Miss Elsie Doling was born at Oriental Place in Southampton, Hampshire. England on 30 November 1893.1
She was the daughter of John Doling (1855-1941), a Temperance hotel proprietor, and the former Augusta Lucretia Parker (1856-1923), Hampshire natives who were married in 1876.
One of a dozen known2 children, Elsie’s siblings were: John Thomas (1877-1938), Mary Elizabeth (1878-1979), Percy (1880-1961), Verna Augusta (1881-1967), Edward Charles (b. 1884), Alfred Ernest (1885-1886), Ethel Florence (b. 1887), Violet (1889-1890), Gladys (1896-1897), Harold Victor (1897-1976) and Lillian Alexandra (1901-1902). By 1911 the family lived at Spring Bank, The Crescent in Shirley.
Elsie’s eldest brother John, then manager of the Atlantic Hotel at 151 Albert Road in Southampton, was married to the former Ada Julia Elizabeth Bone; several of Ada’s siblings, including her mother, had migrated to New York in the previous decade and Mrs Doling had planned a trip to visit them. It was decided that Elsie would accompany her sister-in-law to New York, so the pair secured second-class passage aboard the Titanic (joint ticket number 231919 which cost £23). It has been speculated that Ada and Elsie were travelling with music dealer Henry Price Hodges.
When the Titanic docked at Queenstown, Elsie, Ada and an unidentified male passenger3 were photographed on the aft-promenade deck. The photograph was printed in newspapers after the disaster.
Saved From The Titanic
The sinking of the great ship, the Titanic, on Monday, has caused grave apprehensions to George Bone, of the Graves estate. Mr. Bone’s sister, Mrs. Ada Doling, and his sister-in-law, Miss Elsie Doling, had taken passage with the Intention of spending a few weeks with him inn this country. From the published accounts of the survivors on the Carpathia the names of Doling appears, and there is no doubt that both of the women were saved from a watery grave. — The Irvington Gazette, 19 April 1912
Ada and Elsie Doling were rescued from the sinking, but in which lifeboat they departed remains unknown. Aboard the Carpathia, Mrs Doling attempted to send a telegram to Southampton, but it was not transmitted because of the operators' workload.
Express, Southampton, England Ada Elsie safe
Joining their relatives in New York and following a brief visit, Elsie and Ada returned to England aboard the Philadelphia on 11 May 1912 to be reunited with their family.
In the following years, Elsie’s path crossed with that of Anglo-Indian physician and WWI Royal Navy veteran William St Alban Hendricks (b. 29 October 1887, possibly in Bombay), who was in the UK advancing his studies at the time. The couple fell in love, and Elsie returned with Hendricks to India, eventually being married in Bombay (modern-day Mumbai) on 6 November 1920.
Dr Hendricks (later MBE) worked as a physician in Gangtok, Kingdom of Sikkim, in the foothills of the Himalayas in what is now north-eastern India’s Sikkim State. He and Elsie welcomed four children: William John (1922-2006), Gerald St Alban (1924-2018), Clara (1927-2002) and Elizabeth Mary (b. 1933). The family made numerous trips back to Britain, where, in December 1924, their second child Gerald was born.
In 1949 Elsie and her family resettled in England permanently, with Dr Hendricks becoming a general practitioner in Bitterne, Southampton.
Elsie Doling Hendricks reportedly discussed the Titanic only very rarely. Made a widow upon the death of her husband in 1966, Elsie spent her final years living with her daughter Clara in Lockerley, a village near Romsey in Hampshire, where she died on 3 March 1972 aged 78.
She is buried in the grounds of St John’s Church in Lockerley. As of 2019, her youngest child Elizabeth was still alive.
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