Medway drowning (1915)

Post date: May 06, 2014 9:9:4 AM

Extract from South Eastern Gazette of 22nd June 1915:

WATERINGBURY DROWNING CASE.

A SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT.

As reported in our last issue, an inquest was held at Wateringbury on the 12th inst. on the body of an unknown man, thought to be between 25 and 30 years of age, which had been recovered from the Medway on the pre­vious Wednesday. It was only clad in a shirt and tie, and the features were practically beyond identification on account of decomposition. The jury returned a verdict of "Found Drowned.”

The shirt and tie found on the body have since been identified as belonging to Ernest Cole, aged 17, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Wil­liam Cole, of Langton, near Tunbridge Wells who, about a week before the finding of the body, had failed to return home after cycling to Sittingbourne to visit his sister.

It was subsequently discovered that an escaped prisoner from the Borstal Reformatory at Rochester, who had been recaptured between the date of Cole’s disappearance and the Inquest on the "unknown man” was wearing Cole’s cloth­ing. The youth was one of two who had escaped from Borstal, and were arrested on June 4th in the neighbourhood of Wateringbury. The two boys have stated to the police that they were lying by the riverbank when Cole came along, took off his clothes, and jumped into the river. When he reached mid-stream he sank and did not rise again. They were so frightened that they did not know what to do, so after a time they picked up the man’s clothes and "cleared off.” Afterwards in the wood, one of them changed his Borstal clothes for those of the man who had jumped into the river. The police, it is stated, do no doubt the statement made by the two runaways from Borstal, who may be charged with stealing the dead man’s clothes.