A rather long post this weekend. There are two parts to the post. In the first part I explore the fascinating church of St Pancras, and in the second part, I explore the tragic story of the City of Boston, recorded on one of the memorials in the church.
So to start with the church, this is St Pancras Church as seen from Euston Road on a hot and sunny summer day in 2026:
In the early years of the 19th century, the area around Euston Road was expanding rapidly, as streets and houses were marching over the fields to the north of the city.
The Parish of St Pancras was originally served by the church known today as St Pancras Old Church, however this historic church was far too small and rather dilapidated to serve the growing population, so in 1812, the vicar, Dr. Middleton led a proposal for the construction of a new, much larger church.
The following map is an extract from Horwood’s map of 1799. I have marked the location of the future St Pancras Church with a red rectangle. The road to the north marked Islington is today Euston Road:
As can be seen, much of the area is still open space, but the construction of new housing and streets can be seen at the top of the map, and new streets would soon occupy the whole of the area of the map, hence the need for the new church.
There is an interesting feature to upper left, marked Polygon, which was part of Somers Town.. This was a development of houses, and in the next couple of decades, Clarendon Square was built around the Polygon, with the ring of houses being in the centre, with surrounding roads and houses forming an outer square.
By the end of the 19th century, the Polygon had been demolished, but they are remembered today by Polygon Road which runs along the northern edge of the original feature.
An Act of Parliament enabling the building of a new church was passed in 1816, allowing fund raising and requests for designs to go ahead.
The design selected was by father and son architects, William and Henry William Inwood. William Inwood, the father, was a land steward and surveyor, and the majority of his architectural work appears to have been in partnership with his son Henry William.
Their joint projects in London included:
- St John’s Church, Westminster, destroyed by fire in 1940 – 1941
- Camden Town Chapel
- St Peter’s Chapel, Regent Square
- St Mary’s Chapel, Somers Town
Henry William Inwood had travelled in Greece. He may have been there when the initial designs for the church were made, however whether it was father or son who had the overall responsibility for the design, St Pancras Church displays a very Grecian influence.
William Inwood died in March 1843, and was buried in the church he had designed.
His son, Henry William Inwood died in the same month of the same year, having drowned at sea, when the ship on which he had sailed for Spain was lost, with no survivors.
Henry’s death was around 6 days after his father’s death, so at least the father was unaware of the death of his son. The loss of Henry at sea is a horrible coincidence with another story from the church, which I explore in the second part of today’s post.
St Pancras Church looking across Upper Woburn Place:
The inspiration for the top of the tower of the church is believed to have been the Tower of Winds in Athens, shown to the left in the following late 18th century print. The name Tower of Winds comes from the eight reliefs around the top of the tower which depict wind gods:
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
In the above print, the Tower of the Winds has lost the majority of its roof, the following print shows a reconstruction of the roof:
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
The most distinctive feature of the church can be seen on either side of the church, where towards the rear there are caryatid porticoes. A caryatid is a sculpted female figure that acts as an architectural support. They have central cast iron columns which provides the support for the roof, with terracotta being used to form the figure:
The name caryatid comes from the town of Karyai in the southern Greek region of the Peloponnese. They are believed to be based on a dance performed by young women of the town in honour of the god Artemis Karyatis. Some sources refer to the women dancing with baskets on their head, hence the stance, and the use of a caryatid to hold something up:
The inspiration for the caryatids came from the Erechtheion in Athens, a 5th century BC temple dedicated to the gods Athena and Poseidon. The following print from 1853 shows the Erechtheion or Erectheum with five caryatids in an almost identical configuration as those at St Pancras Church:
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
St Pancras church has only four along the front. In Athens, the temple originally had six, four along the front and one on each of the two sides. As can be seen in the above print, the caryatid on the right side is missing.
Thomas Bruce, the 7th earl of Elgin was the British representative to Constantinople (now Istanbul) between 1799 and 1803. This was a time when Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had a reputation for destroying Greek heritage.
They gave Elgin permission to remove artifacts under the pretence that it was to protect the safety of the artefacts during Greek actions in their attempts to gain independence, which was achieved in 1822.
