Dorothy A. Conner was born in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana, in the United States of America, on 15th September 1890, one of the daughters, and the youngest of ten children, of Charles Horace and Katherine Boudinot Conner (née Atterbury). By 1900, three of her siblings had died. Her father was a very successful manufacturer of roofing materials. Her family lived in Washington D.C., in the late 1890’s, but then returned to New Albany where her father died in 1901.
At the time of her father’s death, the family was quite wealthy, and Dorothy and her mother moved to an extensive ranch in Medford, Jackson, County, Oregon, in the Rogue River Valley.
Dorothy Conner had one sister living in England and another Sara Katherine, living in New York, who was married to a medical practitioner named Doctor, Howard Fisher. She also had brother, Dr. Louis Atterbury. Conner, who also lived in New York at 121, E. 62nd. Street and he was probably the initial link with Doctor Fisher.
Dorothy was a graduate of Wellesley College, and also graduated from a secretarial school.
By the spring of 1915, Doctor Fisher had decided to give up his work in New York and travel to France to work in a Red Cross hospital there, serving war wounded. Dorothy Conner decided to join him and train as a nurse and having first left Medford in the middle of April, to go to New York, she boarded the Lusitania with him, (with ticket number 46111) as a saloon passenger, on the morning of 1st May 1915.
Once on board, she was allocated room E63 which was the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward Alfred Wood, who came from Liverpool. Dr. Fisher was allocated room nearby E50. Just before the liner sailed, she wrote and mailed a quick letter to her family in Medford, in which she said: -
The Lusitania is now being held up and there is a report the captain has lost his nerve, but I think we will get off all right.
The reason that the liner was held up, however, was not because Captain William Turner had
lost his nerve, but because she was waiting to take on board passengers and crew from the Anchor Liner, which had been suddenly requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war service as a troop ship.
The Lusitania finally got underway just after mid-day and at lunch or dinner, Miss Conner and Dr. Fisher made friends with Lady Margaret Mackworth and her father David Thomas. Lady Mackworth was prominent in the suffrage movement of the time in Great Britain and had been in America to accompany her father who was a wealthy coal mine owner and who had crossed the Atlantic on a previous sailing of the
Lusitania, to oversee some mines and other property he had bought in America.
In 1933 Lady Mackworth wrote an account of her life, which she called This Was My World, in which she included a gripping account of her experiences during and after the sinking of the Lusitania. In it, she mentioned both Dorothy Conner and Dr. Fisher, although she referred to them both only as Miss C____ and Dr. F____. Of their first meeting, she said: -
My father and I made friends with our table-neighbours, an American doctor coming over on Red Cross service and his young sister-in-law who had enrolled as a nurse. We used to discuss our chances. “I can’t help hoping,” said the girl, “that we get some sort of thrill going up the Channel.”
Later, on the afternoon of 7th May, after the Lusitania had been torpedoed and was clearly sinking, Lady Mackworth described meeting Dorothy Conner and her brother-in-law again: -
As I came out into the sunlight, I saw standing together the American doctor, Dr. F___, and his sister-in-law, Miss C____. I asked if I might stay beside them until I caught sight of my father which I made sure of doing soon. I put on my own lifebelt and held the other in my hand. Just after I reached the deck a stream of steerage passengers came rushing up from below and fought their way into the boat nearest us, which was being lowered. They were white-faced and terrified; I think they were shrieking; there was no kind of order -- the strongest got there first, the weak were pushed aside. Here and there a man had his arm around a woman’s waist and bore her along with him; but there were no children to be seen; no children could have lived in that throng. They rushed a boat before it was ready for them. A ship’s officer made some feeble attempt to prevent them, but there was real attempt at order or discipline.
As we watched, I turned to the American girl ... “I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organised affair”. “So did I,” said she, “but I’ve learnt a devil of a lot in the last five minutes.” Two seamen began to lower the boat, which was full to overflowing, but no one was in command of them. One man lowered his end quickly, the other lowered his out, but the boat did not capsize, and I think most of them scrambled back afterwards. I do not know. We turned away and did not look. It was not safe to look at horrible things just then. Curious that it never for a moment struck any of us as possible to attempt to get into the boat ourselves. Even at that moment death would have seemed better than to make part of that terror infected crowd. I remember regretfully thinking something of this sort.
That was the last boat I saw lowered. It became impossible to lower any more from our side owing to the list on the ship. No one else except that white-faced stream seemed to lose control. A number of people were moving about the deck, gently and vaguely. They reminded one of a swarm of bees who do not know where the queen has gone. Presently Dr. F____ decided to go down and fetch lifebelts for himself and his sister-in-law. Whilst he was away the vessel righted herself perceptibly, and word was passed around the bulkheads had been closed and the danger was over. We laughed and shook hands and I said, “Well, you’ve had your thrill all right.” “I never want another,” she answered. Soon after, the doctor returned bearing two lifebelts. He said he had had to wade through deep water down below to get them.
