Finding lost voices
Hello and welcome to my blog and first ever post!
My book The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind is out next March (2020) and it's been something I wanted to write for many years.
When you think of Titanic, what comes to mind? Opulence? Grandeur? Multi-millionaires? Jewellery and furs?
That's not what Titanic ever meant to me - because my great-grandfather was a lowly stoker (the men who shovelled coal into the boilers to keep the engines going) and he died on board Titanic aged just 40.
His wife, my great-grandmother Emily, was left a widow at just 38. She had five children to rear and with her husband the breadwinner dead she had to take in washing to survive.
Whenever I saw a film, adaptation, documentary about Titanic, I always felt it was shown to be a 'rich person's tragedy'. I always felt the workers - the stokers, the stewards, the waiters, the cleaning staff - were invisible. It didn't matter that hundreds of them had died. It didn't matter that hundreds of their wives and children were thrown into poverty.
And as I got older, it made me angry. Why was Titanic so synonymous with the rich? Why were the poor men who died on board not talked about? And why were their wives and children's voices so silent, lost?
I became a journalist and worked in national papers and magazines. Twenty years passed and I had my own family. Becoming a mother made me even more determined to get the voices of the wives and children left behind after the Titanic to be heard.
So I began researching. Stories of the rich are easy to find - Benjamin Guggenheim, the 'Unsinkable' Molly Brown. Finding the histories of women thrust into abject poverty was harder. But in time I found them and learnt heartbreaking stories. Stories of women who died after their husbands drowned on Titanic, leaving their children orphans. Stories of women so poor they had to be given emergency bags of groceries to survive because their breadwinner was gone.
That is what my book is about. Making these people visible again and ensuring their lost voices are heard.
Do you think Titanic is synonymous with the rich?
My book The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind is out next March (2020) and it's been something I wanted to write for many years.
When you think of Titanic, what comes to mind? Opulence? Grandeur? Multi-millionaires? Jewellery and furs?
That's not what Titanic ever meant to me - because my great-grandfather was a lowly stoker (the men who shovelled coal into the boilers to keep the engines going) and he died on board Titanic aged just 40.
His wife, my great-grandmother Emily, was left a widow at just 38. She had five children to rear and with her husband the breadwinner dead she had to take in washing to survive.
Whenever I saw a film, adaptation, documentary about Titanic, I always felt it was shown to be a 'rich person's tragedy'. I always felt the workers - the stokers, the stewards, the waiters, the cleaning staff - were invisible. It didn't matter that hundreds of them had died. It didn't matter that hundreds of their wives and children were thrown into poverty.
And as I got older, it made me angry. Why was Titanic so synonymous with the rich? Why were the poor men who died on board not talked about? And why were their wives and children's voices so silent, lost?
I became a journalist and worked in national papers and magazines. Twenty years passed and I had my own family. Becoming a mother made me even more determined to get the voices of the wives and children left behind after the Titanic to be heard.
So I began researching. Stories of the rich are easy to find - Benjamin Guggenheim, the 'Unsinkable' Molly Brown. Finding the histories of women thrust into abject poverty was harder. But in time I found them and learnt heartbreaking stories. Stories of women who died after their husbands drowned on Titanic, leaving their children orphans. Stories of women so poor they had to be given emergency bags of groceries to survive because their breadwinner was gone.
That is what my book is about. Making these people visible again and ensuring their lost voices are heard.
Do you think Titanic is synonymous with the rich?
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Julie Cook, author
Author of The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind: The Forgotten Victims of the Fatal Voyage. Publication date: March 30 2020
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