Elgin removed a range of ancient Greek artifacts, including what are today called the Elgin Marbles, along with one of the caryatids, which, along with the Elgin marbles, is now on display in the British Museum.
The remaining five caryatids were removed in 1979, due to the risk of pollution damage, and were put on display in the Acropolis Museum, and if you visit today, you can see the five caryatids on display, with a gap where the missing caryatid should be positioned.
The photos above are of the caryatids on the southern side of the church, and an identical feature can be seen on the northern side, facing Euston Road:
Internally, the church presents a large, bright, open space. Galleries run along either side of the church, and the altar is built into an apse at the end of the church, where, continuing the Classical design approach, there are tall Ionic columns:
A model of the church:
There are some lovely design features in the church, such as these columns which support the gallery above:
The font and more Ionic columns close to the entrance to the church:
Stained glass:
A statue of St Pancras:
St Pancras was born around 289 in what is today Turkey. During Emperor Diocletian’s persecutions of Christians, St Pancras was brought before the Roman authorities and asked to carry out a sacrifice to the Roman gods. Pancras refused to do so, despite being offered wealth and power.
As a result, the Emperor ordered that St Pancras should be beheaded on the Via Aurelia, the original road from Rome to Pisa. The sentence was carried out in 303. The saint’s feast day is the 12th of May, which is believed to be the day of his execution.
Church memorials are fascinating. They provide a snapshot of those considered by the parish as worth remembering, but they also tell us a bit more about life at the time.
Take the memorial to William Kitchener M.D.
He died on the 27th of February 1827, aged 48. The memorial, as did the obituaries published in the press, made much of his “universal genius”.
William Kitchiner was originally in the medical profession, but after his father died (an eminent coal merchant in the Strand), he inherited a fortune of between £60,000 and £70,000. This allowed him to give up medicine and pursue separate interests.
He wrote a number of books, including a book on Telescopes, and also a large collection of national songs, but his most widely acclaimed book was “The Cook’s Oracle”, which contained 130 recipes, which will “greatly improve the comfort and economy of all, being the best method of making Maigre Gravy Soups; ditto Green Peas, various Fish Soups, all Fried Fish in clarified butter, fresh Salmon Broiled; ditto Pickled; Carp to Stew; Potted Lobster or Crab; Lobster Patties; Stewed Oysters; Scalloped Oysters; Fish Pies, Stewed Eels; Macaroni; Stewed Onions; Omelettes and various ways of dressing Eggs, and warming cold Fish; potato Pie; Cheese and Toast; ditto Toasted; ditto Buttered; ditto Pounded or Potted; Poached Eggs; Puddings; Maigre and Savoury Patties; Preserves; Tarts; Cakes, &c &c.”
A sample of an early 19th century diet.
By the time that first reviews were published, the book already had a print run of 30,000, and typical reviews were:
“We venture to prophecy that the Cook’s Oracle will be considered as the English Institute of Cookery”, and:
“For practical precepts we recommend particularly and chiefly the Cook’s Oracle, in which , along with the plainest directions, there is more of philosophy, and if we may so speak of the Literature of Gastronomy, than in any other work we have seen”.
If William Kitchiner were alive today, he would probably have his own TV cookery series.
William Kitchiner, pictured with a telescope and book:
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
William Kitchiner had a disease of the heart, and knew that death could come at any moment, the knowledge of which resulted in periods of depression. He died after he had been for a meal with friends (an attempt by his doctor to raise his spirits), and suffered spasms after returning home.
And with what seems to have been the standard medical approach to many diseases at the time, his doctor attempted to bleed him, but he had already died.
A high proportion of monuments in London churches mention that the person spent time abroad. There is a memorial in St Pancras that records time with the East India Company, and the following memorial records that he was formerly of Canton and Macao in China.
