The Tragic Summer of 1893
The year 1893 was a tumultuous one for the Lambe family.
The Newlyweds
It started off well enough. On January 16, in the cold of winter, Alfred Boydell Lambe, Jr., a widower, married Annie Woodburn Davidson in Ontario.1 This joyous event was just one more in a steady stream of marriages and births of Lambes, and may have appeared to foreshadow a happy year for the Lambes.
Six months later, in the hot of summer, tragedy struck.
The Kindergarten Teacher and Her Sister
Letitia and Gertie Lambe were twins, daughters of Alfred Boydell Lambe and Mary Eliza (Austin) Lambe.2 (Family information indicates they were two of triplets, with their brother dying shortly after birth, but all official records I have seen list them as twins.3, 4) Letita and Gertie had immigrated to Canada with their family in 1871,5 and by 1893, Letitia lived in Toronto in the household of her mother,6 Mary Eliza (Austin) Lambe, and her brother, W.G.A. Lambe. In the 1881 and 1891 censuses, Letitia was listed without a profession.7, 8 But in 1891, Letitia obtained her provincial license to teach kindergarten.9 From this point onwards, she worked as a kindergarten teacher, at a time when kindergarten was still an experimental program.10 In contrast, Gertie had married George Helliwell Clarkson and by 1893 had three children.11
On July 25 of that year, the temperature hovered between 93 and 96 degrees Farenheit during the day.12 With school out for the summer, the oppressive heat made it an ideal day for a swim, and Letitia and Gertie took advantage of the coolness of Lake Ontario. So did a school boy named Arthur Higgins. Their fates would unexpectedly collide that day.
Soon after dipping in to the lake off Centre Island, first Letitia got into trouble, and when Gertie tried to help her, Gertie, too, began to succumb, leading to a life and death struggle just offshore.
The day after the terrible events of July 25, The Globe newspaper of Toronto carried the following story:13
A peculiarly sad drowning fatality occurred at the old filtering basin, immediately east of the lighthouse,14 on Centre Island, yesterday morning.
About 10 o'clock Mrs. George H. Clarkson and her twin sister, Miss Eliza Letitia Lambe, went into the water for their morning swim. They had not been in many minutes when Miss Lambe suddenly found herself out of her depth, and, with a cry for help, went down. Her sister went to her help, and when she came up the first time caught her, but as neither lady could swim much she was unable to retain her hold, and Miss Lambe went down a second time. When she again came to the surface Mrs. Clarkson, although becoming distressed herself, was about to make another effort to aid her sister, when the drowning lady begged her to save herself or they would both be lost. Seeing the futility of further delay, Mrs. Clarkson turned towards the shore, but was so exhausted that she would have gone down too if a lad on the shore had not reached out and, giving her his hand, helped her to land.
Aid was quickly on hand, and every effort was made to recover the unfortunate lady, but it was half an hour before the body was found, and even then the medical men on hand, including the staff of the Sick Children's Hospital, would not give up a last hope of reviving life; but after doing all that science could suggest they were compelled to abandon the effort.
In the excitement of the occurence a mistake arose as to the identity of the lady who was lost, and the intimation which reached the city of the tragedy, viz., a telephone message from one of the ladies of the party, stated that it was Mrs. Clarkson, wife of Mr. George H. C. Clarkson of Lyman, Knox & Co., who was drowned. Mr. Clarkson did not discover the actual facts until he reached the scene of the accident.
The deceased lady was a daughter of the late Mr. A. B. Lambe, and sister to Mrs. G. H. Clakson, Mrs. E. R. C. Clarkson, Mr. W. G. A. Lambe, the Wellington street Commission merchant, and Mr. Harold Lambe, broker, of Hamilton. Her late residence was 232 Carlton street.
The Globe story was published under the title "Drowned at Centre Island" and the subtitle "Miss Letitia Lambe Loses her Life While Bathing - Her Twin Sister Narrowly Escapes a Similar Fate." The same day's account in The Toronto Mail, under the heading "Drowned at the Island", tells the same story with different details. Note that it differs as to who was swimming with Letitia:15
Yesterday morning about 10.15 o'clock Mrs. E. R. C. Clarkson and her sister, Miss Etta Lambe, went bathing in the old filtering basin on the Island, near the lighthouse. They got out of their depth, and their struggles were noticed by a boy of 12, Arthur Higgins, of 823 Queen street west, who happened to be at hand and pulled Mrs. Clarkson out, but was unable to assist Miss Lambe, who, he says, had then sunk for the last time. After an hour's grappling and diving in the basin, which is not large, but is 20 feet deep in parts, the body was recovered by Mr. H. Howard and P.C. Johnston of Hanlan's point. Three excellent swimmers and divers, Messrs. W.P., D.A., and J.G. Merrick repeatedly endeavoured to find the body, but by reason of a wrong location being given them they were unsuccessful. Dr. J. Russell, who lives at Centre Island and Drs. Robertson and Armstrong, and two nurses from the Sick Children's hospital, used every exertion to resuscitate the victim, but without avail. The body was taken to Mr. E.R.C. Clarkson's cottage, in Clarkson's row, on Centre Island. Miss Lambe was 35 years of age, and was a sister of Messers. W.G.A. Lambe, of Toronto, and Harold Lambe, of Hamilton.
