Truth Really Is Stranger Than Fiction
Like many an aspiring author I set out to write the Great Canadian Novel.
Very quickly, however, the harsh truth sank in: I didn’t have what it takes.
Ten years later, Lieut. Lees’s ship, HMS Swiftsure, made naval history in 1893 when she became the last British battleship to “spread sail while travelling in company with a fleet at sea”. —www.pinterest.com
But there was a soft landing for me.
Even before this sad fact hit home, I’d discovered non-fiction—writing about real people and real events. There was nothing, it seemed, that I could invent in my imagination that hadn’t already been done—and better—in real life!
There’s no getting around it: people and their actions—the good, the bad and the ugly—are fascinating. And the treasure trove of documented history available even to casual researchers is beyond calculation.
I was reminded of this recently while reorganizing my library: a story I’d researched way back when I was writing weekly for the Victoria Colonist. It’s a sad tale, one so unlikely that I defy any fiction writer to make it up.
Warning: The descriptions of Lees’s injuries, necessary to the story, are graphic.
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For most, happily, our journey upon this worldly plane is of reasonable duration. For some, life is cut short by misfortune. So it was with Lieut. Hastings Rowley Lees, Royal Navy, of Her Majesty’s Ship Swiftsure.
Almost a century and a-half after Lees met his fate in a Victoria roadside ditch the circumstances of his death almost defy the imagination.
So far as the Victoria Colonist was concerned, his story began in the evening of Sept. 29, 1883 when a Meares Street resident heard groans that seemed to come from the corner of Meares and Cook streets. Upon investigating, he met a man staggering from one of the houses adjacent to the intersection.
Even in the dim light he could see that the stranger’s face had been wounded to an appalling degree.
Rushing inside the house from which the injured man appeared to have come, he found no one there and immediately deduced that the man was one of the owners, a Mr. Campbell. Returning to the injured man he confirmed that ‘Campbell’s’ face had been smashed beyond recognition.
His right eye appeared to be gone, his nose and forehead were fractured and the upper jaw so shattered that it sagged over the uninjured lower jaw.
At first, the neighbour (whose name isn’t given in the news reports), having seen a gun in the house, thought that Campbell had accidentally shot himself. But he soon abandoned further speculation to the experts and ran to the nearby house of another neighbour for help. Leaving that neighbour to watch over Campbell, he raced down the street in search of further help and encountered F.S. Barnard who was passing by on horseback.
Informed of the emergency, Barnard wheeled his horse about and galloped off in search of Dr. Matthews, who was soon on the scene and dressing the man’s wounds. There was little he could do for Campbell until they got him to the hospital but Matthews did what he could and they prepared to move Campbell to town.
Incredibly, Campbell hadn’t lost consciousness despite the grievous extent of his injuries and, when Matthews finished the bandaging, he asked his patient his name. To the surprise of all present, ‘Campbell’ identified himself as Lieut. Lees of HMS Swiftsure.
This revelation came as a greater surprise to Matthews because he knew Lees well but hadn’t recognized him because of his disfigurement. Upon recovering from his shock, Matthews sent for Dr. Moore, the staff surgeon aboard HMS Swiftsure, then anchored at Esquimalt.
As they awaited Moore’s arrival, Lees signified that he wished to be taken to the naval hospital—an impossibility because of the extent of his injuries. Asked what had happened, he struggled to answer but was unsuccessful. When asked if he’d been hurt by a horse, he nodded affirmatively.
By this time a horse and buggy had been procured to take him to St. Joseph’s Hospital.
St. Joseph’s Hospital where Lees was treated until he could be transferred to the naval hospital at Esquimalt.
By midnight, some three and a-half hours after Lees was found, he was reported to be in fair condition and fully conscious “in spite of the horrid nature of his injuries”.
However, because of the extent of his wounds, and the bandages, he was unable to give an account of how he came to be injured by a horse. “All that is known,” reported the Colonist, “is that in the afternoon he assisted in the decoration of St. Paul’s Church and afterwards drove to town in Howard’s two-wheeled trap and dined at the club.
After helping to decorate St. Paul’s Naval Garrison Church, Esquimalt, Lees set off for Victoria in a rented buggy. —Toad Hollow Photograpy
“He drove away from the club about 8 o’clock and that was the last seen of him until he was found on Meares Street. It is surmised that the trap was upset in turning a corner and that the driver being thrown out was kicked in his face by the horse.
“Lieut. Lees who has a wife and two children in London, has many friends in Victoria, who will be shocked to hear of the terrible and perhaps fatal accident which has befallen him...”