I assume this was a reasonably common background, as they had made their money abroad, retired to London (Fitzroy Square in the case of Daniel Beale, below), and got involved in the life of the local parish:
Some plaques record recent events, including the fire at Kings Cross Underground Station on the 18th of November, 1987, a fire which claimed the lives of 31 people, including Soho’s Station Officer Colin Townsley:
During the last war, the church did suffer some bomb damage, but dry rot seems to have been the major post-war problem, as the church was closed on the 18th of May 1951 as it was considered a dangerous structure due to widespread dry rot:
The church was rededicated and opened two years later in December 1953.
St Pancras Church was the most expensive church in London when it was built, the addition of the caryatid porticoes on both sides of the church no doubt added significantly to the cost, but they are one of the features that make this a very distinctive church.
Henry William Inwood the son of the father / son partnership that designed the church, died in the sinking of a ship.
One of the plaques in the church records another sinking:
The Loss of the Steamship City of Boston
Exploring the story behind memorials can reveal so much about both the event being recorded, and life in general at the time.
One of the memorials records the loss at sea of Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two young children:
In 1870, ships did not have any form of radio equipment. There was limited weather information, and for the north Atlantic route, any information on the location and density of ice flows and icebergs was mainly the exchange of information between captains whilst in port, talking about what they had seen during their crossing.
A sea journey of any length was a risky experience, and there were hundreds of sinkings every year, and for many of these, relatives had to wait for many months before all hope was given up, and there was often no information on the cause of a sinking, or the location.
The Atlantic route was busy with many ships travelling between the US and the UK and Europe.
Shipping lines competed to offer the fastest, safest and most comfortable route across the Atlantic.
One of these was the Inman Line, along with the Cunard and White Star lines, one of the three largest shipping companies in the later decades of the 19th century.
Formed in 1850 by William Inman, the Inman Line operated out of Liverpool, with a fleet of steam ships, nearly all with the name of City of …..
Many of the Inman Line ships were combined steam and sail ships. This offered the benefit of a fallback to sail if there were any problems with the steam engines.
The City of Boston was the Inman line ship that Henry Horace Baker, his wife Rebecca, and their two children, Frederick and Florence, along with their nanny, boarded in Halifax, with the ship departing for Liverpool on the 28th of January, 1870:
The City of Boston carried crew and passengers, some of whom were officers of artillery and other regiments on their way home from Canada and had preferred to make the crossing in a steam ship rather than the troop ship which brought the majority of the troops back to England.
Henry Horace Baker was one of four officers that had their wives and children with them for the journey back to England.
The ship was well provisioned for the journey. Newspaper reports stated that on board were three months provisions for the ship’s use, and among the cargo were the following: 390 tons of beef, 200 barrels of flour, 180,700lb of bacon, and 10,375lb of wheat.
The ship was also fitted with condensers capable of supplying water. The ship also carried 787 tons of coal.
By reading the news reports from the time, we can follow the course of the tragedy that led to the memorial in St Pancras Church.
The lack of any means of communicating with a ship, rumours, false sightings and reports, the challenges of a long sea journey, optimism that the ship would arrive, even when this would have been an unrealistic outcome. One can also imagine the frustrations and worries of those who had relatives and friends on the ship.
We start in February 1870:
February 1870
By the 15th of February, the City of Boston was several days overdue. Newspaper reports started to mention that the steamer had not arrived at Liverpool, and some papers were reporting concerns about the condition of the ship, for example from the Western Morning News on the 15th:
“The agents at Liverpool of the Inman Company state that the Royal Mail steamer City of Boston, which left Halifax on the 28th January, and is several days overdue. lost two blades of her fan on the outward voyage, and is coming home with only a double-bladed fan. Considering the strong easterly gales and the heavy sea prevailing, the agents entertain fears as to the safety of the steamer.”
The number of ships lost at sea was high. On the 21st, as well as mentioning the late arrival of the City of Boston, it was also reported that the Awsel was lost, including 10 hands and the captain, and that the Tea Ship Westburn sailing from China to London had been lost with 700,000 lbs of tea.
On the 24th of February, is was reported that insurance premiums on the City of Boston were increasing to 50 guineas per cent. Interesting that you could still insure a ship even after it had been missing. There was also a report from a ship arriving in Liverpool from Halifax that a captain in Halifax had told of seeing a steamer which launched three rockets, but he could not be sure of the position.
