Child Passengers on the Titanic

[Alexis N. Marlow]

Recently, I came across a really informative book at my city library, called Titanic: Women and Children First, by Judith Geller. I decided to write down the names and locations of the men, women and children for research when I had to take the book back. I did them in separate sections. The first problem is when I counted the Titanic's children, and got 54 altogether. I recounted and got the same number. Sources tell me there were 55, so who's the missing child? Also, I cannot find any information on Betros Seman, nine, nor on the Youssef family, which I found in another book. Father and daughter supposedly survived while mother and son did not. I am thouroly confused. Can anyone help me?

 

[Joannie Durand]

Dear Alexis,the Youssef family was supposly the
touma family because the Youssef family was in another list but no the Touma family.Youssef family was false.

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Alexis,

I have no idea how you get such a low count for the number of children. In 3rd Class there were 79 aged 11 and younger. If you count 12 and 13 year old as some sources do then the figure is higher. Including 1st and 2nd Class there were 106 children.

You say that you did them in sections.

1st Class 5 - 4 saved
2nd Class 22 - all saved
3rd Class: British subjects 22 - 8 saved; Non-British 35 - 9 saved; Cherbourg 17 - 13 saved; Queenstown 5 - all lost.

Total 106 of whom 56 were saved.

You ask about the Youssef family. They were not one family unit. Mrs Youssef was actully Mrs Touma. She and both of her children were saved. Youssef was Youssef Ibrahim Shawah. He did not survive. You will find entires for all of them on this web-site. Betros Seman has an entry as Seman Betros.

I hope this helps,
Lester

 

[Alexis N. Marlow]

Hey,
thanks both to Joannie and Lester for your help. I realized my problem(boy am I stupid). When I counted 54, I was counting the number perished! But I've heard 55 is the true number, so I'd still like to know the identity of the missing child if possible. A couple comments:

There's a dispute over whether or not Jack Ryerson is counted as a child. If the Panula boy is counted as a child at 14, then so is Jack. This probably is where i'm missing a perished child, because he is often counted as a child. I got my info from Judith Geller's W&CF, so he wasn't counted as a child then.

Also, the information I asked on the "Youssef" family was found in A Night to Remember by Walter Lord, in the passenger list, and also in Total Titanic, a book my daughter brought home from a school book fair. I believe the TT list was copied from the N2R list, because they are exactly alike, and both contain incorrect spellings, extra passengers, and other messups. Thanks for the info, though. I really appreciate your time and effort!

Much regards,
Alexis Marlow

 

[Alexis N. Marlow]

Another comment. There were between 24-26 children in 2nd class. In my list, I did not include the West sisters because there were no ages beside their names, and therefore they could have been 14 and 17 or so on.
Also, i'm not sure that the exact number of children is correct, so i'll look into that. Again, thanks for all your help!

Much regards,
Alexis N. Marlow

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Alexis,

If you are taking the number 54 from Geller, then note that is 3rd Class. the 55th child would be Loraine Allison.

54/55 are numbers I do not accept. They do not work even if you include 12 and 13 year olds. I do not. See my paper on the web-site.

Thus both Jack Ryerson 13 and Jaako Panula 14 were adults. Even if 12 and 13 year olds counted as children Jaako Panula would not.

Lucile Carter was also 13, so if you count Jack Ryerson, you have to include her and that gives 7 children in 1st Class.

In 2nd Class there were 22 children/infants plus 12 year olds Ruth Becker and Robertha Watt and 13 year old Madeline Mellinger. - All saved.

In 3rd Class 79, plus 12 year olds Mathilde Lefebvre and Anthony William Sage and 13 year old Filip Oscar Asplund. - All lost.

So even if you include 12 and 13 years olds I only count 53 children/infants as being lost. If you include 14 year olds, the figure is 59. Lost - George Sweet (2nd class); Eugene Abbott; Charles Goodwin; Jaako Panula; Dorothy Sage and Hulda Vestrom.

Saved 14 year olds include Adele Nasrallah (2nd Class) and Jamilia Nicola-Yarrad and Johan Cervin Svensson (3rd Class).

The West girls were only 4 (Constance) and 11months (Barbara).

