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The Next Few Moments

The silence lasted only a few moments. One contemporary account describes the emergence of “cries and shrieks, groans and obdurations [sic] of unearthly intensity.” Even given Victorian hyperbole, that can have not been much of an exaggeration. The devastation was truly shocking. Victorian rolling stock was massively, albeit not scientifically, built. The fall of more than forty feet and the impact with the solid surface and the flying debris of seats, stoves, and other equipment resulted in tremendous crushing and cutting injuries. There was immediate peril of drowning and hypothermia, and shock threatened the soaked victims of open cuts and fractures.

Help was not far away. At first it was the numbed survivors, many of them crew members and off-duty employees, who dragged themselves to the aid of their fellow travellers. In fact, a surprising number of railway men experienced dramatic last-second escapes. Perhaps that reflected the sense of ever-looming disaster that characterized Great Western operations. Just-relieved switchman David Crombie was in the best position to save himself. He had placed but a single foot on the very bottom step of the last car before realizing that something was amiss, he had only to drop off and watch helplessly as the train crashed through the bridge. Within a few moments that car leaned precariously against the abutment and he was scurrying to obtain a rope to lower to its shocked occupants.

Before slipping off the train, Crombie was able to call out a warning to those in the last car. William Muir, assistant superintendent on the GWR, was reading in the last seat of that last car. Hearing that cry and feeling the uneven movement of the train, he quickly rose, flung open the rear door, and jumped to safety. Travelling GWR Auditor Richard Jessup, aboard the same car, sensed something wrong and saw conductor Edward Barrett struggling to undo the coupling at the front of the car — or so he thought. The impossibility of such a feat when a train is in motion makes that an unlikely exercise to attempt. In any case Barrett made no claim to such heroics. Standing on the car’s front platform he said he heard the brake whistle and someone yell jump — so he did! The example was compelling enough for the auditor. He too jumped, and witnessed the disaster unfolding. Then, wasting no time, Auditor Jessup clambered up the steep side of the embankment and scurried across the high-level suspension bridge. There he begged a ride aboard a passing farm wagon to take him to the terminal where he could raise the alarm.

Locomotive headlights cast macabre shadows over the disaster scene in this somewhat inaccurate contemporary sketch. The actual bridge latticework was much taller and did not extend beyond the vertical pier.

Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 4, 1857.

Edward Sevier, twenty-five-year-old baggageman, in the leading vehicle had an even closer brush with death. Having gathered the Hamilton luggage by the open door he was perched on top of it when he heard the sharp whistle. On looking out he actually claimed to have seen the engine sinking before he too leapt to safety. Forty years later, when he was the only known surviving rail hand to have been on the wreck, he held by his story. In 1897 he told a reporter:

I saw on looking out of the door the coupling between the tender and (baggage) car break. I saw the engine and tender breaking through the bridge and thinking it was time to get off, I jumped and found myself lying on my back with my head not a foot from the stonework. I saw the engineer throw up his hands as if to jump, but he poor fellow went down with his engine. My chum Henry Urquhart, the express messenger, also went to his death, not being able to get out of the door on the other side of the car.

Traumatic as the experience was, Sevier stayed with the railway long enough to put in twenty-seven years of service and live through several wrecks before retiring to take up the less vicarious life of a letter carrier.

Brakeman Michael Duffey had a similar hair’s-breadth escape. He saw Crombie drop-off, heard the whistle, knew that steam had been turned off, and saw “that the engine had gone.” In that split-second he jumped and landed just four yards from the edge.

Edwin Richardson, an off-duty conductor, was blissfully asleep in the baggage car. He had no opportunity to react. The first he knew of the disaster was when he was woken by breaking timbers, an explosion of stove ashes, and the onrush of freezing water. That galvanized him into action. Smashing the window, he crawled out onto the ice. There, however, dazed and in pain, he could play no part in the immediate rescue. He recovered sufficiently a little later to try, along with switchman Crombie, to ascertain the cause of the disaster by examining the switch by lamplight.

One of the first non-participants to reach the scene was Diana House, who lived just 100 yards away on the Toronto side, close to the lake. With her sixteen-year-old daughter, she was drawn by the strange sounds emanating from the close-by train and witnessed the drama unfold. Immediately she rushed to the edge of the canal to render what assistance she could. Others shortly joined her.

