Lucy Haddock - known as ‘Cis’ - was born in Salford, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on the 17th January 1896, the eldest daughter of Wesley Leathwood and Mary Ellen Haddock (née Dixon). She had two brothers, named John Wesley and Stanley and one sister, named Marjorie. Her father had been born in Portland, Oregon, in the United States of America and in July 1913, he took the whole family to live in America, and they made their home at 226, Sixth Street, Niagara Falls, New York.
Whilst living in Salford, Cis Haddock had met local boy Harold, ‘Hal’ Taylor, who was an electrician and they had fallen in love. When Cis Haddock went to Niagara Falls, they kept up a correspondence and that November, Hal Taylor followed her there, living in the family home until their marriage, which took place at Niagara Falls Episcopal Church, on 29th April, 1915.
By that time, Hal Taylor’s parents were living at 16, Mount Pleasant, Salford, and the newlyweds had already decided to travel there for a honeymoon visit. As a result, they had booked third class passage on the Lusitania and had joined the liner on 1st May 1915, at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure.
This was then postponed, as she had to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the newly requisitioned Anchor Liner Cameronia and she finally got under way just after mid-day. Six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk off the south coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-20.
Because of the sinking, husband and wife were separated for the first time, although both were rescued from the sea independently and landed at Queenstown. Once there, Harold Taylor related his story to the press and part of what he said was later re-told by Captain Frederick D. Ellis in his book The Tragedy of the Lusitania, published not long after the sinking: -
H.W. Taylor and his bride were on their honeymoon. Mrs. Taylor, hardly more than a girl, cried she would not be separated from her husband. The two were standing at the rail near a lifeboat loaded with women. The Lusitania was settling.
“I won't go, I won't!" Mrs. Taylor was screaming. Her husband extricated himself from her desperate embrace, kissed her, and dropped her into the boat. Before she could climb back to him he had cut the boat away. Something had happened in the engine room which made it impossible to
reverse the propellers and check the liner's impetus. The boat fell astern, the bride hysterical.
Taylor tells the rest of the story himself - a story with a big surprise: "I stood at the rail waiting for the end," he said. “I knew it was no use to jump. I can't swim a stroke, and I had no lifebelt. So I went down with the ship. I died a dozen times before I came up out of the vortex. There was still enough life in me to be worth taking a chance. I got hold of a bit of wreckage. It went down with me. We came up again, went down again.
Then somebody grabbed me by the hair. Other hands slipped under my arms and I was dragged into a boat. When I opened my eyes a woman's arms were around my neck. I looked up. It was my wife, sitting in the seat on to which I had thrown her."
This story is a sensational exaggeration of the truth, however, because in actual fact, the two did not meet until the morning of 8th May, after both had been landed at Queenstown. Hal Taylor was, by this time, dressed in a sailor’s uniform which had been given to him on the ship that had rescued him and Cis Taylor spotted him walking down the street despite his unusual garb! By this time, she had already sent a telegram home which stated: -
DEAR MOTHER I AM QUITE SAFE BUT NOT MY HUSBAND.
and soon followed it with another which had the cheering and more accurate, (if not misspelled) news :-
BOTH SAVE HADDOCK
Cis Taylor later related her experience of being in the lifeboat, at a family gathering: -
I remember the people in the cold, cold, water trying to get into our lifeboats. The sailors rowing had to use the oars to beat the hands of the people trying to get into the boats. If it were up to me, I would have let them in, but I knew they, (the sailors), were right. I remember I had no shoes and stockings.
The couple eventually made it back to the Taylor family home at Mount Pleasant in Salford, at 4.30 on the morning of Sunday 9th May, none the worse for their ordeal except that Cis Taylor was suffering from shock. Once there, her husband was interviewed by a representative of his local paper The Salford City Reporter. This interview was published on Saturday 15th May 1915 and apart from being much more detailed, it told a totally different and accurate story of his reunion with her than that related by Captain Ellis. It stated: -
We were informed on Friday that the lights would be put out at 7 o’ clock so that we could make a dash in the dark to Liverpool. So in the middle of the day, I and my wife went into the cabin to pack our things. We were doing this when there was a sudden shock which threw me against the side of the cabin.
