Survivors who spread lies?

Sarah S

Member
Hello everyone,

Are there any titanic survivors who intentionally spread lies about the sinking or their survival?

I hope this question doesn’t come off disrespectful because I know all of them must have been immensly traumatized, but I have seen so many differing reports or unbelievable stories told by survivors, so I wonder if biographers were able to conclude which survivors were deliberately making up stories (maybe for attention or to clear their names etc.)
I know there is a big amount of “contradictory, unlikely-to-have-happened-reports”, so it could be hard to say who was genuinely oblivious about the falseness and who was intentionally lying. But maybe there is a pattern with certain survivors.

Thank you very much
 
Well, someone spread all that defamational lies in Canada about poor Alice Cleaver being a child killer etc, while in reality she was completely innocent with a squeaky clean record and who just happened to have the same name as the actual culprit. Their middle names were different, of course. There is no proof, but I am convinced that the person who spread those lies was her colleague and fellow survivor Sarah Daniels, who had personal grudges against Alice.
 
Are there any titanic survivors who intentionally spread lies about the sinking or their survival?
With regard to ‘deliberate lies’ about the sinking and/or their own survival, it is a difficult question to answer. Given the social norms of the day, there was a great deal of “survivor’s guilt” among the saved men, particularly after the scale of the tragedy became clear. That said, no amount of guilt or disorientation could explain claims for “swimming for hours” etc which quite a few surviving men appear to have made. The most ridiculous story was probably from Steward Thomas Whiteley, who claimed that he had swum with an injured leg for five-and-a-half hours before reaching a lifeboat; even then he was beaten repeatedly with oars by the occupants standing on the upturned lifeboat (Collapsible B) until he begged to take the place of someone who died. Eventually, someone reportedly did die and then the others unceremoniously shoved the body overboard and hauled Whiteley in. Sometime later Whiteley is supposed to have told a newspaper that he had swallowed so much water during the swim that doctors had to remove his stomach and replace it – with what is a bit uncertain. He went on to become a (very) small time actor.

As I have said a few times before, even the fittest person would have slid into unconsciousness after about 20 minutes under those conditions; that in turn would have rapidly accelerated effects of hypothermia and he/she would have been dead in ten further minutes at most.

I believe that Boxhall lied about his whereabouts at the time of his collision. As Sam and others have demonstrated, there is no way that he could have been walking past the Captain’s Quarters when he heard the bells.

While I would not call it a deliberate lie, I often have wondered about Lightoller’s insistence that the Titanic went down “absolutely intact” while several passengers and crew reported the break-up. Standing on top of the drifting Collapsible B, he could not have been too far to fail to notice it.

There must be a lot more such improbable “Titanic Tales” but it is not easy for say which accounts were first had and which products of newspaper embellishments.
 
While I would not call it a deliberate lie, I often have wondered about Lightoller’s insistence that the Titanic went down “absolutely intact” while several passengers and crew reported the break-up. Standing on top of the drifting Collapsible B, he could not have been too far to fail to notice it.
Based on what he told to Jack Thayer in private on-board the RMS Oceanic in August 1914 it doesn't appear to have been a lie. Thayer recalled:
"In August 1914, just as war was declared, I sailed on the S.S. “OCEANIC” form New York, to play cricket in and around London, on a Merrion Cricket Club team. Lightoller was either Chief officer or First Officer of the “OCEANIC”, I am not certain which. We again went over our experiences and checked our ideas of just what had happened, We agreed on almost everything, with the exception of the splitting or bending of the ship. He did not think it broke at all.”
 
And then according to the many stories of crewman/others getting paid to tell a good story for the newspapers. Not an accurate one but a "good" one.

I never knew survivors got paid for telling false stories. I always thought survivors either lied out of their free will to hide the truth how they survived (like some men out of guilt) or the journalists just shamelessly twisted their words or changed a story without the survivor’s „consent“

Is it known which survivors accepted money from newspapers ?
 
I'm sure Arun, Jason or Thomas probably knows off the top of their head. I would have to go look up some of the names. I've read and seen in a few documentaries that one crewman was paid $500 for a story. That was a tidy sum in 1912. Give me a day or 2. Watching B-ball tonight. Cheers.
P.S...came back to edit this. Was surfing around during a timeout of the game I'm watching. Found that Harold Bride was paid $1000 for his story by the New York Times. Whether or not he ginned up the story I don't know about that one. Cheers again.
 
