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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Mary Jenkins | May 5, 1860 | at Boykin's Mill, Kershaw County, SC | |||
Mariah Teel | December 30, 1870 | at the Poor House, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, That the deceased, Maria Teel came to her death, by being accidently burnt |
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Alfred Gage | May 21, 1890 | at Milton, Laurens County, SC |
by their oaths do say that the said Alfred Gage came to his death "By Accidental Drowning in little river at the Mills at Milton. |
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Minnie Cason | June 9, 1883 | at Williamston, Anderson County, SC |
do say that the death of said Minnie was caused by falling into a well from 25 to 30 feet deep? |
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Alexander | January 2, 1862 | at Dr. Austins, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Alexander came to his death Jany 1st by accident having been caught in the running gear of the gin. |
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Benjamin Franklin Zimmerman | June 18, 1932 | near Patrick, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death by accidental drowning in the waters of big Juniper creek-1/2 miles north East of the Town of Patrick, S. C. |
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slave | slave | March 10, 1835 | at the house of W.W. Dickies, Spartanburg County, SC |
are of the opinion that she came to her death by taking a fit or spazm and falling into the fire and not being able to extricate herself burnt to death |
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infant female | infant female | November 25, 1880 | at T. H. Long, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . . the said infant came to its death by being smothered by its Mother accidentally while she was asleep in bed |
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Nancy James | March 13, 1875 | at Thomas[?] Fegins[?], Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: She came to her death bye falling in a ditch |
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Willie Gooding | at [?] Blair's, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say: That the said Willie Gooding came to his death from accidental burning by fire |
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Louisa Wooden | October 13, 1893 | at Mose Woden, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased Louisa Wooden came to her death by an accidental gunshot wound in the hands of Moses Wooden |
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Milledge Fuller | freedman | February 18, 1867 | at John Ransford plantation, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that. . .came to his death by a gun shot wound accidently done in the hands of Ellie a freedwoman |
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Bob | slave | December 26, 1845 | at the residence Mr. Parks, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death by being drunk and exposed to the weather which was wet and very cold |
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Nancy Crawford | August 9, 1876 | at Cooly's Grave Yard, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that she came to her death. . .near the door of her house (being in labor) by misfortune or accident |
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Augusta Sullivan | August 4, 1896 | at Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Chesterfield County, SC |
from the best information could be gathered came to his death by misschance or by accidental drowning in the mill pond of J. A. McMillan |
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Anna Queen Fuller | five year old child | November 18, 1893 | at Flatwoods, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased was burnt. And Anna Queen Fuller in manner and form aforesaid came to her death by misfortune or accident. |
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Henry Davis | October 30, 1857 | at Anderson Courthouse, Anderson County, SC |
are of the opinion that Henry Davis came to his death by excessive drink, cold and a fall which rendered him unable to take care of himself. |
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James Frazier | Babie | October 24, 1890 | at D. B Hollingworth, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths aforesaid do say that the aforesaid James Frazier did die from Suffocation |
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Fany | female slave | June 11, 1855 | at Mrs Jane Clowneys, Union County, SC |
upon there Oaths do say that they Believe she Dsed Came to her death . . .by some cause to the Jury unknown think she might have died sadingly from some Lingering diseasas she was very often Complaing . . .or might have Falen in the Beauch & was unable to get out & Drowned as she was found in the Beach |
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William Sandy Little | June 18, 1890 | at the Belk Place, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say that the Said W.S. Little came to his death by accient from falling in the well & being drowned |
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Eldrige Padgett | February 9, 1859 | at Eidson Padgetts, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the decased came to his death by being intoxicated and caught on fire and burnt to death in his own house |
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Benjamin Franklin Hocott | May 5, 1860 | at Boykin's Mill, Kershaw County, SC | |||
Henry | November 24, 1851 | at J.H. Dillards, Laurens County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the Slave Henry came to his Death by Accidental Drowning. |
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Margret Ann Kinncade | at W.B. Murry's Place, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to her death from a burn by accidently catching on fire, Sept the 3d, 1886[.] |
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George Wilkins | January 7, 1886 | Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say taht George Wilkins came to his death by misfortune or accident from a gun shot in the hands of Jack Lewis |
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Charley Campbell | March 14, 1892 | at Rhett Copelands, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say "that Charley Campbell came to his death. By Accident or Misfortune, By the burning of the house he was in |