Although a mile and a half away, the Hamilton station was within sight of the bridge. Whether alerted by Jessup’s alarm or the strange activity around the bridge in the failing light, the railway staff was galvanized into action. They formed the vanguard of the hundreds of would-be rescuers and the plain curious who streamed out to the bridge, along the line, and across the ice. The proximity of GWR workshops and yards made it possible to respond quickly with heavy equipment. Special trains were marshalled: first to carry apparatus, later to transport the dead and injured. Ropes and ladders were positioned to help rescuers and wounded scramble up and down the steep banks of the canal. The militia was called in. Major Alfred Booker Junior (whose father, Alfred Senior, the hell-fire preacher, was among the victims) stationed his company of troops at the depot to restore order and deter looters. Captain Macdonald’s Rifles were marched to the disaster scene to provide assistance.

Recovery efforts continued through the night and the following day. It was bitterly cold, but thankfully moonlit. Locomotive headlights were rigged at the scene — casting both helpful light and eerie shadow. At first, efforts were directed toward releasing those trapped in the near-vertical second car, perilously inclined against the abutment.

One of those extracted from that last car was a Woodstock dry-goods merchant by the name of W.R. Marshall, who was seated four seats from the back. He was alerted by the “oscillation of the car” and the mounting alarm displayed by the crew and his fellow travellers. A take-charge type of person and unaware of the proximity of the bridge, Marshall stayed put and calmly advised others to do the same. Given the providential escapes of those who jumped that was clearly rather dubious advice — but there is no evidence that anyone heeded his poor counsel. Marshall grimly rode down with the last car. When the front of it smashed into the rock-hard surface of the frozen canal, seats, fittings, hand luggage, and occupants were torn from their places to lodge in a sickening mass of humanity, wood, and iron at the partly submerged front-end of the car. Here, in total darkness, Marshall found himself crushed “almost to suffocation.” With blood oozing from his mouth and fearing that his next breath must be his last, he can perhaps be forgiven for his theatrical reconstruction of his circumstances.

The next few moments were the worst I ever witnessed: oh that it may never be my lot to experience the like again. Some prayed, others called upon the saints, others swore fearful oaths, and all seemed writhing in the deepest agony. I can only liken the place to a slaughterhouse. The blood streamed down over my face and clothes as if some huge beast had been slain above me.

Further in his recorded recollections, the saintly Marshall waxed even more melodramatic.

What an awful lesson does this shocking event teach those who habitually put off making their peace with God to some future day, or to a death bed. The writer of these few lines will consider himself amply repaid, if his description succeeds in persuading one sinner to seek a refuge in Him who promised to be a present help unto his people in every time of trial.

Hopefully, the upstanding Mr. Marshall maintained such commendable thoughts over the ten minutes or so before he was rescued. His own recollection is that he spent the time enjoining his fellow victims to be patient and wait for help. His reminiscences adopted a rather tetchy tone, however, in describing his actual release — as if a little resentful of the intrusion into his virtuous soliloquy! First, the top of the car was smashed in, providing welcome light and air. Then, almost immediately, Marshall recalls his temple being grazed by a near glance from a well-intentioned crowbar. Not willing to be placed a second time in jeopardy of meeting his maker, he made a monumental effort to seize the instrument. Immediately a hand (which curiously he judged to be a woman’s hand) reached in and was clasped over his mouth, threatening, yet again, to suffocate him. Once more he made a mighty effort and dislodged the hand. Whether his would-be rescuer was so discouraged by all this resistance or whether the good Mr. Marshall simply took matters into his own hand, the balance of his escape he ascribes to his own initiative — at least up to the point where, having dragged himself out of the car and to the edge of the canal, he was hauled by chains to the top of the bank. From there he was carried to a nearby switchman’s hut and given medical attention. His condition immediately after the event was curiously described as “severely though not dangerously wounded.” He was without more ado taken to his brother-in-law’s residence not far away on Queen Street, where he recuperated.

