People on board

PRITCHARD, William

There was more than one William Pritchard in Holyhead of approximately the same age, so it is not certain that this is the man who served on RMS Leinster.

William Pritchard was born in Holyhead about 1875, the eldest of the four sons of Richard Pritchard and his wife Jane. The family lived in Blue Bell off the London Road and in the 1881 census Richard, who was a Joiner, had his parents Richard, also a Joiner, and Jane living with them. By 1891 his parents were no longer with them and by 1901 the three older boys were all employed, William, then aged twenty-six, as a Labourer.

In 1902 William married Cecelia Owen from Holyhead and they also lived in Blue Bell. By 1911 they had three children, Jane, Maggie and William Richard and William was employed as a ‘Ship Stoker’. It was as a Stoker or Fireman that he was working on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. An early report in the North Wales Chronicle on the 11th reported that he had been lost in the sinking, but he had actually survived.

He continued working as a Fireman on ships, and was recorded as such in the 1939 Register when he was aged sixty-four. He was living then in Gilbert Street, a widower, with his son William and daughter Jane, both single. He died in 1953 aged seventy-eight.