By the 28th of February, it had been 30 days since the City of Boston had left Halifax, and there was “a very considerable amount of anxiety has been felt and expressed in the commercial and private circles as to the non arrival of the mail steamer City of Boston”.
There were efforts to calm worries by saying that although the ship had left Halifax with a mechanical problem, she was able to use her sails, and could have been blown off course by strong easterly winds. She was a “strong, well built ship, fully manned, most undeniably well found, and in charge of an experienced and efficient commander”.
March 1870
At the start of March, there was still no news about the City of Boston. There were now serious concerns about the safety of the ship, but also voices that offered some reassurance that the ship could still be under sail, could have been blown off course etc.
On the 8th of March it was reported that the Channel Squadron had been ordered to be on the lookout for ships in distress, particuarly the City of Boston
The Channel Squadron had a secondary purpose, and that was to deliver supplies to the ships that were unable to complete their crossing from America due to the strong easterly winds. It was estimated that there could be 500 ships stalled in the Atlantic, including twenty large vessels, loaded with grain which were bound from San Francisco to Liverpool and were long overdue.
A ship, the Ben Nevis had arrived in Gravesend reporting that they had seen a disabled steamer trying to get to the Irish Coast, however it turned out that that the crew’s description of the steamer did not fit the City of Boston.
On the 10th of March, a sailing ship, the Florence arrived in the Thames, having set sail from New York on the same day that the City of Boston had set out. This gave some hope that the City of Boston could also arrive soon.
In 1870, as has been amplified by the Internet today, there was false information being distributed. On the 19th of March, the New York Associated Press offered a reward of 500 dollars for information leading to the detection and punishment of the author of the false report regarding the arrival of the City of Boston on Wednesday. It had “excited much indignation in the United States”.
By the 28th of March, hope was beginning to fade, and the Newcastle Journal reported that “There is no news of the City of Boston. It is now fifty-eight days since she left Halifax on her homeward voyage, and the opinion begins to prevail that she never now will be heard of. The supposition is that she struck against an iceberg at full speed, and went down, leaving no trace behind her. The City of Durham has left Crookhaven to continue the search for the missing vessel”.
April 1870
By April, the rumour mill was running. On the 2nd of April, Admiral Belcher had written in the Times that “if the City of Boston stood south easterly and fell into the horse latitudes, where few ships care to go, or have any business, and be disabled, she may, like a transport he recollects, be detained there from 100 to 150 days, and would eventually find her way by the trade wind into some port in Florida or the West Indies.”
On the 9th, William Inman, the owner of the ship and the shipping line, said that not an officer in his service believes that the City of Boston had foundered from any gale of wind; and if she is lost, it is to be attributed to running into ice.
On the 14th it was announced that the underwriters of the City of Boston and her cargo had agreed to meet all claims upon them on the basis of a total loss.
On the 19th, a further announcement was made that the reports that the underwriters had settled claims was premature, and that they would not be doing so until the loss was posted at Lloyds.
On the 25th of April, William Inman announced that he was bringing an action for libel against the writer of a letter which alleged that the City of Boston was overladen and also defective in her screw arrangements.
On the 28th of April, Henry Ransford wrote to the Times to state that the letter he had written on the 11th which contained suggestions that the City of Boston was not in a good seagoing tradition, may have been damaged and could have been overladen, were false accusations and that there were no grounds whatever for any imputation on the condition of the City of Boston, and that Henry Rainsford apologised if his letter had misled the public.
On the same day, it was reported that a broken piece of teak wood about three feet long had washed ashore at Perranporth. One side was painted blue, and the other side had been roughly inscribed with a knife or chisel “TY OF BOSTON IS SINKING FEB II”.
May 1870
At the start of May, the ship had been missing for three months. During the month, there were still strange stories about the final days of the City of Boston, and the first obituaries started to appear showing that families of those onboard were accepting the loss of their loved ones.
