The Princess Alice Disaster

by Joan Lock

  Most pertinently, members of the Alliance Club of the Swimming Associations of Great Britain unanimously resolved to invite all their members to collect subscriptions on behalf of the sufferers. Swimming, or the inability of most of the population to be able to do so and the patent lack of facilities to learn, had become a very hot topic on the letter, leader and feature pages in the newspapers.

  As for the paying out of all these monies collected, the aforementioned Reverend W. Dawson of St Paul’s Church in Clerkenwell, had done a two-day stint at the Woolwich dockyard gates on behalf of the Lord Mayor, for the purpose of handing out ‘immediate relief in the shape of money in all necessitous cases’, and the Mansion House organizers announced themselves anxious to receive applications from bereaved relatives

  Possibly the first attempt to fraudulently collect donations on behalf of the victims was made by Mary Barclay, ‘a respectable-looking upholsteress’. She called on three homes in Edmonton, north London, claiming that she was collecting for a relief fund ‘got up by the ladies of Edmonton’ and her uncle, the local vicar. She had garnered 2/6d from each of three persons thus approached before she was halted and given a month’s hard labour for her trouble. Mary claimed she had done it on the impulse of the moment and, The Times reported, ‘expressed her very great sorrow for what she had done, and stated her intention of entering a home as soon as she was able’.6

  Among the royal donors to the Mansion Fund were Queen Victoria, who gave 100 guineas, the Prince of Wales, who sent £50 with a nice letter, and Prince Leopold, who gave £25. The Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse (the real Princess Alice) agreed to be patrons of a concert to be held at the Exeter Hall on The Strand. Since the hall’s two auditoriums held audiences of 1,000 and 4,000 the takings for this were likely to be considerable.

  Princess Alice had also known tragedy. In 1861 she had nursed her beloved father, Prince Albert, while he was suffering from typhoid, then borne the brunt of her mother’s almost demented grief following his death. Alice’s much-postponed marriage to the then Prince Louis of Hesse Darmstadt finally took place in June 1862 in an atmosphere, according to Queen Victoria, ‘more like a funeral than a wedding’.7

  Alice, like her older sister Princess Victoria (by then three years married to Prince Frederick William of Prussia), had been educated and encouraged by her father to have an inquiring mind, to think for herself, have a capacity for hard work and a sense of duty. Prince Albert had hoped that these marriages of his duty-driven daughters might help achieve his dream of a unified and democratic Germany, which at the time was divided into many states. In Princess Victoria’s case, pursuance of this dream had ruffled feathers in Prussia and earned the implacable hatred of Otto von Bismarck, who had his own ideas about what was best for his country and was of the opinion that women, all women, were the last people to know any better, nor should they have any opinions on the subject.

  Although Princess Alice had also startled the natives of her new home city with her forward ways, her dutiful efforts leaned more towards improving the lot of Darmstadt’s poor, sick and disabled. She was also keen on improving the work and social prospects of women and, after regularly consulting with Florence Nightingale, set up nursing organizations. When she set up a hospital and nurse’s training school in Darmstadt, she went to great efforts to ensure that the matron was trained at the Florence Nightingale School at St Thomas’s Hospital in London and at a Liverpool Hospital.

  Indeed, Princess Alice was relentless in her efforts to help people. Even while she was supposedly recuperating from overwork at Eastbourne (on a holiday provided by her mother), she was busily inspecting the conditions of the poor in that coastal resort and visiting the local hospital and a rescue home for prostitutes.

  Her husband, who by 1878 had become the Grand Duke of Hesse, was apparently a kind man and a fond father to their seven children, but he was clearly a simpler soul than she and more interested in the aristocratic pursuits of hunting, shooting, fishing and parading his troops.

  This left Alice feeling bereft of intellectual stimulus. The two great tragedies of her life had been the early death of her beloved father and, in 1873, the death of her 3-year-old son, Fritz or ‘Frittie’, who had fallen out of his mother’s bedroom window. Like his uncle, Prince Leopold, Frittie was a haemophiliac and the condition may well have exacerbated the bleeding on the brain from which the child died without regaining consciousness.

