by Steve Turner
THEO BRAILEY
Ronald Brailey continued his work as a clairvoyant. The International Congress of Spiritualists, which met in Liverpool in July 1912, announced that the loss of Theo Brailey and W. T. Stead on the Titanic “would do more for Spiritualists in the spirit than in the flesh.” He eventually moved to Shoreham by Sea, in Sussex, where in 1923 his home was burned down, destroying many of his private papers and photographs. The house was uninsured, so he had literally lost everything. He and his wife were forced to move back to London and live with their daughters. He died in February 1931, leaving an estate of £105 15s. 6d. Amy Brailey died in 1942.
Teresa Steinhilber never really recovered from the loss of her fiancé, Theo. He had been, she would later say, the love of her life. While recovering from the initial shock at Southport Convalescent Home, she noticed a group of women talking about her. When she queried them, one of them asked to read her palm and, as a result, predicted that she would marry and give birth to twins.
To a recently bereaved girl it seemed unlikely and became even less likely as the First World War reduced the population of eligible bachelors. Spinsterhood would become rife among her generation of British women and every young person, it seemed, had a maiden aunt. By the end of the war she was almost thirty years old and there were still no marriage prospects. She had started working in railway catering, initially as a hotel housekeeper and then as an administrator.
In 1924 the company she was working for, the Caledonian Railway Company, built a stunning hotel with its own station in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. Called the Gleneagles Hotel it was the height of luxury and appealed to a wealthy clientele used to accommodation standards set by hotels on the French Riviera. It had not only first-class catering and splendid rooms, but a top golf course. It was here that Teresa met Alexander “Sandy” Crawford, a forty-nine-year-old jute merchant from Glasgow, who was rich, charming, handsome, and single. They married in October 1928 and in 1931 she gave birth to twins— a daughter, Margaret, and a son, Alistair.
Teresa Steinhilber as an old woman with her son, Alistair Crawford.
It wasn’t a happy marriage. Sandy spent a lot of his time in India, showed little affection, and had an alcohol problem. When the jute company he worked for hit financial problems, he tried to save it by pouring in his own cash. It proved to be a bad investment. The company collapsed and he was left penniless. The family was forced to downsize dramatically and take in lodgers. During the Second World War, when he was over sixty, Sandy became a military censor and then disappeared for two years without explanation. His whereabouts were only discovered when the police found him unconscious at the foot of a flight of stairs he’d fallen down while drunk. They contacted Teresa.
Following Sandy’s death Teresa lived in Leicester and then Southport before making her final home in Scotland where she died in 1985 at the age of ninety-six. Although her family knew of her engagement to Theo Brailey, she rarely ever spoke of it and left behind no letters, photographs of them together, or mementos. According to her son, it was as if the pain was too deep and she felt that the marriage she made was never as good as the one she had imagined with Theo.
WALLACE HARTLEY
Maria Robinson, Wallace Hartley’s fiancée, never married. She moved to a house on the seafront at Bridlington, the town where Wallace had played in the Municipal orchestra, and died there of stomach cancer on June 28, 1939. Her estate of £739 105. was left to her sister Margaret, who was with her when she died. Although her death was noted in the local papers— “Robinson: On June 28, 1939, at Marine Drive, Bridlington, Maria, eldest daughter of the late B. L. H. Robinson, of Thorp Arch, Boston Spa”—there was no obituary or news story. Her connection with Wallace Hartley had either been forgotten or was something she kept to herself.
Elizabeth Hartley, Wallace’s mother, died in 1927, but Albion Hartley, who already looked old at Wallace’s funeral, continued until January 1934, when he died in Harrogate, Yorkshire, at the age of eighty-three of “senile decay.” Only one of the Hartley children, Mary Ellen Hartley, had children. Her marriage to Thomas Sellers in 1897 produced sons Ernest, George, and Frank, although George only lived until 1904. Ernest and Frank married but neither of them had children. So when they died, in 1984 and 1985 respectively, Albion Hartley’s immediate line came to an end. The closest relatives to Wallace Hartley would become the descendants of Albion and Elizabeth’s brothers and sisters.
