Victoria Steamboat Disaster of 1881

Stories in Stone

Woodland, the Landing & the Graves

It was end May, last year, when in our Forest City of London ON, while cycling along Thames Valley Parkway towards Springbank Park, just short of Guy Lombardo Bridge, I stopped by the railing leaning over the calm waters of Thames. This once was Woodland Landing, so they say, the first and unfortunately the last stop for S.S.Victoria when it capsized on her way back from Springbank Park to Forks of the Thames, the docks for Downtown London. The date was May 24, 1881, when the steamer went down with more than 200 fatalities mostly women and children, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of Canada.

Dear reader, as you stand at Woodland Landing facing calm yet tricky waters of Thames, as I was on that May evening, the riverbank on your rear rises up to the grassy patches of Woodland Cemetery and you may spot a few gravestones through the rustling branches of dense trees. This is section Q of the cemetery to be precise, that borders the Thames river. A number of victims from Victoria Boat disaster were later buried in Woodland cemetery, a few of them with their graves on the very edge of section Q facing the river. That May afternoon of 1881, how many of those on board would have glanced at the cemetery while at Woodland Landing, without realizing that they would have their graves on that tract of hill, the very next day, or the day after.

The cold wind coupled with the very thought sent chills down my spine and I took the very next exit at Guy Lombardo Bridge riding my bicycle into the Woodland cemetery. I rode all the way to the end on the side overlooking the Woodland Landing. I had been here before and knew very well that there, just on the verge of the cemetery, were unmarked graves of about 6 Victoria Boat Disaster victims. Just adjacent to section Q there was another triangular section marked QG, with a few more victims buried there. Here was a gravestone of interest, and was the prime reason of my exit from Thames Valley Parkway that May evening.

It commemorated one Emma J Box, aged 22 years who drowned in the Victoria Steamboat Disaster on May 24, 1881. There was no grand obelisk or stone, marble, or granite, or slate, with the surname Box inscribed in bold, leaving space for other names besides Emma, to be etched when in the coming times other people would be interred in the family plot, as is the norm in cemeteries. It had a modest grave marker, as if Emma was there alone in her death, with only her name inscribed on the gravestone, and an equally modest and unheard surname.

Where and how she lived in late nineteenth century London? Was she alone on Victoria Steamer that afternoon of May 1881, or were there family and friends? If yes, what happened to them. I would ask these questions, many a times, whenever I would visit the grave of Emma J Box, while researching other victims of the 1881 Thames Disaster. It would give rise to other sets of questions associated with their lives, and a common death, they all shared that gloomy evening as they drowned in the panicked waters of Thames. This post on Victoria Day Disaster of 1881, dear reader, has a few of their names and stories etched in stones, across the city of London and its surroundings. But first, let’s try to tackle a set of questions concerning the disaster. Ahmad, my twelve year old and cycling buddy, had a few, this Victoria Day long weekend, while at the memorial plaque on the bank of Thames, where S.S.Victoria went down.

A Set of Questions, While at Thames

“How could a steamboat, that large, run on this narrow stream, and how so many people, 182 as the plaque mentions, could die by drowning in these shallow waters?” Ahmad was curious. We were out cycling on our regular Thames Valley Parkway loop this Victoria Day long weekend, as we stopped by the plaque commemorating the Victoria Boat Disaster that occurred during a holiday excursion on May 24 1881, Queen Victoria’s birthday. The plaque announcing 182 deaths in the then city of around 26000 had an eerie souvenir ‘anchored’ to its side. The actual anchor salvaged from S.S.Victoria’s wreck. 

Ahmad was right, for a present day stroller across Thames Valley Parkway it’s difficult to assimilate such a great loss to have occurred on these calm, seemingly harmless waters of Thames. What on earth could go wrong here! Interestingly these were the exact thoughts of S.S.Victoria’s carefree passengers, as reported by a London Advertiser reporter who was aboard the steamer on that fateful day and survived the crash. 600 people crammed on a dangerously overcrowded Victoria returning from Springbank Park, with ankle deep water fording the first deck, moving from one side to the other and causing the boat to dangerously rock, which to them was ‘mere fun’. The passengers of S.S.Victoria were so indifferent to an apparent calamity that our reporter overheard someone saying “Why, if anything happened all we have to do is to wade out.” But then just like a cursed movie script straight from ‘Final Destination’ coming into play, everything that could go wrong exactly went wrong in the most fatal way imaginable when the disaster eventually struck.

