by Joan Lock
Besides the inquests at Woolwich and in the schoolroom at Creekmouth, there were to be other inquests on bodies which turned up further away. One had already taken place at Poplar on two bodies that had been washed upstream and into East and West India Docks. One body was that of a, so far, unidentified woman. The other had been recognized as that of Edward King, father of Police Inspector King, the man who thought he had saved his wife but found, on reaching the riverbank, that it wasn’t her. He was now in search of his wife’s body and those of the rest of his family.
Unsurprisingly, the news of the sinking of the Princess Alice rapidly came to dominate the newspapers. There were initial dramatic headlines such as ‘Terrible Collision on the Thames’, ‘The Catastrophe on the River’, and ‘Fearful Collision on the River’. The text below the headlines soon followed a familiar pattern: a general run-through of the current situation then, under separate headings ‘Narratives of Survivors’ or ‘Personal Narratives’, then ‘Latest Particulars and Inquest’.
The same survivors, such as Oxford Street stationer, Mr Reed, and Mr Childs, whose son had been dashed out of his arms, told their stories or ‘narratives’ to several newspapers, or, one imagines, they were just picked up by them. The Standard managed to strike a particularly tasteless note by describing such tales as ‘thrilling personal descriptions’.
There were also the endless lists. At first, these were merely hastily put together roll calls of the missing, giving their names, ages and addresses plus occasional brief details. For example, from The Times of 5 September:
Enquiries were yesterday made for the following persons, who are missing and supposed to be drowned in the Princess Alice. The list reveals more clearly than any comment could the kind of loss which the collision brings upon very many families:
Edward King, aged 64, a wooden-legged Greenwich Pensioner. His brother-in-law and friends make inquiries. He was on a day’s excursion to Sheerness. His address was Woodbine Cottage, Woodland Street, Trafalgar Road, Greenwich.
Alfred, son of the last, aged 19.
Mrs Fanny King, sister-in-law of the last, aged 29, 20 Wootton Street, Cornwell Road, Lambeth.
Edward King, six months old, child of the last.
Mr Robert Everist, aged 38, 2 Croydon Road, Barking Road, Essex.
Mrs Everist, aged 32, his wife.
Robert Everist aged 10, son of preceding.
John Everist, aged 8.
Willie Everist, aged 4 and
A baby, 15 months, child of Robert Everist the elder.
The enquiries were made by Mr Hawkins, son-in-law of Mr and Mrs Everist. They had gone on a day’s excursion to Sheerness from North Woolwich.
Mrs T. Lee, 28, 2 Kilburn-baths, Kilburn. She was staying at Sheerness with her husband and cousin. They came up by train on Sunday, but she, in consequence of the railway accident on Saturday, was afraid to come and preferred to travel by boat. Her husband and cousin arrived safely and are now looking for her.
But soon the lists of the missing included personal descriptions and the clothing worn. On Friday 6 September The Times told its readers:
The following list of missing persons who have been inquired for is to be added to the list we published yesterday:
William Potter, age 33; height 5 ft 10 in; very stout; dress, brown tweed suit, side-spring boots. Address, 12 Suffolk-street, North-street Poplar.
Caroline Dyble, age 43; dress, black silk jacket, gold watch and chain, gold brooch and earrings. Address, Rose and Crown, Dorset-street, Fleet-street.
Alice Hammond, age 20; fair; dress black, braided jacket, brown Holland dress,3 silver earrings, locket and chain, new side-spring boots. Frederick Villa, Barking-road, Canning-town. E.
Disney Perou, age 51; hair dark, large scar on left check, black suit; on person, gold watch and chain, diamond ring on finger. The Rising Sun public house, 87, Sidney-street, Mile-end.
Walter Brodrib, age 11, complexion and hair dark, eyes blue; dress light plaid suit, straw hat, low shoes with buckles, gray ribbed stockings, white shirt, flannel bandage around chest. Address, 12 Goulborne-terrace, Appleford-road, Kentish New Town.
Annie Summers, aged 30; height, 5 ft 3 in; complexion fair; eyes light blue; dress brown stuff, black silk jacket, side-spring boots; three gold rings (one wedding, one keeper, one fancy). No 7, Mornington-road, New Cross.
And so on, for about another hundred names. The authorities might not know how many were missing but the extent of the loss was becoming more and more evident due to the growing numbers being sought.
There were also lists of bodies found and identified before the coroner. With these, readers were given more of their stories, as in this from The Times of Friday 6 September 1878:
Edmund T. Moore, 45, keeper of the Alfred Tavern, Roman-road, Barnsbury, identified by his son Thomas H. Moore of the same address. Witness’s mother was saved, but two brothers of his are missing.
Susannah Law, aged 52, spinster, Charterhouse-street, identified by her brother, John Law, manager of the Charterhouse-street branch of the London Joint-Stock Bank. Jane, sister of the deceased, aged 49, is missing. Deceased is one of the Bible-class party, which, according to witnesses numbered 48 or 50 persons of ages varying from 28 to 70. All but two of these have been lost.
