Cissie Dooley was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, in 1893, the daughter of Charles and Annie Maria Dooley (née Yates). She was one of eight children in the family and her father was a gardener. The family home was at Fowler Street, Macclesfield.
After she left school, she became a cotton weaver in one of the many cotton mills in the area and then, on the 23rd June 1914, she boarded the S.S. Franconia at Liverpool and immigrated to the United States of America. On her arrival in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 2nd July, she went to the home of her brother, James, who resided in South Attleborough, Massachusetts.
On the 27th September 1914, she married Frank Wardle in North Attleborough. Her husband was from Preston, Lancashire, and it not known if she knew her husband prior to arriving in the United States of America, or whether she met him in Attleborough.
By 1915 she was stated to be living in the Adamsdale area of South Attleborough and expecting her first child. In the spring of that year, however, she decided to return to England. Some accounts state that she wished to see some of her brothers who had enlisted in the British Army before they left for the battlefronts, while others state she wanted to have her child in England where she would enjoy the support of her family. Consequently, she booked as a third class passenger on the May sailing of the Lusitania which was scheduled to leave New York for Liverpool at 10.00 a.m. on the 7th May 1915.
It is assumed that she would have travelled to New York by rail and boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, well before 10 o’clock. She would then have had to wait until just after mid-day before the liner actually left port for what would become her last voyage.
The delay to her sailing was caused because she had to load cargo and embark passengers and crew from Anchor Liner the S.S. Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war work as a troop ship, at the end of April.
Just six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20, twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland and sank just 18 minutes later! At that stage of her voyage, she had only about fourteen hours sailing time ahead of her before she would have reached her home port and destination.
Cissie Wardle was one of nearly 250 third class passengers who were killed as a result of this action and as her body was never recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, she has no known grave.
She was aged 22 years at the time of her death.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Cheshire Diocese of Chester Parish Baptisms 1538 – 1911, Massachusetts Marriage Records 1840 – 1915, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, Massachusetts Passenger Lists 1820 – 1963, Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.