People on board

MacDONALD, Margaret née Huntley

Margaret Huntley was born in 1896 in West Ham, London to James Huntley and Susan Young, the second of four daughters. James Huntley was a soldier, on half-pay in 1901, and a Builder’s Labourer in 1911. The family lived in Waddington Street, in West Ham. In 1914 Margaret married Edwin McDonald in Brentford, Middlesex and they had a daughter Flora in 1916.

Edwin MacDonald was also a soldier, in 1911 with the Army Service Corps in Valetta, Malta. His English-born father was also in the army and Edwin and his siblings had been born in the Military Barracks in Youghal, Co Cork where Edward MacDonald was Barrack Sergeant. The family had moved to Dublin by 1911 and were living in Almeida Avenue in Kilmainham. In October 1918 Edwin MacDonald was in Mesopotamia with the Army Service Corps where he was Acting Staff Sergeant – Supply and Transport.

Margaret MacDonald travelled to Ireland with her two-year old daughter from their London home in Streatham to visit her husband’s family in Dublin. Returning home on the 10th of October they were on RMS Leinster when it was sunk by German torpedoes. They were listed in the Irish Independent on the 16th as ‘Missing’ but their bodies were not found.

Edwin MacDonald remarried in 1935 to Eileen Agnes Mundy and they were living in Kingston-upon-Thames in the 1939 Register. Edwin was a Civil Service Clerk in the War Office and they had a child, unnamed in the Register. Edwin died in 1965 aged seventy-five.