S. M. Page, commercial traveller, East Dulwich, identified by his son W. S. Page, commercial clerk 1, Brixton-villas, Hindman-road, Peckham. This witnesses case, like Mr Towses, is of an especially sorrowful character. He is the only person saved out of a party of six, among whom were his father, his wife, aged 21 years, his son aged 12 months and his sister Florence aged 16 years … when the collision occurred he and his wife, who had the child in her arms, were standing near the part of the steamer which was struck. Holding his wife and child with one hand, he seized the chains of the Bywell Castle with the other but finding the load too much for his strength, he told his wife to sacrifice the child. She refused to do this, and he was obliged to let both go.
As well as the lists of those sought and those found and identified were the lists of bodies found and not yet recognized. These appeared regularly in newspapers and were posted at the dockyard gates and grew longer and more prominent as time went by.
The clothing descriptions for the bodies found were much more detailed than in the lists of the missing; understandably so, relatives were unlikely to be absolutely sure of every detail of what they had been wearing that day. Typical of the lists on bodies found and not identified were:
Man, aged 40, height, 5 ft 9 ins; hard whiskers and mustachios; light summer overcoat, blue coat and vest, cloth plaid trousers, brown striped socks, low shoes; a silver, open-faced watch, gold guard, two lockets, one red stone, one wreath of hair, £2.10s gold, 8s silver, 10d bronze, one telescopic knife, brass, tooth pick, 12 postage stamps, key; ticket, Waterloo to Addlestone; pocket book.
Woman, 35, hair dark brown, height, 5 ft; dress, black cross-over, bugle and lace trimmings, pink flowers, necktie, white stockings, side-spring boots; four rings (left) one wedding, one keeper, two dress, ruby and green stones, a small brooch, shell setting, half-circular comb, pair of earrings, pair of studs, initials C.4
Incidentally, these lists are useful sources for anyone interested in what the upper working and lower middle classes wore for a day out in the mid-nineteenth century. Amongst the interesting facts to be gleaned is that so many of the passengers, male and female, were wearing the fashionable side-spring boots. That is, elasticated at the ankles rather than buttoned or laced.
Looming increasingly large among the questions posed by the press and many others was just how many had been onboard the ill-fated pleasure steamer and therefore how many had been lost. Numbers fluctuated wildly, even going as high as a thousand in one instance. The Morning Post of Friday 5 September made a concerted effort to work this out by comparing estimates gathered from various ‘authorities’.
One authority states that there were 800 passengers, while the ticket collector at Graves
end, who happened to give unusual attention to the number of passengers onboard, expresses his belief that the Princess Alice left Gravesend with about 600 people. Captain Fitzgerald, the Thames harbour-master, estimates the loss at 400; the superintendent of the Woolwich police at about 300; but the steamboat officials estimate the loss at from 400 to 500. It is probable, however, that the loss will be nearly 600 lives.
Oddly enough, they did not reveal how they came to that final estimate, but did say that, so far, ‘not more than 70 survivors are known of with certainty but the number of dead bodies recovered is upwards of 100’.
Opinions on who was to blame for the accident were also prompt to surface. As might be expected, The Times letter writers were soon in full flow on this subject, and on the other big question – why the huge loss of life?
As for blame, Mr W.H. Crispin wrote that the week before the accident he had gone to Gravesend in one of the saloon steamers, which had been crowded with passengers. The tide was against them both up and down. However, instead of the steamers keeping to their own side, ‘they ran first one side the river, then the other, to “cheat” as the captain called it, the tide’. Until a law was passed to prevent such erratic proceedings, he concluded, accidents such as that to the Princess Alice must happen.5
‘Nemo’ claimed the accident was due to ignorance of the ‘rule of the road’, and ‘Marine Insurance’ claimed that such accidents were incessant due to careless navigation but were only noticed when there was loss of life.6
The Times chewed over these points, but concluded that perhaps it would be better to wait until the matter had been thoroughly investigated before coming down on any particular side. The Standard, of course, felt no such compunction. One of their reporters declared:
Waterside people know no better than others how the calamity happened, but they have a strong conviction founded on experience. They say that the officers of the London Steamboat Company are careful beyond all others. That watch is always kept with vigilance, and the crew are picked men. Upon the other hand, it is declared that the crew of colliers leaving London are always worked out, dead with sleep, and that the lookout, always careless, is in no state to do his duty as he goes down the river. I give the statement for what it may seem worth to those who are concerned in such matters.7
Of course, the opinions of ‘waterside people’ may have been somewhat biased, influenced by their familiarity with the Princess Alice crew and the London Steamboat Company, which operated among them and which had brought much needed work and trade to the area.
Notes
1. Standard, 6 September 1878.
2. Lewis’s letter to Carttar.
3. ‘Holland’ was a linen fabric, unbleached or dyed brown.
