An artefact found on the body of Oscar Scott Woody, an American postal clerk employed on the RMS Titanic, was displayed for the first time at the Sberatel Fair in Prague this weekend.
As the Titanic began to sink, Woody and his fellow postal clerks rushed to move mail bags to higher decks to keep them away from the rising water levels. As the danger increased Woody tore facing slips from some of the bags and pocketed them.
Facing slips were used on board ships with a Royal Mail contract to mark bags containing letters and parcels with their destination, the name of the ship, and the responsible clerk.
It is unclear why Woody kept the slips in his pocket; it may have been so he could account for the lost mail or just did so absentmindedly as the seriousness of the situation became clear.
As midnight passed, Woody marked his 44th birthday.
None of the five postal clerks survived the disaster. When Woody's body was later recovered, by the crew of the Mackay Bennett, one of four ships chartered by the White Star Line to recover bodies from the wreck, four of the facing slips were found still on his person. One slip was imprinted for Brooklyn, N.Y., the ship name "Titanic", and Woody's name; another was marked for Washington, D.C.
In time, Wood's grieving widow Leila received the bag (No. 167) of belongings gathered from her husband's body before it was buried at sea.
(Courtesy of Nova Scotia Archives)
The slips were eventually bequeathed by Woody's widow to a Masonic lodge in Maryland. At least two of the slips have subsequently been auctioned. The watch was auctioned in 2022.