Perhaps Marshall’s counsel to his fellow travellers that they remain seated was not entirely without merit. Although those who jumped were saved, at least one survivor believed that the failed effort to reach the door might have cost some their lives. W.W. Reed was seated in the fourth seat of the last car on the left-hand side. At the very front on that side, with his feet on the stove, sat Mr. H.M. Yerrington. Behind him was Samuel Zimmerman and behind him another wealthy contractor, Mr. Farr. When derailment appeared likely, Reed, who had been reading a newspaper, simply braced himself in his seat. He saw Farr and Zimmerman dash past him, making for the rear door, which they almost reached. When the car toppled, however, Farr and Zimmerman fell nearly the entire length of the car to be wedged up against the stove in all the rubble. Yerrington, already seated in front of the stove, collapsed on top of them — Farr and Zimmerman providing human insulation from the scorching heat. When he was extricated, Yerrington was soaked in blood, and therefore reported as in critical condition. By the following day, however, he was sufficiently recovered from his modest injuries to be going out for a walk. The blood, undoubtedly, was from his now-dead companions, who, in Reed’s opinion, might have survived had they stayed seated. Yerrington, on the other hand, seated in front of the stove, might have been the one to be crushed against it.

The scene at ice level was frantic and determined. Armed with only a few ineffective tools, rescuers tried desperately to break through the massive frames of the cars while others shone bright lanterns or attempted rudimentary first-aid.

Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 4, 1857.

How much of the second car penetrated the ice is not known, but it certainly broke through. When Zimmerman’s body was eventually recovered it showed clear evidence of having been submerged for some hours. Yet, initially the stove situated in front of the first seats was at least partially above water. In the darkness, Reed could hear the anguished cries of a woman below him who was being burned to death. This raised the spectre of the too-common consequences of nineteenth century wrecks: fire. It occupied Reed’s thoughts for a time as he waited for the seemingly inevitable conflagration. Whether only the first few feet of the car were underwater (sufficient to account for the waterlogged bodies) or whether it settled further during the first few minutes, enough to extinguish the stove, is not known.

The story of another survivor, John Smith of Michigan, confirms that the last car penetrated the ice. He was seated on the right-hand side (opposite where the stove was located) in the third seat from the front. Like some of the others he made a dash for the door when he realized something was badly amiss. (The frantic rush to “abandon ship” perhaps says something of the lack of confidence GWR passengers of the era felt, as well as the often sluggish pace of travel that could make such an option possible.) Smith never made it to the door, but as the car began to slip he managed to grab hold of a hook and only lost control at the bottom of the plunge, when he found himself submersed in water. Only after swallowing a good deal was he able to twist his face sufficiently to breathe. Nearby, beneath the water, he could feel the head of an already dead victim. Bruised, cut, and suffering from hypothermia, Smith was eventually transported to the Anglo American Hotel, where it was many hours before he could stop shivering.

Of those in the first car only a handful survived, and those who did essentially extricated themselves from the wreckage. William Garrick, yet another Great Western employee, was seated four or five seats from the front of the ill-fated car, on the left-hand side. When the whistle blew and the train gave two sharp jerks he rose to his feet. Out of one of the front windows on the opposite side he could see the end of the masonry parapet appear. Unbeknownst to him the engine must already have been well on the way to its icy resting place, and the baggage car was flying across the gap. However, at the time he assumed that the engine must have been near the end of the bridge. As the car canted down he resumed his seat and held on while it somersaulted head-over-heels to the frozen canal. When he told his story to the Coroner’s Inquest, he matter-of-factly described finding himself in the frigid waters and crawling out “not much hurt.”

But it was not his near miraculous escape from so deadly a calamity that interested the jurors. By yet another of those quirks that dog this tale, Garrick was actually a carpenter employed by the railway on bridge and culvert repair. In fact, he had been repair foreman on the Desjardins Canal Bridge. The previous August he had supervised the placement of an additional twelve needle beams (beams that support the track in a similar manner to railway ties) to provide greater strength to the structure. Only a few months before the accident, he had been in charge of replacing seventeen broken and chipped beams in the same part that collapsed the night of the tragedy. The restoration had been made necessary by an earlier incident in which a freight car had derailed on the bridge.

The salvation of one of the few other survivors of the first car was touched with great tragedy. John Clare, a Hamilton merchant, seemed oblivious to impending disaster until the car actually began its decent. Next thing he knew he was trapped under the weight of the heavy stove, badly cut. He made no complaint of burns, so either the freezing water had quenched the fire or he was quickly able to extricate himself. With great difficulty he pulled himself from the middle of the upturned and partially submerged vehicle to a broken window at one end, which he crawled through onto the ice. He was quite certain that if anyone else availed themselves of the same exit it was not after he had done so — for he would not be budged from the spot. Only with great reluctance was he eventually enticed away to warmth and safety, but he did so without his two-year-old daughter, Mahaly, whom at the time of the accident was perched upon his knee. Her remains were recovered the following day.

