I'm trying to write a scene about the funeral of a main character's sister, but I don't have a cause of death. I want it to be a freak accident because this character, while optimistic, is fairly reckless (so it wouldn't be fitting in my mind if she, oh idk... died of dysentery :p). Details that may also help:

• She'll be 17 when she dies
• The story takes place in the 1890s (so this eliminates certain causes of death)
• Her personality while alive, as well as her death, are essential to the main character's growth

Any help for this will be great!

Ate one too many gold nuggets.

Ran afoul of a train.

Tunnel collapsed.

Fell off a roof while climbing.

Killed by falling piano.

Shot while hunting.

Fell off a horse, broke neck.

Ran over by steam train.

Caught up in a tornado.

Fires a gun, killed by wildly improbable bullet ricochet.

Drowned.

Gored by a bull.

Pulled into some kind of poorly-designed early industrial contraption.

House fire.

Exploding chemistry set.

Fell off a cliff.

Stray duelling bullet.

Unexpected earthquake.

A bird drops out of the air and slams into her. Run over by a stampede of cows. Shot during a dramatic reenactment of the Civil War ("And that why we use blanks now!"). Death by corset.

@Bobby G

I'm liking the first suggestion you made. A lot. All of the others were great, too! (Especially the nugget one; this is a serious scene I'm about to write, so I was feeling a bit down, but that made my day )

Take any of these accidents, and have it be that our protagonist tries to rescue her from them, but he can't.

Family scandal: She made a habit of visiting the folks on the "wrong side of the tracks" for months now, because she found them to be pleasant, kindly people free of her family's pretentious aspirations. Oh, and when we say "wrong side of the tracks, " we mean literally because they live across a railroad tracks.

Anyway. The scandal worsens because the girl regularly got drunk with her new friends, and would always collapse/fall asleep on her way home. Right on the railroad tracks. But by a miracle, her catnaps always ended with a generous margin of time before the train came rollin' along. Also, perhaps, the protagonist could always pick her up an hour before dawn from the tracks, like clockwork.

Then, one night, the train conductors changed the damn schedule.

I would suggest combing the Darwin Awards for suggestions. That place is loaded with freak accident deaths.

Slipped on a banana peel and hit her head on the sidewalk