Treasteall Peacock

Miss Treasteall Peacock was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England around 1908 ¹.

She was the daughter of Benjamin Peacock (b. 1886), an engineer and former Royal Navy-man, and Edith Nile (b. 1885). Her father hailed from Dulwich, London and her mother from Illogan, Cornwall and she was one of two surviving children born two her parents. Her younger brother Albert Edward was born in 1911 and another child died in infancy.

Treasteall appears on the 1911 census living with her mother at 17 Orchard Place, Southampton.

Her father left England in 1911 and settled in Newark, New Jersey where he worked at the power house of the Public Service Corporation and lived at 609 South Broad Street. He soon sent funds over to have his wife and children join him in America. To welcome his children he purchased a baby carriage for his newborn and toys for his Treasteall and was overjoyed that he would soon be reunited with them.

Treasteall, her mother and baby brother boarded the Titanic at Southampton on 10 April 1912 as third class passengers (ticket number 3101315 which cost £13, 15s, 6d).

On the night of the sinking and at a point when all functional lifeboats had already left the ship, young Belfast crewman, scullion John Collins, encountered a steward trying to assist a lady with two children. The steward had one of the children in his arms and the woman, holding the other child, was crying. Collins took the child off of the woman and the group set off in search for a lifeboat. They spied a collapsible boat taken off of the saloon deck and made for it but then the men forward began shouting to go aft. Just as they were turning around and making for the stern a wave washed them off the deck and the child that Collins was carrying was washed from his arms. It is widely believed that the crying woman with the two small children were the Peacocks.

Mrs Peacock and her two children were lost in the sinking. Their bodies, if recovered, were never identified.