I hope this helps,
Lester

 

[Alexis N. Marlow]

It does, but I am wondering why is there a mystery on who to count as an adult/child? it doesn't matter nowadays, and if it did, there would be alot more passengers marked as children(17 and under by todays standards are children) but why is their a conflict on whether or not a 12, 13 or 14 year old is an adult? I believe that 14+ should be counted as an adult, but 13+ does make more sense. this is very confusing. history makes no sense even when you think you have the facts straight. sometimes i wish i had a time machine to tell who was counted fully as a adult/child.

George Sweet was 16 according to Geller.

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Alexis,

There is no mystery. Passenger/Ticket Number List PRO document No 27/780B as well as Titanic's Certificates of Clearance carry the following statements/informations:
Adults: 12 years and upwards.
Children are divided into: Between 1 and 12; and Under 1 year.

Adults were divided into married and single; but it did not have that exact meaning. Married only applied to a husband and wife travelling together. All others (whether married or not) were counted as single.

27/780B Under Adults of 12 years and upwards has: Accompanied by husband or wife; Not accompanied by husband or wife.
Children were between 1 and 12; with another column for Infants.

Since this list (27/780B) does not give ages for 1st Class Passengers and because we do not have a list for passengers boarding at Cherbourg we do not know what ages White Star had for Lucile Carter and Jack Ryerson; all we do know is that on their Contract Ticket List that they counted both as adults. However, in their Passenger List; they had Jack Ryerson as Master. The Contract Ticket List has only 4 children and 1 infant for 1st Class. However, by listing Jack Ryerson as Master it seems he was subsequently counted as a child; with all Inquiry figures stating 6 children in 1st Class.

All 1912 documents agree that 12 and upwards counted as an adult.

You say: "George Sweet was 16 according to Geller." The List in Geller is actually by Michael Findlay. I have accepted 14. The year of his birth is given as 1897; so he cannot have been 16. Depending on when in 1897 he was born he could have been 15. 27/780B gives his age as 14.

You may like to note that Mrs Bucknell listed by both Findlay and Geller as 60. But this falls at the post because Geller gives her birth date as: 28 August 1852.

I hope this helps,
Lester

 

[Alexis N. Marlow]

Thanks, Lester. Hopefully this clears things up for me!

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Alexis,

I hope so, but if you have any more questions please do not hesitate to ask and I will try to help. It would be good if we could get an actual birth-date for George Sweet; rather than just a birth-year.

Regards,
Lester

 

[Alexis N. Marlow]

Thanks Lester. I do have a question, and its in the Lost and Saved catagory, under Unidentified Children. If you could please try to help answer it, i'd be very much obliged.
Thanks again and much luck to you to!
Alexis Marlow

 

[Phillip Gowan]

Lester and Alexis,
The birthdate for Mrs. Bucknell is more probably 1853 although it is true that you will find 1852 on a number of documents. She has descendants who live in this area of South Carolina (Columbia/Midlands).

George Sweet was born April 16, 1897 and would have turned 15 had he lived one more day. (That information is per his birth certificate so should be accurate).

Regards,
Phillip

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Phillip,

Firstly my appreciative thanks for the birth-date of George Sweet. Seems like quite a number of passengers had or were due to have birthdays onboard.

I note that Mrs Bucknell's birth-year was more probably 1853.
My reason for drawing attention to the age 60; 1852 issue was because it seems that a number of researchers simply take the birth-year from 1912 to calculate the age. As you will appreciate there is a 70+% change of this being wrong.

The 1853/1852 issue is of interest because I have recently noticed that:

ET has the following info on Lucile Carter. The text reads: 14, born Oct 20, 1898. Her headstone reads Oct 20, 1897. The death notice and the Death Cert both say 1898.

The informations on Margaret Brown give a birth date of 10 or 18 July 1867; which agrees with her being 65 at the time of her death. But the headstone reads: July 19, 1868. In this case we also have a day question 10 or 18; or 19?

Are you able to provide the correct dates for Miss Carter and Mrs Brown?

Regards,
Lester

 

[Lester Mitcham]

Hi Alexis,

Sorry; but I have never looked at which bodies were recovered or what happended to those that were pulled from the sea. I hope that someone else will be able to assist you with this.

Regards,
Lester

 

[Phillip Gowan]

Lester, July 19th is the correct date for Molly Brown-

But as to Lucile Carter, not even her descendants are sure. I suspect it is 1897--however all the documents I've obtained on her list 1898. So I can't say for sure. And all of them are secondary sources.

I'll let you know if I do find anything definite on Lucile.

Regards,
Phil