We rushed into the dining saloon where lunch was on, but as I had forgotten the life-belts I had to go back to the cabin for them. When I returned to the
saloon the ship was listing heavily and the tables were overturning. There were few signs of panic though people were of course rushing out of the saloon to get onto the decks. I and the wife got on the second deck and as we ran I managed to fasten a life-belt on her. We had no instructions what to do in case of an accident, so we followed the crowd and made for the low side.
Only women and children were allowed to get into the boats. The first two capsized as they were being launched. I managed to get my wife into the third, which was numbered 15. The boats hold 60 each but my wife tells me there were 80 people in her boat. There was no plug in the boat and she took on water, so that it was necessary to bale. Shortly afterwards, some of her passengers were transferred to another Lusitania boat. There were a few men in No 15 working her, but so far as I could see they were not members of the crew. This boat was out for two and a half hours when the passengers were picked up by a paddle steamer and taken to Queenstown.
The paddle steamer was almost certainly the Queenstown harbour tender Flying Fish.
Mrs. Taylor had seen her husband go down with the ship from lifeboat No 15, and thought that he must have been drowned. He had, in fact, been sucked down one of the Lusitania’s funnels and then been blown back out again before managing to climb onto a half submerged wreck of a lifeboat. After helping to bale it out for the best part of two hours, he was eventually rescued by a Royal Naval trawler and landed at Queenstown himself, where he was re-united with his wife, the following day.
Her new in-laws had similarly been suffering; however, as they had first thought that the couple were travelling on the White Star liner Magentic and only discovered that they were on the Lusitania on the morning of Saturday 8th May, at about the same time that news reached them that the liner had gone down. Fortunately, their anxiety was short-lived, as a telegram arrived a couple of hours later from their son, which announced the safe deliverance of himself and his new bride.
Soon after the sinking, her husband made an application to The Lusitania Relief Fund, for financial help on behalf of his wife, in respect of the fact that her health had been injured by the sinking! The fund had been set up immediately after the liner had been sunk, by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool and other local businessmen to help second and third class passenger survivors and the relatives of those who had perished, who had suffered financial stricture as a result of the sinking.
The awards committee only granted her the sum of £10-0s-0d., however, so her health can not have been seriously impaired!
After the sinking of the Lusitania, Cis Taylor’s older brother John Wesley Haddock felt it was his duty to take part in the war and as a consequence, he crossed the border into Canada and joined the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles (The Central Ontario Regiment). After training, he eventually arrived in France and was killed in action on 1st October 1916 near Grandcourt, on the Somme front.
Forced to remain in England by the war, Cis and Hal Taylor set up home eventually at 4, Almond Grove, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, near Manchester, and Hal Taylor was eventually conscripted into the Army, in which he served without mishap until his eventual demobilisation. During this time, they had two children, named Marjorie
Lusitania Gabriella and Dorothy Joan.
In 1920, they set off to return to America, sailing there via Canada and once back in Niagara Falls at first lived with Cis’s parents at Sixth Avenue and later moved to a house of their own at Belden Avenue two doors away from where Cis’s parents had also moved. They eventually settled at Munson Avenue, where two more children were born to them, Audrey and Wesley. Wesley unfortunately died, when still only a boy, in the late 1920s.
The family resided in Niagara Falls for the remainder of their lives where Hal Taylor worked for the Niagara Falls Power Company.
Cis Taylor died on the 5th April 1976, aged 80 years, and was laid to rest beside her husband, who had died in 1960, at Acacia Park Cemetery, Niagara Falls.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, New York U.S. County Marriage Records 1907 – 1936, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, 1925 New York State Census, 1930 U.S. Federal Census, 1940 U.S. Federal Census, Massachusetts Passenger Lists 1820 – 1963, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Liddle Collection, Liverpool Records Office, Niagara Falls Gazette, Salford City Recorder, Tragedy of the Lusitania, Brotherton Library UniLeeds, UniLiv D92/2/280, Graham Maddocks, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.