I know that this event took place in Leeds, but he was on his way home to Pudsey and his brothers lived in Idle. I knew from a memorial inscription that the brother of my 4 x great grandfather died by drowning in Leeds just before Christmas 1818. I thought that the event could have been recorded in the local newspaper and found this article in the Leeds Intelligencer for Monday 28 December 1818. "Another fatal accident occurred on Tuesday night in consequence of the very unsafe state in which the Leeds and Liverpool Canal basin near to Water Lane in this town is suffered still to remain. On the above night, about eleven o'clock, Mr. John Lobley, a mill-owner at Farnley, and Mr. John Whitfield, a cloth-searcher, at Pudsey, left the Queen's Head at Mill-Hill, both on one horse, and proceeded over Leeds Bridge towards Farnley. Soon after they had passed the small bridge leading out of Water Lane towards the canal, one of them observed it was a dismal dark night, and it was well they were so perfectly acquainted with their way. This conversation was scarcely finished before the horse, owing to the fog, quitted the road, and fell with its riders into the old Canal basin. Some time after, Mr. West, master of a stone-vessel lying in the basin, being alarmed by the cries of some person in distress, hastened from his cabin and, with the assistance of Mr. Andrew Coulman, ! and his mate, and some of the workmen employed by the Union Company, rescued Mr. Lobley and his horse from their perilous situation. Whitfield had sunk to rise no more, and though diligent search was made for his remains the body was not found till Friday, having floated from the place where they had plunged into the water, on the south side of the old basin, to the north east corner of the new basin at the point nearest to the Waterloo Ford. On Thursday night, a respectable tradesman, in this town, missed his road, and walked into the new basin: he too would have perished, had he not been an expert swimmer. Blame certainly attaches somewhere for the dangerous state in which both the canal basins are left. We will not now longer dwell on what has unfortunately occurred - but we most sincerely trust that the possibility of future accidents will be guarded against without delay, and as effectually as possible." Immediately underneath that article was this one: "The family of Buonaparte have been allowed to appoint M. Beauregard to go to St. Helena as physician: he attended at Elba." It brings history home, doesn't it ?! If anyone else is reseaching the WHITFIELDs of Idle, Pudsey, Calverley, Horsforth or thereabouts please get in touch. I've been concentrating on that line for the past couple of years and have lots of information. Marilyn Maybury