Discovery of Missing Lad’s Body Under South Aberdeen Wharf
A boarding house keeper searching for a lost coat discovers the remains of a boy drowned in the harbor months prior.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mrs. Sophia Johnson, who keeps a boarding house on the south side, went down under the high wharf over there on Tuesday morning to look for a coat that one of her boys had lost. During her search, she saw an object on the tide mud, which, upon investigation, turned out to be a body in a very advanced stage of decomposition. She informed the Harrison brothers, who run the steam ferry Progress between Aberdeen and South Aberdeen, who took charge of the body and brought it over on this side, where it was recognized by the clothing to be the body of the lad Earl Thompson, who on the 7th of last March was capsized from a boat near Wilson Bros.' mill, while rowing from Sears shingle mill with a number of others, and drowned. The lad's parents, who live at Westport, have been communicated with, and have taken charge of the body.
“During her search, she saw an object on the tide mud, which, upon investigation, turned out to be a body in a very advanced stage of decomposition.”
Accidental drownings and the dark, tidal hazards of the working waterfront were a constant reality in the 1890s, when the industry of the harbor dictated the rhythm of death and life. Today, as Aberdeen works to reconnect the city to its waterfront, those hidden spaces under the pilings remain a haunting physical reminder of the hazards faced by the generations who built the town on the tide-flats.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.