  Notes

  1. The Times, 12 September and 17 September 1878.

  2. Cowcross Street was actually just over the Clerkenwell/City of London border.

  3. Islington Gazette, 11 September 1878.

  4. Islington Gazette, 6 September 1878.

  5. During the Siege of Paris, 1870, and the city’s capitulation (to the Prussians) in 1871.

  6. The Times, 17 September 1878.

  7. Gerard Noel, Princess Alice: Queen Victoria’s Forgotten Daughter.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Meanwhile

  The Princess Alice Thames pleasure steamer had (inadvertently) been part of an earlier tragedy; in 1873, when she was moored off Woolwich during a dense fog, a waterman’s boat carrying workmen from Woolwich to Beckton Gasworks was pulled under her. The boat capsized and nine workmen were drowned. And in the days following the horrendous accident of 3 September she was to be the inadvertent cause of more accidents.

  The morning after the Princess Alice accident, the barge Mary Scott was rammed by the screw steamer, the Norman, in Gallions Reach. The crew were saved by the Thames Police.

  A few days later, paddle steamer Hoboken, coming downstream, struck a barge and was thrown broadside across the river. The Ariel paddle steamer, which had been following, tried to pass but miscalculated. She, also, ran into the barge and was severely damaged. Some passengers, understandably panic-stricken, jumped overboard onto the barge, two of them injuring their legs. Fortunately, they were the only casualties.

  And there had also been deaths immediately following and related to the sinking of the Princess Alice. The inquests on them were heard by Mr Carttar, the Woolwich Coroner, and the inquest jury. On the day after Burial Monday a young man, named Alfred Barnes, had been on the Cupid saloon steamer (belonging to the London Steamboat Company) on his way to search for the bodies of relatives. The guardrail, on which Alfred was sitting, collapsed. He fell into the engine room and suffered a blow to his abdomen from the crankshaft which killed him. He was identified by his sister who had been coming down to Woolwich with him.

  Another boy, named Smith, went out in a boat to see the retrieved wreck, fell into the river and was drowned. Yet another boy, 13-year-old John George Woodley, was on a boat from which he had been swimming when the Thames Conservancy boat on Princess Alice business caused a swell as it passed, causing John George to fall in. It seems John George was only just learning to swim and, though his young friend Fredrick William Wilson (who was able to swim) dived in after him, he was unable to find him. At John George’s inquest Mr Carttar commended young Frederick William on being able to swim, commenting that the wreck of the Princess Alice should stimulate everyone to do so.

  Although the day after the disaster The Times had mentioned one very pertinent accident, that of the Metis and Wentworth, oddly enough it came up very little after that apart from in the provincial press, possibly because they had little local interest in the survivors and victims with which to fill their pages. It was pertinent because it had been a collision between a Woolwich Steamboat Company’s pleasure steamer (the Metis) and a Tyne collier (the Wentworth) one early September evening at almost the same spot eleven years earlier. And not only were the boats, the timing and the venue similar, but the Wentworth had been going downstream to head back home to Newcastle while the Metis had been heading upstream after leaving Gravesend carrying seventy excursionists, some of whom were dancing on the deck.

  The Metis was virtually cut in two by the Wentworth and at first no one knew how many passengers had been lost. Fortuna
tely, in that particular case, both vessels were near the shore and the forepart of the Metis was driven onto the south bank where some passengers were able to leap ashore. Others were saved by small craft and soldiers from nearby barracks.

  At first it appeared that only three of the Metis passengers had died: two children and a man called Edward Cheesman who had been at the wheel. But, shortly afterwards, another succumbed: Police Sergeant Parry of ‘K’ Division, who died not long after rescue. His 9-month-old baby daughter had been one of the two drowned children.

