Monday, February 9, 2009
Mysteries A Strange Death in Court Square
Posted by Vance Lauderdale on Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 9:16 PM
Of all of our city’s parks, downtown’s Court Square probably seems the unlikeliest place for anybody to die by drowning. After all, it’s blocks away from the Mississippi River, and the square’s historic fountain is too shallow to be a hazard. Besides, there’s a cast-iron fence around the entire basin.
But when the massive fountain was unveiled back in 1876, topped with the statue of Hebe, that octagonal basin was actually a concrete moat more than six feet deep, often stocked with catfish, turtles, and — if you can believe some accounts — a couple of alligators. And there was no fence around it. If anybody thought the showpiece of Court Square was a hazard, they never worried about it until the afternoon of August 26, 1884.
That day, 10-year-old Claude Pugh, described as “a newsboy and small for his age,” was sitting on the stone rim of the fountain, playing with a toy boat in the water. He leaned too far over and tumbled in, and since the bottom of the fountain was sloped, and slippery from algae, he couldn’t regain his footing.
What’s incredible is that the park was filled with visitors that day who could have saved the boy, but didn’t. “There were a number of men, women, and children in the square at the time,” reported the Memphis Daily Appeal, “and not an effort was made to save him. Stalwart men did not move a muscle, but stood silently by with staring eyes and gaping mouths.”
After struggling for several minutes, Pugh slipped beneath the surface. Newspaper editors expressed their outrage at the people who witnessed the tragedy: “Their hearts must have been made of stone, and the milk of human kindness in their breasts sour whey. More consideration should have been given a dumb beast.”
Finally called to the scene, it took a fireman more than 15 minutes to recover the boy’s body from the murky water. By that time it was too late. Little Claude Pugh, “the only son of a widow of good family and her chief pride and comfort,” was buried in Elmwood Cemetery. No gravestone marks the site today.
PHOTO COURTESY MEMPHIS AND SHELBY COUNTY ROOM, BENJAMIN HOOKS CENTRAL LIBRARY
Comments (2)
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Wow, that is so sad! Why would they do that? I am looking for the history of this fountain, as it's where my mother met my father in the 60's. I looked at the Pink Palace this weekend, to no avail. I was wondering if you could send me some link or way to find out more about it? I think it has to do with the nurses that served during the Yellow Fever epidemic but can't be for sure! Thank you, I am enjoying reading these things about Memphis. Sadly, I wont forget poor Claude Pugh.
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Unfortunately, not everything can be found by clicking on a link. In this case, I recall reading (possibly in one of Paul Coppock's fine books) about the drowning in the Court Square fountain, and spent quite some time scanning microfilms of old Memphis newspapers before I found the actual story and could provide more details. Then it was off to Elmwood to try to find Pugh's gravesite. The story of the fountain itself is told in many local history books. What's especially interesting is that it was ordered from a catalog from the Mott Iron Works of New York City and then shipped to Memphis for assembly in 1876. Because it was a "standard" design, other cities — especially Bowling Green, Kentucky — have similar fountains.