PERCY TAYLOR
Clara Taylor, Percy’s widow, remarried in August 1918, after returning to live with her parents in Dulwich. Her third husband, forty-seven years old at the time, was an accomplished singer named Albert Pearce, who worked initially in light opera and then in the music halls. He’d been in the chorus of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company when he was seventeen, appearing in the 1887 premier of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore at the Savoy Theatre, and went on to become resident tenor for the Edison Bell Recording Company.
By the time he married, Albert’s best days as a vocalist were over and he performed in music halls with Clara as Talbot and Pearce. In the 1920s the couple moved to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset to be near her sister Minnie, who had married Percy’s brother, George. The four of them banded together to buy a restaurant in the town center, which they called Margaret’s Grill.
Clara didn’t discuss Percy Taylor. As far as she was concerned it was a relationship that hadn’t worked and she left it at that. She was very happy with her marriage to Albert, which lasted until his death in 1946. George Taylor died mysteriously in 1955 during a walking holiday in South Wales. He went out one day but never returned. There was no news for several days and then local fishermen in Bridgend found his body in the sea, a tragic echo of Percy’s death. Foul play wasn’t suspected. It was assumed that he suffered a heart attack or a stroke while on the beach and that his body had subsequently been washed away. Clara died just over a year later at the age of eighty-four.
FRED CLARKE
Ellen Clarke, Fred’s mother, was the most financially disadvantaged of the dependents. As a single mother since the disappearance of her husband, John Robert Clarke, she was reliant on her only son’s income. She was working as a fruiterer and no doubt there had been hopes that the sorting out of John Robert’s estate in America would benefit the family. She died in 1935.
WES WOODWARD
Although Martha Woodward was also a widow, she had six children who married and she was well looked after. Thomas remained at Magdalen College until December 1925, his daughter Eleanor marrying an agricultural expert who went to work in Ceylon and Phyllis marrying the world-renowned luthier Alfred Charles Langonet. Neither Eleanor nor Phyllis had any children.
GEORGES KRINS
As well as his parents, Georges Krins left behind a brother, Marcel, and two sisters—Anne and Madeleine. Anne died as a teenager in 1917 and Madeleine married Englishman George Dustow, with whom she had two children. Marcel married Lucie Moreau in 1919 and had a son, Georges Henri Krins, two years later. Georges died in 2006. Madeleine died in 1981 and her children, Marcelle and George, in 1999 and 2008 respectively.
In 1978 Madeleine Dustow, facing a difficult time financially, wrote to the Charity Commission to find out what became of the money from the Titanic Relief Fund.
That some fund existed at one time is known to me as when my father was ill in 1937 I was living with my husband and son in London. He was paid a small sum of five shillings a week by the association [from] funds resulting from the concert given in the Albert Hall for the men who were in the band of the Titanic and who went down with the ship. I have in my possession the programme of this concert.
I would like to know if this association or any other organisation [that] has been set up to administer a memorial fund still exists and, if not, to what use any residue money was put. I have had a life long interest in this matter as my brother was a member of the ship’s orchestra. I am an old woman of 83 years of age and I can assure you that my father, apar
t from the five shillings he had for about three months, never had any assistance from the association.
Yours faithfully,
Mrs. M. Dustow (nee Krins)
ROGER BRICOUX
A few days after receiving official confirmation that his son hadn’t been rescued, Leon Bricoux had cards printed that he then mailed to friends and family:
Mr and Mrs Bricoux and their son Gaston have the sad duty of informing you of the cruel loss that they have come to experience in the person of their son and brother
Roger Bricoux
Violinist
Aged 20 years and eleven months, victim of the sinking of the Titanic.
A mass will be said for the rest of our loved one, on Thursday May 2nd at 9:00 in the morning at l’Eglise Sainte-Devote in this parish.
Rest in peace.
