The Princess Alice Disaster

by Joan Lock

  Meanwhile, a deputation of Creekmouth inhabitants, accompanied by two police officers, approached him to protest against unclaimed bodies still being kept in their little village. The stench was sickening. The previous evening their coroner, Mr Lewis, had agreed that they should go to Woolwich and he had issued burial certificates. Mr Hughes, the solicitor for the Princess Alice had promised to forward shells and arrange for their removal, but nothing had been done. Fitzgerald sent them to see Mr Hughes again and told them that if they couldn’t find him, to go to Mr Thomas who would see they got their shells.

  It transpired that the lower part of the saloon of the beached wreck was full of mud and water too deep to allow the searchers to wade about. There was no hose to drain the vessel, so Captain Fitzgerald dispatched men to Woolwich for hammers and chisels. ‘In the meantime’, said the Morning Post reporter, ‘the watermen poked about the cabin with boat hooks in the hope of recovering bodies, but they only succeeded in finding clothing and cushions … soon, the deck was littered with a miscellaneous collection of battered hats, dripping umbrellas, babies bonnets, cloaks, crates of ginger beer, bottles, and boxes and drawers full of broken china.’

  When the tools arrived he reported that:

  … the rivets began to fly off, leaving holes through which the muddy water in the cabin shot through in jets. In a very short time the men, stimulated by the energy of Captain Fitzgerald, had wrenched away a portion of the plate, and the water speedily began to diminish in the cabin. As soon as it had sunk down to three or four ft the Thames Police crowded in and fished about for bodies. But none were found amid the debris, nor were any discovered in the closed compartment abutting the cabin. Several bags were found, one containing money taken by the steward2 … The stench arising from inside the wreck was of a most horrible nature, but the Thames Police and others worked manfully and expeditiously.

  In the mud was also discovered the likeness of a girl, which from the newness of the gilt frame, had evidently been taken by some cheap itinerant photographer at Sheerness or Gravesend on the day of the disaster.3

  Elsewhere, twenty-five bodies had been found, five of them men, one of them a uniformed soldier of the 11th Hussars. There were also thirteen women, one ‘lad’, three little girls and two babies. By noon, five more had been taken from the saloon: two women, one little girl and two boys, one of these Captain Grinstead’s son, John James, who had been a call boy on the Princess Alice. They were all loaded onto the Heron and taken to the dockyard shed where they were placed male bodies on one side and female on the other – another method of helping streamline the identification process.

  That weekend, the news of the expected raising of the wreck caused thousands of sightseers and grieving friends and relatives to descend upon Woolwich. They came by train, steamboat, cab and special omnibuses from London Bridge. They crowded the town, tramped and stumbled their way over the marshes and lined the riverbanks on both sides to stare at the site and the wreck of the forepart.

  Doggerel relating to the disaster were sung and hawked about in broadsheets by street musicians, as were souvenir beer and mineral bottles salvaged from the steward’s cabin, which were purchased at high prices, and carefully handled so as not to disturb their muddy crust.

  This is a typical broadsheet of the time, but offered two ballads for the price of one. The first was:

  THE LOSS OF THE PRINCESS ALICE

  Tune: Sailor’s Grave

  How many thousands have found a grave

  ‘eneath the ever rolling wave,

  And day by day the list we swell,

  Another loss we have to tell;

  Above five hundred precious lives,

  Women and children, men and wives,

  In the midst of joy and pleasures’ games,

  ‘eneath the Thames their bodies lie,

  Both old and young were doom’d to die,

  The steamer sank beneath the waves,

  And hundreds found a watery grave.4

  And so on for another five verses.

  Pickpockets also arrived on the scene and were soon plying their distressing trade. There were fights between watermen protecting their ‘fishing’ rights, often fuelled by alcohol. Some sightseers rowed up to the beached wreck and tried to pry pieces off as souvenirs. Others even managed to gain access to the dockland shed where the bodies were still stowed.

  Among those still searching for loved ones, the Morning Post noted, ‘the fearful scenes which were enacted on the previous two days after the wreck, were not yesterday to be witnessed, as the calmness of despair seemed to have taken the place of the frenzied grief naturally manifested at first by the bereaved relatives’.

  The Thames Police, led by Superintendent Alston, tried to control the unruly bystanders, including moving on an old man named Douglas Chellow, who paraded along the riverbank and in and out of a temporary mortuary carrying a placard bearing the words:

  CAN WE BE MASTERS OF THE SEA IF

  WE CANNOT KEEP A PLEASURE BOAT

  AFLOAT ON THE THAMES?

  THE RIVER HAS HAD HER REVENGE.5

  But worse was to come. At low tide several ruffians climbed onboard the chief conservancy barge and impeded the rescue operations. Two drunken labourers began swearing and shouting and, faced with a couple of policemen, one of them drew a knife and threatened to slit up any bluebottle who tried to touch him. Touch him they did, and arrested them. The next day a magistrate informed the pair that their conduct in such solemn circumstances was simply disgraceful and, despite their protests that they had been drunk, sentenced them to two weeks’ hard labour. Another man was charged with stealing from a body.