4. The Times, 10 September 1878.
5. The Times, 5 September 1878.
6. Ibid.
7. Standard, 5 September 1878.
The striking Illustrated London News depiction of the Princess Alice disaster is reproduced in colour on a W. H. Wills’s (Celebrated Ships No. 50) cigarette card, 1911
Leaflet advertising the refurbished Crossness Sewerage Treatment Works. Due to its magnificent Victorian ironwork the engine house has been dubbed ‘the Crossness Cathedral’
Typical contemporary broadsheet describing and illustrating the Princess Alice disaster
Frantic crowds gather and overwhelm the police on duty at Woolwich Pier where many of the bodies of Princess Alice passengers were brought ashore
There is fierce competition among the swarms of watermen probing the river to encourage the drowned to rise so that they may claim a fee for each body
With the aid of divers and heavy lifting chains, three days after the sinking, the forward part of the Princess Alice is brought to the surface and towed to the south shore
Relatives identifying the bodies of the victims at Woolwich dockyard. Initially, bodies found on the northern (Essex) banks of the river could not be held at Woolwich since it was unlawful law to move them to another jurisdiction
Just prior to the collision the huge hull of the Tyne collier, Bywell Castle, looms over the much more fragile pleasure steamer the Princess Alice, while the ships’ warning whistles continue to shriek and the passengers scream
Burying the unknown dead. Eventually, due to increasing decomposition, it became imperative to bury even those who remained unidentified. Their dramatic mass funeral took place on ‘Burial Monday’, 9 September 1878, at Woolwich Cemetery
For almost two weeks, at Woolwich Town Hall, the coroner and his nineteen-man inquest jury listened to a constant flow of relatives and friends identifying the bodies of their loved ones. Only then began the prolonged process of investigating the cause of the accident
At the start of each day the coroner took his jury to view the latest bodies retrieved and they were also taken to examine parts of the newly-raised wreck
The heavier back-end of the Princess Alice proved more difficult to raise. More bodies were released from the wreck as it finally surfaced on the fifth day after the collision
Relatives identifying the belongings of the dead. The number attached to each object corresponded with that placed on the victim’s body: a process designed to make identification easier
The Bywell Castle was a powerful, iron-built, 890-ton Tyne collier. The ship’s most regular coal run took it to the Eastern Mediterranean
The Princess Alice pleasure steamer, built at Greenock in 1865, was only 219 feet long, 20 feet wide and weighed a mere 250 tons
Thames police officers searching for bodies in the drained interior of the forward part of the Princess Alice wreck. None were found among the debris of hats, umbrellas, souvenirs and stewards’ money bags
Identifying the clothes of the dead at Woolwich dockyard. Even when a victim was ‘buried unknown’ their clothing was boiled and retained to aid possible identification later
An Illustrated London News map indicating the presumed site of the collision – close by Tripcock Point. Subsequently, there was to be much dispute amongst the witnesses and ship owners about the exact site of the accident
William Grinstead, the 47-year-old captain of the Princess Alice, was considered to be one of the London Steamboat Company’s most experienced and careful employees and also a very nice man
Princess Alice and her family in 1876. Her ill-fated daughter, May, is seen here in her father’s arms
Postcard of the Victorian panel of the Greenwich Millennium Embroideries. The Princess Alice disaster is shown top right
CHAPTER FIVE
The Vultures are Gathering
‘Gentlemen, before proceeding with the business before us; it is my paramount duty to read to you a gracious message from Her Majesty, which has been communicated to me through the Lord Lieutenant of the county’, announced the coroner on opening the Woolwich inquest on its second day, Thursday 5 September.1
Right from the start, Queen Victoria had been repeatedly telegraphing the Board of Trade for news of the tragedy, wanting to know how many had been onboard and asking that messages of condolences be sent to the relatives of those who had lost their lives. These were passed to the Lord Mayor, Earl Sidney, the Lord Lieutenant of Kent and the London Steamboat Company from whence they were disseminated via newspapers and other means.
She, too, wanted to know just how many had been lost, as did the Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse, who had just arrived back in London from Eastbourne, where they had been holidaying. The day after the collision their secretary sent a letter from Buckingham Palace to the London Steamboat Company saying how they had read ‘the accounts in the papers with very great sorrow’ and hoped that their sympathy be conveyed to the survivors and that the loss of life would not be as great is it was feared to be. The Duchess was, of course, the Princess Alice after whom the fated pleasure craft had been named.
After reading out the Queen’s message, Mr Carttar went on to explain the reason that they were holding a jury viewing and inquest on every victim,
even though the task was almost insurmountable. He said that he and his fellow Essex coroner had asked for but not received any official advice on the necessity of doing it this way, so they had just gone ahead. Also, they had realized that had they not done so, there might be ‘an unseemly scramble for property on the part of people who might have no right to it whatever’.2 He and the Parish authorities had therefore come to the conclusion that they ought to pursue their painful and arduous task to the end if the jury agreed. They did.
Carttar also complained that he was overwhelmed with letters containing all sorts of silly and impracticable suggestions. All these did was waste valuable time and he asked it to be known through the press that he should receive no more.
One of these letters was from a Kent plumber who suggested that some bodies might be brought to the surface if a heavy piece of cannon was fired over the river where, it was supposed, some were thought to lie. He had witnessed it done and had seen a body rise ‘almost perpendicularly’. Another letter writer offered his patented Fresh Meat Preservative, which could preserve the bodies for some time.