Friday 9 August 2013

A Girl Drowned at Hutton Rudby: July 1879

from the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough

Thursday 24 July 1879
A Girl Drowned at Hutton Rudby 
On Tuesday morning Ida Smith, 16, was drowned in the River Leven, at Hutton Rudby.  
The deceased worked at Mr Wilson's sailcloth manufactory, and was standing during breakfast time with her sister and two other young women on a low wall, watching some children catching sticks that came down the swollen river, when she fell into the stream, and owing to the strong current was carried rapidly down the river, and her sister jumped in to try to save her, and was with difficulty rescued.  A vigorous search was at once instituted for the body, which, however, was not recovered until Wednesday morning, when it was found by a man named Sedgwick fully half-a-mile down the stream

Ida was the daughter of Christopher Smith and Jane Ann Meynell (Jane was the daughter of William Meynell and his wife Eleanor/Helen/Ellen Moss).

It seems likely that it was Ida’s elder sister Lilias who tried to rescue her.

1871 Census: North Side, Hutton Rudby, next door to the King's Head Inn
Christopher Smith (39) Powerloom canvas weaver b Hutton
Jane Ann Smith, his wife (34) b Hutton
Lilias Smith (10) b West Hartlepool
Ida Smith (8) b North Shields
Albert Anthony Smith (5) b Boro', London
William Meynell Smith (3) b Rudby
Sarah Ann Smith (1) b Hutton


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