The Thames of 1881 passing through the Forest City making a fork near the origin of Dundas Street, wasn’t much different from the present day water channel. In 1879, to cater for the freshwater supply to the city, a waterworks comprising a dam and a pumping station was commissioned utilizing the fresh water springs astride Thames near present day Springbank area. With a hotel, a dance bar and park in the area soon this was to become London’s recreational hub ideal for a day’s outing, giving a tough competition to Port Stanley, a day’s excursion popular with Londoners of the time. Present day Springbank Drive was Pipe Line Road back then, and for a 6 mile turnaround between downtown and Springbank Park, as compared to walking or a multitude of horse carriages transporting the picnickers, steamboats were a convenient and economical option. The dam with splash-boards on top provided little elevation to water levels upstream, with enough depth for steamboats to navigate the tricky waters of Thames, still puddled with shallow waterbeds on places, large stones and sandbars. Three steamboats ferried along the river taking people from Forks at Thames to Springbank Park  and back, and one of these was S.S.Victoria, Princess Louise and Forest City being the other two.

24th of May 1881 was Tuesday, a holiday being Queen Victoria’s birthday and a busy day for our steamers as the crowd flocked the Waterworks and nearby attractions. This was the day of disaster when on her last trip of the day S.S.Victoria, overcrowded by a huge number of 600 passengers returning after a day’s excursion at Springbank Park, capsized on the way to Forks at Thames near the spot where now stands the commemorative plaque the picture of which, my readers have seen above. 

Multiple factors contributed to the disaster, overcrowding, ankle deep water fording the first deck, an uncontrollable crowd of passengers moving side to side causing the boat to rock and then at one point owing to the rush of passengers onto a side, reportedly to watch a boat race happening beside the steamer, the ship tilted to an unrecoverable angle. This caused the ship’s boiler breaking loose and with it taking away support beams for the upper deck that came crashing on the passengers at the lower tier. The initial casualties were from the burning steam and impact of the boiler followed by the upper deck crashing onto the passengers and then the vessel literally breaking into splinters going down and getting stuck  in an area where water was  8 – 18 feet deep. Imagine several hundred people thrown into water, muddled into the debris of a breaking vessel, their Victorian attire an immediate obstacle to their frantic attempts to swim, ‘clambered’ into each other mercilessly pulling each other down to their deaths in a watery grave. It was estimated that most people were probably crushed to death rather than drowned.

In that moment of desperate and violent struggle for life the dying won’t let go of the surviving. As per one account Lilly Skinner, daughter of an ex Alderman, had survived the initial crash and was swimming to safety along with her brother William, when a few feet short of the shore, she was pulled down by another drowning person. William, too exhausted by his own swimming effort could do nothing but helplessly see his sister drown to death. Among those who survived, badly bruised bodies due to the frantic pulling of those drowning was a common sight.

As per London Advertiser, the accident occurred around a quarter past six. Around eight o’clock seventy six bodies were taken from the river. At nine, 135 were counted, and at 10 PM, the number reached 153. A report published in the 11th June edition of Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper puts the count of all bodies that were recovered to 258 with a possibility of more bodies buried under the wreckage.

It is believed that not all who drowned in the disaster were ever accounted for. A comprehensive list of victims was published in ‘The Dominion Annual Register and Review 1880 – 1881’ ⁵ celebrating the 14th and 15th years of the Canadian Union. This list based on the official return signed on July 5th, 1881 by James Grant, the district registrar of London Township, puts the count to 181, but this too had a few errors and duplicate entries. I came across another well organized list of victims segregated into ‘local interments, and those sent abroad for sepulture’, on the pages of ‘City of London, a history from Pioneer Period onwards’ ⁶ published in October 1900 by London Printing and Lithographing Company Limited. We get a list of 178 names of which 66 were buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, 51 interred in Woodland, 23 in St Peter’s on Victoria Street and 34 were sent outside of London, as far as Bellville, Ontario and Rochester, New York. With 144 known burials within London in the aftermath of the disaster, the Forest City was turned into a ‘City of Funerals’.

