Islington and the Princess Alice Disaster

Speaker: Joan Lock
Time: 8:00 PM
Venue: Islington Town Hall, Upper Street, London N1 

The ramming of the Thames pleasure steamer the Princess Alice by a Tyne collier in 1878 resulted in the loss of around 650 lives and caused great distress in Islington. Among the local victims of this country's worst civilian disaster were well known publicans and their families; a ladies college mistress and her pupils and a poor women's Bible party. An Islingtonian even represented all of those lost when the inquest jury pronounced the cause of death. A dramatic and heartrending story.

Ex-nurse and policewoman Joan Lock, is the author of eleven, non-fiction police/crime books. These include two of Scotland Yard's First Detectives and a history of the British women police a subject on which she is an authority. Joan has also written radio plays and documentaries and more recently turned to crime fiction with short stories and seven novels - one modern and seven Victorian featuring the charismatic Detective Inspector Earnest Best. Two of the latter are partly set in Islington. One of these, Dead Born, is also set against the background of the Princess Alice disaster.