Alice Phillips

January 26th, 1891 - 1923

She is a Aquarius.

Alice Louisa Phillips was born in lifracombe, Devon, England to Cardiff-born parents, Escott Robert Philips (born 1858) and Hannah Maria Knight (born 1868) who had married in 1890. The family appear on the 1891 census living at High Street in lifracombe. They appeared on the 1901 census living at Belvedere, lifracombe and on the 1911 census at Westbourne Grove, also in lifracombe where her mother had ran a boarding school since 1904.

Aboard Titanic/April 14th-15th, 1912:
In 1911 her mother contracted tuberculosis and subsequently passed away in August of 1911, plans were therefore made to emigrate. Her uncle William Philips had already crossed the Atlantic in 1892, working as a painter, and lived with his wife Bessie and daughter, Ethel (born 1893) in New Brighton near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, it was here that Alice was to resettle with her father who had secured a position as a factory foreman. With the sale of their house complete they stayed for a short while at the Central Hotel in lifracombe from where, they were to travel on to Southampton to take passage aboard American Line's Philadelphia. However the ongoing coal strike forced the cancellation of that ship and they were transferred to Titanic. On April 9th, 1912 Alice and Robert left lifracombe by train and arrived in Southampton 9 hours later. That evening they walked down to berth 44 to view the ship later Alice wrote to her grandmother in lifracombe:

'Dad and I have been to look at the Titanic. It is a monstrous great boat as high as the Clarence Hotel, and I cannot tell you how long! We are going to embark tomorrow morning soon after breakfast.'

They embarked the ship as planned the following morning and enjoyed the first few days of the voyage, making friends with a family of 4 (possibly the Samuel Herman family) who shared the table at mean times. Alice shared a cabin with Cornish travellers Agnes Davies and Maud Sincock, all of whom were from St Ives, Cornwall. Alice survived the sinking, her father didn't. The following account was printed in the North Devon Journal on April 25th, 1912:

"I was in the cabin,"she said,"when all at once there was a tremendous shock. Naturally I was dreadfully frightened, and at once ran outside. Just beyond the doorway I met the cabin Shepard, and asked him what had happened, but he assured me there was nothing wrong. Everything was all right, he said, and advised me to go back to the cabin. I could not understand it, and felt that there must be something amiss, but I listened to his advice, and, with many doubts, went back to the cabin. Then I heard shouts and the shouts of general confusion on the deck, and determined to at least see what was being done for myself. Without a moment's further hesitation I rushed to the upper deck, and no sooner had I got there that someone picked me up and put me into one of the lifeboats."
There was already a large number of other women and children in the boat, and I had no been in it a few moments, and did not even fully understand what was the matter, when it was pushed off into darkness. That was the last of the Titanic and I shall never see my poor father again."

The time was 1:25 AM and the lifeboat 12. It would be 9 hours before Alice was to be lifted on the RMS Carpathia. Alice was ultimately met at pier 54 in New York by her uncle who took her to his home at 13th Street, New Brighton.

After The Sinking/Later Life/Death:
As a result of her ordeal, Alice was ill for some time but after recovering sufficiently she decided to train as a stenographer at her uncle's workplace. After a few weeks, however, she became so homesick she returned to bed relatives in England, arriving in Liverpool aboard the Baltic on November 2nd, 1912. Alice received a total of $650 from various American relief sources. Alice was married in St Mark's Church, Cheetham, Lancashire on February 5th, 1916 to Henry Leslie Mead (June 23rd, 1892). Henry, an accounts clerk, was the son of a Welsh father and an English mother but had been born in Dublin, Ireland and returned to England as a small child and was raised in Droylsden, Lancashire.

Henry and Alice had only one child, a daughter named Josephine, in 1921. Alice died, reportedly as an result of influenza, in Salford, Manchester in mid-1923 at the age of 31; Josephine would follow her in death towards the end of the year. Henry remarried in 1924 to Frances Rebecca Littlemore (1903 - 1990) and raised a family. He later died in Southport in 1997 at the age of 84.

Sources:
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Rest In Peace Alice Phillips.

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