Titanic anniversary special by author Lindsay Littleson

This month is the 110^th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, so it seems like a good time to focus on the disaster and in particular, on what happened to some of the children who were on board the doomed ship. 

The main characters in my historical novel, The Titanic Detective Agency, were both real-life passengers aboard the doomed ship. 12-year-old Bertha Watt was travelling in 2^nd Class with her mother and 14-year-old Johan Cervin Svensson was voyaging alone in 3^rd Class. Researching Bertha and Johan’s experiences on Titanic was fascinating, but there were so many incredible stories to tell, and I couldn’t fit them all in the book!

Here’s what happened to four young Titanic survivors.

One of the 3^rd Class passengers who survived on that terrible night was Jamilah Niqula Yarid, aged 14. She and her younger brother Ilyas had to use their own initiative and courage to survive the disaster.

Jamilah and Ilyas had boarded the ship at Cherbourg. Their father wasn’t allowed to travel as he had an eye infection, so the children were unaccompanied by an adult. On the night of the disaster, the two children were struggling to find a way to access the lifeboats and bravely decided to climb an external iron ladder all the way from the lower decks to the Boat Deck.

By the time the children completed their terrifying ascent, most of the lifeboats had gone, but thankfully, they were grabbed by a gentleman on deck, reputedly John Jacob Astor, and thrown into Collapsible Lifeboat C  (both Bruce Ismay and Billy Carter’s father were in this lifeboat). Once they reached New York on board RMS Carpathia, Ilyas and Jamilah were looked after by their older brother Isaac until their father was able to travel to the USA.

Another child survivor, William Thornton Carter, was travelling in very different circumstances but had his own challenges on the night of the disaster. Billy, aged 11, was a 1^st  Class passenger aboard Titanic and was travelling in the height of luxury with his parents, older sister Lucile, three servants and his dog, an Airedale terrier.

On the night of the sinking, the boy was devastated when he was informed he’d have to leave his dog behind, and never got over the loss of his beloved pet. Then, while Billy and his mother were waiting to get into a lifeboat, a steward announced “No more boys!” Immediately, Billy’s mother took off her large hat and placed it on her son’s head. After the disaster, Billy’s mother filed for divorce, claiming unfairly that her husband had got on a lifeboat before ensuring his family was safe.

While Billy’s mother was determined to save her son during Titanic’s sinking, Ruth Becker’s mother was a little careless with her daughter’s safety! Ruth, whose father worked as a missionary in India, was travelling in 2^nd Class with her mother and two younger siblings, Marion and Richard. While the family waited on deck for a lifeboat, Ruth’s mother Nellie became worried when she saw that the younger two children were shivering in the cold.  She told Ruth to go back down to their cabin and get some blankets. While Ruth was doing as she was told, an officer on deck noticed little Marion and Richard and threw them into a lifeboat. Nellie got into the lifeboat with the children and it was beginning its descent down the side of the ship when Ruth arrived back on deck with the blankets. Luckily, Ruth was able to get on to another lifeboat and was reunited with her mother and siblings on RMS Carpathia.

 

Albion House, Liverpool - when news of the disaster reached the offices of the White Star building, officials were too afraid to leave the building and instead they read the names of the
dead from the balcony

Of course, tragically, not all the children on Titanic survived the disaster. On the night of the sinking, being  a 3^rd Class passenger was a real disadvantage. The 3^rd Class cabins were situated on the lower decks and all the lifeboats were on the upper decks, closer to the 1^st and 2^nd  Class cabins. Also, there were gates on the ship designed to separate areas meant for different classes, and while the evidence is unclear, it’s possible that some of these gates stayed closed during the sinking. Many of the 3^rd Class passengers didn’t speak English, but no efforts were made by the White Star Line to ensure that all their passengers knew what to do in the event of an emergency: there were no written instructions in other languages and no lifeboat drills. On that terrible night, events were so chaotic it must have been almost impossible for 3^rd Class passengers to work out what they should do and where they should go - I expect many hoped that the lifeboats, several of which were lowered half-empty, would stop at the lower decks to enable 3^rd Class passengers to board, but that didn’t happen. 

Altogether, there were 128 children aged 14 and under aboard RMS Titanic, including two young members of crew, plate steward Frederic Hopkins and bellboy William Watson, both of whom died in the disaster. 59 child passengers died, and almost all of those children were travelling in 3^rd Class.

Thankfully, changes were made to maritime law after RMS Titanic’s sinking to prevent a similar tragedy ever happening again. Both the British and American Boards of Inquiry ruled that ships should carry sufficient lifeboats for everyone on board, that lifeboat drills should be mandatory and that 24-hour radio contact must be maintained.

The Titanic memorial in honour of all the heroes of the marine engine room, Liverpool

Writing challenge

Imagine you are one of the four child survivors whose Titanic experiences are described in this blog. Write a short account, from their point of view, of what happened to them on the night of the sinking.

I was fast asleep in the cabin when ….

Lindsay Littleson is a qualified primary teacher and lives in the village of Uplawmoor, near Glasgow.

In 2014 she began writing for children and won the Kelpies Prize for her first children’s novel The Mixed Up Summer of Lily McLean. The sequel, The Awkward Autumn of Lily McLean, was published by Floris Books in 2017 and Guardians of the Wild Unicorns came out two years later. 

Guardians of the Wild Unicorns was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for both the Stockton Children’s Book Prize and East Sussex Children’s Book Prize.

