Accident
Accidents were the leading cause of death in the CSI:D sample, and drowning was the leading cause of death among mortal accidents. There are myriad reasons why. Broad swaths of the American public did not know how to swim. Primary modes of transportation, especially early in the century, involved river routes. Mill ponds were prevalent. Children played outside—generally a good thing but occasionally a sad one. Perhaps the saddest of these incidents involved a mass May Day drowning at Boykin Mill Pond in 1860. Twenty-eight teenagers set off on a raft that hit a snag and more than twenty-five drowned, including all five children from one family. Sadder still may be the case of Noah Wesley Dawkins. In mid-June 1888, Dawkins and his friends, all African Americans, set off for a local watering hole where they ran into three white boys, one of whom offered Dawkins fifty cents if he would walk into a particular area in the creek, assuring him it wasn’t deep. It was deep, and Dawkins drowned. It is tempting to classify this as a homicide, but it is clear from testimony that the white children thought they were playing a cruel trick, not a deadly one.
Alcohol was such a critical indirect cause in so many of the accidental drownings, shootings, fires, and falls in CSI:D that it really ought to be regarded the deadliest force in nineteenth century South Carolina. In addition to these indirect roles, alcohol was the direct cause of accidental death in more than sixty cases. It was probably also a direct cause in many of the ‘exposure’ cases—bodies that were discovered outside and were thought to have died from exposure to the elements.
Nineteenth century law enforcement had no recourse to blood-alcohol tests. Even today, determining precise BACs postmortem, and working back from those to levels of inebriation at time of death, is fraught with difficulty. This meant that nineteenth-century coroners had to rely exclusively on witness testimony and the known habits of the deceased to determine alcohol’s role in producing death. Standing around a dead man, jurors found themselves passing judgment on just how drunk he had been the night before. According to witnesses, John Goodlett “seemed to be drunk.” John Agner was “sorry he was drunk.” Abe Waganan was “very funny & lively”—very drunk as [was] his custom.” Is ‘very drunk’ drop-dead drunk? It is hard to know. On the night of January 15, 1816, Angus McQueen drank more than half a gallon of spirits. “The dec’d was very much intoxicated,” noted one witness, “and fell down four times during which time he vomited upon the carpet.” Because McQueen kept getting up and falling down, the jurors determined that the falls (and the winter cold) contributed to his demise, though it is equally possible that McQueen died of alcohol poisoning. Juries were more likely to fix upon ‘intemperance’ as a clear cause of death if the deceased was a notorious addict. In December 1842, H. P. Church was discovered by his land-lady sprawled half on and half off of his bed. A “habitual drunkard” who had been continuously drinking for two weeks, she did not even bother to try and shake him awake. The inquest did not hesitate in finding that Church had died of intoxication.
The third leading cause of accidental deaths were ‘vehicular’ accidents, a catch-all category that includes drunken falls from a train and sober buckings from a horse. Further complicating this picture is the fact that many of the drownings probably belong in this category. There is little difference between falling unwitnessed off of a train and off of a boat, except that in one case you land on tracks and are quickly found where in the other you wash downstream, far from the site of the accident.
Bartholomew Darby was thrown from the saddle and hit his head on a stump, his wagon then “running over his head ... & breaking his neck & deeply cutting him under the right ear.” Steve Yeldell fell out of his cart and broke his neck.
All such accidents pale in comparison to the staggering mortality brought to South Carolina by train. Richard Springs was “run over by a train.” Fannie Ford was “run over by a train.”A slave named Sam was “Run over by [a] train.” Almost as soon as trains arrived in these counties, there were sots to fall off of them, laborers to be crushed by them, and depressives to jump in front of them. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a technological innovation responsible for a sharper uptick in the per capita death rate. It is also clear that coroners and inquest juries were unprepared for the level of bodily violence meted out by train. The body of a slave named Berry was “very much mashed and limbs and bones severed.” William Abbott’s body was “mangled, bruised, cut and crushed.” Even so coroners and their juries were often at pains to absolve the railroad itself of any wrong-doing. Hosea Jackson “came to his death by his own carelessness and from no carelessness whatever on the part of the engineer.” The crushing of William Roberts was likewise “not caused by any dereliction of duty on the part of the rail-road employees.” With train accidents we see for the first time the question of corporate responsibility, and potential corporate liability, creeping into the inquest process.
