baker’s meat market on Pickering Square when he collided with the runaway. The blow knocked them both to the ground. The horse jumped to its feet and was about to take off again when it was stopped by Martin H. Kearns, a truckman. Baker was left unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. The police ambulance took him to his home on Sixteenth Street where Dr. T.J. Murphy said he might have a fractured skull.

The next equine spectacle occurred the very next day. Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Lancaster of Melrose Highlands, Mass. started out for a drive behind a handsome bay horse owned by Mrs. Lancaster’s father, Charles W. Morse, a well-known Bangor horseman. They drove out Hammond Street on their way to the Morses’ farm. A short distance beyond the Cedar Street intersection, one of the sleigh runners caught in the trolley tracks, overturning the sleigh. The frightened horse turned and bolted back toward the city hauling the empty sleigh. Aside from bruises and shock, the Lancasters were unhurt.

“The horse broke all records down Hammond Street,” reported the Bangor Daily Commercial that afternoon. “The sleigh collided with a telegraph pole at the start and its demolition began. The clattering of the remains of the sleigh at its heels frightened the horse more at every jump and he tore down Hammond Street hill at a pace which would have landed him a winner in the Brooklyn Handicap.”

Pols Corner, the busy intersection at the Main and Hammond streets, was crowded with horses and wagons and pedestrians. Patrolman Thomas O’Donahue was the cop on the beat. The runaway emerged from a cloud of snow racing down the hill at breakneck speed, but the patrolman’s actions and the shouts of bystanders cleared the area before anyone was hurt.

A delivery pung (a one-horse box sleigh) belonging to the “soft beer” firm of Copeland & Co. was standing in front of Buckley & Preble, a drugstore at 27 Hammond St. “The excited horse with the remains of the sleigh at his heels piled all over the pung and was thrown on his back,” said the Commercial. “The horse attached to the pung then took fright and bolted through West Market Square with parts of the broken pung dragging, one protruding board raking the feet from beneath a bystander with the neatness of a bowling pin knocked down by a ball.”

This second runaway horse soon was stopped. The Morse horse, meanwhile, had been badly cut, but was not injured otherwise. “The sleigh was a pile of kindling and twisted iron. The soft beer pung was considerably smashed and two cases of soft beer were destroyed,” noted the Commercial, bringing to an end its account of the second potentially deadly horse shenanigans in two days.

The third act in Bangor’s horse opera that winter involved a careless driver. The horse was merely doing what it was told. This time the intrepid Patrolman O’Donahue, who was one of the largest and most athletic men on the Bangor police force, had a close brush with death at his Pols Corner crossing. A sled passed with a long chain dragging behind it. The patrolman stopped to pick it up and throw it in the sled before it tripped somebody.

Along behind the sled came Dr. B.L. Bryant, “his horse stepping at a lively trot,” the Commercial reported on Feb. 3 on the afternoon of the event. Unaware of the oncoming sleigh, O’Donahue was struck by one of the shafts that attached the horse to the vehicle. “The point of the shaft ripped the patrolman’s ulster [a long, belted overcoat made of heavy fabric] open as cleanly as a knife … going through cloth, padding and lining to the undercoat and giving him a painful blow in the side,” reported the Commercial. “The officer was knocked to one side and escaped the hoofs of the horse.”

Even though his steed was stepping right along, Dr. Bryant apparently wasn’t violating the 8 mph speed limit. There was no ordinance against mere carelessness in driving through crowded intersections.

“This sort of thing has gone on long enough,” Police Chief Bowen told the Commercial’s reporter. “A good many of these fellows drive as if they had their eyes shut, and if the patrolman says anything to them they laugh at him because they know he can’t bring any charge against them unless they are exceeding the speed limit.”

Patrolman O’Donahue’s ulster was going to be Exhibit A for the chief when he went before the City Council looking for a tougher ordinance. What to do about runaway horses, however, was a different matter.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.