Her latest novel with Floris Books, Secrets of the Last Merfolk, came out in 2021. 

 

Littleson has also written two historical books for children, A Pattern of Secrets, set in Victorian Paisley, and The Titanic Detective Agency, both published by Cranachan Books. Her latest novel with Cranachan, The Rewilders, was published in March 2022. 

Website: https://lindsaylittleson.co.uk/

Publisher : https://www.cranachanpublishing.co.uk/product/the-titanic-detective-agency/

Bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-titanic-detective-agency/9781911279440?aid=2496

twitter: @ljlittleson 

Instagram: @lindsaylittleson

 

Thomas Coram and The Foundling Hospital by Jeannie Waudby

April is Care Experienced History Month so I wanted to feature the Foundling Museum in London.

Foundling Museum

Although it isn’t the original building, it's built on the site of the original Hospital.

The story begins in the mid 18^th century when a retired sea captain and shipbuilder, Thomas Coram, returned from America with his wife Eunice. He was shocked by the poverty he saw, and the dead and dying babies in London’s streets. It was a time of extreme prejudice against unmarried mothers and their babies. He lost his own mother when he was only 3, and was sent to sea at the age of 11, and maybe these early separations gave him the insight to care for other children who had been separated from their families.

He decided to try and do something. It wasn’t easy because of the stigma but after 17 years he found support from ‘21 ladies of distinction’ and in 1739 received a charter from George II to build the hospital. In doing this, he started the UK’s first children’s charity. 

As soon as it opened, the Foundling Hospital was inundated with babies. Mothers would bring their baby, often leaving a token to identify them as the child’s mother in the hope that they could reunite in the future. Some of these tokens are on view at the Foundling Museum, and they are heart breaking to look at.

Some of the tokens in the Foundling Museum 

Some of them are simple objects that have been altered to make them more distinctive.

A bent thimble

Others are valuable or even engraved and show that not all the babies were there because of poverty.

An engraved token for Stephen Large

Some are handmade with a huge amount of care.

A lovingly crafted heart-shaped token

Life changed completely for the babies who were taken into the Hospital. They were given new names and sent to foster mothers in the countryside for the first four or five years, and many of them got to experience family life and love. But then they had to return to the Hospital, living communally and wearing a uniform.

It must have felt like losing their mum all over again. Many of the foster mothers wanted to keep the children they had looked after, but this didn’t often happen. Life would have become very different, in an institutional environment with boys and girls segregated. But the children received good healthcare and food and an education.
They were taught to read and there was a choir so they also had music in their lives. At 13 or 14, later 16, they would be apprenticed or sent into service – having received an education that prepared them for hard work.

In the early days, the Foundling Hospital had a lottery for which babies would be accepted – mothers had to pick a white ball out of a bag to get their baby in. In 1756 because of the demand, they made admission open and babies could be left in a basket and a bell rung to alert staff. But this caused the mortality rate to go up from 45% to 81%. It also meant that middlemen could charge mothers money to take their baby to the Foundling Hospital, with many dying on the way.

London's Forgotten Children by Gillian Pugh and Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin

Jamila Gavin’s fascinating teen novel CORAM BOY deals with this situation, as well as painting a vivid picture of 18^th century England and capturing the vulnerability of children in a time of poverty and slavery. LONDON’S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN by Gillian Pugh tells the story of Thomas Coram and is packed with photos tracing the Foundling Museum’s history. In 1801 they changed the rules – babies had to be illegitimate and mothers had to bring their baby themselves.

All the babies were baptised and given a new name. In spite of the tokens and later receipts mothers were given when they left their baby, not many children were able to return to their mothers.

This painting from 1858 by Elizabeth Brownlow, a self-taught artist, shows a mother coming back to reclaim her little girl. The man behind the desk is the painter’s father John Brownlow. He was himself raised in the Foundling Hospital and later worked his way up to become its governor. It's possible that the kind Mr Brownlow in Dicken’s OLIVER TWIST is based on him. The certificate proving that the mother and child belong together has fallen on the floor.

The hospital moved first to Redhill and then to Berkhamsted where the air was fresher, where it remained until 1955. In the Foundling Museum, you can listen to recordings of people talking about their experience of growing up there in the 20^th century.

In the 1960s, people came to understand that an institutional childhood, whether it is in a children’s home or a boarding school, makes it very difficult to meet a child’s emotional needs and that most children thrive in a family instead.

Coram has evolved into a charity committed to improving the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people. You can find its website here

It is currently working on Voices Through Time: The Story of Care , which aims to digitise the records of Coram’s work so that the voices and stories of children looked after through the Foundling Hospital can be saved for generations. It will include registers, documents about the children, letters from mothers and the records of fabric tokens mothers left to connect them to their child. Coram hopes to have this archive online in 2023.  

Writing challenge

We’ve seen some of the tokens mothers left with their babies, to represent their love and in the hope of connecting again one day. Centuries later, we can look at these heartbreaking little objects and in doing so, keep their memory and story alive.

For this week’s writing prompt, think of an object that you could give to someone as a keepsake, to remind them of you. It can be simple or precious, imaginary or real, manufactured or natural, but small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Describe this object – its colour, shape, what it’s made of, where you got it or how you made it. What does it say about you? What makes it special?

 

Jeannie Waudby is the author of YA thriller/love story One of Us (Chicken House.) She is currently writing a YA novel set in Victorian times.