They arrived at the Windsor Station at about half-past four in the afternoon. Six of the freight cars contained Norwegian emigrants; another of the freight cars contained emigrants and baggage; the two second-class cars also contained emigrants; the two other freight cars contained baggage. . . . There were about 600 passengers in all arrived by this train . . . There was one person dead in the first of the freight cars containing emigrants in the train when it reached Windsor, and there were thirty-three of the emigrants fell upon the platform of the Station just after they got out of the cars, having been attacked with cholera.11
Dr Alfred E. Dewson, the only physician in the village of Windsor, was called to the Station House to attend the sick. He described the experience as follows:
On repairing to the Station House I found three or more cars standing there; I cannot say precisely how many cars, but the passengers had been disembarked and were scattered about; they were about 200 in number; they were all foreigners; emigrants; Norwegians, as I was told; I could not understand their language nor could they make themselves understood; my attention was first drawn to body of a man lying dead in one of the freight cars; he had died of cholera; I was informed that he had died that day on his way down from Baptiste Creek from whence I was told those emigrants had been brought; I forthwith gave all the attention in my power to the remainder of the emigrants; I found several of them sick in various stages of cholera. . . .
My impression is that there were no cases of cholera out of the second-class cars; those persons who fell upon the platform, after the arrival of the cars, came out of the freight cars. The freight cars are twenty-nine feet by eight feet and a half inside measure. I am quite satisfied that the emigrants who died of cholera were all, or nearly all, among those that were detained at Baptiste Creek.12
Dr. Dewson, with the permission of the railway authorities, took all of the sick Norwegians to a storehouse belonging to the Great Western Railway, where he provided them with food and blankets. The weather at the time was intensely hot.
The following morning, Monday 3 July, a farmer from Amherstburg came to Windsor and found a distressing scene at the Station House. At the inquest he described it as follows:
On arriving, was informed that a large number of Emigrants, foreigners, supposed to be Norwegians, had arrived in Windsor, by a train of the Great Western Railway Company, on the preceding evening, and that many of them were sick of the cholera. He immediately offered his assistance to attend upon the sick, and continued to attend upon them during the whole month of July. At this time there were about sixty persons lying sick, some about the Railway Depot, and others who had been conveyed to Troy [Moy]. To the best of my estimation fifty, at least, died of Cholera or of its effects. Heard that about six hundred Emigrants had been brought to Windsor, and this led him to inquire into the manner and means of conveyance provided for them. Found that a great portion of the said Emigrants had been conveyed to Windsor in freight cars temporarily fitted for their reception. . . .
From the enquiries made personally, as well as from the evidence produced before the Inquest, understood that on an average at least fifty Emigrants had been placed in each car.
On Monday, 3 July nine of the Norwegians died and were buried immediately. Others became ill. For about 11 days the cholera continued to spread among the emigrants. The station master later estimated that of those who arrived on the train on 2 July at least 57 adults died as well as a number of children.
At the inquest the Reeve of Windsor, Samuel McDonell, gave evidence of the treatment of the sick immigrants by the villagers of Windsor. An excerpt from his evidence follows:
As chairman of the Board of Health, I had several communications with different officers of the Great Western Railway Company, on the subject of providing for the sick and the burial of the dead; and it was arranged between Mr. David D. Chapman, on behalf of the Company, and the Board of Health, that the Board of Health should be allowed to use a storehouse of the Company, at Moy, about a mile north of Windsor on the Detroit River, as a Cholera Hospital, until the 11th of August last, and the Company were to defray the expense of providing coffins for the burial of the emigrants who might die from cholera, and that all emigrants should be left at Moy, and transported across the river from that point to Detroit. These arrangements were adhered to by the Company until the 11th of August last, when they ceased, and the Company refused to bury the dead or to renew these arrangements at all. The expense occasioned to the Municipality of Windsor by the necessity imposed upon it of providing for those afflicted with cholera was £125, besides private subscriptions and gratuitous services rendered by the humane of the village.13
At the inquest the station master spoke of the difficulty he had in handling the situation, an overwhelming one for a village with only 750 inhabitants, one doctor, and no hospital facilities. He said:
I was among the cholera patients night and day during the continuance of the malady, and had frequently to superintend the burial of the dead; the men under me refusing to perform the service without my sharing in the danger. I received great assistance from Dr. Alfred K. Dewson, of Windsor, Doctor Hewitt, of Detroit, and several other medical men from Detroit, who volunteered their professional services. And Mr. Isaac Askew, of Windsor, was most indefatigable in his attention to the sick, being constantly with them night and day, and rendered them every assistance he possibly could — having been unable, from his unremitting attention, to take off his clothes from the Monday to the Thursday after the cholera first broke out — and he still continued his exertions until the cholera disappeared. Mr. John McEwen also aided us until he himself was taken ill with the cholera; Mrs. McEwen also paid great attention to the females who were attacked by the disease, and behaved in an exceedingly humane and courageous manner. J.W. Blackadder also rendered us very material assistance, and some few others aided us in a lesser degree but there was a general panic, and it was impossible to get nurses and nearly so to find persons to bury the dead.
In August the epidemic gradually came to a halt, but it was not soon forgotten. It was decided to hold an inquest to consider the role which the Great Western Railway had played in the deaths of so many emigrants. On 25-28 November 1854 the inquest was held in London, Ontario, with evidence on oath from the witnesses quoted above as well as that of several others. There was no doubt that Dr. Alfred Dewson believed that the Great Western was at fault. He said:
They might have landed from shipboard with the disease lurking about them, as Emigrant ships are often very dirty. The car in which the death took place was not the usual car for the accommodation of passengers, it was a freight car. The Emigrants were not physically so strong as the usual class of Emigrants; they were particularly dirty and filthy in their habits and persons. It would be imprudent to put such a class of people in great numbers in a car.
The new Chairman of the Board of Health of Windsor who had meantime replaced Samuel McDonell in this position, read a letter at the inquest in which he protested, on behalf of the people of Windsor:
. . . against the reckless conduct shewn by the employees, of the Company, at Hamilton, in cooping up within close freight cars at this hot season of the year emigrants lately landed from shipboard. From the verdict of the Jurors on the Coroner’s Inquest, held on the bodies of some of these poor unfortunates (with which we believe you have already been furnished), you will perceive that blame is attached to the Company through their employees for forwarding them to this point in such ill-ventilated cars, and we will venture to say scarcely adapted for the conveyance of cattle, much less of human beings.
In fact all the employees here did their duty on the trying occasion faithfully and well, but if these scenes are to be repeated as it is even now whispered that there are more emigrants on their way to the West, we don’t know how diseased they may be, we venture to say that their patience will be completely exhausted, as even now difficulty being found in procuring men to put the bodies of these victims of cholera into their coffins and graves.14
