Remarkable pair of letters related to the loss of newspaper editor William Thomas Stead in the Titanic disaster. First is a TLS signed “Norman Croom-Johnson,” two pages, 8 x 10, law firm letterhead, January 5, 1916. Headed “re ‘TITANIC,’” the letter was sent to the claims department of the White Star Line on behalf of Emma Lucy Stead. In part: “My Client…is the Widow of the late Mr. W. T. Stead who was one of the passengers drowned in the ‘Titanic’ disaster in April 1912…She made a claim against your Company for the very considerable damages caused to her by the loss of her husband who, as you are no doubt aware, was a very well known Journalist and the Proprietor of the ‘Review of Reviews’ but at that time I understand you intimated that you were not in a position to consider any claims. I now understand that the White Star Line has agreed to pay a sum of about £130,000 in settlement of all claims arising from the loss of the ‘Titanic,’ and I am instructed to ask you what portion of this sum your Company is prepared to pay to my Client as compensation for the very serious pecuniary loss caused to her by the late Mr. Stead’s death.” Attached to the front is a letter from the White Star Line to the law firm Hill Dickinson, forwarding the letter and requesting that they address the issue. Also includes the law firm’s retained carbon copy, confirming receipt of the letter. Scattered creases and various pencil notations, otherwise fine condition.
Stead was one of the most famous Englishmen aboard the luxury liner and certainly one of the most valuable—he had revolutionized Victorian journalism, introducing tabloid elements into serious and socially conscious reporting. Two fictional short stories he wrote earlier in his literary career eerily predicted his misfortune—one published in 1886, 'How the Mail Steamer went down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor,' described a collision at sea wherein a lack of lifeboats resulted in a high loss of life, and 'From the Old World to the New' in 1892, told of a vessel rescuing survivors from another ship after striking an iceberg. Stead left the majority of his estate to his wife in his will, which included his interests in the Review of Reviews, the rights to his entire body of published work, all financial investments, their house, and his other personal property. To his eldest daughter he left his private papers, including his diaries and autobiographical material. In all, Stead's estate was valued at £13,000 at the time—an amount equivalent to well over one million dollars today. While the owners of the Titanic were fully compensated by their insurance policies within thirty days of their immense tangible loss, it took years for the families of those who perished to receive any financial consideration—a fact evidenced in these papers from four years after the wreck. Coming in the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy, these letters concerning one of the ship's most famous fatalities are of tremendous historical interest.
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