  Those who went home early on the Sunday missed the raising of the larger and heavier after-part, which began to surface at around 7 p.m. At low tide a lifting barge had been floated over the wreck and divers helped place chains under the vessel from two side barges. At the second attempt, the battered wreck was raised and grounded on the riverbank.

  As soon as the top of the saloon became visible, watermen grew busy probing for bodies. The first to be drawn out was a woman wearing a figure-hugging black gown and black kid gloves. She was followed by another, also in black, but with her gold jewellery shining in the evening sunlight.

  The Times of 9 September 1878 wrote:

  It is noticeable that the women’s bodies chiefly are discovered in the wreck. Those of the men are hooked from the riverbed. Most of the men had a struggle for life. Many of the women seem to have remained in the boat, some huddled in a corner clutching their children, others fighting with each other for egress through the narrow doorway.

  It seemed not to have occurred to them that men were more liable to be able to swim, so would be more likely to ‘struggle for life’, or that the women were probably looking after the children inside.

  Mr Carttar reopened the inquest on the Saturday morning but first had to deal with the problem of the unclaimed bodies that had been out of the water some time and were now causing real health concerns. The weather remained warm, there was no refrigeration, and it didn’t help that the water in which they had drowned was foul; the two marvellous new sewage outlets emptied into the river around the point that the Princess Alice sank and the water was further fouled by waste from the nearby Silvertown factories and fertilizer works.

  The jury foreman reported that a meeting of the Local Board of Health had just passed a resolution saying that, on health grounds, the unclaimed should be buried as soon as possible and Police Superintendent Baynes declared that he could no longer justify exposing his men to the risks of working among the putrefying bodies. Issuing them with smelling salts was not enough.

  The coroner told them he had received some thirty letters suggesting they should be photographed. PC Gilham told him that had already been done and that, apart from those brought in on Friday night, there were thirty-one still unclaimed.

  Mr Carttar thought this ‘an extraordinarily large number’ to remain unidentified. It
was not conceivable that there could be thirty-one people living in London who absence since Tuesday had not been observed by anyone. He could only suppose that people thought giving a description to the police was sufficient and that they would be informed when they were picked up. But given the state of the water and the effects of it on the bodies, it was not possible for police to recognize them from a description.

  A juryman suggested that many of the deceased might live alone in London and all their friends be in the country, so it would take some time for them to become aware of the loss. ‘That is true’, Carttar agreed, but added doggedly, ‘thirty-one unidentified bodies is, nevertheless, a large number’.

  He decided that they should all be buried on the Monday morning. But, before they left to view the latest batch of bodies, he told them about a private communication he had received from the churchwarden at Erith. It justified what had been done with the bodies found there ‘of which the foreman of the jury had remarked a day or two ago that they were in a painfully different state from those landed at Woolwich’. The jury foreman said that he was sure his brother jurors would admit that they were ‘much more exposed as to their persons than the bodies recovered here’. What had happened, Carttar explained, was that two women had been employed to deal with the bodies – ‘to examine their linen for marks etc. – but it was subsequently felt that this was inadvisable and a stop was put to it. With that explanation I think the matter may be allowed to pass’.

  A juryman agreed and the foreman said he was sorry if any expression of his had given unnecessary pain to anyone, ‘but the point was one on which I felt deeply, and I thought it right to express my candid opinion’. Something he seemed ever ready to do.

  Then, once again, came the endless parade of grieving relatives trooping across the tasteful carpet to stand under the brass chandeliers of the town hall’s handsome boardroom and explain why they thought a certain body was that of their loved one.

  They included: Edward Leaver, who identified his 15-year-old son, Albert; John Bolam, who identified his aunt, 38-year-old Mary Ann Bolam, who was yet another deceased member of the Bible party; and William Usherwood, who ‘had some difficulty in making it clear how many of his family were lost’. While being questioned by the coroner and jury members ‘his emotion overcame him, and he had to be furnished with a chair and a glass of water’.

  There was a pause when Mr Hughes for the London Steamboat Company stepped forward to say he wished to correct a mistake made by the Sheerness people as to the number onboard the Princess Alice. He said it was quite true that 491 people went onboard at Sheerness, but they distributed themselves between the Princess Alice and the two other steamers, the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Connaught, so perhaps 150 should be deducted on that account. Therefore, the total number onboard when the Princess Alice left Rosherville might be set down at about 500, instead of 651. The children would be in addition.

  The foreman: Would the 500 include the seven musicians?

  Mr Hughes: I think so.

  The foreman: I think not. It has been stated that the musicians did not travel with tickets.

  The coroner: The actual number onboard must, I am afraid, always remain a matter of doubt.6

  Indeed, as he spoke, bodies were arriving thick and fast and continued to do so, silencing, as one newspaper commented, those ‘who in the teeth of all the evidence continued to assert that the total number onboard the steamer did not exceed five hundred’ and also disproving the watermen’s claims that bodies took nine days to rise.

  As for the little boy at Plumstead Infirmary, the coroner was informed that neither Mr and Mrs Lambert nor Mr and Mrs Brady, whose names he had given, had had a boy with them. The little boy now said he was with his father and mother and a brother named Bob and a sister named Alice.

