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Notable Passengers Aboard

SIR HENRY SETON-KARR—LAURENCE IRVING—MABEL HACKNEY—COMMISSIONER REES—MAJOR LYMAN—CANADIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS—LONDON CLERGYMAN—HALIFAX PATHOLOGIST—AUTHORESS AMONG LOST—SOME OTHER WELL-KNOWN PASSENGERS

The tragic loss of life was emphasized by the fact that many of the passengers were known around the world. Among these were Sir Henry Seton-Karr, English lawyer, traveler, and hunter, and the actor Laurence Irving, and his wife, Mabel Hackney.

Sir Henry Seton-Karr

Sir Henry Seton-Karr was born in India, on February 5, 1853, the son of G. B. Seton-Karr, of the Indian civil service and resident commissioner at Baroda during the Indian mutiny. He was educated at Harrow and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he received an M.A. degree. In 1876 he took second-class honors in law. He was called to the bar in 1879.

In the next year he married Edith Pilkington, of Roby Hall, Liverpool, who died four years later. Then he married Miss Jane Thoburn, of Edinburgh. Two sons and a daughter are in his family. His work for the State Colonization Committee and the results he accomplished as a member of the Royal Commission on Food Supplies in Time of War won for him, in 1902, his place among the knights of England. He was created a commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. From 1885 to 1906 he represented St. Helen’s, Lancashire, in Parliament. Sir Henry wrote many books on sports, as he took keen delight in shooting, golfing, salmon fishing, and yachting, and collected notable hunting trophies.

Laurence Irving

Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving, actor, author, and manager, was the second son of the late Sir Henry Irving, born in London August 5, 1870. He was educated at Marlborough College and the New College, Oxford. Later he spent three years in Russia studying for the Foreign Office. He made his first appearance on the stage in F. R. Benson’s Shakespearean company in Dundee in 1893, and for the next two years was with J. L. Toole’s company. Mr. Irving played in provincial tours, appearing in A Bunch of Violets, Trilby, and Under the Red Robe, from 1896 until 1898. In the latter year he joined his father, for whom he wrote the play Peter the Great, which proved a disastrous experiment, although it was a work of considerable cleverness and force. He was the translator of Robespierre, written especially for his father by Sardou, and he himself played Tallien. He was the Junius Brutus in his father’s unfortunate revival of Coriolanus, and later was Colonel Midwinter in Waterloo, Fouche in Madame Sans-Gêne, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, Nemours in Louis XI, and Valentine in Faust. In all these diverse characters he manifested marked intelligence and ability, although his histrionic facility developed slowly. He then entered into management for himself, acting in England in Bonnie Dundee and Richard Lovelace, with moderate popular success, but no little critical approval, and later in Raffles. He had made great advancement as an actor, proving himself an eccentric comedian of fine finish and incisive force, when he and his wife (Mabel Hackney) appeared in New York in 1909–1910 in The Incubus (Les Hannetons), and The Three Daughters of M. Dupont. In both these plays he won critical and popular approval. Recently, he was the Iago in Sir Herbert Tree’s revival of Othello.

Sir Herbert Tree’s Tribute

Sir Herbert Tree has written the following tribute to Laurence Irving:

“We actors were proud of Laurence Irving in life and no less proud of him in death. There was always something fateful about his personality, and one feels that his end is in tragic harmony with his being. Irving was an idealist, fearless of standing by his ideals in any company. He was a scholar in knowledge as in expression, and as an actor had already attained to a great height. His work, like the man himself, was always original.

“Technically Irving stood at the very top of his profession. As an actor with power to thrill and hold his public, he had few equals and fewer superiors. Personally, he was a man of rare charm of manner, courteous, dignified, serious in conversation, and imbued with the highest ideals. His devoted wife, whose whole career was wrapped up in her husband’s success, was herself an actress of distinction whose loss is deeply deplored.

“They did honor to their profession and added dignity to the stage upon which they had so often appeared together and from which they were destined, in the end, to pass—together, as they would have wished it to be.”

Commissioner Rees

The late Commissioner David M. Rees entered the Salvation Army Service from Reading in 1882. He was at the time of his death territorial commissioner for Canada for the second time. He was at one time principal of the International Training College in London, and later became field secretary for the United Kingdom, assuming afterward the office of territorial commissioner for South Africa and Sweden. He married Captain Ruth Babington in the year 1885.

The last official function performed by Commissioner Rees was the conduct of the farewell service at the Salvation Army Temple on Wednesday night. On that occasion he was full of life and spirits. Every speaker on the platform was stimulated by his enthusiastic and delightfully humorous address. At the close he leaned over the desk during the singing of “God Be with You till We Meet Again” and shook hands with a group of young men in the front seats, perfect strangers to him, but brothers in their presence at the service.

