The equipment rushed from Hamilton had made recovery efforts on the near-vertical second car relatively quick and easy. All the bodies, living or dead, were concentrated at what had been the front of the cars. It was a relatively simple matter to force entry (although not completely without incident, as the upright Mr. Marshall’s brush with the crowbar demonstrated). Salvage efforts on the leading car were largely limited to recovering bodies, complicated by the need to break through the sturdy floorboards to gain entry, and because there was no way of telling where in the length of the car victims might be found.
As the night wore on less delicate means were adopted. Men on makeshift rafts probed the nine-foot depths of the canal (now a patchwork of fractured ice and frigid murky water) with long poles, testing for the resiliency that would signal a body. All night the efforts continued. Attempts to raise the first passenger car were hampered by the still-perilously placed second car, so with the aid of axes and saws the latter was dismantled and dragged to the shore. Heavy tackle was mounted on each abutment and, although they were able to raise the leading car a bit, it too had to be demolished the following day.
Brute force and rudimentary equipment were all that the rescuers could marshal in the salvage effort. How much they accomplished, under circumstances that would have to be considered extreme even by today’s well-equipped and trained professional rescue crews, is amazing. In deep water, at temperatures cold enough to kill, with only locomotive headlights and moonlight to provide illumination and at risk of being crushed by the precariously balanced car and doubtful bridge, teams of impromptu volunteers managed to save the living, recover most of the bodies, and clear much of the debris.
Their accomplishments speak to their resolve and tenacity. Amidst the general vigour some examples of individual heroism stand out — perhaps none more so than that of one man, who caught the eye of a reporter for the Hamilton Spectator. “Who,” he asked, “is that noble fellow who early at the scene worked like a second Hercules unceasingly for hours hewing away at the timbers of the cars, in his shirt sleeves, and up to his waist in water?” The image caught the imagination of the public and for a day or two the identity of “That Noble Fellow” was on many peoples’ minds. The Spectator was able to put a name to the hero when a correspondent reported him to be Alexander Middlemis, a GWR carpenter. “He was lifted from the water,” the letter-writer observed, “after two hours exertion covered over with ice.” The correspondent added a second name, George Bourne, another railway carpenter, who took over from Middlemis and worked like another Hercules. Like a super abundance of shopping-mall Santas, the list of claimant “Hercules” began to grow. A day or two later, the Spectator commented: “Two other persons have put in claims to the distinction assigned Alexander Middlemis as the noble hearted fellow who was conspicuously the observed of all observers in rescuing the dead and dying from the ill-fated train at the Bridge, on the night of the 12th instant.” That torturous sentence, perhaps, revealed the waning interest of the reporter in the matter. He went on to identify the first of the newly identified as John A. McGillis, and then with commendable honesty continued: “The name of the other we have forgotten.” The proximity of the accident scene to GWR maintenance shops meant that, in fact, many employees played heroically key roles in the rescue. Although “That Noble Fellow” may have stood out, many of his colleagues demonstrated selfless exertions that night. The minute books of the Great Western are notably terse on the subject of the accident, but they do include an expression of thanks to those many employees.
Within a few hours treating the wounded and comforting the survivors gave way to collecting and transporting the dead, many of whom had initially been laid out on the ice and foreshore. By all accounts this was conducted in a most businesslike manner. Flatcars and barrows were used to bring most of them to the baggage and freight rooms at the station. There they were laid out in an orderly fashion in rows, each with a chalked number marked on the floor at their feet. Coroners Bull and Rosebrugh supervised the process and, at first, strictly limited access to the buildings. Many mourners, in fact, had to wait until the Friday before even being permitted to view the dead. There were reasons for the tight security. Not only were many of the victims carrying considerable wealth but there was also a crush of anxious relatives and friends, a good many of whom had been waiting at the station since before the accident. The coroners held their ground and Alfred Booker’s Artillery Brigade enforced order. They did not entirely avoid unpleasantness. At least one attempt to steal from the corpses was curtailed by the ruffian being felled by a stunning blow delivered by a GWR mechanic. The perpetrator was taken into custody. Someone managed to purloin a travelling bag belonging to Samuel Zimmerman — specially crafted to contain a set of monogrammed silver toilet items. Zimmerman had purchased it in Paris at a cost of around five hundred dollars.
An account in the Toronto Globe describes the general appearance of the victims as ghastly. “The general expression on the countenance was that of fear and alarm; the eyeballs stretched to the utmost, the mouth open, and the hands generally fixed in an attitude of defense.” At the instruction of the Managing Director of the Great Western C.J. Brydges, a local photographer, R. Milne, was hired to take photographic images of the deceased to assist in later identification. He employed a “force of artisans” equipped with “several sets of apparatus.” This was a novel concept and is believed to have been the first such use of photography.
This contemporary sketch captured the grim setting in the Great Western’s baggage rooms. In the shadowy light, bodies were arrayed in orderly rows, guarded by the militia and surrounded by an anxious crowd of relatives.
Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, April 4, 1857.
The scene was grim. Security was tight. When the grieving were allowed in there were numerous anguished episodes. It was still an era when ladies were expected to swoon. The gloom, the watchful militia glowering in the shadows, the cold, and the wretched condition of the dead must have created a horrible pastiche.
Virtually every member of the community was affected — whether personally touched by grief, directly involved in the frantic rescue efforts, or simply caught-up in the electric atmosphere that charged the usually tranquil night with unusual activity. Eleanor Bull, a young pastor’s wife about to give birth to her first child, was unable to sleep due to the constant tramp of horses and wagons on the Caledonia Plank Road that passed their cottage. Not until the morning was she told of the significance of the strange nighttime movements.
All that night the post office and telegraph offices remained open, handling the spate of outgoing dispatches and the flurry of incoming messages seeking confirmation and reassurance. The Spectator began publishing special edition after special edition in order to keep up with the demand. Newsboys flooded the city with the extras. Over the next day 6,000 copies were consigned to New York destined for Britain via the steamship Persia. The usual two bags could hold only one half of the sudden rush of mail destined for Britain. So dramatically had communications changed over the preceding decade that shortly after the Legislative Assembly in Toronto (Canada’s pre-Confederation Parliament rotated between Toronto and Quebec City) reassembled at 7:30 p.m. that very evening, rumours of the catastrophe began to circulate. Among those reported dead were Zimmerman and two members of Parliament.
Shortly, a newspaper extra was brought into the house with sufficient confirmation that, at the urging of the opposition, the house was adjourned. In assenting, on behalf of the government, John A. Macdonald, then the attorney general, observed that he had reason to fear that gentlemen well-known to the house and of great worth and merit had met with their death by that lamentable accident; and he quite concurred that the house was not in a position to go