Being still stuck in India I did not see the show yesterday, but the one I did last year was at a castle and so yesterday's one might have been a repeat. Following last year's show, Jason kindly passed my contact details to Sidney's son Richard Daniels, who then got in touch with me by e-mail. Unfortunately, despite being the same age group - Sidney Daniels was 18 and John Collins was 17 years old on board the
Titanic and working in the Victualling Department - the two men do not appear to have known each other. At least, Sidney, who lived a long life and died only in 1983, never mentioned the scullion to Richard.
The Daniels stuff I’m having some difficulty with unless he fathered kids when he was getting on a bit? Those interviewed talked about their ‘Dad’.
The man you saw at the show, Richard Daniels, was definitely Sidney's son. Look at this:
Sid was remarried in 1920 to Alfreda Kathleen Clements (born August 15, 1895 on the Isle of Wight). They would have seven children: Kathleen (1922-1966), Sidney (b. 1925), Albert (b. 1928), Robert John (1930-1981), Marion (b. 1932), Richard (b. 1935) and Jean (b. 1938).
So, Sidney Daniels was 28 years old when his first child was born and 44 when the 7th and last arrived. Not all that unusual in those days, I would have thought. Richard Daniels looked well preserved for his 87 years, as did his sister - I think it was Jean who appeared with him.
My interest in Sidney Daniels began in 1985 when I used to live in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK. Opposite our apartment block was a Secondhand Bookshop (Needwood Bookshop) owned at the time by a Mr Alan Sheppherd, a
Titanic enthusiast himself. Mr Sheppherd was the one who rekindled my interest in the
Titanic; he was originally from the Portsmouth area and went to school with Sidney Daniels' son Albert. As a boy, he had met Sidney himself several times and listened to the latter's stories about the
Titanic.
Mr Shepperd was also the man who introduced me in the summer of 1985 to Mrs Alice Braithwaite, a niece of Clarence Woods, John Collins' fellow WW1 POW and friend in Germany; the two men kept in touch after the war. As a young girl, Alice had met John Collins a few times in the 1930s when the latter came to see his friend and what she told me during our only meeting decades later was what started me on the long and convoluted research into the circumstances of the scullion's
Titanic survival.