The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-14 00:00:00

SUICIDE AND DREADFUL LOSS OF LIFE

On Saturday morning, between the hours of one and two
o'clock, a most awful catastrophe occurred on the river
Thames, in the vicinity of Southwark-bridge. The Orion
steam-vessel, which plies between Ipswich and London,
having been moored in the middle of the river, one of the
sailors, named Johh Clementson, who had been at the Surrey
Theatre, hailed the vessel, in the expectation that some of his
shipmates would bring the small boat to him and takehim on
board. Receiving no answer, after calling for some time as
loud as he was able, he went into the George Inn, which is
close to Southwark-bridge, on the bank or Surrey side of
the river; where after having some gin, he prevailed on a
party of sailors, seven in number, belonging to the Pearl,
Gravesend steamer, and who had been drinking together,
to undertake to row him to his vessel, beside which their
own vessel was moored. The boat being small, it was
deemed unsafe for more than four persons to go in her at
once ; and it was agreed that when Clementson was put on
board his vessel, one of the men belonging to the Pearl should
return to the water-side and take the remaining four sailors
to her. The boat had not gone above 10 or 12 yards from
Bankside, when Joseph Thornton, of Greenwich, one of the
men belonging to the Gravesend steamer, leaped overboard
with the view of drowning himself. The other three men
in the boat rushed at once to the part of the boat whence he
had thrown himself in the water, and their weight, with the
suddenness of the movement, causing the boat to lurch,
they were all precipitated into the water, and the whole four
perished. As well as those on the bank of the river could
guess from the darkness of the night and the confusion arising
on the aliening catastrophe, the three men who rushed to the
side of the boat, with a view of rescuing Thornton from a
suicide's grave, went down together, all clinging to one an-
other with a firm tenacity of grasp. Two or three of the
boats were put in immediate requisition, and one of the
bodies, that of John Clementson, was found before it could
have been 20 minutes in the water, but, notwithstanding the
fact, every effort to restore animation was unsuccessful. Two
of the other bodies, those of John Oxley and Robert Clark-
son, both of whom belonged to Gravesend, have since been
recovered, and the three bodies are now lying in the George
public-house, to await the coroner's inquest. The body of
Thornton, the suicide, has not yet been found. He had
been very depressed in spirits the whole of the day before the
catastrophe occurred, and stated to some of the crew of the
Pearl Ins intention to destroy himself, but they did not pay
much attention to what he said on the subject. Among other
things, he requested them to tell a female to whom he was
supposed to be attached, when they returned to Gravesend in
morning,the that she would never see Joseph any more. The
impression of the captain of the Pearl was that the cause of
his resolution on self-destruction was, that he had been ac-
cused the previous day of having stolen £l5, which had been
missing, and a threat had been made that means would be
taken to ascertain whether or not he was the guilty party. It
is a singular fact that the boat did not capsize. She was af-
terwards found a considerable distance down the river, in her
usual position. with the jacket of one of the men lying where
it had been put when he began to row. One of them was a
widower with three children ; none of the others had ever
been married, but the mother and brother of Clementson are
said to have been dependent upon him. The frightful occur-
rence has excited a very great sensation in the neighbourhood.