Alfred Shaw Mainman, always known as “Alf”, was born in Prahran, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in May 1895, the son of Alfred Reid and Elizabeth Sarah “Bessie” Mainman (née Dowsett). His father was a butcher, who had emigrated from England to Australia in 1882. He had an older brother named John V., known as “Jack”, who was born in 1894, and younger sister, Mary Frances, known as “Mollie”, born in 1898.
In July 1904, the entire family sailed on the Persic from Australia to England, arriving on the 3rd August. Presumably, they spent time with his father’s family, but it’s unlikely that his father found any work, for in April 1906, the family immigrated to Canada.
They first went to Saskatchewan, but then moved to 10535, Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta. Although his father began his working life as a grocer, he later qualified as an accountant and was employed in this capacity by Edmonton City Council in the treasury department there. In 1907, his mother gave birth to twins – a boy named Edwin Richard, known as “Eddie”, and a girl named Elizabeth Sarah, known as “Bessie”.
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In the spring of 1915, Alf’s grandparents in Exeter, Devonshire, England, had died and the family was requested to go there to wind up the family estate. Consequently, at the end of April 1915, all seven family members left Edmonton for New York where they joined the Cunarder Lusitania as second cabin passengers, at Pier 54, before she sailed for Liverpool on 1st May.
When the liner was sunk, six days out of New York, Alf Mainman was killed as were all the other adult members of the family, only the children surviving. As his body was never recovered and identified later, he has no known grave. He was aged 19 years.
Australia Birth Index 1788 – 1922, 1911 Census of Canada, UK Incoming Passenger Lists 1878 – 1960, UK Outward Passenger Lists 1890 – 1960, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Edmonton Journal, The Age, Liverpool Record Office, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/198, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Lawrence Evans, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.