Kate Mary Hopkins, known as “Katie”, was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England, in 1888, the daughter of Henry and Sarah Ann Hopkins (née Foster). Mr. Hopkins was a gardener and the family home was at 17, Henry Street, Kenilworth. Kate Hopkins was unmarried, and she had three sisters and two brothers.
In 1909, her sister Alice went to live and work in the United States of America, as a domestic servant, and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After a visit home in 1912, Katie decided to follow her to America to work in a similar capacity for the same employer. It is not known for how long the sisters remained in Philadelphia, but by 1915, they were living and working in Boston, Massachusetts.
In early 1915, another Hopkins daughter, Annie, decided to get married to a soldier, Company Quartermaster-Sergeant R.C. Snelling of the Royal Engineers, and the date for the wedding was set for 7th May. Alice and Katie Hopkins decided to return to Warwickshire to take part in the wedding, and cabled home to ask that it might be postponed until 8th May, when they hoped that they could be present. They followed this up with a letter written by Alice, which said: -
Boston 16th April. After your letter of this week Katie and I propose to sail from New York per the s.s.
(sic) Lusitania on May 1st. With good luck we shall be in Liverpool on the 8th May.
Consequently, they booked as second cabin passengers on the Lusitania and having left Boston some time at the end of April, they arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915 in time for the liner’s scheduled 10 o’clock departure. This was then delayed until the early afternoon as the liner had to take on board passengers, crew and cargo 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 later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine
U-20 off the southern coast of Ireland, only hours away from her Liverpool destination. Both Kate Hopkins and her sister were killed as a result of this action. Kate Hopkins was aged 26 years.
Another second cabin passenger, Mr. Arthur Gadsden, befriended the sisters on the trans-Atlantic crossing and later described how he had helped them both into life belts, before the ship sank, but clearly his actions were not enough to save them.
The wedding of Miss Hopkins and C.Q.M.S. Snelling went ahead despite the tragedy and part of their honeymoon was spent in Queenstown, where the newlyweds toured the temporary mortuaries searching for the bodies of the two sisters.
The gruesome search proved fruitless, however, and they returned to Kenilworth on Wednesday 12th May. They must have failed to recognise Katie Hopkins' body, however, as it was one of the first to be recovered from the sea and landed at Queenstown. Before it was positively identified, it was given the identification number 5, in one of the temporary mortuaries there.
It was buried in The Old Church Cemetery, Queenstown, on 10th May 1915, in Mass Grave C, 3rd Row, Lower Tier. It was on this day that most of the victims of the disaster were buried, following a long funeral cortege which began outside the offices of The Cunard Steam Ship Company at Lynch’s Quay, Queenstown. Alice Hopkins' body was not recovered until later and was subsequently buried in Mass Grave B on 17th May.
It is likely that Katie Hopkins identity was not known at the time of her burial, but she was positively identified by a Mrs. Alice Chambers of New York in August 1915, obviously from a photograph of her corpse. As it was necessary to bury all the recovered bodies as soon as was practicable, they were all photographed in the temporary mortuaries in Queenstown before being buried. Anxious relatives of those missing were then invited to identify their loved ones through these photographs.
In a letter sent to Cunard’s Liverpool office by its New York office on 30th August 1915, it was stated: -
Hopkins Kate - body No. 5. She is definitely identified by a Mrs. Alice Chambers. Also, she had a chamois purse with $500 given to her by the above and a gold watch with the initials K.H. bought on 14th December 1914 from Messrs. C.R. Smith of Market Street, New York by a Mr. Hugh Huston, who sailed on the Lusitania on January 15th.
It is possible that Alice Chambers was Kate Hopkins’ employer in New York and as far as can be ascertained, the purse, the money and the inscribed gold watch were never recovered.
Katie Hopkins made a will, which was proven at London on 10th July 1915, administration being granted to her father. Her effects amounted to £126-17s-7d, (£126-88p). Upon production of these letters of administration, property taken from her body, was forwarded to Henry Hopkins on 12th September 1915.
It is difficult to imagine the effect that this double tragedy must have had on the family!
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Warwickshire England Church of England Baptisms 1813 – 1910, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Kenilworth Advertiser, Probate Records, PRO BT 100/345, UNiLiv.D92/1/6, UniLiv D92/2/262, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.