HOW MANY WERE LOST IN THE DISASTER?
In the highly charged atmosphere in the hours immediately following the loss of the train, some wildly inaccurate estimates of the loss of life were current. According to the Dundee Courier and Argus of 30 December, 1879, first reports spoke of 200 victims, while Mr Walker, the manager of the North British Railway Company, dispatched a telegram stating that ‘he deeply regretted to say that there were nearly 300 passengers, besides Company servants, on the train.’
At the same time Walker set in motion an inquiry to try to ascertain a more accurate figure. The procedure followed by this inquiry was to examine the record sheets kept by the collector of tickets at St Fort Station – the last stop before the bridge itself – since it was normal practice for tickets for Dundee to be physically collected at this station. Tickets for Broughty Ferry, Newport and any stations further to the north were examined, but then left with the passengers for collection at their final destination. Season tickets were similarly retained by their holders. According to this procedure, 75 tickets had either been collected from passengers, or inspected and returned, but to these should be added the number of children with no tickets, and several servants of the railway company – an estimated total of around 90.
The previous day, 29 December, the Courier’s sister paper, the Evening Telegraph, had published a list of named victims totalling only 24, and a list of tickets collected at St Fort totalling only 56. To this figure should be added, according to the report, a number of children with their parents, two third-class tickets from King’s Cross held by two young ladies of about 18 years of age, five third-class tickets actually issued at St Fort and not included in the list, and about five passengers to Broughty Ferry. There was an unknown number of through passengers, and a few season-ticket holders.
By the afternoon of the next day, 30 December, the Telegraph reported that ticket collectors at St Fort were now convinced that the number of persons on the train, excluding infants and children travelling without tickets, could not have exceeded 75. This number was made up of 56 ticket holders whose tickets had been collected, 5 passengers to Newport, and 6 to Broughty Ferry. Added to this were two season-ticket holders, three guards, one mail guard, the driver and the fireman – 75 in total.
At the official Inquiry into the Disaster held initially in Dundee, similar figures were advanced. William Friend, the ticket collector at St Fort, stated that he collected tickets from the forepart of the train, altogether 56 tickets. There were two season ticket holders, and five or six for Broughty Ferry, who did not give up their tickets. Among the tickets were two halves. Altogether the tickets represented 57 or 58 persons, to whom should be added those who did not give up their tickets.
The porter at St Fort, who had helped Friend to collect tickets, confirmed to the Inquiry that the practice was to collect tickets only from passengers for Dundee – passengers going further retained their tickets. Four passengers in the second class were going to Newport, and so he did not take their tickets. (This may seem odd, in that Newport is south of the river. On weekdays, passengers to Newport from the south would normally change trains at Leuchars. But on the Sabbath they were obliged to continue across the bridge and take a local train or the ferry back to Fife. The ferry terminal was literally within a stone’s throw of the station.)
Finally, Robert Morris, the stationmaster at St Fort, who had also taken part in the collection, reported that he had made up a list of all tickets collected. This list showed whether they were singles or returns, and where they were issued. The total number was 56, plus 2 half tickets. ‘The persons who gave up their tickets and those who did not give up their tickets represented everybody in the train he saw.’ Some support is given to this figure by the existence of a collage of tickets, claimed to be the tickets collected at St Fort, now on loan to the City Museum in Dundee from the family of stationmaster Morris. The collage contains 55 tickets, including two half tickets, and each of the tickets shows the name of the station at which the ticket was bought, and the destination. (The half tickets are literally one ticket, from Leuchars, cut in two – possibly the two children’s tickets referred to in the Inquiry report.)
Scrutiny of the collage reveals that all of the tickets contained in it show Dundee as the final destination of the ticket holder, supporting the evidence of the St Fort staff that they collected tickets only from the Dundee-bound passengers. The absolute accuracy of the exhibit may be called into question, however, given that there is not an exact match between all the tickets in the collage, and the known embarkation points of the victims. For example, there are 7 tickets with the embarkation point Perth, but only two victims in the official death list can be traced back to Perth, and six passengers are known to have embarked at St Fort, but there is only one ticket from St Fort in the collage.
