A column about days gone by in Melksham by local historian Lisa Ellis
Local Youths’ Deaths by Drowning
“…having no prospect of any alleviation of her treatment, she deliberately resolved in this manner to endure it no longer.” – a correspondent of the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 13 September 1821
Mary Boyd, 14, was found drowned in a well at Shaw Hill in September 1821. She had been missing for six days before her body was found.
Apprenticed to her master as a weaver, Mary felt she was being cruelly mistreated. She had no one, having been born illegitimately, that she felt she could turn to for help in the situation – even the parish officers, whom she approached in vain several times. The verdict at the coroner’s inquest: insanity.
Florence Newbury was 19 when her body was discovered in the canal near a bridge in Whaddon on Good Friday 1911. She had left a suicide note blaming her employer, the wife of an accountant in Langport, Somerset. Her father lived in Semington, but she never stopped to see him and he was unaware she’d left her employment.
The inquest into her death did not coincide with those self-written accusations but rather indicated she was broken-hearted over her boyfriend having gone to Canada and she hadn’t been able to join him. The latter explanation, I speculate, given by her employer.
Alternating reports list the death of Ephraim Knee as being, firstly a suicide, then later an accident. And, he was either 12, 18 or 19 years old, depending on which newspaper you read.
It’s not uncommon for newspapers to be so quick to get the news out that they sometimes get it wrong. But both accounts were reported more than two weeks after Knee disappeared.
Working as a servant at the King’s Arms, Knee left the inn the evening of the 29th September 1841. His friends reported he’d left his place of employment “under strong excitement” and when they could not find him, they decided to take action. On Saturday, three days after Knee disappeared, they fired a gun along the banks of the river, believing that the report would ‘burst the caul’ and raise the corpse to the surface. When that did not work, on the following Monday, they beat a drum along the banks, thinking that the drum would not make a noise when near the corpse, according to superstition.
Knee’s body was eventually discovered near the Avon bridge on Sunday, the 10th of October. Ephraim Knee was the son of George and Elizabeth Knee, who lived in Broughton Lane.
Other local youth drownings, mostly by accident, in either bodies of water or in wells:
• Michael Hillier in 1841, aged four, of Blackmore
• Thomas Earl in 1845, aged five, of Lock House, Melksham Forest
• Benjamin Dicks in 1845, aged six, of Seend Row
• Elizabeth West in 1845, aged 13, of Woodrow
• Thomas Guley in 1846, aged two, of Snarlton Lane
• Frederick Clement in 1848, aged six, of Chapel Court, Market Place
• Charles Martin in 1848, aged seven, of Canon Square
• Joseph Pegler in 1849, aged six, of Melksham Forest
• Samuel Harding in 1849, aged six, of Melksham forest
• Emma Fillis in 1852, aged four, of Craysmarsh
• Charles Bolwell (aka Chilton) in 1853, aged six, of Semington
• John Wells in 1855, aged 16, of Seend
• Eliza Hemmings in 1860, aged six, of King Street
• Mark Dicks in 1862, aged 12, of Beanacre
• William Brown in 1866, aged eight, of Berryfield
• Noah Rawlings in 1871, aged 10, of Seend
• Henry John Sims in 1872, aged six, of Rusty Lane, Seend
• Robert Curnick in 1874, aged 10, of Beanacre
• Walter William Albert Allen in 1877, aged eight of Broughton Road
• Edward Webb in 1879, aged five, of Church Street
• Jesse Gray in 1889, aged 16, of Beanacre Road
• Herbert B Shaul in 1891, aged 15, (formerly) of 19 Bank Street
• Ada Louisa Clements in 1897, aged 19, of Bowerhill Lane
• Percy Llewellyn “Lewin” Shadwell in 1903, aged nine, of Church Walk
• Arthur James Gardner in 1912, aged two, of 14 Church Walk
• Herbert William George Loder in 1932, aged 10, of 24 Crescent Road
• Margaret Jean Cleverley in 1951, aged eight, of Lambourne Crescent
• Derek Anthony Robert Nash in 1960, of 272 Sandridge Lane
• Stephen Peter Fell in 1965, aged 14, of Queensway
And the 1912 tragic sinking of the Titanic which took the entire Goodwin family of eight, including Lilian Augusta, 16; Charles Edward, 14; William Frederick, 13; Jessie Allis Mary, 12; Harold Victor, 10; and Sidney Leslie, 19 months.
