Helen Alice Wallace Stroud was born in Westminster Hospital, London, England, on the 19th March 1912, the daughter of Constance Ida Stroud (née Simpson). On her birth certificate, her father’s name is given as Edward Percy Wallace Stroud, who was married to her mother, and who was a marine superintendent with the Anglo Mexican Petroleum Products Company Limited, at Tampico, Mexico.
However, in May 1913, Edward Stroud travelled from Mexico to London, and on the 30th June, he filed for divorce from her mother on the grounds of adultery, claiming that Helen Alice Wallace Stroud was not his child, even though his name appeared on her birth certificate as being her father. Her mother did not contest his claim and the divorce was granted on the 29th June 1914.
Despite this Helen and her mother travelled to Mexico on two occasions, presumably because her mother wished to rekindle her relationship with Edward Stroud.
In the spring of 1915, Edward Stroud, Helen, and her mother had been in Mexico, and for their return to London they had booked second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool.
Having travelled to that city in time to board the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 on 1st May for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. sailing, they all had to wait - along with all the other passengers and crew - until 12.27 p.m.. This was so that so that she could take on board passengers, cargo and crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war work as a troop ship at the end of April.
Then, six days out of New York, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, and sank just eighteen minutes later. At that stage of her voyage, she was only 250 miles from the safety of her home port.
Although Edward Stroud and her mother survived this action, Helen was killed, as Edward Stroud told a representative of County Cork newspaper The Southern Star not long after the sinking: -
The sub. was seen by several and when the torpedo was launched there were gasps from everyone. People went dashing to find their loved ones. Afterwards there was no chance of us in the boats on (the) port side with the high list. When the ship dived my wife and I were washed off deck and flung among the wreckage and struggling people. It was then I lost my child as she was swept from my arms. We were in the sea for a terrible time clinging to wreckage before a steamer picked us up.
Helen Stroud was just three years old at the time and as her body was never recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, she has no known grave.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, England & Wales Civil Divorce Records 1858 – 1918, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Pennsylvania Passenger & Crew Lists 1800 – 1962, Cunard Records, The Southern Star, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.