The Band That Played On (32 page)

During the next two years, the immensity of the
Titanic
tragedy would be pored over in many books, magazines, and newspaper specials, but in the summer of 1914 came the start of the First World War and deaths on a previously unimaginable scale. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, more than twenty thousand British troops were killed—the equivalent of thirteen
Titanic
disasters. By the end of the conflict, almost six million soldiers fighting against Germany had lost their lives. The war helped push the
Titanic
to the back of people’s minds as words such as
tragedy
and
disaster
took on new and deeper meanings.

15
“T
HE
S
WEETS
OF
N
OTORIETY.
”

I
f they had not died on April 15, 1912, almost all the musicians would have had to fight in France and perhaps half of them wouldn’t have returned. When Roger Bricoux didn’t respond to the French call-up in 1914, he was registered as a deserter even though he had been dead for two years. At the age of thirty-six, Frederick Nixon Black of C. W. & F. N. Black found himself in the British army, first with the Royal Defence Corps in Hereford, and then after the war, with the Manchester Regiment handling German prisoners. Theo Brailey, had he lived, would have been called back to the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Passenger ships continued crossing the Atlantic during the early part of the war in the belief that they were of no strategic value to the enemy. That view changed on May 7, 1915, when a German U-boat sank the
Lusitania
off the Irish coast, with the loss of 1,198 lives, an action that helped drag America into the war. The
Arabic
, the ship that had brought Wallace Hartley’s body back from Boston, was torpedoed in August 1915. The great liners were repainted in dull grays or with dazzle camouflage and put to military use. The
Olympic
became a troop ship, as did the
Megantic
. The
Mauretania
at first carried troops during the campaign in Gallipoli, and then became a floating hospital. The
Oruba
was scuttled in Greece to create a breakwater, the
Carmania
became an Armed Merchant Cruiser fitted with eight 4.7-inch guns, and a U-boat sank the
Carpathia
off the east coast of Ireland in July 1918.

Some of the musicians’ relatives initially stayed in touch with each other, united by the cause of getting the right financial recompense. Leon Bricoux and Auguste Krins met up in Paris with survivor Pierre Maréchal to try and make some sense of what had happened to their sons. Clara Taylor and Martha Woodward were in correspondence over the
Titanic
Relief Fund, and Andrew Hume, Ronald Brailey, and Leon Bricoux had contact over the case against C. W. & F. N. Black.

T
HEO
B
RAILEY

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.

W
ALLACE
H
ARTLEY

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.

P
ERCY
T
AYLOR

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.

F
RED
C
LARKE

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.

W
ES
W
OODWARD

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.

G
EORGES
K
RINS

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, apart from the five shillings he had for about three months, never had any assistance from the association.

Yours faithfully,
Mrs. M. Dustow (nee Krins)

R
OGER
B
RICOUX

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.