In his summing up, Chairman of the Inquiry Henry Rothery stated that there were 72 or 75 persons on the train, including the Company’s servants. That is – 57 including two half tickets, 4 company’s servants, 2 guards not on duty, 1 mail guard, 5 persons for Broughty Ferry, and 5 or 6 for Newport.
The figure of 75 has been widely accepted by subsequent commentators as the extent of the death-toll in the disaster. This was the number adopted by John Prebble in his seminal history of the event – The High Girders (1956). The same number, or one close to it, has been accepted by several subsequent writers on the subject, such as John Thomas in The Tay Bridge Disaster – New Light on the 1879 Tragedy (1972); Peter Lewis in Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay (2004); Charles McKean in Battle for the North (2006), though he chose 72; and most recently by Robin Lumley in The Tay Bridge Disaster – the People’s Story (2013). Prebble did not spell out how he came by this information – The High Girders is not supplied with either footnote references or a bibliography – but in all probability it came from the two sources quoted above: the Dundee newspapers of the day, and the Report of the Board of Trade Inquiry.
And yet that is not at all the end of the story. Other evidence exists which offers a very different tally of the victims. From time to time both the Telegraph and the Courier published the actual names of victims, as distinct from the list of tickets. The latest of these, in the Courier for 1 January 1880, totalled only 56. The police list, held in the Police Museum in Dundee, records 60 names, though one of these (James Paton) was not actually a victim, and this figure is cited in Andre Gren, The Bridge is Down (2008), and the first edition of the present book. Most important of all, the National Register of Archives for Scotland lists 59 death certificates for victims of the disaster. It was this figure and this list of the names of victims which were adopted by the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster Memorial Trust in 2013, as the tally of people, men, women and children, who were known to have died in the fall.
The question is – can these two figures be reconciled, or the wide difference between them be explained?
In the first place it should be understood that the two sets of figures were arrived at by quite different means. As is clear, the figure of 75 or thereabouts was derived solely from the list of tickets collected at St Fort station, or more accurately, the 56 tickets which were collected at St Fort plus the passengers and crew who either did not need tickets, or who retained them for the onward journey. The circumstances for carrying out an accurate count were hardly ideal. There have been suggestions that the bag into which the tickets were put already had some tickets from the previous train. A fierce gale was blowing, there was pressure to get the count over as quickly as possible, but was that sufficient to lead to such a wide discrepancy?
On the other hand the list of the 59 named victims was derived not from the count of tickets, but from the testimony of North British officials and the friends and relatives of the passengers. All but two of the named victims were local people, and it is a reasonable assumption that if there were any more victims, most of those would also have been locals. Are we to understand that as many as 15 or 16 victims had no relatives, friends or business colleagues to report their disappearance?
Where then does this leave the question of the number of victims? The wording on the memorials to the victims erected in 2013 is specific – it names the 59 victims who are known to have died in the Disaster. There may have been more, but if so we do not know their names or how many there were. Until new and compelling evidence comes to light to add to this list, it must stand.
