Riverside sisters perish after gas leak tragedy

One of Stirling’s worst domestic tragedies occurred 90 years ago when three sisters died in a gas escape.

Catherine, Helen and Isabella Wilson were overcome by fumes in adjoining bedrooms in the house they shared in Sutherland Avenue, Riverside.

Reporting on the incident, the Observer told how around 4am on

July 16, 1929, the girls’ mother – who was sleeping with their sister Jessie in a ground-floor room – woke and detected a small of gas.

She at first thought nothing of it as there was no gas being used in the house but an hour later, about to leave for her charring work at the Post Office, she noticed that the smell of gas was more pronounced and went to investigate.

`Mrs Wilson opened the scullery door and found the apartment full of gas escaping from a service pipe leading through wooden casing from the main. It was about a yard from the stopcock that originally supplied a meter which had been taken away’, the Observer said.

Told to wake her sisters, Jessie ran up to the bedroom where 21-year-old

Catherine and Helen, 18, had been sleeping . The teenager found the room full of gas and both siblings lying apparently dead. Sixteen-year-old Isabella was discovered in the next room in a similar condition.

Mrs Wilson later told the paper: “Just as I was leaving, Jessie came running out shouting hysterically `my sisters, my sisters. Oh mother, mother, mother’. Rushing into the house I was horrified to see my three young daughters lying in their beds evidently unconscious.”

The family flagged down a passing cyclist who was asked to inform police and call for medical help then Mr and Mrs Wilson and Jessie `carried or rather dragged’ the bodies downstairs and out on to the lawn at the front of the house.

“We tore the clothes from their necks, rubbed them and slapped them and tried everything we knew to bring them round,” said Mrs Wilson.

“We tried to give them drinks and I broke a bottle of champagne which had been lying in the house, but all our work was in vain.

“Catherine, or Kate as we called her, was the only one to show any signs of life after we made the discovery of their plight but while she looked up at me, she never spoke and died almost immediately.”

A doctor was quickly on the scene and confirmed that all three girls were dead.

The Observer said that the escape of gas had risen through the property and overcome the occupants of the upstairs bedrooms. Mr Wilson, who was disabled as a result of a motor accident, escaped as did his wife and the two other family members because they were sleeping downstairs.

A neighbour, Mrs Rodgers, did what she could to comfort the family following the tragedy which, said the Observer `cast a gloom not only over the Riverside district but throughout the town’.

Mrs Rodgers was of the view that the gas escape had come from inside the tragic family’s house and she sought to scotch rumours that the cause of the escape had been digging outside the property.

Mr Wilson, originally, from Lanarkshire, was well known in

Stirling having lived in the area for many years. Mrs Wilson was born in Stirling and eldest daughter Catherine was the housekeeper and, said the paper, “made a charming hostess.”

Helen, a nursemaid, was an accomplished musician and medal winner for vocal solos at Stirlingshire Music Festival. The youngest victim, Isabella, worked with purveyors Messrs Keith and Ralston.

All members of the family were connected to Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.