Edwin Moore was born in Cowling, in The West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1854, the son of John and Ruth Moore (née Sugden). His father was a wool sorter in a woollen mill and Edwin was the eldest of four children.
In 1875, he fathered a child – a girl named Mary Ann, with a girl named Dinah Stephenson, who lived at Lumb Farm, Cowling. Then, in 1877, he married Elizabeth Ramsbottom in Keighley, and the couple emigrated to the United States of America in 1878.
They eventually settled in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Edwin became foreman pattern maker in the local engineering works. They set up their home at 20, Whitford Avenue, where they had two sons named Miles and Harry. In 1904, Edwin’s daughter, Mary Ann, came to live with Edwin and his family, but eventually returned to Cowling, to live with her aunt, Mrs. Richmond, of ‘Lane Ends‘, Cowling.
Edwin Moore made frequent journeys to and fro across the Atlantic, to visit his family and his daughter, and had last visited Cowling in 1914. In the spring of 1915, he decided to make a similar journey and as a consequence, booked second cabin passage on the Lusitania, for his return. He joined the liner at the Cunard berth in New York in time for her sailing, which took place just after mid-day on 1st May 1915. Before his departure, he wrote his daughter Mary a letter, informing her that he had booked passage on the Cunarder and asking her to meet him at Liverpool, when the liner docked. By this time, she had married a Mr. John Cowan Capper.
Tragically, the postman delivered this letter to her on the morning of Saturday 8th May, just as she was reading of the vessel’s loss in the newspaper! She immediately cabled the Cunard office at Liverpool for information and the reply soon came back, confirming that her father had been on the ship when she had left New York. She then travelled to Colne, the nearest large town, with the intention of proceeding to Liverpool, but was persuaded to return home on the basis that as his name was not amongst the list of survivors, such a journey would have proved useless at that time!
She did travel to Liverpool on the morning of Monday 10th May, however, with the intention of taking a sailing to Queenstown from there, but she was not allowed to travel further, on the basis that the authorities in Queenstown had already started to bury the bodies of the victims recovered so far, and by the time she could have arrived there, all the burials would have been completed.
As the Cunard Company by this time had given her no hope that her father might have survived, she decided to go to Southport, Lancashire, not far away from Liverpool, to stay with friends, and there to await photographs of all the unidentified corpses, in the hope of recognising her father amongst them!
Because of the urgent need to bury the bodies of the dead, which were already beginning to decompose after their immersion in the sea, all those that could not be identified by documentation or personal recognition, were photographed in their coffins before burial. Copies of these gruesome relics were then posted in public places and distributed amongst relatives in the hope that a definite recognition might be made.
Mary Moore was not able to recognise her father’s remains amongst those photographed, however, and as a result, it had to be assumed that his body was never recovered. He was aged 62 years.
On 23rd February 1916, Mary Ann Capper was granted administration of her father’s estate at London. His effects amounted to £481-0s-0d..
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, West Yorkshire England Church of England Births and Baptisms 1813 – 1910, 1861 Census of England & Wales, 1861 Census of England & Wales, 1871 Census of England & Wales, 1900 U.S. Federal Census, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, Rhode Island U.S. State and Federal Naturalization Records 1802 – 1945, New York Passenger Lists
1820 – 1957, Massachusetts Passenger Lists 1820 – 1963, Cunard Records, Craven Herald, Probate Records, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/235, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.