Last edited:
Sarah. Do you have the A&E docu on Titanic? Been awhile since I watched that but I'm pretty sure they covered (at least briefly) about people getting paid for their stories. Maybe its time for me to watch that again. Has some mistakes but still one of my favorites.
 
Found that Harold Bride was paid $1000 for his story by the New York Times. Whether or not he ginned up the story I don't know about that one.
Yes, I read about that on Bride's ET bio. Wow! Considering,
As an employee of the Marconi company, he received monthly wages of £2 2s 6d.
$1000 would have been a fortune to Bride. Ginned up his story? For that kind of money I would not have been surprised if he'd claimed that a T Rex was among the First Class passengers!

There were several 'tall tales' - mainly exaggerations about survival - that a lot of people told but probably not many outright lies with other agendas in mind. For me, those by Boxhall and Sarah Daniels' lies stand out in that category. Then there are ridiculous stories about mass shootings and it is hard to tell how many of those really originated from survivors per se; one of those was supposedly from a woman passenger in Lifeboat #14 who claimed that Lowe shot her boyfriend point blank as he sat next to her in the boat and the body was shoved overboard. Other such stories might have come from newspaper embellishments of uncertain survivor accounts, from the relatives and descendants of survivors in later years and a certain blog site that claims that as many as 23 people were shot dead as the Titanic sank, including 7 around Lifeboat #14 alone. Make what you will of that kind of thing.
 
Sarah. Do you have the A&E docu on Titanic? Been awhile since I watched that but I'm pretty sure they covered (at least briefly) about people getting paid for their stories. Maybe its time for me to watch that again. Has some mistakes but still one of my favorites.

I haven’t watched many Titanic docus, mainly some in the german language. If you recommend it then I’ll look where I can watch it.

Yes, I read about that on Bride's ET bio. Wow! Considering,

$1000 would have been a fortune to Bride. Ginned up his story? For that kind of money I would not have been surprised if he'd claimed that a T Rex was among the First Class passengers!

There were several 'tall tales' - mainly exaggerations about survival - that a lot of people told but probably not many outright lies with other agendas in mind. For me, those by Boxhall and Sarah Daniels' lies stand out in that category. Then there are ridiculous stories about mass shootings and it is hard to tell how many of those really originated from survivors per se; one of those was supposedly from a woman passenger in Lifeboat #14 who claimed that Lowe shot her boyfriend point blank as he sat next to her in the boat and the body was shoved overboard. Other such stories might have come from newspaper embellishments of uncertain survivor accounts, from the relatives and descendants of survivors in later years and a certain blog site that claims that as many as 23 people were shot dead as the Titanic sank, including 7 around Lifeboat #14 alone. Make what you will of that kind of thing.

My first thought was also the „mass shooting“ on deck but then again we can’t really distinguish what was claimed by survivors and how much of it was just made up by the journalists. So I’m looking more for survivors who really went out of their way to go and make wrong statements, or maybe even looked for money and attention with their story. I kind of doubt any survivor was like that, but seeing that even Bride was gived huge sum of money, that really raises my eyebrow a bit, though of course I can’t blame them for accepting this money especially in those times.

That story you mentioned of Alice Cleaver being a child killer as claimed by a fellow survivor, is already really intense and the kind of story I had in mind
 
I haven’t watched many Titanic docus, mainly some in the german language. If you recommend it then I’ll look where I can watch it.



My first thought was also the „mass shooting“ on deck but then again we can’t really distinguish what was claimed by survivors and how much of it was just made up by the journalists. So I’m looking more for survivors who really went out of their way to go and make wrong statements, or maybe even looked for money and attention with their story. I kind of doubt any survivor was like that, but seeing that even Bride was gived huge sum of money, that really raises my eyebrow a bit, though of course I can’t blame them for accepting this money especially in those times.

