Not far from Victoria Mill stands another factory, called Dyson’s Mill, which at the time of the flood was occupied by Mr Jonathon Sandford, who resided in the mill yard with his two daughters aged ten and five years, and a housekeeper named Ellen Wood. 

The house was completely swept away, and nothing left standing except a portion of the walls. 

On the evening of February 4^th, Mr. Sandford had been informed of the unsafe condition of the reservoir, and was advised not to sleep at home; but Mr Sandford did not consider the danger sufficient enough to remove his family, and they all retired to rest, but in the morning not one of them remained to tell the tale. 

Mr Sandford was a person of considerable property, and it was said that he had a sum of £3,000 or £4,000 in the house at the time of the deluge. 

Just before the flood he had been in treaty for the purchase of a considerable estate near Penistone, and only that same week had given instructions to a Huddersfield Sharebroker to buy for him a large amount of London and North-western railway stock. 

It was also stated at the time that his life was insured for £1,000.

FINDING MR SANFORD’S BODY

Two of three days after the flood the bodies of Mr Sandford’s children and the house-keeper were found, but it was not till 20^th February – 15 days after the flood – that Mr Sandford’s body was found at Thongsbridge, although a reward of £100 was offered for its recovery.

The machinery in Sandford’s mill was damaged and two houses swept away. 
Of Mr Sandford’s property above mentioned not a particle was found with the exception of some title deeds, which were found embedded in Mr. Floyd’s garden at Sands, one mile away from the mill.

For two or three days proceeding the 20^th February there had been a sharp dry frost, which had lessened the streams and rendered the water in the river Holme much clearer. 

About nine o’clock in the morning of Friday, the 20^th February, a carter named Joseph Bray, while passing over the river at Thongsbridge with a horse and cart, observed something in the goit of the mill then run by Messrs. Robinson but did not stop to examine it, and casually mentioned the same to a youth named William Broadhead. 

Mr Broadhead went nearer to look at it, and came to the conclusion that it was bacon. 

He tried to draw it out, but not proving strong enough he went for John Crosland, and a companion of his fetched Hiram Earnshaw, two men who were employed by Mr Godfrey Mellor. 

These two went into the stream, and upon removing a portion of the mud surrounding the object they discovered it was a human body, and from certain marks on the back they at once identified it as that of Mr. Jonathon Sandford. 

The body was deeply embedded in the mud, as though it had been puddled in, and occupied fully half-an-hour before it could be released from its position. 

On being taken out of the water it was found to be dressed in a flannel shirt, linen shirt with a stock round the neck – the shirt being washed over the head, and wound tightly round the neck.

At the inquest on the body, Broadhead gave the following evidence:-
“On Friday, the 20^th February, I went to the river Holme for some water. 
I put my pail down, and then went on the bridge.  I saw part of a body laid in the water.  His feet would reach into the tail goit of Mr. Robinson’s Mill. 

I went home and fetched a mud-drag. 
There had been no one near the body whilst I was away. 

On returning I went down Mr Robinson’s yard and called Hiram Earnshaw’s sons.  They followed me to the place.  I went into the water so as to put the drag over the body.  I could not pull him out.

 Hiram Earnshaw’s son was coming, and I sent for John Crosland, the constable.  I remained with the body till he came.  It was not removed. 

Crosland, Hiram Earnshaw, Jonathon Brook, and two other masons removed the body into Hiram Earnshaw’s house, and it was afterwards removed to the Royal Oak, and afterwards to the Crown.

 When it was some men said it was Jonathon Sandford.”

A writer at the time of the flood thus gives his impressions of the appearance of the bodies as he saw them :-
“The children seemed to have suffered little, and to have made but little resistance to the overpowering flood, but the adults appeared to have struggled and suffered much. 

The faces were flushed; they exhibited bruises on various parts, and in some cases the expression was remarked to be that of surprise and consternation. 
This was remarked to be the case especially with Mr Sandford. 

Though living actually under the mill dam, and in the very course of the current, and warned of the danger impending over him and his family, and the next he was seen, it was above a fortnight after the catastrophe by which he had been surprised and destroyed. 

Well might his very remains exhibit the surprise of the moment in which he was awoke to a sense of danger, and called to meet death in such an awful form!”

Mr Sandford and family attended the Wesleylan Chapel at Holmfirth, and there his two wives had been interred. 

His family-tomb, being somewhat further from the river, and protected by the chapel, had escaped the violence of the flood by which so many others were destroyed; and it was ready to receive his two children and himself, as successively they were rescued from the retiring flood.

The Halifax Garden of march 6^th, contained the following account of Mr Sandford’s funeral, which was conducted by the Rev. W. Firth:-

“The Funeral of Mr Jonathon Sandford took place last Saturday, in the Wesleylan Burial-ground at Holmfirth. 

This unfortunate victim to the ‘raging waters’ was followed to the grave by a large retinue of sorrowing family and friends; and after the solemn sermon of interment the officiating minister took occasion to address those present in a very affectionate manner, touching upon the awful catastrophe by which so many homes had been made desolate, and endeavouring to impress the subject practically upon the hearts of his hearers.”