Kate Hodges was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England, on the 28th October 1862, the daughter of Peter and Elizabeth Hodges (née Pike). Her father was a commercial traveller for a woollen manufacturer.
Kate worked as a tailoress and on the 13th April 1903, she married Frederick Watson in Leeds, Yorkshire. The couple had no children.
On the 8th February 1912, her husband died and Kate travelled to Canada sometime after his death. She had been living or visiting in Seaforth, Ontario.
Nothing much else is known about her, however, except that in the spring of 1915, she decided to return home and as a result booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool. Her ticket number was 53942.
She would have left Canada sometime in April 1915 and 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 10.00 a.m. departure. Then, she would have had to have waited until just after mid-day, before the Lusitania actually sailed, because the liner had to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for war service as a troop ship at the end of April.
Then, six days out of New York on the afternoon of 7th May, and within sight of the coast of southern Ireland, the ’Greyhound of the Seas’ was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. At that time, she was only about fourteen hours away from her home port.
Kate Watson lost her life as a result of this action and as her body was never recovered from the sea and identified later, she does not have a known grave. She was aged 52 years, although Cunard records state that she was aged 30 years!
Her name does not appear at all in the list of passengers known to have been on the Lusitania’s last voyage, which was published by The Cunard Steam Ship Company in March 1916, but it is shown on the original passenger list which would have been printed on board the ship, for the day the voyage began. On the 31st August 1915, a Cunard employee wrote on a copy of this list to the effect that Catherine Hodges and a Mrs. Kate Watson were one and the same person. This is confirmed by the fact that both of the named passengers had the same ticket number!
Her name does, however, appear in a revised list compiled and finished in February 1917, by the company, which now resides in the Public Record Office at Richmond, Surrey. Presumably by that time, the Company had received more detailed information about the travel arrangements which led to her untimely death.
In the summer of 1915 a Mrs. Watson from Leeds, Yorkshire, 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!
Mrs. Watson stated that she was the dependant mother of Mrs. Kate Watson, although she was more likely her mother-in-law, and the Committee awarded her the sum of £6-0s-0d at a rate of £0-10s-0d per month, and the matter to be reviewed after twelve months. It would appear from surviving records that Mrs. Watson’s sole income was from her Old Age Pension.
Although her remains were never recovered, she is remembered on the gravestone of her husband in Harehills Cemetery, Leeds.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, West Yorkshire England Births and Baptisms 1813 – 1910, West Yorkshire England Church of England Marriages and Banns 1813 – 1935, 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, Cunard Records, Liverpool Record Office, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv.D92/1/8-10, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Denise Deighton, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.