Person:Alice Hobson (3)

Alice Hobson was born the sixth of nine siblings in Frodingham, Lincolnshire, England. When she was about 23, Alice married Joseph Dinsdale at St John the Baptist church in Whitton, Lincolnshire with witnesses Francis Hobson (possibly Alice's Uncle), Thomas Walker and Joseph's sister, Hannah Dinsdale. Alice and Joseph lived in Whitton where they had five children, Joseph was a farmer and Alice was a shopkeeper, prior to her demise which was well documented in the nearby Hull Packet, newspaper and reprinted a few days later in the London, Morning Gazette.

The violent end of Alice Dinsdale of Whitton

Wednesday 7th June 1837 at 6am and Whitton shopkeeper Alice Dinsdale was waiting on board the Hull to Gainsborough steam packet, The Union, for it to leave on the short journey from the Humber Dock Basin at Hull to Whitton. She had just two minutes to live. As The Union cast off there was a rumbling and its boiler blew up with a tremendous explosion, throwing large bits of metal 80 ft into the air and raining corpses onto, and through, the roofs of Minerva Terrace alongside the dock. In that instant thirteen passengers and crew died. Some bodies were never found, but Alice Dinsdale’s was retrieved from a neighbouring steam packet, The Don, and was interred in Whitton churchyard. A piece of doggerel on her gravestone reads :

Stop my friend and view my stone, Consider well where I have gone.

Prepare yourselves make no delay, For in a moment I was call'd away.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} .

   http://www.diplomate.freeserve.co.uk/whitton.htm
   Hull Packet , Friday, 9 June 9, 1837;
   Morning Chronicle (London) Monday, 12 June , 1837.

2. ↑ .

   "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N6Z4-V8H : accessed 04 Jul 2014), Alice Hobson, 30 Aug 1795; citing Frodingham, Lincolnshire, England, reference 2:3NKCGJG; FHL microfilm 1450417.

3. ↑ .

   http://www.freereg.org.uk/cgi/SearchResults.pl?RecordType=Baptisms&RecordID=7809896&v=MTQwNDUxNDg4OTowNDBiMjQyZTcwZTYwMmIyMDdiYWNlNGRlYjYwN2U1MjU0YzJhNmUx