People on board

JOHNSON, Mary Ann

Mary Ann Johnson was born Mary Ann Richards in Kent about 1850. Her father, Mark Richards, was a Licensed Victualler. She married a Mr James, identity unknown, and they had at least two daughters, Mary Ann James born about 1878 and Ethel James born in 1883. In October 1888 she married Henry Johnson in London, when she was a widow and he a widower. He was also a Licensed Victualler. In 1891 they were living in Lavender Hill in Battersea and Ethel, then aged eight, was the only child living with them. The older girl, Mary Ann, had married William Roache in 1898.

In 1911 they were living in Hythe in Kent, and Henry had retired. On the night of the census Mary Ann and Henry had her daughter Mary Ann and grandson Bryan Roache staying with them. Ethel had married in 1919 to William Arthur Lethbridge, an Inspector of Technical Education, and they had their first child in Cork in June 1911.

In the spring of 1917 Henry and Mary Ann moved to Llandudno in Wales to get away from the danger of German Zeppelin air raids in Kent. In October 1918 Mary Ann went to visit her daughter and family who were then living in Arkendale Road, Glenageary in south Dublin. She was due to return on the mailboat on the 10th and Henry waited for her at the railway station at Llandudno Junction. It was two days later that he got the news that she had not survived the sinking but that her body had been recovered.

William Lethbridge identified the body and it was returned to Wales where she was buried on the Great Orme, above Llandudno.