The Daily Mail version suggests that it is Amy, not Gertie, who was swimming with Letitia. However, since the The Globe identifies the two sisters as twins and contains much greater detail about the family, leading to the impression that the writer of the The Globe account actually spoke to a family member whereas the writer of The Toronto Mail account did not, it is safe to conclude that it was Gertie swimming with Letitia that day.
We can only imagine the effect that Letitia's death had on Gertie, especially given her presence that day. It surely also darkened the happy outlook of the rest of the Lambe family.
The Boy Hero
The twelve-year-old boy who saved Gertie's life, Arthur Higgins, lived with his parents on Queen Street West. His family was in the jewellery and laundry businesses.16 Laundry must have been more lucrative, because in later years they focussed solely on the laundry business,17 so much so that when Arthur married Nettie Strickland in 1900, he described himself as a "laundryman".18
The Greiving Mother
Only four weeks after the news of Leitia's demise, the matriarch of the family, Mary Eliza (Austin) Lambe, died on August 24, 1893 of "valvular disease of the heart" according to her Ontario death registration.19 Her death registration, signed by Dr. Frederick Strange, indicates that she had had this condition for several years. The loss of her daughter Letitia, who for her entire life had lived with her mother, must have had a profound effect on Mary Eliza.
While she lived to see the happiness of many of her children married, and many grandchildren born, she also lived long enough to experience the tragedy of losing Letitia.
Mother and daughter are buried side by side in unmarked graves in St. James Cemetery on Parilament Street in Toronto.
Footnotes
1Descendant Chart for John Lambe prepared by Hugh van Nostrand, March 4, 2010.
21861 UK Census Record for Alfred B. Lambe and family, Erith, Kent, page number obscured (family #34).
3Family Tree prepared by Alfred Boydell Lambe Jr., c. 1925.
4See especially only two entries for the last name Lambe in the General Record Office index of births of September 1855, on www2.freebmd.org.uk: Fanny Gertrude Lambe and Eliza Letitia Lambe, accessed December 2, 2012.
5Records for A.B. Lamb travelling on the Severn and the Prussian, July 27 and 29, 1871, respectively, in the Toronto Emigrant Office Assisted Immigration Registers Database on the Archives of Ontario website, accessed July 12, 2005.
61891 Canadian Census Record for William Lamb and family, St. David's Ward, Toronto, Ontario, p.18.
71881 Canadian Census Record for Mary E. Lamb and family, St. Thomas Ward, Toronto, Ontario, p.20.
81891 Census Record for William Lamb and family.
9Ontario Legislature, Report of the Minister of Education (Ontario) for the Year 1892 with the Statistics of 1891, Toronto: Warwick & Sons, 1893, p. 110.
10Province of Ontario Death Registration for Eliza Letitia Lambe, July 25, 1893.
111891 Canadian Census Record for George Clarkson and family, St. Thomas Ward, Toronto, Ontario, p. 75.
12"The Wave of Heat" in The Globe, July 26, 1893, p. 8.
13"Drowned at Centre Island" in The Globe, July 26, 1893, p. 8.
14Staples, Owen, Lighthouse, Centre Island, 1913, courtesty of the Toronto Public Library.
15"Drowned at the Island" in The Toronto Mail, July 26, 1893, p. 6.
16Entries for Wm and Hannah Higgins, The Toronto City Directory for 1893, Toronto: Might's Directory Company, 1893, pp. 862-863.
17Entry for Wm Higgins, The Toronto City Directory 1899, Toronto: The Might Directory Company, 1899, p. 550.
18Province of Ontario Marriage Registration of Arthur Higgins and Nettie Strickland, dated October 4, 1900.
19Province of Ontario Death Registration of Mary Eliza Lambe, dated September 5, 1893.
