People on board

BARCLAY, Samuel Dugald

Samuel Dugald Barclay was born in Glasgow on the 4th of March 1887 to Samuel Barclay and Margaret Gordon Mathieson. Samuel Snr. was a Commercial Traveller, later a ‘Glass and China Merchant’. Samuel Dugald was the third of five children in the family which lived in Eastwood, Glasgow. In the 1901 census he was still at school aged fourteen, while his two older brothers worked as Clerks. According to a newspaper report in 1918 he was the nephew of W.D. Barclay of the Bank of Scotland and a J.P.

In 1911 there was only his mother and youngest brother Gordon, born in 1900, living at home. Samuel then stated that he worked in ‘Life Insurance’. In May 1917 he married Magdalene Linton in Glasgow giving his occupation as Commercial Traveller, but also 2nd Lieutenant in the 5th Reserve Battalion of the Scottish Rifles.

It is not clear why Samuel Barclay was in Ireland in October 1918 though some battalions of the Cameronian Scottish Rifles were based there. A report in the Motherwell Times on the 18th of October stated that he had been returning home prior to going to France, and was “among the list of those drowned by the sinking of the Leinster”. His body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.