As doctors did their best for Lees, city police Superintendent Bloomfield and Officer Flewin began a search for the missing horse and buggy, eventually finding the two-wheeled trap in a deep ditch on Cook Street, not far from where Lees was found on Meares Street.
The buggy, they reported, was “smashed to matchwood,” the horse, which had stepped from its traces and stood nearby, had a deep gash in its left flank. In the light of their lanterns, the officers examined the ground and discovered, under the horse’s hooves, two of Lees’s teeth. His hat was recovered from the bank beside the ditch.
As for the cause of the mishap, the morning newspaper had no doubt, it being “too apparent. The unfortunate gentleman missed his way in the dark and drove into the ditch, which is six feet deep in depth.
“The trap must have been upset at once and Mr. Lees, thrown beneath the horse’s feet, was kicked in the face. How he extricated himself must ever remain a mystery, but on the edge of the ditch where he succeeded in clambering out there is a great pool of blood as if he rested there before pursuing his way towards the spot where he was first seen on Meares Street.
“The awful agony the poor gentleman must have endured whilst groping his way along the dark street with one eye knocked out and the other closed, and the upper part of his face hanging down, can scarcely be imagined.
“Dr. Matthews says that when he first saw him he was holding his detached face in his hands! [Colonist’s italics]. At two o’clock this morning scarcely any hope was entertained of Mr. Lee’s [sic] recovery.”
Such was the graphic journalistic style of the day. Let us simply accept that poor Lees had suffered terrible, perhaps fatal wounds in that lonely ditch bordering Cook Street.
When next the Colonist went to press, on Tuesday, Lees’s condition was said to be stable, attending physicians having earlier said that he could be moved to the naval hospital as he’d requested. Originally, his removal, scheduled for Monday morning, was to have been by road, Lees to have been carried the six-odd miles in a cot pulled by bluejackets.
But, after further consideration, it was decided to transport him by water. The Swiftsure’s steam pinnace, with a cutter in tow, then chugged into the Inner Harbour and docked alongside Jones’s landing.
Earlier, the cutter had been covered with canvas so as to protect Lees from the wind. When all was ready, word was relayed to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Lees, riding in a cot slung from a pole, was carried to the water’s edge by several strong seamen. Once on board, the pinnace, with her “mournful freight” in tow, steamed slowly out of the Inner Harbour.
By this time, doctors were more confident of Lees’s eventual recovery, opining that, with skilful attention, the victim of what had been termed the most “frightful” accident on Victoria record would pull through.
They didn’t, however, express any hope that his face could be restored. He’d also lost an eye in the accident.
In the meantime, curious spectators had made the pilgrimage to the six-foot-deep ditch lining Cook Street to view the accident scene: the skid marks on the muddy bank where Lees had struggled so desperately to climb free, and the large pool of drying blood where, finally, he’d succeeded and rested.
All must have marvelled at the naval officer’s terrible and lonely battle on Saturday night, and the stoicism that he’d since demonstrated although in excruciating pain.
On Monday night, a telephone call to the Colonist reported that Lees was progressing favourably.
But the newspaper wasn’t content to leave the matter there. The “late accident,” it editorialized, “calls for energetic action on the part of the municipal court in causing immediate steps to be taken to prevent the possibility of a recurrence of a similar disaster.
“Everyone who has seen the unprotected approach to the Cook Street ditch (which varies in depth from four to six fee), must at some time or other have had the idea suggested that it was an exceedingly dangerous place for travellers on dark nights, especially as no lamps shed their dim light upon this neglected part of the street.
“So long has it been in the present state that immunity engenders unconcern, and as a consequence the source of danger that its exposed position constantly rendered it, scarcely ever, if ever, presented itself to those whose duty it was to attend to such matters, or if it did, with practical results.
“Without attributing any serious blame to the present council in particular, for following in the steps of their predecessors and ignoring what had become an institution, their conduct will be extremely reprehensible, should they from any cause whosoever, fail to remedy the present state of things.
“When at the next municipal meeting the councillor for this ward makes a motion to this effect—and he will fail in his duty if he does not do so—it is hoped that he will not be met with the now monotonous cry that funds are low and that nothing, therefore, can be done. The plea of ‘No funds’ will not serve as an excuse to shirk a work of this description which should and will have to be done, even if the money has to be borrowed for the purpose.