Ring the bell softly, there’s crape on the door;

Nestled between the Springbank Drive and the winding stream of Thames, with its circular roads and grassy plots cooled under the shades of oak and plum trees, if you happen to be between the living and the dead at Woodland Cemetery, as I was that afternoon, on the southern periphery of Section R, an obelisk in pink granite captures your attention. As you read the inscriptions on the three sides of the square base all bearing the same date of death, a painful realization dawns at you that it’s a family of five who perished on May 24th 1881. Our tall obelisk, dear reader, belongs to Evans family. George Evans, a boiler worker at Great Western Railway, lost his wife Elizabeth and four kids, in the Victoria Boat Disaster of 1881.

In the present day calm that surrounds the somber Evans’ cemetery stone, it’s hard to imagine the actual scenes on the day of burial, here in Woodland and the other cemeteries of London. The grief that engulfed the Forest City post Victoria Disaster was magnificent. There was hardly a family in the city that was not personally touched by the grief of losing a loved one, if not a family member then a friend.

The papers on 26th, the second day of funerals were full of the heart wrenching happenings witnessed around the city. In one block of the city there were five families bereaved, mourning the loss of one or more of their loved ones in the disaster. In South London, which back then was along the southern bank of Thames, in one block of Craig Street a funeral procession had six coffins carried from five homes. On the corner of Richmond and Dundas two funerals met each other at right angles. In another household Fryer family had five corpses lying side by side awaiting hearses. There could only be three and the two bodies had to be carried on wagons for some distance.

Lovely in Life, Undivided in Death

Immediately up north the Cove Bridge on Thames, the spot where S.S.Victoria capsized on that fateful day, across the Riverside Drive, not very different from Woodland in its layout, grassy plots and winding roads, is the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The first time I came here was on a chilly November morning, straight from a Remembrance Day parade at Victoria Park, to pay homage those buried in a neatly organized Commonwealth War Graves section. A little down south of these uniformed Commonwealth Graves, not very far from the cemetery office, are three plots, C, M and N neatly laid out. Here now lie in their tombs and potter’s field, the Victoria Disaster victims, around 66 as per records, the most burials for the victims in a cemetery within the city of London.

Just beside the curved pathways that divide the M and N plots, in the former stands a beautiful arch, the pillars of which rest on two square white marble pieces, which in fact are the two headstones. The monument bears the surname Glass. Fannie Cooper and William Glass were two young sweethearts who were engaged to be married in a fortnight, but met their untimely death, which dear reader, is true for all deaths, in the Victoria Boat Disaster. We come to know that a joint funeral was arranged for our to be couple, with Mr Glass’ coffin leaving the premises of his residence at 2 PM joining Ms Cooper at John Cooper’s house in around 30 minutes. The Choir of the Queen’s Avenue Methodist Church, who attended the funeral, and of which our sweethearts were a member, must have recited a few love hymns in Mount Pleasant that afternoon as the two coffins were lowered in a joint grave. The arch pillars of Glass memorial have inscribed on them, “They were lovely in their lives. And in death they are not divided”.

Across the pathway from the Glass memorial is the N section where not very far from one another stand the Morrison and McPherson stones. Here lie buried the children of both the families whose bodies laid side by side the morning they were buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. It was Mary Patterson, daughter of Archibald McPherson who was visiting her cousins, the children of James and Mary Ann Morrison. On Victoria Day they took a trip to Springbank Park and were on board S.S.Victoria when it went down. Nellie, John and William James Morrison along with Mary Macpherson all died in that disaster.

A Last Relic in Elizabeth St, St. Joseph’s Ward

A ribbon and a flower was what she could grab from the dress of her elder sister, as she saw her go down the cruel waters of Thames. Henrietta herself was just nine years old, but in her struggle for survival tenaciously held onto the last relics from her sister. Henrietta was rescued but her elder sister Mary couldn’t. The Hogan stone, with arched pillars standing tall in St Peter’s Cemetery on Victoria Street now remembers Mary Hogan we lost in Victoria Boat Disaster.

