‘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.
Mr Harrington, the jury foreman, spoke up to announce that after the previous day’s adjournment, in compliance with instructions, he and Inspector Dawkins had taken a steamboat down to Erith to collect the fourteen bodies left there. He reported, ‘I am sorry to say they [the bodies] have been treated in a different manner from what has been the case at Woolwich’.
In fact, some of the bodies at Erith were rather more damaged than those landing elsewhere – possibly due to buffeting when carried a long distance downstream. More disturbingly, some had been undressed, which, said The Times, ‘somewhat retarded their identification’.3
By the reopening of the inquest on Friday, 6 September, it all seemed to be getting a little too much for Mr Carttar. Three days of viewing bodies of men, women and children and listening to a relentless succession of bereft relatives giving their tearful evidence of identification, were obviously taking their toll. As he spoke of the magnitude of the disaster and the dreadful loss of life, and praised the military, the people of Woolwich and others for their assistance, he was suddenly overcome and covered his face with his hands. When he recovered, the sad procedure continued. But, upset or no, Carttar was not going to let any dubious witnesses go unchallenged.
Thomas Gray, who claimed a body to be that of his wife’s niece, Harriett Gurr, aged forty, admitted that he had no real reason to assume that she had been onboard the Princess Alice. He knew nothing of her movements apart from the fact that she had gone to Gravesend on the Monday. It was only when he heard of the accident that he had become concerned. His wife, however, had had ‘a presentment’ and had ordered him down to Woolwich where, he claimed, he had seen her niece among the dead. He had no doubt about her identity.
The coroner was not satisfied and urged Mr Gray to consider that a mistake was possible.
Mr Gray was not happy: ‘I have no doubt about the identity of my niece’.
But Mr Carttar persisted. ‘You are, I doubt not, speaking as you believe, but I should like some better evidence.’ He went on to describe a case ‘not long ago’ in which sixteen persons had sworn most positively to the identity of a body of a man. There had been a public subscription for the widow and her dead baby had been buried in the same coffin with the corpse. Three months later, the husband suddenly appeared alive and in good health. Therefore, Carttar insisted, it was necessary to be particular.
‘Mr Gray could not see the argument,’ reported the Standard, ‘and lost his temper. He had been sent to recognize his wife’s niece and he had done so’.
However, in answer to a question from the jury foreman he admitted that had there been no accident they would not have inquired for some days longer.
It was revealed that the niece usually wore a hunting watch so Mr Gray was sent off to examine her property.
Next came a surgeon, Mr Arthur William Kempe, who presented an erroneous death certificate which, he said, had been issued for the body of his surgeon-dentist father. A fellow surgeon had identified him as Arthur William Kempe, but in fact his name was William Hussey Bloomfield Kempe. ‘This mistake was most serious, pointed out the Daily News, ‘as the deceased had insured his life; the name was corrected, of course’.
When William John Anchorn identified his father and mother to the court’s satisfaction ‘a spectator’ stood up to declare that the mother’s name had been wrongly given as Ellen Elizabeth when it should be Ellen Flin. He knew that because she was his sister. The son said he had never heard the name Flin connected with his family or his mother. The objector was called forward to explain ‘that property might be at stake’. Since he had no proof of his claim he was told that the name could be changed if some was brought.
‘A lady, who indeed had no close interest in the remains she claimed’, reported the Standard, ‘was painfully anxious about “the property” – a wedding ring, a keeper ring with two emeralds and a small diamond, silver earrings and suchlike. The police eased her mind by the assurance that these things were safe, and she departed happy.’
It seemed that Carttar and Williams Lewis had been right to ensure proper identification. The vultures appeared to be gathering.
Mr Gray reappeared complaining that he had been unable to find the official charged with keeping his niece’s things, but someone spoke up to say he had just left Inspector Ford in his proper place, whereupon Mr Gray found he had been looking in the wrong direction. ‘This gentleman’, commented the Standard, ‘evidently thought himself a public benefactor in identifying his wife’s niece, and declared aloud, on setting out once more to find Inspector Ford, that if this search was not successful he would go home’.
The Standard continued its graphic descriptions but mostly in a somewhat kinder tone:
The testimony of Henry Beadle had touches of extreme pathos. A gaunt and dirty old man deposed to the finding of his wife, and the coroner’s close questioning could do no more than raise a quiver of his unshorn lip, and a dogged repetition, ‘Oh I know her – oh I know her, sir!’
Mary Jones gave her evidence firmly until it came to the point when her husband went ‘for a ramble with a friend’ after doing his work. Here she broke down suddenly and piteously, but in a few seconds her firmness returned. The companion of this sad ramble had escaped and he stepped up to the table. In that dry and husky voice that belongs to the street poor of London, with odd starts and bursts, and sudden stoppages he told how the pair went to Deptford, then to Gravesend, and thence the one to death and the other to do a battle with the stream.
