Edwin Richard - 'Teddy' or ‘Eddie’ - Mainman was born in Edmonton, Alberta Canada, on the 4th October 1907, the son of Alfred Reid and Elizabeth Sarah “Bessie” Mainman (née Dowsett). He had two older brothers, John V., and Alfred Shaw, and two sisters, Mary Frances, and his twin – Elizabeth Sarah. In 1915, the family home was at 10535, Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
His father had started his working live in England as a grocer’s assistant, before immigrating to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where he became a butcher, and met and married his mother, who was Australian. His three older siblings had been born in Australia. In 1906, his family had immigrated to Canada.
His father had originally come England, but in March 1915, Edwin’s grandparents, who were retired and living in Exeter, Devonshire, England, had died and the family was requested to go there to wind up the family estate. Consequently, at the end of April 1915, they left Edmonton for New York where they joined the Cunarder Lusitania as second cabin passengers, at Pier 54, before she left there, for her last ever trans-Atlantic crossing, on 1st May 1915.
Just six days later the family was destroyed, for when the liner was sunk, for out of seven family members who boarded at New York, only three survived. These were Teddy Mainman and his two sisters, his parents and his two older brothers John and Alfred all being killed.
It is probable that the three children were only saved because they were put into one of the lifeboats which was successfully launched. Having been landed at Queenstown, Teddy was taken with his sisters Mary and Elizabeth to Canterbury in England, to a relative, Mrs. Clarence Merrett, Montrose Street, St. Thomas’s Hill.
At some stage during the summer of 1915 an application for aid was made on behalf of them all to The Lusitania Relief Fund. This fund had been set up by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool and other local dignitaries to help alleviate financial stress amongst the surviving second and third class passengers.
In response to the request, the sum of £25-0s-0d was sent to a Mrs. Ellison at 2, Princess Avenue, Liverpool, Lancashire, on their behalf. The three surviving children stayed with her for a time. Mrs. Ellison was probably a relative, as her husband took charge of property recovered from John Mainman’s body in June 1915. A suit of clothes was also paid for out of the fund, for the surviving three children.
This was only an interim payment; however, for Alfred R. Mainman’s estate proved to be worth £2,306-19s-2d., (£2,306.95p.), which provided for the education and maintenance of Edwin and his sisters in the following years.
Edwin became a maintenance engineer, working in a feed stuffs mill, and in 1937, he married Doris Mary Holmes in Liverpool, Lancashire. The couple had one child, a son named William R., who was born in 1939.
Edwin Mainman died on the 4th January 1976, aged 68 years. His residence at that time was at 5. St. Georges Road, Beccles, Suffolk. His remains were cremated at Great Yarmouth Crematorium on the 8th January 1976. He left an estate of £14,584.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, England & Scotland Select Cemetery Registers 1800 – 2016, 1911 Census of Canada, 1939 Register, Cunard Records, Edmonton Journal, The Age, Liverpool Record Office, Probate Records, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/198, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Lawrence Evans, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.