That story you mentioned of Alice Cleaver being a child killer as claimed by a fellow survivor, is already really intense and the kind of story I had in mind
You brought up a good point about the journalists. In fairness we don't really know how much they added or simply made up to what they were actually told. Lots of yellow journalism going on then. But really no different today. Deceptive editing, things taken out of context...ect. Today with the internet and the many independent journalist's is easier for people to push back than it was in those days. But people have to make an effort to dig for the truth. Most just go with the flow.
P.S. If you don't mind me asking where are you from in Germany? Just curious as I used to live there. If you don't want to say I fully understand. Cheers.
 
Good post above. Very valid points.

My first thought was also the „mass shooting“ on deck but then again we can’t really distinguish what was claimed by survivors and how much of it was just made up by the journalists. So I’m looking more for survivors who really went out of their way to go and make wrong statements, or maybe even looked for money and attention with their story. I kind of doubt any survivor was like that, but seeing that even Bride was gived huge sum of money, that really raises my eyebrow a bit, though of course I can’t blame them for accepting this money especially in those times.
I confess that I had not thought of the monetary angle till I learned about NYT's offer to Bride; other papers might have learned about it and the report could then have leaked out among the survivors. But we also have to look at it from their perspective; those were unsympathetic times compared with today and the surviving victims of the disaster received only small compensations at best. The lower echelon crew were probably worst off, even temporarily losing their livelihood when the ship foundered. Most were poorly paid and as for the passengers, many moving to settle in America lost relatives, friends and most of their possessions in the disaster. Under those circumstances, offers of money for their stories would have been tempting and I would not be surprised if reporters encouraged their "clients" to make their stories as colorful as possible.

About the shooting business, most sensible researchers agree that IF there was an incident where one or two men where fatally shot by an officer before he turned the gun on himself, then the much debated one on the starboard forward side in the final minutes would have been the only one. The issue here is that a lot of survivors had heard shots being fired earlier, first by Lowe as Lifeboat #14 was lowered, then probably by Murdoch when there was disturbance during loading of Collapsible C and then by Wilde or Lightoller near Collapsible D. But all those were warning shots either along the side of the ship or into the air and so did not hit anybody. But if the final shooting incident involving people being killed really did happen, a few survivors would have witnessed it just liked they claimed later. Those people in turn would have mentioned it to other survivors on board the Carpathia, including those who had heard the previous (harmless) shots. As you can imagine, the net result very well would have been for many of the latter to imagine that what they heard was the fatal shooting and if newspapers later added incentives for their stories, you have a classic Spaghetti Western type climax that Sergio Leone could not have improved upon.


That story you mentioned of Alice Cleaver being a child killer as claimed by a fellow survivor, is already really intense and the kind of story I had in mind
Understood. For the record, both Sarah Daniels and Alice Cleaver were from London and were hired by the Allisons around the same time. It is not known whether the two women knew each other from before, but I have read a lot of accounts that there were issues between them during the voyage. It might well have been related to their job descriptions like some have conjectured. But the bottom line is that Baby Trevor's nurse was Alice Catherine Cleaver who had worked as a nursemaid for rich and influential families since her teens and had a squeaky clean record. She would have had to for a methodical man like Hudson Allison to not only hire her as a nursemaid for his heir, but also entrust almost all responsibility for the baby's care to her. It could be that was what started Sarah Daniels' resentment towards her younger colleague, compounded by Alice's refusal to allow Sarah access to baby Trevor on board the Carpathia. Being from London herself, Daniels would have known about the recent case involving Alice Mary Cleaver, only some 2 years older than the nursemaid and the actual woman who reportedly killed her own illegitimate child when under a fit of depression. IMO (and that only), Sarah Daniels used that bit of information to extract her revenge against Alice Cleaver after the survivors reached New York.

Speaking of similar lies by survivors, there is the strong probability that Elizabeth Dowdell, nanny to Virginia Martin-Emanuel, told one such story when she (Dowdell) was a guest at a special screening of the film A Night To Remember in the late 1950s. As you know, Dowdell and her charge Virginia Martin were Third Class passengers on the Titanic and were both rescued in Lifeboat #13. Upon reaching New York, the then 6 year old Virginia was taken charge of by her maternal grandparents, Mr & Mrs Weil, and soon lost contact with her nanny. Elizabeth Dowdell, who had complained about having to rub shoulders with Chinese survivors on board the Carpathia, went back to working as a domestic maid in New York and downsized her age from 52 to 35 years when she married salesman Harry Fierer in 1933. During the aforementioned special screening of ANTR in 1958, Dowdell is supposed to have claimed that her former charge, Virginia Martin-Emanuel, was now living in London under the name of Vera Hanson. The real Virginia Martin actually had died in 1936 aged only 30 years as Phil Hind's research has proved beyond any doubt, but that did not stop a woman really named Vera Hanson from claiming that she was actually Virginia. Considering that the claim was first made a few years before the film was released, one has to wonder if Elizabeth Dowdell was somehow involved in the scam.