On the 3rd, New York papers had reached Liverpool, and they included the following report:
“A boy named George W. Doty, residing at Princes Bay, Staten Island, while playing along the beach at that place, yesterday (April 19) in company with two other boys, plucked up an ordinary soda bottle, and discovered in it a piece of hard coarse brown paper, and upon it were written in lead pencil the following words:-
Steamship City of Boston, March 2, 1870. As I write this note (perhaps my last on earth) I hear the wails and moans of my fellow passengers as they see the last vestige of their safety lost and swamped in the deep. the vessel caught fire from the engine room this morning, and is fast driving the passengers to the bow of the boat. They have just attempted to launch the lifeboat, but it got swamped with about forty persons, male and female. The captain is doing his best. I must bung and finish. God help us. James…..Nas”.
The New York Times believed that the note was a hoax, as the ship had been at sea for over a month when the note was apparently written, and that there was no passenger on board with a name ending in ‘Nas’.
Another note found in a stone bottle was handed to the receiver of wreck at the Liverpool Custom House. On the note was written:
“S.S. City of Boston, Feb 4 1870. The City of Boston is fast settling. We have lost 4 men overboard, 3 have died. We………..in great danger for our preservation. The ship is on fire, and hurrying all the passengers to the bows. We have had to come on under canvas. our propellor is broken, and we are now at the entire mercy of the waves. God help us, I am on my bare feet and have been all the week. Sig……….Hough, J Hon, W. Eccleston.”
The newspaper report added that the names at the bottom of the note did not appear on the articles of agreement with the crew, and if it were not a hoax, then it must have been signed by passengers. The authorities in Liverpool did not appear to have had a complete list of passenger names.
On the 21st of May, an obituary notice was published in the Times for Henry Horace Baker – the name that appears on the memorial in St. Pancras church:
“Lost, at sea, in the Royal Mail steamship City of Boston, on returning home from Halifax, Nova Scotia, after five years foreign service. Henry Horace Baker Lieutenant Royal Engineers, aged twenty-eight, third and dearly loved son of Mr and Mrs Henry Baker of 108, Gower-street, London’ also his wife Rebecca (Becky), daughter of Mr James Taylor of Summer-hill, Mayfield, Sussex; together with their children, Fredrick Horace aged five, and Florence Hamilton, aged three; and their faithful nurse, Isabella Oliver.”
The memorial in St. Pancras was probably written by the family of Henry Baker. The memorial tells a terribly sad story of the loss of a family, but what adds an extra layer of sadness is that whilst she was remembered in the Times obituary, the memorial in St Pancras does not include Isabella Oliver, the faithful nurse, who had presumably been with the family for some time.
June 1870
By early June, the City of Boston had been missing for over four months, but newspapers were still suggesting that there was still hope. On the 8th of June in an article about the City of Boston, it was reported that the Cerealis, another missing ship which had left Philadelphia on the 14th of January, had finally been reported safe, after being missing at sea for 141 days.
The safe arrival of the Cerealis was repeated in other articles about the City of Boston on the 11th of June, titled HOPE ON, HOPE EVER, where it was argued that whilst people have started to cease thinking or talking about the missing ship, the Cerealis offers a glimmer of hope.
William Inman, the owner of the shipping line, had by mid June, given up any hope of seeing his ship again, as he had written to the Board of Trade admitting that there was no longer any hope, and whilst there is no direct evidence as to the manner of the loss, his opinion was that the sea ice had broken up suddenly that year, and that the City of Boston had foundered from getting among it.
July 1870
By July, the human impact of the loss of the City of Boston was starting to be reported. There were death notices for some of the crew and passengers, and an article reporting the actions of the Liverpool Seamen’s Orphan Institution demonstrated the scale of human loss from ship wrecks.
The article reported that James McGregor, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 10 years, and Ann C. McLean, whose father had sailed out of Liverpool for 11 years, and who had both been lost on the City of Boston, had been nominated as deserving of admission to the institution.
The article also mentions that 66 children had recently been admitted, and that there are many more deserving cases which are postponed for want of room.
There were no fewer than 5,271 wrecks between 1867 and 1868, and the seamen who died from various causes during those years numbered 10,133, of these 6,754 left widows, with an average of three children each.
It was an incredibly dangerous profession.
