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, 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 was
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 afterwards 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
afterwards 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 Rev. 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 Hon. 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 re-election 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.