Elizabeth P. ‘Lizzie’ Stevenson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States of America, on the 2nd June 1914, the daughter of William Rintoul and Janet Anderson Stevenson (née Wallace). Her parents had originally immigrated to America from Scotland. Her father was a pattern moulder, and the family home was at 2060 Denison Avenue, Cleveland.
In the spring of 1915, Janet Stevenson decided to return to her native Kilmarnock for a visit and no doubt to introduce her new daughter to her relatives and leaving husband William behind, she left Cleveland at the end of April with her baby daughter and set out by rail for New York. Once there, on 1st May 1915, she and Lizzie joined the Lusitania as second cabin passengers, in time for the liner’s last ever sailing out into the North River and across the Atlantic, which began just after mid-day on 1st May 1915.
When the liner was torpedoed and sunk on the afternoon of 7th May, by the German submarine U-20, both Lizzie Stevenson and her mother were killed. Lizzie was aged a mere two months. At that stage of her voyage, the Lusitania was within sight of the coast of southern Ireland and only about fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her Liverpool destination.
As neither her body nor that of her mother was ever recovered and identified afterwards, neither has a known grave.
On 16th June 1915, however, a letter was received by the Cunard office at Liverpool, which had been re-routed from its Glasgow office and written by Lizzie Stevenson’s aunt in Cleveland. She had seen a photograph of an infant child rescued from the Lusitania in an American newspaper and she thought it was her niece. She wanted to know if it were possible that Lizzie Stevenson had survived.
Cunard had to reply the next day that it had no record of any survival of the child.
He father later filed a claim for consideration by the Mixed Claims Commission. He had become a naturalized citizen of the United States on 21st September 1916, but as he and Janet were British subjects at the time of the sinking, the Commission declined to make any award for compensation to him.
Ohio U.S. Birth Index 1908 – 1998, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 2198, Edinburgh Evening News, Kilmarnock Standard, PRO BT 100/345., UnilIv.D92/1/5, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff
Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.