Dreams of Disaster: Laura Martin and the Sinking of RMS Lusitania

A couple travelled to New Philadelphia, Ohio from England in 1914 to visit family members and possibly create a new home in America. The husband’s death resulted in the wife returning home on an ill-fated, soon to be infamous, ocean liner.

Elizabeth (1854-1921) and Laura (1860-1941) Truman (sometimes spelled Trueman) were the daughters of a coal miner named Abraham Truman (1825-1894) in the town of Ilkeston in Derbyshire, England. Their mother, Laura Smith (1826-1860) died shortly after giving birth to Laura in the fall of 1860. Abraham married Annie Hallsworth (?-1870) in March 1861 and she gave birth to four more children before her death in 1870. The children attended school while very young, but began working in their early teens; the boys as coal miners and the girls in trades related to the fabric industry.

Elizabeth married William Severn (1857-1915), a coal miner, in December 1876 and the couple soon decided to move to America. They left England in 1877 and eventually made their way to New Philadelphia, Ohio where William found work in one of the many local coal mines there. Meanwhile, Laura worked as a lace clipper in one of Ilkeston’s fabric manufactories while she boarded in a nearby home. She met a local coal miner and widower named Albert Martin (1858-1914) and the couple married in February 1884.

Albert Martin had two children from his previous marriage that Laura helped raise in their household on Awsworth Road in Ilkeston. One of Laura’s brothers, also a coal miner, and his family lived with the Martins for a time in the small home as well. Albert and Laura never had any children of their own and, after the two children grew up and moved away, the couple moved into a home on Burleigh Street in Ilkeston where they lived until their unfortunate trip to America to visit Elizabeth and her family in 1914.

Elizabeth and William Severn and their family lived on the 300 block of North Ninth Street in New Philadelphia, Ohio when Albert and Laura Martin decided to visit. Albert booked them third-class passage on the RMS Carmenia scheduled to travel to New York from Liverpool in late May 1914. They arrived in New York in early June and made their way to New Philadelphia by rail, arriving around the end of June 1914. Shortly after their arrival Albert began to feel unwell and, less than two months after arriving, he died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was buried in East Avenue Cemetery in New Philadelphia, over 3000 miles from home.

Laura, distraught, stayed with her sister’s family for several more months as she considered what to do next. She purchased a ticket home from Dover merchant Joe Fried in early 1915, only to cancel her plans due to ill health. Joe Fried warned people booking passage to Europe of the dangers given the outbreak of World War One and the danger of German U-Boats. Undeterred, Laura booked her return passage in the spring of 1915 on a steam ship sailing from New York, the Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania. . In the weeks leading up to her departure, however, Laura complained to family and Mr. Fried of dreams of shipwrecks, but she was determined to return home to Ilkeston.

The RMS Lusitania, with Laura Martin sharing a third-class cabin with another woman, left New York on May 1, 1915. Six days later, and less than 11 miles from the coast of Ireland, a German U-Boat spotted Lusitania and fired a torpedo that struck the ship and caused a secondary explosion. Water began to pour into the third class cabins and, somehow, Laura Martin managed to get herself on deck and eventually was helped into one of the six lifeboats that managed to be successfully launched. It was days before what happened to Laura Martin, and that she survived, was reported in the New Philadelphia newspaper.

The same newspaper, that reported on May 8, 1915 of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania also reported on the death of Laura’s brother-in-law William Severn. Laura returned to Ilkeston where her first-hand accounts about the Lusitania‘s sinking was reported in the local newspapers. Laura and her husband had traveled to New Philadelphia, Ohio to visit her sister and her brother-in-law. When the visit dramatically ended, both sisters were widows. Laura Martin died in January 1941 in Ilkeston.

You can read more of Laura Martin’s account here.

© Noel B. Poirier, 2024.