People on board

WILD, Robert

Robert Wild was an English man who lived in Dundalk and worked for the Great Northern Railway. Robert came from Carlisle in Cumberland. He was born in 1851 to George Wild and Ann Curry, part of a large family. His father was also a railway man. Robert married Mary Sewell there in 1877. Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Dublin where their first two children, George and Annie, were born. But they were not long in Dublin, moving to Louth for Robert’s job. The rest of their children (Susan, Grace, William, Margaret, Isabella and Mary) were born in Dundalk, where Robert ultimately rose through the ranks to become the Manager of the railway works.

Their daughter Grace had married John Bishop in 1909, but sadly their younger daughter Isabella died of tuberculosis in 1910 at the age of 17. The 1911 census showed them living at 22 Brook St with their now grown-up children Annie, William, Margaret and Mary.  The house belonged to the railway.

Aboard the Leinster, Chief Steward Llewelyn Lewis remembered showing Robert Wild to his cabin, where he presumably still was with the ship was torpedoed.

Daughter Margaret had married just a month before her father’s death to John McWilliams. After Robert’s death, his widow and unmarried daughters moved to Watford West. Today, Robert Wild has surviving great grandchildren in Oxfordshire, Dublin, Co. Leitrim and Penclawdd, Swansea.

Text: Claire Bradley