The life and death of Robert Brock

 I wrote about Robert Brock's death in an earlier post.  He was the first person in our database of Charterhouse residents whose death was worth investigating.  Now I have researched more about his life; and it's a fascinating story.

Robert was born in Stainforth near Doncaster in 1813 and baptised in nearby Hatfield.  His parents were George and Elizabeth.  Stainforth was (and still is) a canal town, on the Stainforth and Keadby Canal which connects the River Don Navigation at Bramwith to the River Trent at Keadby, by way of Stainforth, Thorne and Ealand, near Crowle.  The waterways in this part of the country are part of a system which dates back to Roman times, connecting the Humber Estuary with the rivers to the west and south.  For centuries sailing vessels called Humber keels plied these waters, and the Brocks may well have come from generations of keelmen.  Whole families spent their lives on board, transporting goods to and from the Humber ports to the towns of Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire.  Many birth certificates showed the place of birth as "on water".  

Stainforth

On 30 October 1839 Robert Brock married Mary Richardson in Hull.  Mary came from Beverley.  In August 1840 Robert's name appears briefly in  the Hull Packet when two boys were charged with stealing a rope from his boat.  Evidently the Brocks were based in Hull from now on.  They are not to be found on the 1841 census but their son George Thomas was born in that year.   The 1851 census misses them, but Robert's older brother Thomas is there, with his family at 100 High St, Hull, and describing himself as a shipowner.  Perhaps he owned a keel which was crewed by someone else.

Robert and his family were moored in Hull's Old Harbour on census day 1861.

The "keel of river trade" called the Carrier had Robert as its Master, son George as mate and Mary as Master's wife.

Four months later Robert got his name in the papers again.  On 3 August the Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette reported:  

The incident didn't put Robert off a life on the canals.  Such mishaps were not unusual.  In 1871 he was on the Stainforth canal with Mary and a 14-year-old boy as "servant".  But Robert was perhaps finding the work increasingly hard as he got older.  By 1881 he and Mary had settled at 20, High St, Hull.  Robert described himself as a general labourer.  He was 68 and probably just picking up whatever work he could find.

On 3 May 1887 Robert and Mary Brock were admitted to the Charterhouse.  Five years later Mary died.  

Our register records that Robert Brock, aged 81, died on 7 January 1895.  But a note adds: "Presumably; body having been found in the Queen's Dock".  This prompted me to send for his death certificate, and I then found a letter in the archives.  Together they tell us more of the sad story.  7 January was the date he went missing from the Charterhouse.  Presumably there was a search; if there was, it was unsuccessful.  On 26 January, and again on 30 January, it seems that the Master assumed he was dead and was writing to the the council's Charterhouse Applicants Committee asking them to fill Brock's vacant room.  A letter survives from the Town Clerk in reply on 31 January saying that they were deferring a decision "in the hope that some news may be heard of Brock".  His body was not found for more than two months; it was recovered from the dock on 15 March.  There was an inquest, and the verdict was that he had drowned.  It leaves so many questions unanswered.  How did he come to fall in the dock?  Why did the body not surface for two months?

Can one say that it was an appropriate death for someone who had spent so much of his life on the water?