One doesn’t expect happy news from a cemetery, so none of what follows should come as a particular surprise.
These researches are not intended to be intrusively morbid. They have been made in reaction to gravestone inscriptions in Rosebank Cemetery which were surely intended by relatives to trigger memory or spark interest among future generations.
In that sense, these short and melancholy stories constitute polite responses to long-standing invitations.
Only in one example does investigation unearth what the bereaved were possibly trying to conceal. That is in the case of Thomas Milikin, whose death was described in America the next day with an unsettling combination of great narrative pacing and brutal concision. The Morning Oregonian reported:
Thomas C. I. Millikin, aged 28, a bookkeeper, went to the shore of Lake Washington today, undressed carefully, swam out 100 yards into the lake and then deliberately drowned himself. His nearest relative is Miss Elizabeth Millikln, of Hamilton, Mont.
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Captain Abercromby Bogue was something of a celebrity in seafaring circles at the time of his demise. The headstone’s account closely matches that which appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News on 11 March 1878.
CAPTAIN OF A LEITH STEAMER
KILLED.
The steamer Prague, belonging to Messrs Currie & Co., arrived in Leith on Saturday from Hamburg in charge of the mate and with the master, Abercromby Bogue, dead on board. The vessel encountered terrific weather during the voyage. The mate reports that about five o’clock on the morning of Friday, when the vessel was off the Dogger Bank, a tremendously heavy sea struck the vessel amidships on the starboard side, which flung the captain, who was standing on the bridge, over the bridge rail, and dashed him forcibly against the galley skylight, at the same time causing the vessel to shake from stem to stern. The captain was heard to utter feebly, “Oh, my ribs!” and shortly after expired. The same sea completely smashed one of the ship’s boats, washed away the coal stall and sky-light windows, and inflicted other considerable damage about the decks. Captain Bogue had been in the employment of Messrs Currie & Co. as shipmaster for the long period of fifteen years.
The Scotsman carried the same story, adding that ‘It is believed that death was caused by some of the ribs being pressed against the lungs. Captain Bogue was widely known and universally respected by the shipping community of Leith’.
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There was no lucky return for James Crombie, another mariner. The Evening News reported on 12 November 1873:
TWO LEITH SEAMEN WASHED
OVERBOARD.
The Marie Stuart, from Dunkirk to Leith arrived at the latter port this morning. The captain reports having experienced terrible weather on the voyage, and that the second mate and one of the crew were washed overboard. The latter was washed back again and saved, although he sustained severe injuries. The mate was drowned. His name was James Crombie. He resided in Newhaven, and leaves a wife and large family to mourn his loss.
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Life could be harsh and dangerous at sea, but it was by no means risk-free for those working to make a living on dry land. The Evening News reported on 11 March 1878:
TWO YOUNG LADS KILLED IN LEITH SHIPBUILDING YARD
—Two young lads, Henry Thomson, son of a fisherman residing at 1 Ann Street, and Adam Rutherford, son of a marine fireman residing at 24 Annfield, both of Newhaven, were killed yesterday afternoon in the yard of Ramage & Ferguson, shipbuilders in Leith, by the falling of a bridle beam from a crane on which it was suspended. The two youths were employed as “catch-boys,” who work with the black squad, and were underneath the beam, which weighed about 16 cwts., when it came down. They were conveyed as soon as possible to Leith Hospital, where life was pronounced to be extinct. The lad Thomson was 16½ years old, and his father is at present at sea, while the other deceased was not yet 15 years of age.
We shall return with further stories from Rosebank Cemetery in the weeks to come.