Emma Stephenson was born in Knotty Ash, Liverpool, Lancashire, England, in 1857, the daughter of William Stanley and Elizabeth Stephenson (née Thornton). Her father was a ship’s chandler, and Emma was one of eight known children in the family.
She married Dr. Henry Wylie, a physician and surgeon, in early 1882 in Liverpool, and they lived at ‘Maryville’, Ivy Cottages, Blundellsands, Lancashire, England.
Dr. Wylie died in December 1910, and in September 1911, Emma Wylie travelled to the United States of America to visit friends and enjoy an extended holiday. The first person she visited was a person named W.C. French, who resided at 133. Pearl Street, Boston, Massachusetts, and it is not known where she went after this, but by early 1915, it is believed that she was in Jersey City, New Jersey.
In the spring of 1915, she decided to return to Liverpool and booked a second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania, which was scheduled to leave New York on 1st May 1915. Having left New Jersey at the end of April, she arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York in time for the morning sailing, only to have to wait until just after mid-day.
This delay was caused because the liner had to take on board passengers, crew and cargo from the liner Cameronia, a Anchor Liner, which the British Admiralty requisitioned as a troop ship at the end of April.
Six days out of New York, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20, only miles off the coast of southern Ireland and only hours away from docking at Liverpool.
Emma Wylie was not amongst the survivors of the action and as her body was not recovered from the sea and identified, she was later presumed to be dead. She was aged 57 years.
On 21st August 1916, probate of her estate was granted at Liverpool to a James Percy Morgan, a produce broker, who was a son of her sister, Elizabeth, and therefore her nephew. Her effects amounted to £6,535 12s-1d., (£6.535.60p.).
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1861 Census of England & Wales, 1871 Census of England & Wales, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Crosby Herald, Probate 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.