Sarah “Sadie” Rachel Orr Hale was born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, on the 17th December 1885, the daughter of John F. and Matilda Jane Hale (née Hamill). Her father was a gas company manager, who died in 1889, leaving his widow to raise Sadie and her older brother, John Frederick Downshire, known as “Fred”. She had another sister, Matilda, who was born in 1879, but died in infancy.
Sometime after 1901, the family moved to Liverpool, Lancashire, England, where Sadie’s brother found work as a mechanical and electrical engineer with an electricity company.
In 1909, Sadie was employed by the Cunard Steamship Company as a stenographer, and
her conditions of employment were that she travelled on the trans-Atlantic steamers to provide typing services, and between voyages she was employed in the Cunard offices in Liverpool.
Sometime after 1911, her mother returned to Ireland where she established her home at “Ierne”, Cranmore Gardens, Belfast, County Antrim.
In 1915, Sadie Hale lived at Mildway House, Blackburne Place, Liverpool, Lancashire, England and engaged at Liverpool on the 13th April 1915 as a typist in the Deck Department, for what would be the Lusitania's final visit to the New World. Her rate of pay was £1 per week, and it is likely that she would also be paid by passengers for doing typing work for them.
After an uneventful voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, she was still on board on the 1st May for the return voyage to Liverpool. She was killed when the vessel was sunk off the coast of southern Ireland on the 7th May. She was aged 29 years.
Her body was recovered from the sea, however, and before it was positively identified, it was given the reference number 127 in one of Queenstown's makeshift mortuaries. Following identification, however, it was embalmed before being sent to Belfast on the 12th May 1915 and buried the next day, in the family grave in the City Cemetery there. It lies there still in Old City Section B, Grave 22.
The headstone is made from green marble and the inscription on it, in incised letters, picked out in gold, states: -
HALE
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
SADIE
DAUGHTER OF THE LATE JOHN HALE, BALLYMENA
WHO LOST HER LIFE THROUGH THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA MAY 7TH 1915
From above He drew me over many waters
faith forever unto death
Despite having a known grave, the records of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission originally listed her as being missing at sea and as a consequence, she is also commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London. Since Graham Maddocks’ research proved that she has a known grave, however, the Commission has altered its records accordingly and stated that should it ever be necessary to replace the bronze panel which bears her name, at Tower Hill, her name will be omitted from its replacement.
As well as Typist Hale, fifteen other female crew members perished on the Lusitania.
Property recovered from her body was also eventually sent to her mother in Belfast and this consisted of a wrist watch a pair of cameo earrings, a gold ring inscribed inside MARQUIS OF DOWNSHIRE Obt. 12TH APRIL 1845, and a brooch bearing a horse and jockey.
1915 was a tragic year for the Hale family, for on 7th November, exactly seven months to the day that the Lusitania was sunk, her only brother, Fred, died as a result of an accident in Liverpool.
Prior to her death, Sadie had written a number of letters which were to be passed on to
her family in the event of her death. Included in these letters were details of her insurance policies and bank savings accounts and gave instructions as to the disposal of her property. With the exception of a few items, most of her estate was to be divided equally between two nieces, Helen Margaret Taylor, and Dorothy Hamill Taylor.
Sadie’s estate amounted to £443-12s.-10d. (£433.64p.) but a legal predicament followed, as to whether or not Sadie’s letters amounted to a will. As a legal will required the maker’s signature to be witnessed by two other persons and as this was clearly not the case with Sadie’s letters, her family sought an exemption under a provision of the Wills Act, 1837. Under this Act, any soldier in actual military service or any mariner or seaman being at sea, could dispose of their personal property without their signature being witnessed. The Judge hearing the case deemed that Sadie was a “seaman” for the purposes of the exemption, and therefore ruled that her letters amounted to a legal will and her instructions were carried out.
Register of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1901 Census of Ireland, 1911 Census of England, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dublin Evening Telegraph, Larne Times, Northern Whig, Probate Records, UniLiv.D92/1/8-10, UniLiv D92/2/397, PRO BT 100/345, PRO BT 334, Graham Maddocks, Ray Clelland, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 28th December 2023.