Leon maintained an active interest in the official inquiry and the battle for compensation. He dutifully collected cuttings that made reference to his son and carried on correspondence with everyone from C. W. & F. N. Black to the French consul in London and with an American company planning a souvenir edition of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and wanting to include photos of the band.
Charlie and Frederick Black continued their business without any obvious repercussions from their involvement with the Titanic. In 1916 Charlie even made a trip across the Atlantic, sailing on the St. Louis from Liverpool to New York. By this time the brothers had moved home from Heron Road to a house called Ness Acre in the village of Willaston. The company stayed at 14 Castle Street until 1924, when it moved to 37 School Lane where it initially shared premises with the well-known Liverpool musical instrument manufacturers Crane & Sons Ltd.
Entrance to 14 Castle Street, Liverpool, former office of the Black Brothers.
The agency was still a going concern in 1934, when Frederick drew up his will and bequeathed to Charlie his “share of the profits, capital (if any) and goodwill in the firm known as C.W. F. N. [sic] Black Music Directors of 37 School Lane, Liverpool,” but appears to have been wound up between 1939 and 1942. There was no mention of the business in the will that Charlie updated in 1946 when he was living at his final home on South Parade, West Kirby, overlooking the River Dee.
The wills of the two brothers offer a rare insight into their connections and interests. Frederick was the first to die, on October 14, 1945, and his will took up less than half a page. He was clearly the junior partner and his final wishes betrayed no outside interests or concern for posterity. The freehold of the house belonged to Charlie. Other than his share of the agency, all he had to leave was five hundred B shares in Central Equipment Ltd. (which he left to a friend named Andrew Orr) and a gross worth of £27,090 6s. 4d.
Charlie died less than a year later, on September 16, 1946, and his detailed will covered eight pages. His home and furniture were to pass to his sister Elizabeth, then living in Llandudno, North Wales, and the value of the rest of his possessions, along with his bank balance of £56,906, was to be put into a trust fund, the income of which would go to Elizabeth. On her death, £1000 would be paid to two cousins and the rest would be divided among a number of charities, including the National Sea Training School, the Children’s Convalescent Home in West Kirby, the Halle Orchestra Pension Fund, and the Liverpool Radium Institute. He seemed particularly keen that he and his brother shouldn’t be forgotten in the musical community and provided £10,000 to the Royal Academy of Music in London to establish the Charles William Black Trust Student Fellowship (which is still awarded), £2,000 to the Musicians Benevolent Fund in memory of Frederick Nixon Black, and £1,500 to the Royal Manchester College of Music for the Frederick Nixon Black Scholarship.
When Elizabeth Alderson Black died on January 14, 1955, she specified that £100 of her money (she left £47,380 gross) should be invested by the Parish Church of Roby, Lancashire, to maintain the graves of her parents, William and Emma, and her sister Florence; and £100 similarly invested by the Parish Church of West Kirby, Cheshire, for the upkeep of the churchyard “and particularly the grave therein of my brothers Frederick Nixon Black and Charles William Black.”
St. Bridget, the Parish Church of West Kirby, is a short walk from the last home lived in by the Black brothers. Charlie and Frederick, along with their sister Elizabeth, lie beneath a plain, horizontal, gray-green stone in the southeast corner of the churchyard. Chiseled into the stone and faint from weathering are simply their names and dates. There is nothing to indicate their connection with the most famous shipwreck in modern history.
JOCK HUME
The most dramatically affected of the musicians’ families was that of the Humes. Not only did Andrew Hume suffer the indignity of being taken to court by his son’s fiancée, but he also lost his home because of the missing violins, which today would be valued collectively at more than £500,000.1 Andrew, by now approaching fifty, felt desperate about his financial situation. Within such a short time he had gone from being a hero’s father to a discredited music teacher with no home or savings. Two of his daughters got on so badly with their stepmother that they’d left home—Grace, twenty-three, to become a nurse in Huddersfield and Kate, seventeen, to live in a nearby lodging house. It appeared that things couldn’t get worse. But they did.