The larger point, however, is a physical one. Moving the body at a faster speed than the body was designed to go is an enormous convenience that has to be paid for. Today vehicular accidents (car, motorcycle, and all-terrain-vehicle) are the fourth-leading cause of death among Americans after heart disease, cancer, and stroke. The nineteenth century was not particularly different, except that families moved by horse, wagon, and train—and died less often of cancer.
The fourth leading cause of accidental death in the CSI:D sample involved the discharge of firearms. Some were simple cases of men who were cleaning or handling weapons that suddenly went off. The vast majority of cases, however, involve an unfortunate bystander. In 1849, Tilman Attaway was mistaken for a turkey by his hunting buddy. In 1808, James Spradley was leaning in to watch two dogs fight over a dead deer. Fourteen-year old George Nettles sought to break up the dogs by bashing one of them with the butt of his gun. Instead the gun discharged into Spradley’s face. As this case attests, guns and children made as disastrous a pairing then as they do now. In 1820 ten-year old Mancel King accidentally shot and killed his brother. In 1899 ten-year old John McManus shot and killed his friend. “I was fooling with the pistol and it went off,” he told the inquest.
Undoubtedly some of these gun-related ‘accidents’ were not accidents at all. A dead man alone in a room might have been cleaning his gun, or he might have harbored hidden miseries. Similarly some of the accidental misfires on bystanders were probably intentional homicides. Unless new evidence emerges at this late date, however, such cases will have to remain categorized as accidents.
The fifth leading cause of death by accident in the CSI:D sample was death by suffocation—another category that speaks more to what a coroner was called to investigate than to what people actually died from. A majority of the ‘smothering’ deaths were probably SIDS victims. In white households such cases would not have been investigated—infant mortality was relatively high in the period and a white family’s ‘dear pledges’ were often ‘recalled to God.’ But in a society where every enslaved child was as potentially valuable as a Lexus, infant death in the quarter was more rigorously investigated. Coupled with deep prejudices against enslaved mothers, inquests typically found that an unnamed “negro Child” was “negligently Smothered” by its mother, or that the enslaved child Lora was “accidentally smothered” in the family bed, or that the enslaved children Henry and Alcy were crushed in the night, having being “overlaid” by their parents. It is possible that such ‘negligence’ did occur among overworked and overtired slaves, and such findings were far preferable to those cases where enslaved parents were charged with infanticide.
The sixth leading cause of death by accident in the CSI:D sample was death by fire. Most homes in the period were made of wood. Most had fireplaces. None had a fire extinguisher. Fire was light and life, but it was also occasionally death. In 1866 a freedman named Sloan was burnt to death in a gin house. In 1890 a child named Julia Hightower wandered too close to the family fireplace. Her younger sister tried to dowse her with water to no avail.
These six types of accidental death—drowning, alcohol abuse, transportation mishaps, gun miscues, suffocations, and fires—account for 75% of the accidental deaths in the CSI:D sample. Other relatively common accidents involved falling trees and limbs, industrial accidents, and poisonings and overdoses. Rounding out the sample were accidents that were more unique. Home alone, Medora Williams had an epileptic seizure and fell into her own fireplace. Traveling with the Bailey & Company circus, George West was gored by his own elephant. (Some might not consider this an ‘accident’ since the elephant had ‘cause’; and acted with ‘intent.’)