If possible, the story of the Doyle family is even more tragic. At least seven of the Pickering, Ontario, area family were travelling in the leading car: Timothy, a shoemaker, his wife, Ann, and their three young children. Also in the party were Timothy’s brothers Patrick and Owen. Some early reports added two cousins, a cousin’s wife, and two of their daughters to the group. If so, the extended Doyle family would have accounted for about one-quarter of the travellers in the ill-fated first car. Mention of the cousins was dropped from later accounts, so most likely they were simply a manifestation of the immediate confusion.

What is certain is that Timothy and his wife perished, as did his two-year-old son, also called Timothy, along with one of his brothers. Timothy’s other brother, Owen, survived by breaking through a window and half swimming, half crawling onto the ice, before losing consciousness. Somehow or other he was able to push his eight-year-old niece ahead of him and to drag her nine-year-old brother to the window. As Diana House, the nearby resident, stumbled and rolled down the steep and frozen bank she came across the girl who, it is said, pleaded: “Oh, don’t mind me, save my brother.” House could see the boy grimly clutching the window frame, with his chin barely above water. She could hear his desperate cries for help. Although the ice had fractured around the almost submerged car, she was able to reach the boy and drag him to safety. Clutching the freezing lad, she enlisted the aid of a passenger, himself badly injured, to carry the girl on his back. Together they hurried the children to her home, where she bundled them into bed. Apparently, by morning, the two exhibited no physical effects from their experience. But they surely could never have overcome the psychological trauma of the accident and the loss of so many of their loved ones.

The equipment rushed from Hamilton had made recovery efforts on the near-vertical second car relatively quick and easy. All the bodies, living or dead, were concentrated at what had been the front of the cars. It was a relatively simple matter to force entry (although not completely without incident, as the upright Mr. Marshall’s brush with the crowbar demonstrated). Salvage efforts on the leading car were largely limited to recovering bodies, complicated by the need to break through the sturdy floorboards to gain entry, and because there was no way of telling where in the length of the car victims might be found.

As the night wore on less delicate means were adopted. Men on makeshift rafts probed the nine-foot depths of the canal (now a patchwork of fractured ice and frigid murky water) with long poles, testing for the resiliency that would signal a body. All night the efforts continued. Attempts to raise the first passenger car were hampered by the still-perilously placed second car, so with the aid of axes and saws the latter was dismantled and dragged to the shore. Heavy tackle was mounted on each abutment and, although they were able to raise the leading car a bit, it too had to be demolished the following day.

Brute force and rudimentary equipment were all that the rescuers could marshal in the salvage effort. How much they accomplished, under circumstances that would have to be considered extreme even by today’s well-equipped and trained professional rescue crews, is amazing. In deep water, at temperatures cold enough to kill, with only locomotive headlights and moonlight to provide illumination and at risk of being crushed by the precariously balanced car and doubtful bridge, teams of impromptu volunteers managed to save the living, recover most of the bodies, and clear much of the debris.

Their accomplishments speak to their resolve and tenacity. Amidst the general vigour some examples of individual heroism stand out — perhaps none more so than that of one man, who caught the eye of a reporter for the Hamilton Spectator. “Who,” he asked, “is that noble fellow who early at the scene worked like a second Hercules unceasingly for hours hewing away at the timbers of the cars, in his shirt sleeves, and up to his waist in water?” The image caught the imagination of the public and for a day or two the identity of “That Noble Fellow” was on many peoples’ minds. The Spectator was able to put a name to the hero when a correspondent reported him to be Alexander Middlemis, a GWR carpenter. “He was lifted from the water,” the letter-writer observed, “after two hours exertion covered over with ice.” The correspondent added a second name, George Bourne, another railway carpenter, who took over from Middlemis and worked like another Hercules. Like a super abundance of shopping-mall Santas, the list of claimant “Hercules” began to grow. A day or two later, the Spectator commented: “Two other persons have put in claims to the distinction assigned Alexander Middlemis as the noble hearted fellow who was conspicuously the observed of all observers in rescuing the dead and dying from the ill-fated train at the Bridge, on the night of the 12th instant.” That torturous sentence, perhaps, revealed the waning interest of the reporter in the matter. He went on to identify the first of the newly identified as John A. McGillis, and then with commendable honesty continued: “The name of the other we have forgotten.” The proximity of the accident scene to GWR maintenance shops meant that, in fact, many employees played heroically key roles in the rescue. Although “That Noble Fellow” may have stood out, many of his colleagues demonstrated selfless exertions that night. The minute books of the Great Western are notably terse on the subject of the accident, but they do include an expression of thanks to those many employees.