In July, the Inman Line had set aside £300 to distribute “amongst the more necessitous relatives of the ship wrecked crew”. There was no legally binding need to compensate the families of the crew that worked for the Inman Line, or that they should all receive compensation, of what value and for how long.
August 1870
Despite the claim by the Inman Line that they had set aside £300 for relatives of the crew, it is unclear how this was distributed, and in August there was concern within the town of Workington.
Captain J.J. Halcrow of the City of Boston was well known in Workington, and his aged mother had lived in the town for all her life. Captain Halcrow had left behind a widow and four children, the youngest only two years of age.
It was reported that the family of Captain Halcrow have been left unprovided for, and that a ” few Liverpool gentlemen” have opened a subscription for the benefit of the family.
September 1870
There had been two letters to the Times arguing that the City of Boston had left Halifax in a mechanically poor state and also overloaded. One author had withdrawn his claim and apologised. the second author had not, so William Inman had sued for libel. In August the case came to the Law Courts who found in favour of William Inman, and awarded £250 in damages.
Final Reports
As is usual with such disasters, the event gradually faded from the news, and in the last few months of 1870, there were very few references to the loss of the City of Boston.
Strangely, a couple of alleged messages from those on board the ship were still being found.
In November 1870, a bottle was washed up ay Cranstock Sands near Newquay in Cornwall. The pieces of envelope inside contained a number of names and messages “We are lost”, and “City of Boston, We are all sinking, goodbye”.
In May 1871, another message was washed up on the south-east coast of New Brunswick. The message stated “March 21, 1870 – City of Boston – Ship sinking; over half full now. Good-bye all. Look after my boy. Thompson”.
The name of Thompson was confirmed as being on the passenger list.
It took a couple of months for a complete list of passengers and crew to be published, with lists finally appearing in April. I assume it would have taken a couple of months for lists from New York and Halifax, the two US boarding ports, to be transferred to the UK.
Even with this delay, the passenger list appears to be incomplete. There were 116 listed as passengers, some only given a title such as lady, servant, infant or nurse.
For the crew, only the senior officers were named. In addition there were stewards, firemen and coal-passers, giving a total crew of around 100, so in total there were around 216 people who lost their lives on the City of Boston.
The sinking had an impact on the families of those who were lost at sea. This included Mrs Jane Naughton, or Fegan who died in December 1870 after deeply grieving the lost of her son who was one of the crew on the ship. When she first heard the news she was reported as having been “seized with an apoplectic fit, and her health was never so well thereafter”.
In December 1875, rumours of a new possible cause for the loss of the City of Boston was being reported.
The steam ship Mosel was seriously damaged whilst in Bremerhaven Docks. Cargo was being loaded and during the process, one item of cargo fell to the dockside and exploded, killing 80 people and wounding many more.
The cause was found to be an attempted insurance fraud by a Canadian named Alexander Keith.
Boarding the ship using the false name of Thomas, he had taken out insurance, and also built a bomb which was timed to explode whilst the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic. His plan was to leave the ship when it briefly stopped in Southampton, then claim the insurance money after the ship had been lost.
He was badly wounded during the explosion, and attempted to commit suicide, but was held in custody until he died of his wounds, and confessed before his death.
Newspaper reports of the explosion started to make a link with the loss of the City of Boston:
“There is a suspicion now afloat that the missing City of Boston perished by the same means as those which destroyed the unfortunate men on board the Mosel; but we may ask, if the City of Boston, why not any of the many other vessels which have never been heard of since they left their port of departure? We have the appalling fact found that Thomas had ordered and had constructed a whole assortment of infernal machines similar to that placed by him on board the Mosel. It is impossible not to feel alarmed by the thought that life at sea is almost unprotected by any deterrent agency against attempts like that of Thomas.”
The date, reason for the sinking and location where the City of Boston went down, have never been identified.
The memorial in St Pancras Church records just one family who were lost.
The memorial does not include the name of the nurse who was with the family. All the passenger lists I have seen just record nurse or servant rather than their names, so it is good to add the name Isabella Oliver, at least virtually, to the memorial in St Pancras Church.