NEXT: Natural Causes
Accident Inquests
Name | Deceased Description | Date | Inquest Location | Death Method | Inquest Finding |
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Daniel Gallis | January 31, 1819 | at house of Daniel Gillis, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that . . . by cutting down a oak he was accidentally struck by a limb of the said tree and instantly killed |
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W. H. Davis | November 1, 1940 | at Chesterfield, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that W. H. Davis received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by gun shot in the hands of self-inflicted accidentally |
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Willie Williams | Fairfield County, SC |
NO OFFICIAL CAUSE OF DEATH STATEMENT |
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Chaney Pilgrim | August 12, 1877 | at the plantation of James Anderson, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid Chaney Pilgrim came to her death while in the bed with her mother Julia Pilrim. . .from some cause or causes unknown to the jury |
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Henry Gibson | November 4, 1834 | at Abner Benson dweling, Union County, SC |
do say upon their oaths thay thot the said Henry Gibson . . .died by the visitation of god by getting drownd in the Spring of Abner Bensons |
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Lucy Ellen Jane Rivers | November 9, 1882 | at Chesterfield C. H., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say That the Said Lucy Ellen Jane Rivers came to her death by accidental burning Nov 9th 1882 |
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Gertrude | infant child | December 1, 1891 | at Edgfield Court house, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say. . .that the infant received burns which caused death |
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John Shumport[?] | November 7, 1851 | at John Shumports[?], Edgefield County, SC |
Upon their oaths do say, that John Shumport . . .did come to his death by misfortune or accident |
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Infant of Sarah McQueen | Infant of Sarah McQueen | November 16, 1887 | at Chesterfield C. H., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: that the said infants came to their deaths by being accidentally burned on the 15th day of November A.D. 1887 |
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Hollan | April 29, 1856 | at Conwayboro, Horry County, SC |
Upon their Oaths do say, tha the said Girl Hollan came to her Death by accidental Drowning |
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Noah Wesley Dawkins | June 18, 1888 | at home of John Dawkins, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death by accidental drowning while in swimming |
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female Infant Slave | female Infant Slave | December 25, 1846 | at the plantation of J. C. Ison, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .the child was . . .smothered in bed by its mother throuch[?] or by accident without having any intention to do so |
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Walter Manningall | November 21, 1906 | at Clearview in Chesterfield County, Chesterfield County, SC |
Upon their oath do say Walter Manningall came to his death by accidental burning |
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Lousay | November 25, 1860 | at Doct John E. Padgett, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said Loosey came to here death by accidnetal Burning |
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William Johnson | January 20, 1871 | at William Johnson's residence in Camden, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said William Johnson came to his death ... from a sudden attack of illness occasioned by his having eaten oysters which were probably tainted |
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James Jenkins | May 30, 1875 | at Robert Spence's [?] Mill, Anderson County, SC |
It appears that deceased came to his death by mischance or misfortune or accidental drowning in the mill pond at Robert Spences |
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Mary McDaniel | January 13, 1891 | at Burnside, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid Mary McDaniel came to her death by accidental drowning |
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Wilson Campbell | December 26, 1880 | at Henry Sorrels, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say it appears that the deceased came to his death by mischance by freezing to death the finding shall conclude That that Wilson Campbell, in manner and form aforesaid came to his death by misfortune or accident |
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Muse | slave | September 18, 1831 | at the resident of Roger Parish, Kershaw County, SC |
do upon their oaths sayeth that the sd. Slave above mentioned died by the visitation of God a natural death on the 18 Instant. . .by lying in the open air the weather being very cool and he being very old and very thin clothed |
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Henry Henderson | March 19, 1850 | at Henry Hendersons, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oathes Do Say that the Said Henry Henderson came to his Death by accidentally fawling in to a Branch near his house while under mental Derangement on the 17th day of March about ten oclock at Knight [sic] and that Henry Henderson in manner and form aforesaid came to his death by Misfortune or accidental Drowning. |
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Flemming Taylor | at Jack Taylors house, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that deceased came to his death near his home on P W Clarks place in Fairfield County SC the 15 day of Nov 1896 from a Pistols Shot Wound at hands of Abram Kennedy |
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William Harlin | February 19, 1856 | at a new place sitting by Mr James Swearingem(Jr) on the Akien Road, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say the deceased William Harlin, came to his death by the cavin in and filling up with dirt the well in which he was engaged digging on the Siken Road |
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John | November 24, 1829 | at the house of Robert G Bagley, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that according to such and all evidence it is their belief that on the night of the 23rd instant the before mentioned Alexander Caldwell and his little son (the deceased) was in a Small House and A Sleep an they believe that a pallet whereon the deceased lay or the house caught fire, by accident, and consumed the house and the child... |
