Alice Ann Middleton was born in New Ferry, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England - on the opposite side of the River Mersey from Liverpool - in 1880, the daughter of John and Georgina Middleton (née Hardingham). Her father was a boat builder, and Alice was one of nine children, although by 1911, four of her siblings had died. The family home was at 36, Alderley Avenue, Claughton, Birkenhead. She was unmarried.
In May 1911, she left Liverpool on board the Victorian, bound for Quebec, Canada. On arrival in Quebec, on the 19th May, she boarded a train for Seattle, Washington, in the United States of America, to work as a children’s nurse, although prior to this, she had been a dressmaker. Two of her brothers – John and William – were residing at 4528. 8th Avenue, Seattle.
In the spring of 1915, perhaps because of the war, she decided to return home again, and as a consequence, she booked as a third class passenger on the May sailing of the Lusitania to Liverpool, which was due to leave New York on 1st May 1915. Her ticket number was 37583.
She joined the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of that day, in time for her scheduled 10.00 sailing. Once on board, the ship, however, she transferred to second cabin status, so perhaps because she was unhappy with the third class accommodation. The liner’s departure was then delayed until just after mid-day because she had to embark passengers, cargo, and some of the crew from the Anchor Lines vessel Cameronia which had been requisitioned for war service by the British Admiralty at the end of April.
Six days later, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20, within sight of the coast of southern Ireland. After the liner was struck, Alice Middleton found herself without a lifejacket and was actually given one by the millionaire Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who helped her to put it on. When the liner went down, she was dragged down with it and was probably saved by the lifebelt. Adolph and Mary Hoehling in their book The Last Voyage of the Lusitania described what happened to her after this: -
Beneath the surface, her head had become jammed in an opened porthole and the pressure had made her eardrums seem about to burst. It tortured her with a pain so great that she did not see how she could endure, much less survive it. Yet somehow, she returned to the surface, to be appalled at once by the vast number of bodies - especially those of children - floating all around her. They looked like drowned dolls.
Beside her was a woman struggling. Alice stared in disbelief. The woman was giving birth to a baby, there in the water, alone. It was the most terrible thing she had ever witnessed - or would witness in her life. She became sick with a pitying horror, helpless to do anything for the woman. Soon Alice lost consciousness.
She was eventually taken from the sea by rescuers - still in a coma - and having been landed at Queenstown, she was taken to hospital there, where she recovered consciousness some hours later. Christened Marvel by the nursing staff there, she began to make her recovery - apart from the fact that her hair had begun to fall out! It was some time before she was fit enough to make the journey from Queenstown to the family home in Birkenhead. She remained convinced that she owed her life to the lifebelt given to her by Alfred Vanderbilt.
During the summer of 1915, she had decided to return to America and contacted the Lusitania Relief Fund, administered by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool and The Mayor’s Committee for the Relief of Lusitania Sufferers of New York - presumably, because she had lived in America - seeking help from both of them.
Perhaps at the behest of one or both of these organisations, The Cunard Steam Ship Company granted her a free passage back to New York on board the S.S. Saxonia on 1st October 1915, but she wrote back to them stating that she was unable to say whether or not she would be fit to travel. There is no record of her arriving on this vessel at any time throughout the autumn of 1915, however, in the immigration records of the former reception centre at Ellis Island, although they do record that she did arrive in New York on 7th August 1916, on board the Pacific Steam Navigation liner S.S. Orduña.
Initially she returned to Seattle, but on the 29th May 1917, she married George McDougall, a Scotsman, in Detroit, Michigan. Her husband worked in an automobile factory.
George and Alice McDougall had two children – Hector, born in March 1919, and Jacqueline, born in January 1921. Jacqueline was a special needs child, who suffered from ill-health, and died in April 1932, aged 11 years.
The McDougall family resided for the remainder of their lives in the Detroit area, and Alice McDougall died in Livonia, a large suburb of Detroit, in Wayne County, Michigan, on the 8th September 1964, aged 84 years. Her husband had died in 1963.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Michigan U.S. Marriage Records 1867 – 1952, Michigan U.S. Death Records 1867 – 1952, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, U.S. Border Crossings from Canada to U.S. 1895 – 1960, Cunard Records, Last Voyage of the Lusitania, Liverpool Record Office, UniLiv.D92/1/1, UniLiv D92/2/500, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.