Family lore has told of a tragedy in my father’s mother’s family whereby a number of children died in a fire. Today as I was seeking to fill in some of the blanks in the Wood family I found the records of this terrible event.
William Wood and Margaret McGeoch are my nan’s great grandparents. They were born about 1827 and lived in Greenock, Scotland. By 1863 they had six children.
The following report was in the Caledonian Mercury and the London Daily News on the 6th January 1863. There was a shorter report in the Glasgow Herald on 5th January 1863.
THE APPALLING OCCURRENCE AT GREENOCK
FOUR CHILDREN OF A FAMILY SUFFOCATED
The Glasgow Mail gives the following account of this painful accident alluded to in our columns yesterday:-
William Wood, belonging to Paisley, but for the last eleven years residing in Greenock, a caulker in the employ of Messrs Robert Steele and Co., shipbuilders, resided with his wife and five children at 5 Shaw Street, a few doors west from the Rue-End, south side. While he follows his occupation, Mrs Wood carries on a small green-grocery business. The premises consist of the shop to the front, a kitchen behind, and an intermediate apartment, where Mr and Mrs Wood slept, the children sleeping in a tent-bed in the kitchen. On Friday night, between eight and nine o’clock, Mr and Mrs Wood went out to a party, to the house of Mr Robert Simpson, spirit merchant, Suttie’s Land, Cathcart Street, within a few hundred yards of their shop, taking with them George aged 14 years, their eldest child. They left their four younger children at home in charge of the house, the shop being shut up. These children were – James aged 12; William 9; Lillias 5 and Grace 3 years; Sarah McGeoch aged 12, a cousin, who had come from Paisley on the previous day to visit them, was also in the house making five children in all. They were amusing themselves in the absence of their parents, and that to an extent that was noisy, inducing a neighbour to call them to be quiet. It appeared, however, to have been the ordinary amusements in which children will indulge when left alone under similar circumstances. About one o’clock in the morning George was dispatched from Mr Simpson’s to see that all was right with the children at home, and on going he found that Grace, the youngest, had been put to bed, the girl McGeoch was stripping Lillias to put her to bed also, and they were all on the eve of retiring to rest, and the fire in the grate was quite out; and this was the condition of the house when he left to return to Mr Simpson’s, after remaining only a short time. Being the holiday season, the party sat long, and on Mr Wood returning to his house about 5 o’clock in the morning he knocked, but could not gain admission. He went to the back window, which is stanchioned. On getting the sash up a little he felt the wood work inside quite warm, and the kitchen densely filled with smoke. Aided by some neighbours he soon obtained admission by forcing in the front door. Nothing was wrong in the shop, or in the intermediate apartment, where lay the girl McGeoch in bed, unharmed. He found the door leading from that apartment into the kitchen shut, and on forcing it in he found the kitchen filled with smoke. The gas had been screwed out, but fire had been smouldering on the floor, a little to the right side, and in front of the fire place; and this fire had communicated to and charred all the front of a chest of drawers, on top of which stood a bookcase filled with books. The floor was burned through, forming cavity of about thirty inches in diameter; and this seems to have been the seat of the fire. The introduction of fresh air into the apartment caused the hitherto smouldering fire to blaze up, but a neighbour pulled down the bookcase and drawers and a few buckets of water arrested any danger. Opposite to the fireplace stood the bed, in which lay the four children of Mr Wood, and on rushing to ascertain their condition, he found them rigid and dead, having every appearance of having died convulsively from the smoke. The four bodies were instantly removed to the house of Mr Simpson. Drs McFee and Lochhead were soon on the spot, but though a slight pulsation was discernable in the boy James, he was past recovery. The feelings of the bereaved parents, who are industrious, well-doing people, may be better imagined than described. The origin of the fire may have been a match thrown on the floor among some clothing, but this is merely conjectural. The circumstances cast a deep gloom over the whole town. This is not the time to moralise on the subject, but we may say that he awful occurrence affords a solemn lesson to parents. The Procurator-fiscal was immediately put in possession of the facts, and will make the usual examination which devolves on him.
The newspaper states that they had five children but my research has them with six children – four of whom died as reported from suffocation. The survivors were George, 14 at the time, and Margaret who was 8. George was attending the party with his parents but the whereabouts of Margaret are unknown – perhaps she was visiting and elsewhere at the time. She was born in 1855 and is on the 1861 census with the rest of the family. George is my nan’s grandfather.
William and Margaret had another three children after the fire; William, Lillias Grace and Robert Gosby. Tragically their daughter Lillias Grace named after Lillias and Grace who they lost in the fire also died as an infant. William and Robert lived to adulthood.
Their surviving children did not stay in Scotland. By the 1870s George and Margaret were living in Birkenhead. George had previously lived in the Isle of Man where he met his wife Ann Jane Corlett. They were married in Liverpool and are nan’s grandparents. Margaret then moved to Guyana and Brazil before her death in Birkenhead. Her descendants the ‘Millions’ still live in Brazil.
William who was born in September 1863 the same year as the tragedy emigrated to Chicago in the early 1890s where he married Mary F Callahan. He was a naval architect.
Robert Gosby who was born in 1870 was an Engineer Designer and he worked first in Greenock, in Belfast and briefly in London before moving to Rugby.