  One hundred and twenty bodies were brought in on the Saturday and, by 6 p.m. on Sunday, a further 111 had been added. They came not just from Woolwich but, Barking, Erith, Rainham, Greenhithe and upriver at Blackwall and brought the total thus far to 503. One of the last two bodies recovered just off Woolwich Arsenal, at around 9 p.m. on the Sunday night, was that of Captain Grinstead, the much-respected skipper of the ill-fated Princess Alice. He was immediately recognized by an old acquaintance, Police Inspector Phillips.

  Notes

  1. Standard, 9 September 1878.

  2. Chief Steward, Mr Boncey, had been on board, as his nephew had predicted.

  3. Standard, 9 September 1878.

  4. Broadside Ballads, The National Library of Scotland. digital.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/14981

  5. As quoted in ‘Disaster’, an article by Jon Josling in the Warren magazine, summer 1974.

  6. The Times, 9 September 1878.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Burial Monday

  ‘A stranger entering Woolwich yesterday might have imagined that a terrible pestilence was ravaging the town, so large was the number of hearses which came in from the London Road, so subdued the demeanour of the residents’ reported the Standard on Tuesday 10 September 1878.

  Indeed the conduct of the people of Woolwich on Burial Monday was held to be in stark contrast to the unseemly behaviour of the holidaymakers on the preceding day. The shops on the route were closed and shuttered, quiet crowds assembled on the pavements as the church bells tolled. Men’s hats were lifted and the eyes of the women were wet as army ambulance wagons rumbled by, driven by smartly uniformed members of the Army Service Corps wearing the pickle-haube.1 They were carrying thirteen of the still unidentified dead. On each person’s coffin was a metal plate inscribed with the police registration number that had been attached to their clothes and jewellery, their photograph and any laundry or other mark found upon their clothing.

  Most of the long-term unidentified dead were women, a fact which much exercised one of the imaginative Standard reporters. Why was this when women’s garments and personal adornments were so much more distinctive than those of men? Was it that the men were too busy working to provide for their families to attend? Or was it that men lost heart sooner, were less patient of the weary agony of waiting or sickened sooner over the dreadful task of identification? Men gave up in horror and despair, whilst women became totally absorbed with the object of their search was his conclusion. The fact that there had been more women than men onboard may well have also had something to do with this identification disproportion.

  Sixty-one more unidentified bodies were buried that afternoon. Once again the route of the cortege, led by two mounted police officers, rumbled past the dockyard wall and the Arsenal Gates, out onto the Plumstead Road and up the hill to the new Woolwich cemetery at Wickham. It was a pretty place shaded by many trees, bright with flowers planted among the graves, and fragrant with the odour from its cedars, limes and Italian pines.

  Beyond, the eye stretched away over green fields to the steep wooded slopes of Shooters Hill, where 2,000 to 3,000 people had gathered. Some were merely spectators, some relatives and friends still searching for their loved ones and some just wanted to bear witness for those as yet unnamed. Then there were the policemen drafted in to keep them in check: an inspector, five sergeants and fifty constables. But, this time, their crowd control skills were not needed, people were quiet and respectful.

  The officiating clergyman, Reverend Adelbert Anson, stood at the top of the hill, outlined against the sky as he intoned the words of the burial service to the hushed and expectant crowd. They displayed ‘great emotion’ as he advised them also to be ready, ‘for no man knoweth the hour’, but assured them that souls redeemed by the Saviour’s love could cheerfully face even sudden death, for they were always ready for the Master’s call.2 One doubts, of course, that many of the Princess Alice victims had cheerfully faced their dreadful, sudden deaths, but Reverend Anson was doing his best.

  The dissenting body, which was numerous and influential in Woolwich, was represented by a well-known minister, the Reverend Thomas Tuffield.

  As
the coffins were lowered into the ground a Miss Broughton of New Cross (a member of Reverend Anson’s congregation) scattered sweet-smelling flowers – heartsease, fuchsias and geraniums – onto each one.

  Clergymen continued to pray over the graves as the skies grew dark and the atmosphere emotional.

  What The Times referred to as ‘a remarkable incident’ occurred just after the first cortege had left the dockyard. Two (separate) relatives who had long been searching for their loved ones, suddenly recognized the bundles of washed clothing belonging to those already en route for the cemetery. The pair were placed in a cab to follow the funeral procession. At the cemetery ‘due to the admirable system of registration’ the bodies were claimed and taken back to the dockyard where a family burial could be arranged.3 Thus, the body of William Alfred Codling was identified by his brother and Mrs Wayman was claimed by her brother-in-law.

  It was not only the unclaimed who were buried that day, hence the many hearses traversing the riverside town. More than 150 private funerals also took place, including that of the Princess Alice’s chief steward Mr Frederick Boncy.

  It was the police who had been responsible for the ‘admirable system of registration’ as well as the handling of the flow of bodies, which was now threatening to become overwhelming. Dock labourers brought in to replace striking Arsenal dock labourers had themselves just struck for a rise from six shillings a day to seven shillings and sixpence, for what was clearly a dreadful job. However, they were quite quickly replaced by thirty ‘volunteer’ soldiers.