Major Lyman

Major Henry Herbert Lyman, one of the passengers, was well known throughout Canada as head of the old established wholesale firm of Lyman, Sons & Co., and was also widely known for his former association with military affairs.

He was long connected with the Royal Scots, now the Royal Highlanders. He served from ensign up to senior major. He retired in 1891, but was afterward appointed to the reserve of officers. In religion he was a Congregationalist, a member of Emmanuel Congregational Church.

An ardent imperialist, Major Lyman supported every movement tending to a greater unity of the Empire. He held that to attain full citizenship in the Empire, Canada must bear her just share of imperial burdens. He was a strong advocate of imperial preferential trade. Politically, he was independent.

Mr. Lyman was one of the organizers of the Imperial Federation League in Canada and formed one of the deputation that waited upon Lord Salisbury and Mr. Stanhope in 1886 to ask that an imperial conference be summoned, which conference was held in the following year. He was treasurer of the league in Canada and was a member of the executive committee of the British Empire League in Canada.

He was also vice president of the Graduates’ Society of McGill University; vice president of the Natural History Society; president of the Entomological Society of Ontario and Montreal; a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society; and a life governor of the Montreal General Hospital.

Canadian Government Officials

George Bogue Smart, superintendent of child immigration, was a well-known government official who was en route to England to accompany a party of British children to Canada. Mr. Smart was fifty years old and a native of Brockville, Ontario. He had been fifteen years in the government service, and his business took him frequently to the old country. He was a writer of articles and author of works dealing with immigration problems in Canada. He was well known as a lecturer. Recently he was elected a member of the Authors’ Club in London.

R. A. Cunningham, of Winnipeg, was on his way to England as representative of the Manitoba government in the immigration department. He was formerly a lecturer at the agricultural college.

London Clergyman

The Reverend J. Wallet, pastor of the United Methodist Church of Argyll Street, Westcliff-on-Sea, was returning from a holiday in Canada, paid for by his congregation. He gave up a good position in a shipbuilding yard in North England to join the ministry. He has a wife and one child. The story of his escape from the sinking vessel is told in another chapter.

Halifax Pathologist

Dr. Alexander Lindsay, of Halifax, pathologist at the Victoria General Hospital, was on his way to England to be married. His engagement to Miss Kathleen Webb, second daughter of Richard Webb, of Briarwood, Solihull, Warwickshire, was announced the day before he sailed, and the marriage was to have taken place the middle of June. He was also professor of pathology at the Dalhousie Medical College.

Authoress Among Lost

Mrs. Ella Hart Bennett, one of the passengers on the Empress of Ireland reported lost, was the wife of Honorable W. Hart Bennett, C.M.G., colonial secretary of the Bahamas, was president of the Nassau Dumb Friends’ League, member of the Order of Daughters of the Empire, and prominent in social life of Nassau. As a girl, she lived in Japan; she was the author of the book An English Girl in Japan.

Some Other Well-Known Passengers

W. Leonard Palmer, of the London Financial News, was well known in Halifax. He came with his wife to Canada to complete the organization of a New Brunswick land colonization scheme on behalf of English capitalists. He organized a recent English manufacturers’ tour in Canada on behalf of the Financial News and had organized a proposed Canada Confederation Exhibition in Montreal in 1917.

Alfred Ernest Barlow was a lecturer in geology at McGill University. The son of the late Mr. Robert Barlow, of the Canadian Geological Survey, he was born in Montreal in 1871. He entered the employ of the Geological Survey and was its lithogist from 1891 to 1907, when he retired. His wife was Miss Frances Toms, of Ottawa.

Mrs. F. H. Dunlevy, numbered among the lost, was prominent in Denver society. Her husband, whom she married seven years ago, is a well-known realty dealer. Mrs. Dunlevy’s family home is in Portsmouth, near Quebec.

Henry Freeman and his wife were to spend two months abroad, visiting their old home in England. Freeman was head of the blacksmith department of the Allis-Chalmers Company and was to transact company business abroad. He refused to run for reelection as alderman of West Allis, Wisconsin, in April, because of his contemplated trip abroad. He was president of Common Council and one of the directors of the First National Bank of West Allis.

P. C. Averdierck and A. G. Brandon, of Manchester, England, had been in New York for several days regulating the business of the American Thread Company, the American branch of Jones, Crewdson & Youatt, of Manchester, and were returning on the ill-fated steamer.

George C. Richards, president of Lower Vein Coal Company, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was born in England in 1843 and took a degree in geology and mineralogy at the Bristol School of Mines. Mrs. Richards, daughter of Ben J. Street, Sheffield, England, came to America in 1879.