Henry “Harry” MacKenzie was born in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, on the 29th March 1889, the son of William and Isabella Jane MacKenzie (née Coutts). His father was a printer and compositor, and Harry was one of three children, having an older brother named William, and a younger one named George. His mother was a widow with two children, Rebecca and Annie Pope, when she married his father.
After leaving school he joined the British Army, serving as a gunner in the 97th Bn. Royal Field Artillery, spending some of his service in South Africa, but by 1912, he had left the army and was working as a hotel porter in Edinburgh.
By this time, his parents had died, and he lived at 25, Springwell Place, Edinburgh, with his married stepsister, Mrs. Rebecca Nicolson, and her family.
In October 1912, he arrived in New York City, in the United States of America, in search of work. Then, in the spring of 1915, he decided to return to his home country, perhaps because of the war raging in Europe, and to re-enlist in the British Army.
Rather than pay for his passage home, he engaged as a waiter in the Stewards' Department on board the Lusitania on the 30th April 1915 at New York, at a monthly pay rate of £4-5s.-0d. (£4.25p.), just in time for her last ever trans-Atlantic crossing. His decision to engage was to prove a costly one for him as he was killed when she was sunk, just one week later. He was aged 26 years.
As his body was never recovered and identified afterwards, he is commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London.
His name is spelled McKenzie in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1891 Census of Scotland, 1911 Census of England, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Edinburgh Evening News, UniLiv. D92/6/1, UniLiv D92/2/297, PRO BT 334, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 19th March 2024.