Whereas both Woodland and Mt Pleasant Cemeteries have had conducted tours on Victoria Boat Disaster in the past, not many of us know that a number of victims were also buried in St Peter’s, the only Catholic Cemetery in London. Ms Meaghan O’Hare was very polite and accommodating as I walked into the office of St. Peter’s Cemetery and Holy Family Chapel Mausoleum on Victoria Street that afternoon. In a few minutes the burial register was out and we scanned the interments on May 25 – 27, 1881. That afternoon in the cemetery office, we came to know of an interesting convention. The North – Western corner bordering the intersection of Huron and Barker streets is the oldest section of the cemetery. Back then, and this is true for the time of May 1881 burials as well, the plotting in this cemetery was done into wards and streets. There was St Raphael’s Ward towards South and St Joseph’s in the North with St Mary’s Ward just next to it. The rows of gravestones followed the alignment of streets, named Epiphany, Elizabeth, Dominic, Amherst and others. Now looking against the entry for Mary Hogan (inscribed as Minnie Hogan in the register), No. 17 East, Elizabeth St. St Joseph’s Ward made sense.

Hogan memorial is a prominent granite arch in grey color in St Joseph’s Ward visible from a distance. Looking from front, the headstone under left pillar of the arch remembers Mary Hogan, Aged 11 years and 10 months, who drowned in Thames Disaster of 1881. Whether the ribbon and flower from her dress saved as the last relic by her younger sister who survived the crash, were buried with Mary Hogan or kept by the grieving family, we, dear reader, know not.

A few rows above Mary Hogan, the register of burials at St. Peter’s has names of two Madden sisters from England. Elizabeth and Mary Madden aged 13 and 16 respectively. We find them buried beside the road just at the corner of Roch St. in St. Raphael’s Ward. Years back, and by a handsome count of them, when the burial record at Catholic Cemetery of London was compiled we find the mention of Madden stone which back then was a ‘badly worn white marble cross’. The inscription was still readable, ‘In memory of Mary / aged 16 yrs. and of Elizabeth / aged 13 yrs. daus. of Peter and Annie Madden and granddaughters of Bridget Fahey drowned in the River Thames May 24, 1881’. The top of the cross is torn off and what now survives cannot be described as white marble. At the base we can only decipher the word ‘drowned’ in bold letters and the mention of date May the 24, 1881. A broken slab placed on the foot of this surviving monument tells us of a Bridget Fahey who died on April 22, 1900, also buried there alongside her granddaughters.

The Two Misses Foxton, and The Shipley Sisters

On Wednesday, May 25, 1881, the afternoon train to Wingham via Exeter, Clinton and Blyth was on time as it chugged past the Hyde Park railway station in London. The tracks of London, Huron and Bruce Railway (LH&BR), the most scenic route in Western Ontario were overcast with a shadow of gloom. That Wednesday afternoon, dear reader, our ‘Butter and Egg Special’ on her way to Clinton carried three caskets in one of its carriages, the victims of Victoria Boat Disaster on 24th May 1881.

May 25, 2025, was Sunday, and the sky was overcast on that melancholic morning as I walked into the cemetery on Hydro Line Road, North East of Clinton. On my way from London, this little town with its yellow brick buildings had tempted me to stop for a coffee, but I had a few more miles to go to the place where the Foxton Sisters and their little brother, our victims from Victoria Boat Disaster, were now in eternal sleep in Clinton Cemetery.

The three caskets arriving at 7 PM train from Hyde Park London the previous day had a large funeral in Ontario Street Methodist Church on Thursday, May 26th, 1881. The pupils from Blyth Public school followed the coffins as one of them carried the body of their teacher Jane Elizabeth Foxton. Jane along with little William was visiting her sister Mary Ann Foxton, a teacher in public school near London and the trio was out on picnic in Springbank Park and that is how fate placed them onboard S.S.Victoria on the day of Thames Disaster. In Clinton Cemetery, the Foxton obelisk in cherry blossom colours and tall grace now remembers the two sisters, and their little brother.

