Jessie Irene Emerson was born at Cambridge Place, West Hartlepool, County Durham, England, on the 16th May 1888, the daughter of Isaac Brown and Jessie Emerson (née Bilton). Her father was a chemist and druggist, and Jessie Emerson was his second wife. He had four children from his first marriage, and he was a widow when he remarried. Jessie was the second born of three daughters from her father’s second marriage.
Jessie was an accomplished pianist, and it is probably that she went to study in France, where it is likely she met her future husband, Rene Joseph Philibert Marichal, who at that time was a sous-lieutenant in the French Army, stationed at Lille.
The couple married in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, in the early summer of 1908, and on her husband’s return to France, he was summoned to appear before a military tribunal where he was charged with forging a weekend pass, and marrying without the permission of his regimental colonel, and forced to resign his commission.
The couple settled in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, where her husband secured a position as a language teacher at a secondary school, and the couple lived at “Roncavaux”, Stornoway Road, Southend-on-Sea. They had three children - Yvonne Jessie, born in 1909, Maurice, born in 1910, and Phyllis, born in 1913.
In 1913, the family had immigrated to Canada and settled in Kingston, Ontario, where Joseph Marichal had taken up a position as Professor of Romance Languages at Queen’s University. In April 1915, however, he had obtained a better position at the University of Birmingham, in Warwickshire, England, and as a consequence, the family booked second cabin passage on the Lusitania to make the journey there.
As a consequence, having left Ontario at the end of April, they all boarded the liner on the morning of 1st May, in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure which actually occurred just after mid-day. The delay was caused because she had to take on board passengers, cargo and some crew from the Anchor Lines ship the S.S. Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war work as a troop ship.
When the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk six days later, off the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, all the family, including Jessie, survived, which probably indicates that they were able to get into one of the lifeboats which was successfully launched. She did, at some stage afterwards, however, miscarry her unborn child, as a result of her ordeal! Her daughter Yvonne Marichal would later state that her parents had insisted that all three children dine in the restaurant with them rather than in the nursery, and that consequently they were all together when the liner was struck!
Eventually, having been landed at Queenstown, the family finally made it to Birmingham, where they successfully applied to The Lusitania Relief Fund for financial assistance to mitigate their lost property. The fund, administered by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, awarded the family the sum of £9-13s-6d., (£9. 67½p.), on 1st June 1915, to pay a doctor‘s bill - probably as a result of Jessie Marichal‘s miscarriage.
The Fund's cheque was sent to them at 21, Hampstead Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, Warwickshire, but a document which still survives in the archive of The Liverpool Record Office in Liverpool, makes the remark against this award payment: -
Lecturer at University (unsatisfactory case)
Joseph Marichal was later heavily involved in scandal surrounding the Mersey Enquiry into the sinking, from which he did not emerge with his reputation entirely intact. Then, having joined the French Army, he was killed in action on the 12th August 1916, on the Somme front.
Jessie Marichal never remarried, and moved to 36. Infirmary Walk, Worcester, Worcestershire, and earned a living as a teacher of pianoforte. She died on the 2nd December 1964, aged 76 years.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, 1939 Register, U.S. Border Crossings from Canada to U.S. 1895 – 1960, Cunard Records, Liverpool Record Office, Ministère de la Défense, République Française, The Times, Lusitania, PRO BT 100/345, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.