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Infant of Adeline Teague | Infant of Adeline Teague | August 18, 1894 | at Laurens County Court House, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that it Died in Laurens Co. on the 17th day of Aug. AD. 1894 from accidental suffocation. |
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Lewis Bradley | Laurens County, SC |
we the jury find in our opinion that Lewis Bradlet Died in Laurens County on the 29th day of Decr. 1894 from great Exposure in the [extreme?] cold, and that no one is to blame as far as we know, for his death. |
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Willie Featherston | December 29, 1875 | at Ridgeway, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Willie Featherston came to his death, on Wednesday after noon, from a Knife wound, inflicted by himself, in the lower part of the Sternum, as we believe by accident |
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Zilpha Fisher | July 19, 1882 | at Greenville CH, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . . the said Zilpha Fisher came to her death from sun stroke |
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Saul | slave | January 9, 1833 | at Cowpen Furnace, Spartanburg County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said Saul did unfortunately and accidentally fall from the dam or bridge |
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Thomas Dalton | February 8, 1882 | at Williamston, Anderson County, SC |
do say that in their opinion the said Thos Dalton by abcess on the[?] part of the head which was accidentally[?] effected and caused his death. |
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Oscar Latter | at the Nancy Rabb place, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that the deceased came to his death sometime between mid night and day the 27th of Feb 1889 on the Plantation of W.C. Rabbs from accidental Suffocation |
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Edmund Cleveland | December 4, 1871 | at Spartanburg Court House, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that sd. deceased came to his death by the falling of the wall of Duncan's new building in the town of Spartanburg |
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William Bradley | December 29, 1841 | at Elizabeth Eubank's, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . . drink & ardent spirits to an excess so as to intoxicate him so much as to render him incapible of helping himself to where he could have the benefit of fire, and only reached the edge of the field where in his residence was ... and there fell down and perished with Coald. |
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Dora Woods | May 3, 1885 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say: "By accident or mishap by a fall from the banister or shelf of the piazza while playing there." |
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Sallie Holmes | December 20, 1893 | at D. P. Bodies[?], Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . .the said Sallie Holmes aforesaid came to her death from accidental burning |
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J. J. Watts | April 17, 1848 | at the house of J.J. Watts, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death from the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of Zack Gupple |
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Wilson M. Gilligan | July 25, 1855 | at the Jail of the Districtaforesaid in Conwayboro, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death by Dorwning, cause unknown |
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Leander Pack | August 14, 1883 | at the residence of Elias Atkins, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Leander Pack came to his death ... by a blow of a fallen tree of which the decased were cutting |
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Sally | slave | December 15, 1850 | at Gerrymiah Gregorys, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths doo say . . .that the aforesaid sally . . .came to her death by misfortune or accident |
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Sam Malloy | May 30, 1899 | at Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Chesterfield County, SC |
From the evidence I got from the party's there the deceased was accidentaly drowned |
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Clem | slave, boy | October 3, 1858 | at Tabitha Abney's, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid Lem[?] came to his death by the accident firing of a gun in his own hands |
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Herman Peters | November 2, 1836 | on the Camden Road near the house of Hugh Y.[?] Rosborough, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that they believe according to all evidence adduced to them, the said Herman Peters came to his death from intoxication and inclemency of the weather, some time of the morning of the 2nd instant, on the Camden Road four miles from Winnsborough |
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Louisa Nettles | May 5, 1860 | at Boykin's Mill, Kershaw County, SC | |||
Bonaparte Bates | March 26, 1856 | at the Fuller old field, Anderson County, SC |
do say that Bonaparte Bates in manner and form aforesaid came to his death by misfortune or accident |
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William Fortune | November 24, 1873 | at Jerkens Stabberd, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: We find that the deceased Wm Fortune came to his death by excessive use of ardent spirits and exposure to cold, producing Lung congestion of the lungs and other viscera. |
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William Foster | December 20, 1845 | at Bishop's old field, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by freezing to death from being intoxicated |
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Hattie Smalls | at C.B. Blair's, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, That Hattie Smalls, in manner and form aforsaid came to her death by having burned[?] to death accidently |
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Rosa M. Smith | October 11, 1877 | at Spartanburg C.H., Spartanburg, S.C., Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Rosa M. Smith came to her death by means of accidental burning |
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Gabriel Gibson | April 18, 1819 | at Elbethel Meeting house, Union County, SC |
Doe say upon their oaths that . . .Gabriel Gibson Came to his End By Mischance & Say that he was Spliting Roling Down A Decent |
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Martha Hubbard | January 1, 1912 | at McBee, Chesterfield County, SC |
[No official declaration] |
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infant child | infant child | January 10, 1892 | at Trenton, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that deat was produced from suffocation . . . after a long spell of sickness |