The Sinking of the R.M.S. Leinster
 

People on board

Laura Lalor


LALOR, Laura / LEXOW, Leonora

The newspapers reported that Laura Lalor was a survivor of the sinking and taken to hospital, giving an address at Hollybank Avenue, Clonskea. Nobody of that name has been identified at that address, though a Laura Lexow was living at 57 Hollybank Avenue and is most probably the person in question.

Leonora Guerra Tett was born in London to Samuel Tett and Emma Partridge, the elder of just two children. Samuel was named as a Parish Officer in the 1861 census and as a Parochial Settlement Clerk in 1871. Leonora married Ernst Wilhelm Robert Lexow in Paddington in 1887 and in 1889 their only child, George Ernest, was born. Ernst Lexow had been born in Berlin about 1856 and was a Piano Manufacturer. The family were in Sheffield at the time of the 1901 census.

They moved to Dublin about 1907, initially living in Elmwood Avenue in Ranelagh before moving to Hollybank Avenue. Other than their presence in the Thom’s Directories, nothing has been recorded of their life in Dublin. In the 1911 census Leonora was named as Laura. By 1918 their son Ernest had moved to Graham Court in the north inner city.

It is not known why Laura Lexow was travelling on the Leinster on the 10th of October. Her only brother had died in 1902 in London but his only child was married and living there with his three children. Laura may have been a ‘grandmother’ type of figure to them. She survived the sinking and lived until February 1926 when she died of heart failure. Her name given on the death certificate was Leonora. Her husband lived exactly two months longer. Their son Ernest, a Bookkeeper, died in Cork in 1967, having never married.

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