People on board

SMITH, David Allan Grant

David Allan Grant Smith was born in 1875 in Kinnettles, north of Dundee in Scotland to David Smith and Margaret Ross, the eldest of their six children. David Smith Snr was a Coachman all his life, in 1881 at inverighty house in Kinnettles. By 1891 the family had moved to Edinburgh and were living at 33 Dean Park Mews, where David Allan, aged fifteen, gave his occupation as ‘Pageboy’. In 1901 he was Butler in the household of James Lawrence Boyd, a retired Solicitor of the Supreme Courts, then in Regent Terrace. He moved with the Boyds to 39 Moray Place and that was his address on his marriage certificate in 1906. He was then thirty-three and his bride, thirty-nine year old Christina Nicolson, was a Domestic Servant also in 39 Moray Place.

In 1911 they were living in Canal Bank Place and David was still a Butler in ‘Domestic Service’. There does not appear to be any children of the marriage. It is not known when David Allan Grant Smith enlisted, though it appears that it was initially with the Cameron Highlanders, Service Number 25844. There is also a transcript record of his being with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, Service Number 26527. By October 1918 he had transferred to the 663 Home Employment Company of the Labour Corps, apparently a fairly recent transfer which had brought him to Ireland.

Presumably returning home on leave, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin. His name is recorded on the Scottish National War Memorial.