Heading out of London, taking the main artery due north, we now know as Highway 4, right in the heart of the little town of Birr, if we take a left on Thirteen Mile road, there stands in seclusion, St. George’s Anglican Church with its cemetery. On a bright sunny day standing under the scanty shade of cedar trees, it’s hard to imagine that here once proceeded ‘one of the largest funerals ever witnessed in North Middlesex’ with more than 160 carriages and buggies lined up on this modest road. The year was 1881 and the event was the funeral of Shipley sisters, misses Lizzie and Minnie Shipley of Carlisle, the visitors to London who perished in Thames disaster.

Like other caskets going out of London that day, the carriage taking those of Misses Shipley must have followed Richmond Street. Back then it was a gravelled route called Proof Line Road joining the township of London with counties up north. Making way through various toll gates, and the hearses were hopefully exempt from the tolls paid by the living, they must have passed by the taverns and hotels at each milepost, just like the caravanserais on the Grand Trunk Road in the Indian Dominion, before taking a final left on the rural route that is now Thirteen Mile Road, or may be they followed Sixteen Mile Road further up, a route much straighter to Carlisle. The Shipleys were long dead to mourn the loss of their daughters, and on Thursday, May 26th, Grandpa Shipley, a veteran pioneer in the area lead the grand funeral attended by large number of family and friends from Carlisle and East Williams, and surroundings to include Lobo, Ailsa Craig and various parts of the Township of London.

The Untold Story of Emma J Box

From families buried together, mothers interred beside their children, sisters with their brothers, we now head back to Emma J Box, lonely in her death, resting under a solo gravestone in a burial plot near Woodland Landing. This was the gravestone I frequented the most during my visits to victims’ graves, and with the mention of which, dear reader, this story begins. I then came across a brochure from Woodland Cemetery. It was about the walking tour once organized to commemorate the victims of Victoria Day Disaster on 135th anniversary of the event. A leaf had the graves of the victims marked on a layout of the burial plots in the cemetery, those included in the tour and others who were not. On serial 24 (not included in the tour) was Emma ‘Jane’ Box, buried in section QG, and beside it was this curious one liner; “Emma (22) was going to be married that day had the wedding not been postponed by one month”. From where that information had come, I wondered.

This took me to the cemetery office at Woodland, where in a very pleasant interaction, Kerry Blackwell, General Manager Woodland Cemetery, Mausoleum and Crematorium, assisted me. I was given access to the booklet, “Life and Death at Woodland Cemetery”, a project by Western University students. Ms. Blackwell believed that any information the said brochure had on the victims came directly from the booklet where a chapter titled “Tragedy & Commemoration in Victorian Era Woodland” covered the Thames Disaster of 1881. There was nothing on Ms Box in the booklet but the bibliography was indeed of value, that eventually led me to the microforms section of London Room in Central branch of London Public Library in the Forest City downtown.

Consulting archives has this typical ‘undertaker feeling’ of digging through the records, long buried in the vault of time, an associated aura and aroma of darkness and dust, the misty scent of decaying paper and the seal-wax in bright red or dull brown, holding those shredding fragments together. It was nothing like that in the well lit Ivey Family London Room where Mr. Arthur McClelland, the librarian in-charge greeted me with a lively smile and settled me on a terminal loaded with a microform scanner. But, dear reader, in that lively evening inside London Public Library I still was in the company of dead as the microfilms I scrolled through contained the deadly news of Thames Disaster reported in the evening newspapers, onwards of May 24th 1881, and the corresponding burial records of the graves dug during that time-span in London cemeteries. And there in the list of victims being revised and republished on subsequent days I found the mention of ‘Emma Jane Box, aged 22 years, domestic at the household of James Magee, the barrister’.

Now Magee family was well known in London, and James Magee who later served as Justice in Ontario’s Appeal Court died in 1938 and was buried in the Forest City. We have Magee stone in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and know that no one from Magee family including kids were involved in Victoria Boat disaster. So what Emma, their domestic was doing on S.S.Victoria? Was she partying alone in Springbank Park on that Victoria Day holiday? The only Magee casualty in Thame Disaster was one Harvey Magee, aged 15, too old to be under supervision of a domestic. Also Harvey was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in potters field, an unlikely burial for a member of Magee family of status in 1880s London.

