Ethel Williams was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in the United States of America, in late 1909, the second daughter, and fourth child, of the six children of John and Annie Williams (née Millman). Originally from England, the family had immigrated to the United States of America in April 1904. They first went to Marlborough, Massachussetts before moving first to Westfield, and then the nearby town of Plainfield, New Jersey. Her father was a coachman, and her parents had nine children, although three had died in infancy.
On 1st April 1915, her father joined the Cunard Steamship Company as a steward, and sailed for Liverpool on the Lusitania on that date, the last eastward voyage the great liner would ever complete. Once in Liverpool, he crossed the River Mersey to the home of his sister, Mrs. Charlotte Forster of Deva Villas, 2, Church Road, Hoylake, Cheshire. Having obtained work as a motor mechanic in a garage opposite the nearby railway station, he sent for his wife and family to join him.
The family could obviously not afford to pay their fare across the Atlantic and a charitable group, The St. George’s Society, paid it for them, and as a consequence, at the end of April 1915, Ethel’s mother Annie and the other children, David, Edith, Florence, George and Edward, all set out from Plainfield to New York, where, on 1st May they boarded the Lusitania as third class passengers for the trans-Atlantic voyage.
The liner‘s departure from New York was delayed until the early afternoon, because she had to wait to embark passengers, cargo and some crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned for war service by the British Admiralty. Six days later, however, when the ship was off the south coast of Ireland and only hours away from her Liverpool destination, she was torpedoed and sunk, by the German submarine U-20. Mrs. Williams and George, Ethel, Florence and David were killed, only Edith and Edward being saved.
Ethel was just five years old and her body was never found and identified afterwards.
As a consequence, she has no known grave.
In the summer of 1915 John Williams applied to The Lusitania Relief Fund, for financial help. This fund had been set up immediately after the liner had gone down, by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool and other local business dignitaries to help second and third class passenger survivors and the relatives of those who had perished, who had come upon financial difficulties as a result of the sinking. It was thought at the time that the saloon passengers would not need financial help!
The awards committee granted John Williams £5-0s-0d to compensate him for the loss of most of his family. At that time he was stated to have been employed as a coachman.
In May 1916, John Williams, still employed as a steward with the Cunard Steamship Company, returned to the United States with his two surviving children. He left them with friends for a while, but returned to England with them in 1919. He filed a claim for compensation for the loss of his wife and children, but it was rejected by the Mixed Claims Commission on the grounds that both he, and his late wife, had been British subjects at the time of their deaths, and therefore he was not qualified to make a valid claim.
It has been reported in many accounts that John Williams had deserted his family in April 1915, but no evidence has been discovered in support of these accounts.
1910 U.S. Federal Census, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 2558, Birkenhead News, Exploring the Lusitania, Tragedy of the Lusitania, Liverpool Record Office, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.