Nearly every bone in worker’s body broken
The St. Catharines Standard’s morning coverage of the death of David Radford opened with the tragic news, “The Welland Ship Canal claimed another victim …”
About 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 27, 1930, Radford was oiling a water pump when a piece of his clothing became caught in the equipment’s moving machinery.
According to the resulting inquest and other reports, Radford’s body was picked up and either wrapped around a pump shaft or caught up in the machinery’s belting. There were no witnesses to the horrific accident. His body was found on the ground by the on-site foreman. The Standard stated that he died instantly, “nearly every bone in his body being broken.”
Radford was born in 1880 in Staffordshire, England (now part of West Midlands County). He was the youngest of 11 children born to Samuel and Selina (Oakley) Radford.
Growing up, before coming to North America, Radford had worked as a labourer, steel smelter and gas worker. He married Fanny Susannah Ryder on Nov. 3, 1901, and together they had six children: H. Harold, Lenora, David, Samuel, William and Doris. The first three children were born in England, the youngest three in Canada.
Radford immigrated to Canada in April 1906 with his brother-in-law Albert Ryder. They sailed on the R.M.S. Caronia. Eighteen months later, Radford sent for his family to join him in their new home. Radford and Ryder found work in St. Catharines as labourers in a tool factory.
Radford served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, enlisting in January 1916 and becoming a gunner in the 49th Battery. He was injured several times through non-combatant mishaps, including in November 1916 when he fell from his horse while on parade, badly injuring his knee and thereby removing him from any front-line service. In 1918, Radford was granted the Good Conduct Badge, and was discharged in April of the following year.
As for his brother-in-law and travel partner, Ryder, he also enlisted in St. Catharines for the war, just a week before Radford. Ryder died in action with the Central Ontario Regiment on Nov. 11, 1917 and is buried at Poelcapelle British Cemetery in Belgium.
After the war, Radford made a living delivering coal. For several years, he also found occasional work on the Welland Canal before becoming a pump operator for one of the canal’s main contractors, Peter Lyall & Sons Construction Co, Ltd. He was noted as being “a reliable workman.”
News of Radford’s death spread quickly through the canal’s administration. Division engineer Carl West wrote a letter the morning of the accident to engineer-in-charge Alexander Grant stating that this was “the fourth fatal accident on Section No. 4.” Grant then sent a quick telegram to Col. Arthur-Édouard Dubuc, chief engineer of the Department of Railways and Canals, reporting on the incident, followed by a formal letter to Dubuc two days later with more details and a note that an inquest was going to take place “in Thorold on February 4th next.”
The inquest jury of 10 men listened to testimonies from doctors, foremen and workers. The pump foreman, H.H. Clark, who discovered Radford’s lifeless body after investigating “a peculiar noise” in the adjoining pump house, informed the jury that Radford had been “wearing two sweaters and a coat at the time, the top sweater and coat being open …” probably suggesting that his loose clothing was a contributory cause to the accident. The inquiry also revealed that safeguards were not usually placed on such machinery to protect the workers.
In the end, the jury determined that this was an accidental death and recommended to the Compensation Board “that movable pumps of the order used by Radford might be in [the] future particularly and properly guarded.”
With his death, Radford left behind a widow and four surviving children. He is buried at Victoria Lawn Cemetery.