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Franklin Turner | son | December 26, 1850 | at John Turners, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths do say . . .that the aforesaid Franklin Turner . . .came to his death by misfortune or accident |
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Judith Berry | December 17, 1811 | near Swift Creek ... [at] home of James Berry, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said Berry to came to her death by a violent burn which she received from her clothes taking fire at the fireplace in the house of James Berry . . . of which she instantly died. |
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Sallie Bell Suber | at Lyles Ford, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Ida Suber and Sallie Belle Suber came to their deaths by accidently burning to death from[?] carelessness of their mother. |
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unknown negro | unknown negro | April 24, 1855 | at Savannah Bluff, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do say tha the Said engro (to them unknown) came to his Death by Drowning |
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Howard Gale | June 13, 1879 | at Jacksons Holinns[?] Mill, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the Said Howard Gale came to his death by accidental droning |
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Tom | Slave, old negro man | January 12, 1853 | near the residence of Harry Scott, Edgefield County, SC |
Upon their Oaths do say, that the dead body of Tom lying in the branch near the residence of Henry Scott . . .came to his death, by accident or misfortune |
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infant | April 15, 1879 | at the house of Mrs. Mary Smith, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the infant aforesaid came to its death ... from the ignorant neglect of said child by Sarah D. Smith, the mother of said child without intent to murder the child upon her part |
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Eliga Clark | April 18, 1906 | at Purvis Brige in Cheraw Town ship, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: that Eliga Clark came to his death by causes unknown to the jury |
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Willie Chappell | June 18, 1882 | at Badgetts quarter, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Willie Chappell came to his death at Badgetts quarter place in Laurens County on Sunday the 20th day of June AD 1882 That Lucinda Bradford the said Willie Chappell by misfortune and contrary to her will in manner and form aforesaid did kill... |
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Ashford D. Clary | March 17, 1822 | near David Graham's, Laurens County, SC |
do say upon their oaths, that he being Intoxicated on Sunday the tenth day of this Instant (March) and had attempted to cross the branch aforesaid, and crossing had fallen into the same and was Drowned in the water of said Branch |
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Harris Hotchkiss | March 12, 1821 | at Thomas Hugh's, Union County, SC | |||
Bailey Redman | June 28, 1817 | at Brockman's Mill, Spartanburg County, SC |
do say upon there [sic] oaths. . .that his death was caused by [swimming] over the dam |
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John Groce | June 12, 1876 | at John Groce's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he John P. Groce came to his death . . . by accidental drowning in the mill pond of W J Bates while bathing in company with P D Bates, Morgan Flynn and Benjame Cannon[?] |
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Center | December 14, 1853 | at Jos. Willinghams, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, all cirumstance of the case show conclusively that Center was accidentaally drowned in Little River last Sunday evening |
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Infant of Albert Davis | at Crosbyville, Fairfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say the cause of death was suffocation |
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James Baldwin | infant | June 8, 1825 | at William Dilliard's plantation, Union County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the said James Baldwin came to his death by an accident, occasioned by his elder brother Henry Baldwin tying a Rope around his the said James Baldwin neck and fastening one end of said rope to a [?] fastened in the joist and the said Henry going off and leaving of it in that situation ... as a reason for tying the said child was that he was subject to eating of dirt and Salt[?] and that his brother done it to prevent him from getting the same whilst he was in the field at work |
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George | May 6, 1849 | at C... Garlington Mill pond, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do Say by accidental drowning. |
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Starkes Whitlock | February 16, 1853 | at J P Poters, Union County, SC |
upon ther oaths do say that he was the cause of his own death . . .come to his own by Drinking & Exsposure by laying out in the wet & cole |
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Alexander Martin | September 8, 1867 | at the residence fo B.W. Knight, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Alexander L. Martin came to his death by the falloing of a tree some of the limbs striking dec'd on the back of the head neck and shoulders |
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Willie Parker | December 21, 1892 | at S. Parkers, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: that Willie Parker came to his death by being struck on his head by a falling Tree Accidinetly |
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Toney Moore | November 29, 1865 | at Conwayboro, Horry County, SC |
upon their oaths do say That the said Toney Moore came to his death by Mischance from the accidental explosion of a Steam Boiler |
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Solomon | negro man | June 24, 1844 | near the Mill of George A. McKee on Stevens Creek, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that the said negro came to his death by drowning |
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Mingo Mosley | January 13, 1883 | at Samuel[?] Corley's, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths aforesaid do say that the aforesaid Mindo Mosley came to his death by accidental burning |
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Lewis Berry | February 20, 1815 | Union County, SC |
do say on their oaths that the said Lewis Berry come to his death by being in [?] in the Cold |