 | | The Bell Inn |
The inquest was held on Saturday 22nd October at the Bell Inn in Golden Green which was the nearest available public room to the scene of the disaster.
It was held before D N Dudlow Esq, coroner and a jury of 12 local people, also present were a solicitor and a manager representing the Medway Navigation Company who had overall responsibility for the upkeep of the bridge.
Before the proceedings began the coroner made it clear that should the jury find that there had been any negligence or carelessness that charges of manslaughter could ensue.The proceeding began with eye witness accounts of the accident and the events leading up to it. Heavy rainfall for several days had caused flooding in the area and water was laying on the roads to a depth of several feet.
High crown
Consequently the farmer who had employed the pickers, Mr Cox of Hadlow, provided a wagon and a pair of horses so that they might be transported back in relays to their lodging without getting wet. The bridge itself was not under water as it had a high crown, but the approach roads on either side were submerged.
 | | Hartlake Bridge today |
The first journey passed uneventfully but when they were passing over the bridge for the second time the horses shied, the wagon slipped and the wheels of the wagon broke through the boards that skirted the wooden structure.
Despite the best efforts of the driver to pull the wagon clear it finally overturned throwing the occupants into the swollen river. Eleven of the passengers managed to scramble to safety but 35 others were quickly drawn below the surface of the fast flowing waters. Despite the best attempts of a party of men who quickly arrived on the scene from Mr Cox's farm no more survivors were found. The jury and other members of the inquest then visited the scene of the disaster together with the newspaper reporter who described the scenes they witnessed at the rivers edge:
 We found groups of the bereaved friends and relatives standing about in mute despair - others with animated gesticulations were describing the terrible catastrophe - some with long poles were probing the eddies and backwaters of the river for those that were lost. A little bareheaded shoeless girl was pointed out to us as having lost father and mother and infant brother. One man (Hearn) had lost 14 relatives - another whose face and mien were the personification of grief itself, threw a piece of wood to direct the men with poles to the spot where he had last caught a glimpse of his drowning wife. Only six of the bodies had been found; and 30 more it was believed were then to be discovered. It is scarcely possible to perceive a more distressing sight.
| | Newspaper reporter describing the scene at Hartlake Bridge |
Back at the Bell Inn later in the afternoon they heard more evidence, this time about the condition of the bridge. Some local witnesses submitted that they considered the bridge to be in a dangerous state as a number of the timbers were rotten and a Mr Johnson from Mereworth said that he always went the long way home rather than use the bridge.
The coroner himself also admitted that he didn't use the bridge but his reason was that when horses heard their hooves on the resonant wood they were likely to become restive and frightened.
'Defective'  | | The Bell Inn at Golden Green |
The jury subsequently left the room to consider their verdict. On readmission they returned their verdict to the effect that the deceased were accidentally drowned, and in the opinion of the jury: 'the accident arose entirely from the defective state of the road and the wooden bridge, and their dangerous construction, which ought before have been remedied.' Considering the tragedy to be an accident absolved of any responsibility in spite of the fact that the bridge was 'defective' and a 'dangerous construction' effectively denied the victims families the possibility of obtaining any recompense from the local Medway Navigation Company. The glorious days of hand hop picking finally came to an end during the 1960s after a period of intensive agricultural mechanisation that had begun during the second world war. | 
Hartlake memorial:news coverage of the tragedy
