Mary Kezia Roberts

Mrs Mary Roberts was born as Mary Kezia Humphreys ¹ in Liverpool, Lancashire, England on 19 October 1870.

She was the daughter of Welsh parents Hugh Humphreys (1838-1899), a joiner, and Elizabeth Williams (b. 1846), both Anglesey-natives who had married in Liverpool in 1868. She had six known siblings: Catherine Jane (b. 1869), Robert Richard (b. 1872), Hugh John (b. 1874), William M. Edward (b. 1879), Angharad Lloyd (b. 1881) and Gladys Elizabeth (b. 1883).

Mary first appears on the 1871 census and at that time she and her family were living at 31 Hunt Street, Everton, Liverpool. For unknown reasons, Mary is not listed with her family on the 1881 and 1891 census returns; at those times her parents and siblings were listed as living at 55 Bulwer Street, West Derby and 1 Hemer Place, Bootle, respectively. The whereabouts of Mary at this time is not certain.

Mary was married in Shardlow, Derbyshire on 2 December 1896 to Scotsman, David Roberts (3 June 1875 in Dundee, Scotland) who worked as an electrical engineer. They lived at different times in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, settling in the latter, and they went on to have five children: Frank (b. 1899-1985), Kathleen (b. 1899-1986) Kezia Norah (1901-1984), Daisy Bell (1906-2003) and Jean (b. 1907-2000).

The 1901 census shows Mary and her family living at 3 Huston (?) Street in Derby, Derbyshire and the following 1911 census has the family at 9 Chestnut Grove, West Bridgford in Nottingham. No profession was stated for Mary on either record but she reportedly worked for the White Star Line for a number of years prior to the Titanic. Her husband reportedly ran the West Bridgford Motor Company.

When she signed-on to the Titanic on 6 April 1912, Mary gave her address as 9 Chestnut Grove, Nottingham. Her last ship had been the Adriatic. As a stewardess she received monthly wages of £3, 10s.

On the Titanic one of the passengers she served was Edith Rosenbaum, who recalled that they had been together on a previous voyage.

Mary was rescued from the sinking together with fellow stewardess Miss Gregson in lifeboat 11. A letter from Edith Rosenbaum (later Russell) stated that Miss Roberts took care of youngster Frank Philip Aks who had become separated from his mother. 

After surviving the Titanic Mary Roberts continued her life at sea on the Majestic for the rest of 1912.

During the First World War Mary served aboard the hospital ship HMHS Rohilla. In late October 1914 that ship departed from the Orkney Islands; on 30 October Rohilla was sailing in the North Sea off the coast of Whitby in North Yorkshire when in gale conditions she struck rocks only a couple of hundred yards from Whitby's cliffs. Despite the poor conditions (Whitby's lifeboat had severe difficulties getting deployed) a rescue operation lasting nearly fifty hours was mounted and Mary was one of around 140 survivors.

Mary Roberts continued to work at sea up until the late 1920s, latterly serving on the SS Rajputan in 1929. She and her family later settled in Epsom, Surrey where she died in the Cottage Hospital on 2 January 1933. She is buried with her husband (who died in December of the same year in a motorcycle accident) in the church of St Mary the Virgin Church, London Road, Ewell, Epsom, Surrey. Her grave wrongly gives the year as 1932.