Kate was working as a clerk at the office of a local electrical company when, on August 10, 1914, she claimed, a nurse calling herself Miss Mullard came in and asked to speak to her. The woman, whom she had never seen before, said that she had worked with her sister Grace at a military hospital at Vilvorde, near Brussels, and was bringing the sad news that Grace had been murdered by German soldiers who had subsequently burned down the hospital. She gave Kate a handwritten letter supposedly composed by Grace as she died. A separate letter, written by the woman, explained the background.
Miss Mullard’s letter read:
I have been asked by your sister, Nurse Grace Hume, to hand the enclosed letter to you. My name is Nurse Mullard, and I was with your sister when she died. Our camp hospital at Vilvorde was burned to the ground and out of 1517 men and 23 nurses only 19 nurses were saved, but 149 men managed to get clear away.
I expect to pass through Dumfries about the 15th September but am writing this in case I should not see you. Your sister gave me your address, so, as I know Dumfries well, I shall send it to your office, if I do not see you. As there is a shortage of nurses in at Inverness, 15 of us are to be sent there. Grace requested me to tell you that her last thoughts were of Andrew and you, and that you were not to worry over her as she would be going to meet “her Jock.” These were her words.
She endured great agony in the last hours. One of the soldiers (our men) caught 2 German soldiers cutting off her left breast her right one having already been cut off. They were killed instantly by our soldiers. Grace managed to scrawl this enclosed note before I found her. We can all say that your sister was a heroine. As she was a “loose nurse”—that is, she was out on the fields looking for wounded soldiers—and on one occasion when bringing in a wounded soldier a German attacked her. She threw the soldier’s gun at him and shot him with her rifle. Of course, all nurses here are armed.
I have just received word this moment to pack for Scotland, so will try and get this handed to you as there is no post from here, and we are making the best of a broken down wagon truck for a shelter. Will give you fuller details when I see you. We are all quite safe here now, as there have been reinforcements.
I am, yours sincerely,
J. M. Mullard
Nurse, Royal Irish Troop
(Am not allowed to say which special troop.)
The letter signed by Grace was dated September 6. The writing slanted on the page and the words were spidery. The last sentence appeared unfinished and the signature gave the impression of having been written by someone who was torn away as she wrote.
Dear Kate,
This is to say Goodbye. Have not long to live. Hospital has been set on fire. Germans cruel. A man here has had his head cut off and my
right breast taken away. Give my love to Goodbye Grac x
According to Kate, as soon as she read the letter she broke down. Within hours the story had spread through the small town. When a policeman visited Andrew Hume’s home, his wife allegedly muttered that Grace had “got the death she deserved” but Andrew remained suspicious, first because as far as he knew she was still in Huddersfield and, second, she wasn’t qualified to work on a battlefield. To the policeman he said, “Grace couldn’t nurse nobody.”
Journalists from the Dumfries Standard interviewed Kate on September 14 and on September 16 a story headlined “Terrible Death of a Dumfries Nurse” appeared in the paper. National newspapers in London subsequently picked up the story. When Grace read news of her own tragic death, she immediately sent her father a telegram that read: “Reports untrue. Safe in Huddersfield.”
On September 17 she wrote to him in more detail:
I am sorry you have been made miserable by the false report. I knew nothing about it until yesterday when I saw placards in town “Terrible Murder of Huddersfield Nurse.” I bought a (Huddersfield) Post and saw the report. On arriving home I found a reporter waiting. I gave him details … Then I thought I’d better wire you straight away.
You say you heard about it on Saturday. It is an absolute mystery to me. I neither know, nor yet have I heard of such a person as Nurse Mullard. Neither have I been out of Huddersfield since war was declared. I certainly volunteered to go. Will you please forward any particulars regarding this affair? I have been informed this morning that the police may take it up. I hope they will. I should like very much to find out who this Nurse Mullard is …
I am again very sorry that you should be put to any trouble and inconvenience at all but I hope you will understand that it is as much a worry and trouble to me as well. The person who concocted the tale evidently knows all about us. I am trusting you will send me these particulars. Yours, Grace.