  Accusations and counter accusations had been bandied about in the wake of that accident: drunkenness, of the captain of the pleasure steamer; the Metis crew had not kept a proper lookout; she was hugging the shore but changed her mind at the last moment; once the accident had happened, the captain of the Tyne collier had responded wrongly. (To add to the eerie coincidences there had even been shouts of ‘Where are you coming to?’) Such accusations were about to be discussed, pulled apart, refuted and counter-claimed in the case of the Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle. The Metis and Wentworth incident was like nothing so much as a forewarning, a dress rehearsal for the real thing: the greatest civilian disaster England’s waterways had ever seen. Unfortunately, at that time no one was taking any notice.

  Death by drowning continued to occupy the pages of the mainstream British press, particularly their letters pages. Here, the flow of ingenious ideas to prevent that fate continued despite a Times leader pointing out that the offer of advice to excursionists would be very opportune if there were the remotest chance that any attention would be paid to it.

  They are enjoined to learn to swim before embarking for Gravesend. They are told that no man or woman should go onboard a river steamer without a life-belt. Precautions which implied anticipations of death as a result of a trip down the river would kill the pleasure of most holiday makers.1

  All this advice, they went on, should be aimed at those who order the excursions, not those who make them. Was it too much to ask that steamers be compelled to use fog signals after dusk, as the Venetian gondolier notifies his approach when he drives into a side canal? (A rather strange comparison under the circumstances.)

  Still the life-saving ideas came and still The Times and other newspapers published them.

  A Mr R. Barclay Jamieson who suggested ‘an extremely simple contrivance whereby those who cannot swim may at least manage to keep afloat for a much longer time – an umbrella – an indispensable article – almost universally carried nowadays in this uncertain climate by the pleasure seekers of all kinds’. Several hundred umbrellas had been found floating on the river and in the cabins of the Princess Alice, he claimed but in every instance, he believed, they were found closed and neatly wrapped up.

  Had each owner retained sufficient presence of mind to have opened his or her umbrella, and when in the water held it handle downwards by means of the ferule end … they would have found the inflated dome would have supported at least one person comfortably, if not more in the case of children. The umbrella would simply have floated with the tide, supporting and carrying those who continued to cling to it until timely help arrived.

  He had known, he added, ‘this exceedingly simple contrivance’ save more than one precious life.2

  Of course umbrellas then were nothing like the compact little objects we now slip in our pockets or handbags. Many were substantial items with ample domes 2 or 3 ft wide but, even supposing such a ‘contrivance’ would support a person in the water, to suggest it might have saved Princess Alice’s passengers’ lives overlooks the manner in which they were suddenly thrown into the water, on top of each other, pushing each other down and struggling not just to stay afloat but to find space. Even supposing they had their umbrellas to hand, which is unlikely, they would scarcely have been able to undo the wrapping, raise them up and float to safety. But, wouldn’t you know, shortly afterwards, one of the survivors, a Mr J. J. Wharton, claimed that his opened umbrella had supported him until he quitted it for a plank.

  N. A. recommended the use of inexpensive life-saving fittings that were then in partial use onboard several of the Clyde steamers – these were seat cushions made of cork and covered with painted canvas.

  A Flag Officer came up with more advice, much of it regarding the vessels themselves and their handling, but also including the theory ‘to ride my own hobby horse’, which was that all who went afloat in close waters should carry something about them which would support and enable them to reach the shore, such as an air-tight lining in some convenient part of the dress or a cork belt or jacket. Of course, the cork belt or jacket would not require the time and presence of mind required for dress inflating and they could be covered with silk or made ornamental. To be able to swim was good, of course, agreed the Flag Officer, but even good swimmers were frequently drowned from various causes. In any case, women could rarely swim ‘even without their dresses. With the inflated dress or belt they cannot sink if they try’. When they were in fashion he had heard of women being kept afloat by a crinoline ‘though the centre of gravity of the human being is not generally favourable to these obsolete articles of dress as life preservers’. But what about a very small crinoline above the waist which, like his inflatable overcoat, had a small tube attached through which to inflate them?3

  Naturally, the subject of swimming did come very much to the fore. Mr George Hayes of Pimlico referred to the young lady who had swum to the riverbank and pointed out that it was important that girls as well as boys should be taught and British mothers should overcome their prejudice against their daughters learning to swim. Curious to lay the blame on the sex which was utterly powerless when it came to decisions about such facilities.

