Southampton's first 'social worker' helped Titanic bereaved families

The impact was devastating, especially on the close-knit communities of Chapel and Northam.

One Southampton woman lost eight relatives, her husband, a son, two brothers and four cousins. In one school alone in the Northam area of Southampton, one hundred and twenty-five children lost their fathers.

In the April 24, 1912, edition of a local newspaper, the Southampton & District Pictorial, a photograph was printed of these unfortunate youngsters. It carried the title ‘Toll of the Titanic’ and underneath the caption, the following was printed:

“Everyone of the children pictured above has lost a relative or relatives by the foundering of the vessel, and they all attend Northam School. Several of them are left orphans, others have lost fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins. There are something like 140 all told in this one school who will never forget the great ocean tragedy.”

The mayor of Southampton, Henry Bowyer, set up a room where money from the Southampton Titanic Relief Fund was distributed to the neediest families. Eventually £413,000 was raised.

It was decided that they needed a ‘Lady Visitor’ to help bereaved families. Such a job would be done today by a social worker but 1912 was pre Welfare State. The committee’s preferred choice was for a woman who was not resident in Southampton, presumably because she would bring more objectivity to the task.

However, the eventual appointment was Ethel Maude Newman, 36, who lived all her life at Hawthorn Cottage on the Common. The site was demolished after the Second World War and later became the home to Southampton Zoo. It is now occupied by the Hawthorns Urban Wildlife Centre.

Ethel was listed on the 1911 census as secretary to a local charitable organisation.

Miss Newman earned an annual salary of £100 from the Relief Fund plus travelling expenses. She would ride her bike around Southampton visiting families who were in receipt of monies from the Southampton Fund, and checking on their ongoing welfare. 

John Bartlett May later recalled that “she used to ride her upright bicycle with her Dalmatian dog always running beside her and she used to come regularly, once or twice a month”.

The distribution of the Relief Fund was very much along Victorian class and gender lines. The working-class widows were not considered competent to manage their own budgets. Money was doled out in small, frequent amounts. The social attitude of the day was very much to group people as the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor. Relief fund recipients had to be seen to be ‘deserving’ poor and any hint of moral looseness or drunkenness meant that income would cease immediately.

Ethel seems to have managed to balance the fine line between befriending her charges while simultaneously ensuring that domestic situations were satisfactory. She was not universally popular and on one occasion her bicycle ended up in the River Itchen. Often she was able to help families in very practical ways, including setting up apprenticeships like one to French and Sons Bootmakers – a firm established in 1803 and still going strong in Bedford Place today.

Miss Newman continued to work for the Relief Fund until her death in 1940. The fund was finally wound up in the late 1950s. Ethel Maude is buried in the recently restored family grave in Southampton Old Cemetery.

Martin Brisland is a tour guide with SeeSouthampton.co.uk .