People on board

ENTWISTLE, John

The Freeman’s Journal reported on the 12th of October 1918 that “Mr John Entwistle, Old Trafford, who is among the survivors, was a leading pig sales man in the Manchester market, and had considerable connection in Irish trade”.

John Edward Entwistle, born on the 27th of September 1886, was the second of three surviving children and the only son of John Highpike Entwistle and Elizabeth Manly. The family lived in Water Street in Manchester initially and then moved to 6 Darwen Street, Old Trafford, Stretford where they stayed. In the censuses John Highpike described himself as a ‘Hog Salesman’ and in the 1911 census the three children, aged twenty-eight, twenty-four, and nineteen were all ‘Hog Salesman Assistants’.

John Edward Entwistle married Annie Webster in 1913 in Prestwich and they had a son, John Douglas, in 1917. It can be assumed that John Edward had travelled to Ireland to buy pigs for the Manchester market in October 1918. As this appears to have been a fairly regular trip he would have been familiar with the lay-out of the ship and would have been known to the crew. There is no report in any of the newspapers of his experience or if he was hospitalised, but he presumably returned to Manchester in the following days.

In 1922 Annie Entwistle née Webster gave birth to their second child Dorothy, but died the same year. In 1928 John Edward Entwistle married Evelyn Hilda Nicholson in Scarborough and they had a daughter Joan in 1930. In the 1939 Register they were recorded as living in Sale, where John gave his occupation as a ‘Wholesale Meat Manager’. Elizabeth Entwistle née Manly, widowed since 1919, had also moved to Sale and died there in 1943. John Edward Entwistle died in Seamer, near Scarborough in 1956. All the family were buried in Southern Cemetery in Manchester.