  Even before the accident, there had been a growing concern about the fact that so few people could swim. Around 2,000 annual deaths from accidental drowning were recorded and the wreck of the training ship Eurydice4 off the Isle of Wight less than six months earlier, when 317 sailors, most of them cadets, had drowned, had concentrated minds on the subject.

  Even if people were keen to learn to swim there were very few swimming pools where they could practice. Islington, an area which had suffered greatly from the Princess Alice tragedy, had the private Wenlock Baths, where a couple of clubs, the Albion and the Sandringham, held regular swimming competitions. The Wenlock Baths were no distance from the Mission Hall in Cowcross Street from which the Bible party had set out.

  In a letter to the Islington Gazette (published on 30 August 1878, only four days before the disaster) a ‘CONSTANT READER’ suggested that the now-disused site of the Highbury Barn (an Islington pleasure garden) would be a good place to install a large swimming bath for women, making the point that there was nowhere in this large and important parish for them to learn the art.

  Another letter, in the same issue, from Mr J. Garratt Elliott, Honourable Secretary of the London Swimming Club, said that every park should have a swimming pool. The opening hours of the limited accommodation at the Serpentine and Victoria Park Lake were so curtailed as to be almost useless. Whereas on the banks of the River Trent in Nottingham there was a bathing shed where a couple of thousand people could, and did, undress at one time. Mr Elliott revealed that in some parts of London men took the matter into their own hands:

  The casual Sunday stroller by the River Lea is at all points shocked by crowds of naked men, thus depriving the fair sex of a constitutional walk by its winding banks; whereas, if the Conservators of the Lea would erect bathing sheds here and there, where the bottom is safe, bathers (who I cannot blame) would resort thereto and pay a penny toll, which would amply pay for maintenance, the innumerable accidental drownings would be minimized, and genuine recreation founded for the people.

  Indoor facilities could also be provided in the capital city, insisted Mr Elliott. The commissioners of bathing establishments were seeing the error of their ways. The St Pancras authorities had erected ‘the best appointed bath in England’ in Tottenham Cou
rt Road. (St Pancras was the adjacent borough to Islington.)

  Mr Elliott ended his long letter by offering the services of his members who were willing to attend any bath to give a display of fast and ornamental swimming. They would also teach anyone to swim. If they sent him a stamped addressed envelope, he would let them have a voucher for an initial free lesson. Workhouse and school children particularly should learn.

  The London Swimming Club were as good as their word and, on the Saturday afternoon three days before the disaster, at the Caledonian Asylum in Holloway, the boys were sat on stools and given a drill to perform which showed them how to use their hands and legs simultaneously. Then they were taken to the baths where, in ‘the sling belt, twenty-five of them were given their first lesson’.5 (There is no mention of a similar exercise for the girls.)

  The Honourable Secretary of the Swimming Club of Great Britain also put his oar in with the statistic that of London’s four million inhabitants not five per cent could swim, while Edwin Guest thought it was time the Englishman renounced their pretension of being a common sense, practical, self-helpful race and submitted to being judged by history as an indolent, self-indulgent one. Apart from its value in moments of peril, swimming was a new means of enjoyment for the whole family. ‘After “spelling bees” and “rinking”,6 why should not “swimming” become the “rage” – the “craze” if you will.’ A teacher from Hammersmith admitted that, ‘In my school out of 170 boys, two can swim imperfectly, and the rest not at all; while of three pupil teachers, two have just learnt to swim’. ‘A Father’ in Brighton said that men and boys there could, at certain places and certain times, bathe for free, but what about the women?7 Interestingly, at the same time, there was a flow of correspondence in The Times concerning the ‘Rescue of Drowning Persons’. Among the letters was one from a surgeon to the Orphan Working School at Tavistock Hill that described in detail how swimming and the correct life-saving method were taught to all their pupils. Obviously there was already a stirring of interest in the subject life-saving and ‘imitation of breathing’ and an increasing awareness of the vulnerability of those unable to swim.