Louisa Boddington, an interesting young girl, claimed a burial certificate for her mother, who had gone upon the pleasure trip of the Cowcross Mission. As a lady explained, this child is left without a sixpence to support four little brothers and sisters. Mr Catlin, who was seeking his own dead at the riverside, is willing to bury Louisa’s mother if the corpse can be brought to him, and the exertions of the military and steam-boat authorities have provided for such a case.4
Poor old Fanny Robert, a spinster from Luton in Bedfordshire, who identified the body of her cousin, had been kindly looking after this cousin’s seven children while she and her husband went on the Princess Alice to Sheerness. The husband was still missing and Fanny had been left holding the babies, all seven of them.
There came further evidence of whole families being wiped out. George Hunt, an office fitter from Kingsland in Hackney, identified the body of his 22-year-old son. His wife and four other children, two boys and two girls, were also lost.
And so it went on: sons and daughters identifying parents, parents identifying children, husbands identifying wives and wives identifying husbands, with occasional variations.
George Quinton, a cooper, identified Emily, the 10-year-old daughter of his employer, William Davies. William Davies himself, his wife, and five other children were all lost.
‘The mother reached the shore alive,’ reported The Times, ‘but died thirty-six hours afterwards from exposure and exhaustion. She was perfectly conscious to the last and knew that all her family were lost. Her husband at the moment of collision said to her, “It’s all over this time.” The newspaper did not explain what Mr Davies had meant by ‘this time’.5
Mrs Davies was not the only survivor to die quite soon after rescue. Sixty-one-year-old Mrs Emma Standish, who had been recovering in the infirmary, died on the Friday morning from ‘chronic bronchitis accelerated by shock and immersion’.6 Mrs Davis of Limehouse ‘succumbed to her injuries in the presence of her friends’ in one of the Creekmouth cottages7 while Mr Vachel, ‘a gentleman from Surbiton’ died on Friday night at the house of a friend, Dr Lacey of Plumstead ‘whither he was taken from the wreck at his own request’.8
Other departures from the norm of family identifications occurred when Royal Artillery Sergeant Major Richard Sleet identified Farrier Sergeant James Burton and when Police Inspector William Jenkins identified the body of PC Cornelius Briscoe, ‘N’ Division’s local hero who had rescued a drowning person from the Regent’s Canal. His wife and children were still missing.
At nearly one o’clock the coroner decided to adjourn ‘for dinner’ but Mr Hughes, on the behalf of the London Steamboat Company, asked if he might summarize a statement of his which demonstrated how they had arrived at the number who were onboard at the time of the collision. This explained that, at various boarding points, a tally of passengers was taken by the pier-master, for the purpose of charging dues, giving a pretty accurate return and thus answering the burning question of how many might have drowned and how many more bodies they might expect to surface.
It was known that the Princess Alice was licensed to carry 936 passengers on the ‘smooth water voyage’, that is as far as Gravesend, but beyond that, in the estuary where the Thames began to open out to the sea, only 486 in the summer and 336 in the winter.
Mr Hughes’s statement revealed that on Tuesday 3 September 1878, there had been 491 passengers onboard the Princess Alice when she arrived at Sheerness. Four had left there, leaving 487. Eighty-one of these had landed at Gravesend, reducing the total to 406, but seventy-nine people had then boarded at Gravesend, bringing the total back up to 485. At Rosherville, 138 had boarded, raising it to 623. To be added to that were twenty-nine crew and stewards, bringing the total up 652. And, to this, ‘a few’ needed to be added for the band. However, very young children were not counted nor were children in arms.
A juryman commented that, in fact, children up to the age of six or seven were not counted. The coroner disagreed saying that, in his experience, two children above the age of two were counted as one passenger, which meant that if 150 of the single tickets represented two people, this would raise the 652 total they had been given, to 802.
A juryman suggested that an aggregate might be obtained by taking the numbers of the parties, as stated by the witnesses. But the jury foreman said that very few tickets had been found on the bodies, so it seemed there must have been a number onboard without tickets. Another juryman pointed out that this might be accounted for by one member of a party having retained all the tickets and therefore some bodies might be found with several tickets on them.
In the end, it seemed that Mr Hughes’s statement had not taken them much further forward except to convince them that, as feared, the number onboard had been very large, and therefore there were many more bodies yet to come.
Meanwhile, as Mr Carttar and his jury adjourned for their dinner, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse (the real Princess Alice) were lunching at Clarence House, in the company of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the King and Queen of Denmark, prior to their departure that afternoon for Antwerp and thence home to Darmstadt.
1. Standard, 6 September 1878.
2. Ibid.
3. Standard and The Times, 6 September 1878.
With regard to the naked bodies it had been remarked that, should you have committed a murder and wished to get rid of the body, this was a good time and place to do it. An idea which I confess I made use of in my historical crime novel, Dead Born (Hale, 2001) which I based around the Princess Alice disaster.
4. Standard, 7 September 1878.
5. The Times, 7 September 1878.
6. The Times, 7 September 1878, and the Standard, 6 September 1878.
7. Standard, 6 September 1878.
8. The Times, 7 September 1878.