Bride Drowns on Day Before Wedding in Fen Ditton Ferry Tragedy

You'll find yourself being intrigued by many stories you stumble across - nothing to do with your family, but they intrigue you.  The online newspapers are the most common way to discover these old events.  One of my areas of research is Chesterton, Cambridge and, as it's alongside the river, drownings and bodies found in the river are a regular occurrence.

Grave of Violet Maude Handscomb.
Victim of ferry tragedy, 1905.

One such event occurred on Saturday 10 June 1905.  My great-grandparents were living in Chesterton in 1905, my grandmother had just been born in May 1905, so they will have known about this tragedy - they might even have been at the riverside when it occurred, although a mile or two downstream!  Below is a transcription, from PapersPast, although there are several reports of the tragedy available on FindMyPast:

DROWNED ON HER WEDDING EVE.

There was a melancholy ending to the May boat races at Cambridge. A ferry overturned and three lives were lost.
The accident happened at Ditton Plough, where the ferry consists of a flat-bottomed pontoon, which is drawn across the river by a chain. The last racing boat had passed, there was a rush to cross to the Chesterton side, and the ferry was filled. When nearing midstream the ferry turned over and sank, about twenty persons being thrown into deep water. Several young men pluckily dived in and rescued all they could see.
One young woman, who belongs to Bishop's Stortford*, and who was witnessing the races with her fiance was brought ashore exhausted and insensible. She was revived by means of artificial respiration, and was subsequently removed from the Plough Inn to a house in Fenn Ditton, but died at midnight.
In two other cases efforts to restore consciousness proved unsuccessful, the victims being Mrs. Thompson, of Malta Road, Cambridge,  who was only recently married, and Miss Murkin, of Selwyn Terrace, Newnham, who was to have been married the following day to Mr. Ebenezer George Reece, of Swansea, who was on the bank at the time of the accident.
There was a similar accident with this ferry about twenty years ago, but only one life was lost on that occasion.

You then find yourself finding out more about these people, abandoning your own family research to chase the interesting story you found!  It's good to have a break though.  I used the Camdex online BMD system and FreeBMD to try to find more details:

• FreeBMD has the death of a Minnie Murkin, aged 26, registered in the second quarter of 1905 at Chesterton. The Camdex reference for Minnie's death registration in 1905 was 331/FUL/29/351. 
• FreeBMD has the death of a Annie Maria Thompson, aged 20, registered in the second quarter of 1905 at Chesterton. The Camdex reference for Annie's death registration in 1905 was 331/FUL/29/352.  The GRO Index gives her age as 20. 

You'll notice the two deaths were registered one after the other as the entry numbers were 351 and 352. 

I then tried to find the marriage of Annie Maria Thompson.  My first port of call to look up Cambridgeshire marriages is the online Camdex system as this pairs up the married couple, so can be easier to use than FreeBMD.  This gave me one potential candidate:

• Annie M Sheehan who married John W Thompson in 1904. Camdex ref number 331/CE042/01/22, which was at Cambridge St Philip.  I've built up a list of Camdex codes for the parishes, over time, so that information is from my own research.  

Next I checked FreeBMD and that gave me the same result:

• John William Thompson married Annie Maria Sheehan in the 3rd quarter of 1904.

So between Camdex and FreeBMD it looks like this is the lady who drowned on the ferry in May 1905.

*The third victim of this ferry accident, whose name wasn't listed in the newspapers was Violet Maude Handscomb, aged 22.  Looking for records of Violet, I found the following on FreeBMD and Camdex:

• FreeBMD had the death registered as Violet M Handscomb, aged 22, registered in Chesterton district.  Camdex has the same information recorded, with a reference number of 331/FUL/29/350 - again, you'll see that the reference number of 350 shows that all three victims of the Plough Ferry disaster were registered at the same time.

Violet Handscomb was buried at Bishops Stortford New Cemetery, Hertfordshire, England.
Violet Maud Handscombe, 1883-1905.

Violet was the only daughter of Albert Handscombe, a builder of Church Street, Chelmsford. Violet was a dressmaker and was due to be married in November and was on a day trip to visit her fiance.  Albert Handscombe had already previously lost his only son in an accident.

John Thompson had been on board the ferry and had tried to rescue his wife, but failed to do so.

Minnie Murkin was a nurse - she was identified by her sister-in-law, Annie Murkin.

I find it fascinating researching the stories that got into the newspapers as they are events I know my ancestors will have been aware of and had conversations about with family, friends and neighbours!

The location of this tragedy is The Plough, at Fen Ditton - nowadays still a great riverside pub.  The ferry operated until 1961, when it finally sank.

Image (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Geograph