Henry Philip Creese was born in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1868. He was the son of Charles and Jane Creese. He had an elder brother, William Creese who was to lose his life on 19 November 1917 when the submarine, SS Jutland, was torpedoed off the Brittany coast near Ille d'Ouessant.
Charles Creese and his family are not traceable on the 1881 UK census and as it seems likely that he was a seafarer this might point to their absence abroad at that time.
The 1901 census finds Henry Creese, then aged 33, living at 46 Emerson Road, Poole, Dorset. Described as a marine engineer he was at home with his wife, Anne (born Falmouth 1861). He had married Anne at Cardiff in 1894 and this was where their first daughter, Dorothy Victoria Annie Creese was born in 1897. The census also reveals a son, Henry who was born in Poole, Dorset in 1899, but at the time of Henry’s loss on Titanic in April 1912 only his 2 daughters are mentioned so it is likely that this child died young.
Their second daughter, Gladys was born in 1904 and it is probable that Annie died in childbirth or shortly following the birth as Henry went on to marry for a second time.
The evidence which points to the second marriage is that a gravestone in Falmouth Cemetery states that Henry’s wife was Annie Napton Creese but the Creese grave in the Lordswood Cemetery, Southampton states that his wife was Elizabeth Anne Incledon Creese (born 1873).
The matter is made more confusing by the fact that although his second wife was called Elizabeth Anne she is referred to in reports following the sinking of Titanic as Annie, which of course was also the name by which his first wife was known.
By 1912 Henry, his second wife and 2 daughters had settled in Southampton and were living at 2 Enfield Grove. Annie Creese remained in the Southampton area until her death in 1937. Her final home in Southampton was 54 Janson Road.