William Phillip 10th July 1845 ~ 8th Sep 1874Tragic Death at Gagies Quarry, Murroes, Angus, Scotland.

This was written for my husband and his family.

William Phillip was Alexander Brown Herd’s grandfather. Alexander’s parents were called William Henderson Herd and Williamina Phillip. Williamina’s father William Phillip was born in July 1845 in Inverkeillor, in Forfarshire (Angus), Scotland.

Location of Inverkeillor and Murroes.

William Phillip was the fourth of nine children of William and Betsy Phillip, William Phillip senior was a quarry labourer of one form or another all his life.

In the 1871 census, William Phillip the son was 25 and was working as a farm labourer, in June that year he married Margaret Paterson in the nearby parish of St Vigeans, almost exactly nine months later, in April 1872 their first daughter, Jane Ann Phillip was born.

But a terrible tragedy struck the young family. On 8th September 1874, William Phillip died of accidental drowning at Gagie Quarry, in Murroes, where he was working.

William’s death registration is shown here, there is a small note on the side which if you zoom in, says “result of force of suction”. His death was registered by his brother John Phillip who also worked at the quarry.

Because it was an accidental death, it would have had to be checked out by the Procurator Fiscal’s Office and a postmortem would have been carried out.

Amended entry following post mortem.

My theory is that rainwater had accumulated in the bottom of the quarry and it was being suctioned out, and William fell in and was drowned by the force of the suction.

There was nothing reported in the newspapers.

William’s wife Margaret was 7 months pregnant, and two months after this tragedy she gave birth to her second daughter, Williamina Phillip (named after her father). Williamina never knew her father.

Margaret never married again and raised her two daughters alone. I found a record of her as an “annuitant” in the 1891 census, and I suspect she was given a pension to live on following her husband’s death, and it may have been a condition of the pension that if she married again she would lose the pension. Margaret died in 1936 at the age of 86 in the home of her daughter Jane in Carnoustie.