People on board

LIMBRICK, Ivy Winifred

Ivy Winifred Limbrick was born on the 16th of April 1899 in Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester to Arthur Limbrick and Catherine (Kate) Nugent, the fourth of their five children. Kate Nugent, from Scilly, Kinsale Co Cork had married a soldier, James Ashdown of the Royal Artillery in 1879 and had four children with him. They were born abroad in Malta, Bermuda and Hong Kong, with the youngest child registered in 1890 at the army’s Spike Island in Cork Harbour. When James died in 1891 she remarried to Arthur Limbrick, a Sergeant in the Manchester Regiment, based in Kinsale Barracks.

Their first child, Maud, was born at Spike Island in 1892 but they then moved to Ashton-under-Lyne where the other four children were born. Arthur Limbrick was Sergeant-Instructor, and later Sergeant Major, of the Volunteer Battalion of the Manchester Regiment in Ashton-under-Lyne, retiring in 1907. The family has not been found anywhere in the 1901 census except for Kate’s thirteen year old daughter Kate Alice who was in the Protestant Orphanage in Clifden, Galway.

By 1911 the family had moved to Salford in Manchester and Arthur Limbrick was employed as Club Steward / Caretaker in the Conservative Club at St James’s Road in Salford. The eldest girl, Maud, was an ‘Underpresser’ and Ivy was at school. The next sighting of Ivy was in October 1918 in a report and photo in the Manchester Evening News that she had survived the sinking of RMS Leinster.

Her address given then was St Bees Street, Moss Side, but it is not known if the family were also living there. Ivy was reported to have been returning from a visit to Ireland and was recovering in the Temple Hill Hospital in Blackrock, south of Dublin.

In 1920 Ivy Limbrick married Leonard J Freece in Chorlton, Manchester and they had a son Frederick Anthony in 1924. However the following year she married Harry Edge in Manchester, using her maiden name Limbrick. A son, Robert Engarde Augustine, was born in 1926. Then in August 1931 she married Axel William (or Wilhelm) Johnson in Rochdale, declaring on the marriage certificate that she was a Widow, despite both her previous husbands being alive. Axel Johnson was born in Connecticut of Finnish parents and was a Ship’s Officer in the Merchant Service.

In February 1932 Ivy Johnson sailed to Baltimore, Maryland with her two sons Frederick and Robert. A son, Axel William Jnr. was born in July 1932. She returned to England almost annually with her two older sons until WW2 began. Ivy Johnson née Limbrick survived until 1968, outliving two of her three sons. She was buried in the Gardens of Faith Cemetery in Baltimore.