Delia “Della” Josephine Doyle was born in Ireland in 1886 or 1887, the daughter of Michael and Nora Doyle (née Sullivan). Nothing is known of her life, or even where she lived in Ireland!
It is not known when she emigrated to the United States of America, but on the 13th September 1910, she married Terence James Condon in Manhattan, New York City.
In 1911, the couple adopted a baby girl; they named Helen, from the New York Foundling Hospital. This child had been born in March 1909.
In the spring of 1915, Della decided to travel to Europe, possibly to visit family or friends in Ireland, and having booked return second cabin passage on the May sailing of the
Lusitania, she boarded the vessel at the Cunard berth at Pier 54, on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for the liner’s scheduled 10 o’clock sailing. This was then postponed until the early afternoon whilst the liner loaded cargo and took on board passengers and crew from Anchor Liner the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned as a troop ship at the end of April.
Six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine
U-20, twelve miles off The Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland and sank only eighteen minutes later. At that stage of her voyage, she was a mere twelve or fourteen hours away from her Liverpool destination. Della Condon was one of those killed. She was aged 28 years.
Her body was recovered from the sea on 10th May 1915 by the Dutch salvage tug
Poolzee of Rotterdam, off Cape Clear, about 50 miles around the coast from the Old Head of Kinsale, where the
Lusitania went down.
It was landed at the Cunard wharf in Queenstown at about 2 p.m. the same day and taken to one of the temporary mortuaries there, pending a positive identification. Before this was done, it was given the reference number 143.
Once identified as that of Della Condon, from documents taken from it, it was embalmed before being put on the S.S.
Philadelphia for repatriation to New York, on the instruction of Wesley Frost, the United States Consul at Queenstown, who himself was acting for the family in America.
It arrived there on 3rd June 1915, just over one month after the Lusitania’s last sailing from the port, and it was presumably buried there at a later date. Property recovered from it, which probably helped with its identification, was forwarded to Mr. Frost on 28th May 1915, before being sent on to New York.
It consisted of a second cabin return ticket, nine gold sovereigns and some assorted low value coins, three gold rings, one of which was engraved with
F.C. TO D.D..
Terence Condon filed a claim for compensation for the death of his wife and the loss of her belongings in the sinking which was considered by the Mixed Claims Commission. In 1924, the Commission awarded him the sum of $10,000.00 in compensation for her loss, and the sum of $651.50 in respect of the loss of her personal belongings.
In April 1916, her husband re-married. He died in 1959.
New Jersey Marriage Index 1901 – 2016, New York Marriage Licence Indexes 1907 – 2018, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 240, Deaths at Sea 1971 – 1968, Cork Examiner, Cunard Records, New York Times, PRO BT 100/345, Tragedy of the Lusitania, UniLiv.D92/1/8-10, Uniliv.PR13/6, Graham Maddocks, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.