Alice Maud Lines was born in Saxmundham, Suffolk, England, on the 18th December 1896, the daughter of William John and Alice Matilda Lines (née Hall). She was the third eldest of six children and her father was a cabinet maker. The family home was at Fairfield Road, Saxmundham.
After leaving school as a teenager, Alice entered domestic service, working as a kitchen maid for the Heywood family at Friston House, Saxmundham. Then, in 1914, she was engaged as a children’s maid by the Pearl family, who were from America, but were living in Folkestone, Kent, at that time.
Frederic Warren Pearl was a qualified medical surgeon, and having served as a Surgeon-Major with the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War of 1898, was now retired. He had married Amy Lea Duncan in 1909, and between 1910 and 1914, he and his wife had three children – Stuart, Susan, and Amy. Amy was born in Folkestone in February 1914.
Shortly after Alice Lines was engaged by the family as their children’s nurse, and the birth of Amy Pearl, Frederic Pearl and his entire family, accompanied by Alice Lines, went to Stockholm, Sweden. In August 1914, while they were in Stockholm, the Great
War commenced and Frederic Pearl travelled to Petrograd in Russia to offer his services to the Imperial Russian Army. As the war intensified, he moved the family to Skagen in Denmark, and then while returning from a brief trip to England, via Belgium and Germany, he was arrested in Lübeck, northern Germany, on suspicion of being a British spy!
Frederic Pearl was detained in Germany for several weeks before he was allowed to return to his family in Skagen, and shortly afterwards, the Pearls, accompanied by Alice Lines, and a Danish-girl named Greta Lorenson, who had just been engaged by Mrs. Pearl as an additional children’s maid, went to Copenhagen where the party boarded the s.s. Frederik VIII, bound for New York on the 18th November. Alice Lines posed as a U.S. citizen for the voyage, to avoid any difficulties with the German authorities.
Amy Pearl was expecting her fourth child when she arrived in New York City and gave birth to a daughter, named Audrey, in February 1915. Alice Lines and Greta Lorenson continued in their positions as children’s maids, and then, in April 1915, Frederic Pearl decided to travel to Belgium where he intended to volunteer his services as a surgeon to Dr. Antoine Depage, who had established a hospital at La Panne, Belgium.
Frederic Pearl decided to have his wife and four children accompany him to Europe, and as a consequence he booked saloon passage on the 1st May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool for his family and Alice Lines and Greta Lorenson.
Once on board, Frederic Pearl and his wife occupied suite E51, Greta Lorenson took Stuart and Audrey into room E67, which had three beds, whilst Alice Lines took Amy and Susan into room E59 with her. The ticket for the whole family group was numbered 46071. The rooms were the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward Alf Woods who came from Liverpool.
Once the ship had left New York, the pattern for the voyage emerged. Greta Lorenson and Alice Lines generally dined with the children during the first part of the day in the first class dining room, and then Miss Lorenson took the children to afternoon tea in the nursery and looked after Audrey Pearl during dinner. Sometimes, a stewardess would feed Audrey, and Greta Lorenson would join Alice Lines with the Pearls for dinner.
On the afternoon that the liner was sunk, the two nurses took the three older Pearl children to lunch in the first class nursery, leaving Audrey sleeping in room E59. Having finished helping feed them, Alice Lines left the cabin to feed Audrey and took Stuart with her, while Greta Lorenson took the other two little girls back to their cabin.
Shortly afterwards, the torpedo struck and the liner immediately lurched to starboard. Greta Lorenson managed to grab the two children and get them out onto the deck. According to Hickey and Smith in their book Seven Days to Disaster, at the same time, Alice Lines was also making for the deck and: -
They met Greta coming down with baby Susan. Alice suddenly panicked. Where was her beloved Amy? “What have you done with my baby?” she cried.
Greta was sobbing with fright. “A stewardess took her to a lifeboat. Oh, what are we to do?” “Don’t bother with anybody else,” Alice said emphatically, “Just watch the children.”
According to Audrey Pearl, then Audrey Lawson Johnson, in an interview with Graham
Maddocks in 1999: -
Greta Lorenson and Susan actually got into a lifeboat but it capsized and they were thrown out and they must have been drowned for they were never seen again.
Alice Lines, with Stuart and Audrey Pearl, survived the sinking and were rescued from the sea and landed at Queenstown. Major and Mrs. Pearl also survived, but despite rigorous searches of the mortuaries by Frederic Pearl and Alice Lines afterwards, no trace of the two missing Pearl children or Greta Lorenson was ever found.
Alice Lines continued to work for the Pearl family, staying in lifelong contact with Audrey.
On the 14th January 1922, Alice married Frank Richard Page, at the Parish Church, Wimbledon, Surrey. The couple resided at 28. Bean Road, Bexley, a suburb of London. They had no children, and Frank Page died in 1962, leaving Alice a widow.
In early 1964, Alice re-married. John H. Drury being her second husband.
Alice Drury died on the 7th November 1997, at Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex, one month short of her 101st birthday. The chief mourner at her funeral was the Hon. Audrey Lawson Johnson, who, as Audrey Pearl, owed her own long life to her young nurse 82 years earlier!
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Surrey England Church of England Marriages 1754 – 1937, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, 1939 Register, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Lusitania, Saga and Myth, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Audrey Lawson Johnston, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.