LOST HIS ENTIRE FAMILY
At times a frantic man would hurry from coffin to coffin looking over the shoulders of persons near it and trying to satisfy himself by a quick glance that the body was not that of the loved one—most of the bodies were so marred that quick identification was impossible—and then dash to the next. The most pathetic is the experience of C. W. Cullen, a candy merchant of Montreal, who had sent his wife, two children and a maid, Jennie Blythe, on the Empress of Ireland for a summer trip to England. The maid alone survived.
Cullen ran from one coffin to another looking for his wife, but in vain. Then he turned to gaze on the coffins of children. He quickly found the body of his daughter, Maude, six years old, who in the excitement following the collision had been seized by the mother. The search among the babies ranging from twelve months to three years then went on. Some of the babies lying in the coffins looked as if they were asleep, with their hair curled or ruffled by a light breeze. Others had bruised foreheads, suggesting vividly how they had been hurtled against stanchions or the sides of their cabins and killed before the water came upon them. The legs and arms of others were cut and bruised terribly. Upon the little ones Cullen gazed and finally picked out one baby with blond hair. He turned to Canon Scott, rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, and said:
“That is my boy.” Then Cullen turned again to search through the bodies of the adults for his wife.