Unfortunately, some poorly researched books have contributed to the infamy of some of the lies perpetrated by survivors. Andrew Wilson's Shadow Of The Titanic gives pathetically silly "evidence" to support Vera Hanson's claim while the truly terrible Titanic: Women And Children First by Judith Geller is even worse, making all sorts of melodramatic accusations against poor Alice Cleaver amongst other things.
 
P.S. If you don't mind me asking where are you from in Germany? Just curious as I used to live there. If you don't want to say I fully understand. Cheers.
no it’s alright:) I’m from West Germany (the state I’m from is called North Rhein Westphalia, in short NRW)



For the record, both Sarah Daniels and Alice Cleaver were from London and were hired by the Allisons around the same time. It is not known whether the two women knew each other from before, but I have read a lot of accounts that there were issues between them during the voyage. It might well have been related to their job descriptions like some have conjectured. But the bottom line is that Baby Trevor's nurse was Alice Catherine Cleaver who had worked as a nursemaid for rich and influential families since her teens and had a squeaky clean record. She would have had to for a methodical man like Hudson Allison to not only hire her as a nursemaid for his heir, but also entrust almost all responsibility for the baby's care to her. It could be that was what started Sarah Daniels' resentment towards her younger colleague, compounded by Alice's refusal to allow Sarah access to baby Trevor on board the Carpathia. Being from London herself, Daniels would have known about the recent case involving Alice Mary Cleaver, only some 2 years older than the nursemaid and the actual woman who reportedly killed her own illegitimate child when under a fit of depression. IMO (and that only), Sarah Daniels used that bit of information to extract her revenge against Alice Cleaver after the survivors reached New York.

Speaking of similar lies by survivors, there is the strong probability that Elizabeth Dowdell, nanny to Virginia Martin-Emanuel, told one such story when she (Dowdell) was a guest at a special screening of the film A Night To Remember in the late 1950s. As you know, Dowdell and her charge Virginia Martin were Third Class passengers on the Titanic and were both rescued in Lifeboat #13. Upon reaching New York, the then 6 year old Virginia was taken charge of by her maternal grandparents, Mr & Mrs Weil, and soon lost contact with her nanny. Elizabeth Dowdell, who had complained about having to rub shoulders with Chinese survivors on board the Carpathia, went back to working as a domestic maid in New York and downsized her age from 52 to 35 years when she married salesman Harry Fierer in 1933. During the aforementioned special screening of ANTR in 1958, Dowdell is supposed to have claimed that her former charge, Virginia Martin-Emanuel, was now living in London under the name of Vera Hanson. The real Virginia Martin actually had died in 1936 aged only 30 years as Phil Hind's research has proved beyond any doubt, but that did not stop a woman really named Vera Hanson from claiming that she was actually Virginia. Considering that the claim was first made a few years before the film was released, one has to wonder if Elizabeth Dowdell was somehow involved in the scam.

Unfortunately, some poorly researched books have contributed to the infamy of some of the lies perpetrated by survivors. Andrew Wilson's Shadow Of The Titanic gives pathetically silly "evidence" to support Vera Hanson's claim while the truly terrible Titanic: Women And Children First by Judith Geller is even worse, making all sorts of melodramatic accusations against poor Alice Cleaver amongst other things.

The story with Elizabeth Dowdell is unknown to me, thank you for sharing.
I somehow expected there to be even more of such stories where survivors tried to make a fortune for being on the famous ship. There have been countless of people coming forward claiming they were on the titanic although they never were just to make headlines and get attention, so from that pov it somehow seems to have been tempting for actual survivors to try and seek attention as well, since journalists probably swarmed them and offered lots of money. But I guess most survivors continued to live a rather calm and humble life away from the press and always hesitant to speak about the sinking because of how traumatizing it was.
 
Back
Top