“The general condition of the street has blighted the life, and mayhap caused the death, of a gallant naval officer, and the best expression of sorrow for its past neglect that this city can show is to instantly abate what is a most dangerous nuisance, and what has possibly proved a death-trap.”
Two nights later, city council met for its regular meeting.
Among the items on the agenda were the Wharf Street drain installation; an application by H. West to furnish and install tin nameplates for city streets (refused); an application by P. Wilson to use part of View Street pending its alterations (granted); a complaint from a business that a neighbour’s drain system had no outlet (referred to the street committee for study); a second complaint concerning drains, this one on Fort Street between Cook and Vancouver streets (also referred to committee).
And so it went as council dealt with everything from complaints by businessmen that hack drivers were operating on Government Street in defiance of a bylaw, to the granting of a contract in the amount of $235 for the removal of a rock outcropping on Blanshard Street, to the illegal construction of “closets” (toilets) in various parts of the city in contravention of the building code.
Not until well into the evening did Mayor Redfern and council get around to the matter of the late accident on Cook Street. Councillor Walter Shears expressed regret that steps hadn’t been taken earlier to eliminate the dangerous ditch but thought that it was better late than never.
He then moved that the street committee study the hazard and report back to council as to the cost of having the ditch filled.
At this point, Councillor Louis Vigelius observed that electric lighting would soon be “shedding its rays over every part of the city”. He admitted that the ditch in question was a deep one, but said that there were others of greater priority in more frequented parts of town. The Cook Street ditch was in a quieter part of the city and if drivers exercised more care and attention, he thought, such accidents as that which befell Lieut. Lees wouldn’t be repeated before the city could take steps to remove the danger.
He then contradicted himself when he said that a gentleman of his acquaintance, one well acquainted with the ditch in question, had narrowly escaped a repetition of the Lees mishap just a few nights before despite his having been aware of the hazard’s proximity and his having exercised due care.
“All such dangerous nuisances,” Shears argued, should be removed regardless of cost or location (an oblique reference to the city’s ward system and jealousy among councillors).
His motion was then put to the vote, Councillors Shears and James approving his motion that the ditch be filled, Councillors Gribble and Vigelius voting against. Mayor Refern cast the deciding vote in favour of the resolution although with the qualifying comment that he didn’t consider the city to be at fault “in any way,” and that council wasn’t “bound to take such excessive precautions”.
After the monthly statement was read and referred to the finance committee, Councillor Grimble moved that a special meeting be called for Monday night for the second reading of bylaws, and the meeting was adjourned.
For Lieut. Lees, the involuntary protagonist of the tragedy, the matter was academic. On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 3rd, he slipped into delirium then a coma. Twenty-four hours later, he mercifully succumbed to “congestion of the brain”.
Previously, on Friday afternoon, he’d been able top give a detailed account of the accident. He said that he hadn’t seen the ditch in the darkness and crashed his horse and buggy into the chasm. Ironically, he’d been thrown clear, landing on his side without injury. He’d then entered the ditch to back his horse and trap free.
Unaware that the buggy had splintered upon impact, he backed the horse into a sharp obstruction, at which the animal reared in pain and fright and struck Lees full in the face with its forelegs.
“Thus,” mourned the Colonist, “in the midst of a promising career, cut off in the flower of his age, died this gallant officer.
“Of exceptionally fine physique, brimful of life and spirits, many perhaps who saw him drive away in the darkness of that fatal night, envied him the possession of such perfect health and brilliant prospects. But the issue of one fell moment deprived him of all these blessings and dealt him what [has] proved to be his death blow.
“Yesterday afternoon, four days after the accident, he became delirious and spoke of his wife and family as if they were around him.
“Though his life was devoted to his profession and his country he was denied the consolation in his dying moments of having given up that life in the service of his Queen. Though nursed with every solicitude that his friendship of brother officers could suggest, no wifely presence, no mother’s tender touch, soothed his last moments, which were passed in merciful unconsciousness of his approaching dissolution.
“And when time shall have softened the last bitterness of their loss, his family will be able to think calmly of a mound in the peaceful naval cemetery where his saving grace, heavy with dew, furnishes a symbol of sorrowful affection for one who died far away from his home and native land...”
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Beautiful Veterans’ Cemetery, Esquimalt, B.C. —Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Esquimalt Veterans’ Cemetery is one of the most beautiful on Vancouver Island, its headstones laid out in picture-perfect military formation. Poor Lieut. Hastings Rowley Lees died a horrible death, far from home and family, but he’s in good company.
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I said in my introduction that his is a tragedy so unlikely that I defy any fiction writer to make it up.