Whilst we were standing, I unhooked my skirt so that it should come straight off and not impede me in the water. The list on the ship soon got worse again, and, indeed, became very bad. Presently Dr. F____ said he thought we had better jump into the sea. (We had thought of doing so before, but word had been passed around from the captain that it was better to stay where we were.) Dr. F____ and Miss C____ moved towards the edge of the deck where the boat had been and there was no railing.
Dorothy Conner and her brother-in-law jumped into the sea and were immediately separated. She was eventually rescued from the sea and having been landed at Queenstown, she was put in to a room with five other women. In the
Last Voyage of the Lusitania, there is an account of an experience Dorothy had while staying in this room which states: -
‘Dorothy asked for a hot bath and toddy. After what seemed hours she was presented with a small bowl of tepid water and a bottle of cold lemon soda. The elderly woman who brought it delivered, as a bonus, a lecture on selfishness.’
Dorothy went to see Lady Mackworth, whom she had discovered was at The Queen’s Hotel, on the day following the sinking. Lady Mackworth related this meeting and Dorothy Conner’s rescue, in
This Was My World: -
One of the first people to come to see us the next morning was Miss C____, the pretty American girl. She was still dressed in the neat fawn tweed coat and skirt which she had on when I saw her step off the deck the day before, and it looked as smart and well tailored as if it had just come out of the shop. It seemed that, though she had partly unhooked it on deck, when I had unhooked mine, modesty had prevented her from undoing quite all the hooks. The result was that it had stayed on, and when she was sucked below as the ship sank, it caught on something and prevented her coming straight to the surface, so that by the time she did reach it she was unconscious. She was pulled onto a raft, but the people on it thought she was dead, and there was not room on the raft for bodies, so they were just going to throw her back into the water, when one of them, a Canadian nurse, saw a throbbing in her throat. She was kept on board to see if the nurse was right. The nurse worked at her, and in a short while she came round. And a couple of hours later, when the steamers came on the scene, the raft-load was picked up. Her brother-in-law, the doctor, had been saved too. He had come up conscious and swum to a boat – a boat in which there was an Italian surgeon, who, so he told us, operated then and there on the leg of one of the crew, which had been badly damaged by the explosion, with a pen-knife.
The ship which had rescued Dr. Fisher had been the Greek steamer Katerina, outward bound from Havana, Cuba, with a cargo of sugar.
Dorothy Conner eventually arrived in England with her brother-in-law and presumably they made for her sister’s home. She never joined the Red Cross in France, because, as a result of the sinking, she suffered numerous contusions and shock which produced a neurasthenic state from which she suffered for several years. She is also reported to have developed a weakened, dilated heart as a result of her ordeal.
Lady Mackworth’s father David Thomas also survived the sinking and father and daughter eventually returned safely to South Wales after convalescing in Dublin. Bedroom Steward Wood, who had looked after Miss Conner in room E63 also survived and eventually got back to his Liverpool home.
Having recovered from her ordeal, both Dorothy and her brother-in-law, Dr. Fisher, travelled to Bordeaux, on south western France, where they boarded the liner, Rochambeau on the 26th September 1915, and disembarked in New York City on the 5th October, after an uneventful voyage.
Having filed a claim with the Mixed Claims Commission, in February 1924, Dorothy Conner was awarded the sum of $10,000.00 in personal compensation, and an additional $2,160.00 to compensate her for the loss of her personal property.
In October 1917, Dorothy travelled to France to work with the French Red Cross, assisting in a hospital canteen in Braine, Aisne, France. She remained there until the end of the War, returning home, after spending a period in England, in April 1919.
Sometime following her return from Europe, Dorothy and her mother moved to new York City, and on the 4th June 1923, Dorothy married Greene Williams Dugger in Manhattan. Her husband was an officer in the United States Navy, and the couple made their home wherever her husband was stationed. Their first child, a son named John Atterbury, was born in Manila, Philippines, in 1924, and their second, a daughter named Mary Anne, was born in Washington D.C. in 1929.
In 1941, Greene Williams Dugger died, and Dorothy died on 9th August 1967 in Bethesda, Maryland County, Maryland, just north of Washington D.C., where she lived. Her remains were interred in Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington D.C..
New York Marriage License Indexes 1907 – 2018, 1900 U.S. Federal Census, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, 1920 U.S. Federal Census, 1930 U.S. Federal Census, 1940 U.S. Federal Census, U.S. Passport Applications 1795 – 1925, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 241, Cork Examiner, Cunard Records, Last Voyage of the Lusitania, Morning Oregonian, San Francisco Examiner, PRO 22/71, This Was My World, Graham Maddocks, John Booth, Stuart Williamson, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.