Dorothy Alice Wilson was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the 10th April 1913, the daughter of William and Emily Leah Wilson (née Green). His parents had emigrated from Great Britain and married in Ontario in 1907. Her father was a carpenter, who was employed as a cabinet maker in Toronto, and she had an older brother named Frank who was born in 1910.
In the spring of 1915, Dorothy’s parents decided to return to Great Britain and settle around Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, where Dorothy’s mother originally came from. As a result, her father travelled to Wales to find and prepare a home for the family, leaving them at the home of relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, while he did so.
Having secured a house at 14. Raglan Street, Risca, Newport, and presumably finding employment for himself, her father summoned his family to join him.
Consequently, the three family members arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time to board the Lusitania for her scheduled 10 o’clock departure. This was then delayed until the early afternoon as the liner had to take on board passengers, crew and cargo from Anchor Liner Cameronia which had been taken up from trade for use as a troop ship at the end of April, by the British Admiralty.
Six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 off the southern coast of Ireland and only hours away from the safety of her home port. She went down in less than 20 minutes.
Dorothy Wilson, her mother and her brother were all killed as a result of the torpedoing and as none of their bodies was ever recovered from the sea and identified later, none has a known grave. Dorothy Wilson was only two years old.
In view of her age, it is possible that she died as she was being fed in the ship’s nursery when the torpedo struck. It is estimated that none of the babies and toddlers from the nursery survived the sinking and neither did any of Cunard’s nursery staff as they
simply could not cope with the magnitude of the task of rescuing all their charges as the liner sank so quickly!
Ontario Canada Births 1832 – 1916, Cunard Records, Western Mail, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.