LIST OF KNOWN VICTIMS
Name |
Age |
Occupation |
Address |
|
|
|
|
Anderson, Joseph Low |
21 |
compositor |
13 South Ellen Street |
Annan, Thomas Ross |
20 |
iron turner |
48 Princes Street |
Bain, Archibald |
26 |
farmer |
Mains of Balgay |
Bain, Jessie |
22 |
sister of above |
Mains of Balgay |
Beynon, William Henry |
39 |
photographer |
Cheltenham |
Brown, Elizabeth Hendry |
14 |
tobacco spinner |
28 Arbroath Road |
Cheape, or Roger, Euphemia |
51 |
domestic servant |
99 High Street, Lochee |
Crichton, James |
22 |
ploughman |
Mains of Fintry |
Cruickshanks, Annie |
54 |
domestic servant |
Moray Place, Edinburgh |
Culross, Robert |
28 |
carpenter |
Tayport |
Cunningham, David |
20 |
mason |
23 Pitalpin Street, Lochee |
Davidson, Thomas |
28 |
farm servant |
Linlathen |
Dewar or Fowlis, Robert |
21 |
mason |
23 Pitalpin Street, Lochee |
Easton, or Loudon, May Marion Montgomerie |
53 |
widow |
Galt Villa, Aberdeen |
Graham, David |
37 |
teacher |
Stirling |
Hamilton, John |
32 |
grocer & spirit dealer |
16 North Ellen Street |
Henderson, James Foster |
22 |
labourer |
3 Church Street, Maxwelltown |
23 |
grocer |
57 Mains Road |
|
Jobson, David |
39 |
oil & colour merchant |
3 Airlie Place |
Johnston, David |
24 |
railway guard |
Edinburgh (Abbey Hill) |
Johnston, George |
25 |
mechanic |
18 Beaconsfield Place, Victoria Road |
Kinnear, Margaret |
17 |
domestic servant |
6 Shore Terrace |
Lawson, John |
25 |
plasterer |
39 Lilybank Road |
Leslie, James |
22 |
clerk |
Baffin Street |
McBeth, David |
44 |
railway guard |
46 Castle Street |
McDonald, David |
11 |
schoolboy |
70 Blackness Road |
McDonald, William |
41 |
sawmiller |
70 Blackness Road |
McIntosh, George |
43 |
goods guard |
25 Hawkhill |
Mann or Hendry, Elizabeth |
62 |
n/a |
Prior Road, Forfar |
Marshall, John |
24 |
railway stoker |
18 Hunter Street |
Miller, James |
26 |
flax dresser |
Dysart |
Milne, Elizabeth |
21 |
dressmaker |
High Street, Newburgh |
Mitchell, David |
37 |
engine driver |
89 Peddie Street |
Murdoch, James |
21 |
engineer |
1 Thistle Street |
Murray, Donald |
49 |
mail guard |
13 South Ellen Street |
Neish, David |
37 |
teacher & registrar |
51 Coupar Street, Lochee |
Neish, Isabella Mary |
5 |
daughter of above |
51 Coupar Street, Lochee |
Nelson, William |
31 |
machine fitter |
53 Monk St, Gateshead |
Ness, George |
21 |
railway stoker |
Ogilvy Street, Tayport |
Ness, Walter |
24 |
saddler |
4 Bain Square, Wellgate |
Nicoll or McFarlane, Elizabeth |
24 |
n/a |
46 Bell Street |
Peebles, James |
15 |
apprentice grocer |
Newport |
38 |
forester |
Corriemoney, Inverness |
|
Robertson, Alexander |
23 |
labourer |
100 Foundry Lane |
Robertson, William |
21 |
labourer |
100 Foundry Lane |
Salmond, Peter Greig |
43 |
blacksmith |
50 Princes Street |
Scott, David |
26 |
goods guard |
7 Yeaman Shore |
Scott, John |
30 |
seaman |
Tobias Street, Baltimore |
Sharp, John |
35 |
joiner |
76 Commercial Street |
Smart, Eliza |
22 |
domestic servant |
Union Mount, Perth Road |
Spence, Annie |
21 |
weaver |
62 Kemback Street |
Syme, Robert Frederick |
22 |
clerk |
Royal Hotel, Nethergate |
Taylor, George |
25 |
mason |
56 Union Street, Maxwelltown |
Threlfell, William |
18 |
confectioner |
9 Union Street, Maxwelltown |
Veitch, William |
18 |
cabinetmaker |
39 Church Street |
Watson, David |
18 |
commission agent |
Newport |
Watson, David Livie |
9 |
son of Robert Watson snr |
12 Lawrence Street |
Watson, Robert |
6 |
son of Robert Watson snr |
12 Lawrence Street |
Watson, Robert |
34 |
moulder |
12 Lawrence Street |
Source: Nicoll, M., Nicoll, C., Buttars, G., Victims of the Tay Rail Bridge Disaster, Tay Valley Family History Society, 2005