Within a few hours treating the wounded and comforting the survivors gave way to collecting and transporting the dead, many of whom had initially been laid out on the ice and foreshore. By all accounts this was conducted in a most businesslike manner. Flatcars and barrows were used to bring most of them to the baggage and freight rooms at the station. There they were laid out in an orderly fashion in rows, each with a chalked number marked on the floor at their feet. Coroners Bull and Rosebrugh supervised the process and, at first, strictly limited access to the buildings. Many mourners, in fact, had to wait until the Friday before even being permitted to view the dead. There were reasons for the tight security. Not only were many of the victims carrying considerable wealth but there was also a crush of anxious relatives and friends, a good many of whom had been waiting at the station since before the accident. The coroners held their ground and Alfred Booker’s Artillery Brigade enforced order. They did not entirely avoid unpleasantness. At least one attempt to steal from the corpses was curtailed by the ruffian being felled by a stunning blow delivered by a GWR mechanic. The perpetrator was taken into custody. Someone managed to purloin a travelling bag belonging to Samuel Zimmerman — specially crafted to contain a set of monogrammed silver toilet items. Zimmerman had purchased it in Paris at a cost of around five hundred dollars.

An account in the Toronto Globe describes the general appearance of the victims as ghastly. “The general expression on the countenance was that of fear and alarm; the eyeballs stretched to the utmost, the mouth open, and the hands generally fixed in an attitude of defense.” At the instruction of the Managing Director of the Great Western C.J. Brydges, a local photographer, R. Milne, was hired to take photographic images of the deceased to assist in later identification. He employed a “force of artisans” equipped with “several sets of apparatus.” This was a novel concept and is believed to have been the first such use of photography.

This contemporary sketch captured the grim setting in the Great Western’s baggage rooms. In the shadowy light, bodies were arrayed in orderly rows, guarded by the militia and surrounded by an anxious crowd of relatives.

Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 4, 1857.

The scene was grim. Security was tight. When the grieving were allowed in there were numerous anguished episodes. It was still an era when ladies were expected to swoon. The gloom, the watchful militia glowering in the shadows, the cold, and the wretched condition of the dead must have created a horrible pastiche.

Virtually every member of the community was affected — whether personally touched by grief, directly involved in the frantic rescue efforts, or simply caught-up in the electric atmosphere that charged the usually tranquil night with unusual activity. Eleanor Bull, a young pastor’s wife about to give birth to her first child, was unable to sleep due to the constant tramp of horses and wagons on the Caledonia Plank Road that passed their cottage. Not until the morning was she told of the significance of the strange nighttime movements.

All that night the post office and telegraph offices remained open, handling the spate of outgoing dispatches and the flurry of incoming messages seeking confirmation and reassurance. The Spectator began publishing special edition after special edition in order to keep up with the demand. Newsboys flooded the city with the extras. Over the next day 6,000 copies were consigned to New York destined for Britain via the steamship Persia. The usual two bags could hold only one half of the sudden rush of mail destined for Britain. So dramatically had communications changed over the preceding decade that shortly after the Legislative Assembly in Toronto (Canada’s pre-Confederation Parliament rotated between Toronto and Quebec City) reassembled at 7:30 p.m. that very evening, rumours of the catastrophe began to circulate. Among those reported dead were Zimmerman and two members of Parliament.

Shortly, a newspaper extra was brought into the house with sufficient confirmation that, at the urging of the opposition, the house was adjourned. In assenting, on behalf of the government, John A. Macdonald, then the attorney general, observed that he had reason to fear that gentlemen well-known to the house and of great worth and merit had met with their death by that lamentable accident; and he quite concurred that the house was not in a position to go on with its business.