Another clue comes to us from the list of survivors, published alongside the list of dead in London newspapers after the Victoria Boat Disaster. There we come across a Ms. Mary Kernohan, another domestic at James Magee the barrister, who was rescued in bad shape ‘badly bruised in face by being kicked’. So in all possibility our two domestics Emma and Mary from Magee household were out on picnic on Victoria Day at Springbank Park and were the unfortunate and fortunate passengers respectively on S.S.Victoria. The third clue in this hunt, dear reader, comes to us from the burial records of the very cemetery where Emma Jane Box lies buried, and it’s a name, Arthur W. Cheesman.

Upon my request, Ms. Blackwell had very kindly arranged the burial record register for me to take a look at the cemetery office. The entries in the register did not reveal much other than the date of death, age and profession, for which ‘spinster’ was entered against Ms. Box. Having consulted the register, where a lot many burials ended up to be in the potters field, it was unusual for a domestic at James Magee household to have her own burial plot and a gravestone. It was out of curiosity that I inquired my host in the cemetery office if there was a way to find out who had paid for the burial plot and the gravestone for Emma Jane Box at the time of interment. Land ownerships, dear reader, and that includes the burial plots in the cemeteries, have their records well preserved. Having queried the ‘database of the dead’ at Woodland Cemetery, we got the name of one Mr Cheesman and that helped put together a few missing pieces in the puzzle.

The modern day convenience of using available tools on internet takes us to the ancestry website and there we could trace the family tree of Ms. Box. Emma Jane Box was born to William Box and Elizabeth Greenway in 1859, in Morwenstow, Cornwall, England. After the death of her husband Elizabeth along with her daughter Emma came to Canada, and the date was 9 May, 1873. We have their names on the passenger manifest embarking the steamer at Plymouth, England sailing to Quebec, Canada. Now in all probability Emma’s elder sister Mary Elizabeth Box was already in Canada. On Jul 2, 1867, Mary married one Arthur William Cheesman in England and later moved and settled in London Ontario. Arthur William Cheesman is our man who paid for Emma’s interment and the burial plot and had the gravestone installed in the Woodland cemetery. Interestingly Arthur, who died in April 1900, is buried in the same QG plot as Emma in Woodland Cemetery, in an unmarked grave.

My dear reader, in all probability, on May 24 1881, Emma Jane Box along with Mary Kernohan, the two domestics from the household of James Magee, the barrister, were out on Victoria Day excursion in Springbank Park when on their way back they boarded the ill fated S.S.Victoria when the disaster struck. Mary was rescued with some really bad bruises but Emma did not survive the crash. On Friday, May 27th, 1881, probably in the afternoon Emma Jane Box was buried in a marked grave in QG section of Woodland Cemetery and her funeral must have been attended by her family to include her mother Elizabeth Greenway, elder sister Mary Elizabeth Box and her brother in law Arthur William Cheesman. After all our Emma is no more lonely in her death. She had her family beside her at the time of burial and most probably they are also buried in the same plot as Emma. The inscription on Emma’s gravestone, from an elder sister to a younger one, now makes sense.

We still don’t know the origin of the specific piece of information regarding Emma’s wedding on May 24, 1881, the day of the Victoria Boat disaster, which if not postponed would have changed the course of Emma’s life and an untimely death. Perhaps, we will find the missing link, and that dear reader, shall be a story for another day.

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Postscript

On a second round of scanning through microfilms of London newspapers that covered the Victoria Steamboat Disaster, on the inner pages of May 26th edition of The London Free Press, I came across the paragraph on Emma Jane Box. The same paragraph that became the primary source of information on Ms Box, that we came across in the Woodland Cemetery brochure on the Walking Tour featuring victims of the Thames Disaster of 1881. From the pages of same newspaper, dear reader, we come to know that Emma once lived in Grey Street, in a neighbourhood just off the northern bank of Thames, in London Ontario.

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