They were on a holiday organised by the Co-operative Holidays Association. They were staying at The Towers in Portinscale. All five worked at the Lomeshaye Mill in Nelson and, on Sundays, they taught the children at the Wesleyan Church in Carr Road.
They would have travelled by train and arrived in Portinscale on Saturday, August 6, at the beginning of the Wakes week holiday. On the Sunday they would have climbed a small fell with other members of their party and later they would have attended an open-air service.
On other days, they would have made an excursion to Skiddaw and they might well have attended a lecture by Hardwick Drummond Rawnsley in the grounds of Crosthwaite Church. “The holiday was to conclude with one final excursion to be remembered for a lifetime, a boating trip across the queen of the lakes and a walk to see what marvels the valley of Borrowdale had to offer.”
The boat, built for five passengers but carrying eight, left Nichol End to cross Derwentwater to Isthmus Bay.
The Derwentwater Disaster At the inquest, Mr John James, one of the three men who survived, described what happened: “We kept the boat headed straight on to the wind. Miss Clegg was steering under the directions of Mr Lane and myself. A few minutes after, while everything seemed to be going well, I heard a shout from one of the ladies in the boat.
"They cried, ‘Hey, stop!’ I looked and saw a luncheon satchel floating away from the rear of the boat, and one of the ladies held out an arm towards it. I believed that the satchel had dropped out, there was no water in the stern of the boat to wash it out and only a little coming over the bow. I stopped rowing and was just about to back-water to get it when someone cried, ‘The boat is filling.’ The water was very bad just at that time.”
The three men survived and were picked up by another boat. The five women, all non-swimmers, weighed down by their heavy clothes made heavier by the water, stood little chance and they drowned.
Their bodies were recovered later in the day by men in boats using grappling hooks to search the lake bed. Their hats and umbrellas floating on the surface would have indicated the best places to search.
The following day the five coffins were placed in a London and North Western van and transported back to Nelson. All five were buried at the same funeral. The town itself was in mourning. A large monument to the five Sunday school teachers was erected in the town cemetery. There was no monument or even a plaque erected in Keswick to record the event.
Ray Greenhow, a former inspector with Cumbria Constabulary, has been researching this tragic story since he first stumbled across it when searching through police archives. He was amazed that he had not heard of it before and, when he made enquiries in Keswick, he found that it was totally unknown there.
The inquest reports for those years are missing but Ray was able to piece together the story from reports in the Cumberland and Lancashire newspapers. Their record makes for a graphic account of the worst drowning tragedy in the county’s history.
Review by STEVE MATTHEWS
Bookends, Carlisle and Keswick
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