The Princess Alice Disaster by Joan Lock

Author:Joan Lock [Joan Lock]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719816727
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Oddly, Mr Hughes inquired after Haines’s musical instrument. He replied, ‘The bass viol floated away, but I have heard of it down the river. My bow was picked up at Gravesend’.11

The additional causes of death that had also been thrown into the mix were injuries found on victims which may had been caused by the propeller or screw of the Bywell Castle which, it was alleged, had not stopped turning following impact.

Joseph Hawes (a steward on another London Steamboat Company boat but a Princess Alice passenger on the fateful day and who had climbed up a rope to board the Bywell Castle) claimed that he overheard a row between the captain, mate and pilot as to whether to stop the engines. Mr Nelson, for the pilot, said that this evidence had nothing to do with the collision, but the feisty foreman exclaimed that it had a great deal to do with their inquiry. ‘Some of the people may have been killed by the propeller of the Bywell Castle.’ 12

The other new cause of death being mooted was poisoning by the foul water into which the victims had fallen. Not surprising, given that the two sewage outlets for north and south London emptied into the Thames about this point. A Times editorial explained why this had become an issue:

… when the loss of life after the collision between the Bywell Castle and the Princess Alice was almost the only subject which engaged the attention of the public we printed a letter from ‘A PHARMACEUTICAL CHEMIST’, in which the writer expressed his belief that the mortality must have been due, in part at least, to the noxious character of the fluid into which the sufferers were plunged. Now that the first shock of the calamity is over, this opinion seems to be gaining ground; and today we publish other letters written for the purpose of enforcing it. Some of the evidence given at the inquest yesterday confirms that impression.13

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