Alexandra Mary Bryson was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on the 1st November 1865, the daughter of James Alexander and Isabella Bryson (née Rome). She was the third eldest of six known children in the family and her father was a merchant.
While she was still a child, her family moved to the other side of the River Mersey to Claughton, Cheshire, where they resided at 14. Caroline Place for many years.
On the 9th April 1910, she boarded the Lusitania at Liverpool, and immediately she disembarked in New York City on the 15th April, she married her fiancé, Dr. Alexander Bryson Osborne in Manhattan. Dr. Osborne was a Canadian medical doctor, practising in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and following their wedding, they travelled to her new home there at 42. Charlton Avenue. It is not known when or where they originally met one another.
In February 1915, Dr. Osborne had enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and was commissioned as a Major. He had previously served as a military surgeon during the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa which probably explains his immediate appointment to the rank of Major. On the 19th April 1915, he embarked for Europe, and his wife decided to follow him as far as her family home in England to be nearer to him.
Having booked a saloon passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania with agents of W. McIlroy, of Hamilton, she left that city at the end of April and travelled to New York for the voyage to Liverpool. Having boarded the liner - with ticket number 865 - at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for the liner’s scheduled 10 o’clock sailing, she was escorted to her room, E74, which was the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward David Critchley, who came from Bootle in Lancashire, along the banks of the River Mersey from Liverpool.
The liner’s departure for Liverpool was then delayed until the early afternoon, to take on board passengers, cargo and crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war work as a troop ship. She actually sailed just before 12.30 p.m.. Then, six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, she was torpedoed twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, and sank about 10 miles off shore. At that stage of her voyage, she was only 250 miles from her home port.
Alexandra Osborne survived this action, however and having been rescued from the sea, was landed at Queenstown, from where she presumably made it back to the mainland and her original destination.
Bedroom Steward Critchley, however, who had looked after her in room E74, perished in the sinking and never saw his Bootle home again!
One second cabin passenger who was killed, and whose body was never recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, was Richard Preston Pritchard, who originally came from Ramsgate in Kent. In an attempt to learn more of his fate, his mother wrote to many surviving passengers and crew members seeking any information about him.
One of these was Alexandra Osborne, and on the 17th August 1915, she replied to the letter she had received from Mrs. Pritchard: -
Aug. 17
Dear Madam,
I regret very much that I can tell you nothing about your son. Had he been in his cabin on D deck he would have had plenty of time to get on deck – unless his cabin was on the starboard side, at the place where the torpedo struck. It would be better that you should try & enquire from some of the 2nd cabin survivors – however, I am sending your note, etc., to a friend who was very observing & may have noticed your son – but her father, who stood beside her as the vessel sank and was struck by
wreckage & we believe killed instantly, his body being found next day, which might well have been your son’s fate. The bodies of two of my friends have never been recovered.
With sympathy,
Yours truly,
A. M. Osborne.
Following the war, Alexandra and her husband returned to Hamilton, where she submitted a claim for compensation for the loss of her personal possessions in the sinking of the Lusitania. In February 1927, she was awarded her claim of $2,665.73.
On the 25th April 1921, Alexandra and her husband boarded the s.s. Victorian at St. John, Newfoundland, and travelled to England, where they took up residence at Kensington Palace Mansions, London. Then, on the 28th January 1922, her husband, Dr. Alexander Bryson Osborne, died, aged 59 years.
Alexandra Mary Osborne died on the 18th October 1947, aged 81 years. Her residence at that time was 1. Basil Mansions, Basil Street, London. Probate of her will was granted in Liverpool on the 28th February 1948 to the Midland Bank Executor and Trustee Company Limited and Richard Alfred Leicester Billson, solicitor. She left an estate of £29,289-19s.-6d. (£29,289.97½p.).
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, New York U.S. Marriage License Indexes 1907 – 2018, 1871 Census of England & Wales, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of Scotland, 1939 Register, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, UK Incoming Passenger Lists 1878 – 1960, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Canadian Claims Case No. 854, Probate Records, IWM GB62, PRO 22/71, PRO BT 100/345, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.