Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

Paul Crompton 1871 – 1915.

We know quite a lot about Paul and Gladys Crompton from a number of different sources including the New York Times and web sites relating to the loss of the Lusitania. Paul Crompton was Vice President of the Surpass Leather Company, one of the largest leather companies in America which was also integrated with the Booth Shipping Line as hides had to be imported from Brazil, Argentina, China, India and Nigeria. The Cromptons appear to have been a well off and mobile family. In 1915, although being in New York and Philadelphia, they were listed as living at Gilstene Rd, Kensington, London. The work with these companies took Paul Crompton far and wide. He was at one time based in China from 1902 until about 1907. He was working in New York from 1907 with the Surpass Leather Company while his brother, David Crompton, was based there from 1910 as the representative for the Booth Steamship Company. He was certainly in New York when his brother David was married in July 1912 as he acted as best man at the wedding at the Church of Ascension. We know mostly about their last few days as they were lost with their six children on the Lusitania in 1915.

Paul Crompton was born Middlesex and lived in Chertsey with his parents and brother David. Paul’s father, Henry Crompton, was a circuit Judge for the Welsh assizes. Pauls Grandparents were Sir Charles and Lady Caroline  Crompton. Caroline’s sister was Emily (nee Fletcher 1803-53) who was the mother of the Rt.Hon Charles Booth (1840-1916). In turn Charles Booth’s uncle Henry Booth (1788-1869) was married to Ellen Crompton, eldest daughter of Abraham Crompton of Chorley Hall. Ellen had 15 brothers and sisters, one of whom, Jessy, became the grandmother of Beatrice Potter which may explain their link with the Potters. Paul is recorded as having a love of languages which started when both he and his brother were taught French by the French governess, Paul died intestate with the entire estate going to his mother. The close link between the Cromptons and the Booths led to Paul and David’s involvement with these companies. Further information on the Booths can be found at http://www.boothandco.com/history.htm

More information on the Rt.Hon. Charles Booth can be found at

http://booth.lse.ac.uk/static/a/2.html

More information on the Rt.Hon Charles Booth and Gracedieu in the Midlands.

http://www.geocities.com/oliveshark53/booth.htm

Also

http://www.landshapes.org/uploads/rtf/Charles%20Booth%20Final.rtf

Paul was married to Gladys Schwabe. Her father George Salis Schwabe, he was born in 1844 near Liverpool, and married Mary Jaqueline James (Born Marylebone London 1851) in 1870. George and Mary had the following children:
1. Edgar William Salis Schwabe born in Ireland 1875
2. Gladys Mary Salis Schwabe born 11th March 1878 in Prestwich
3. Rhoda Jaqueline Salis Schwabe born in Ireland 1885,
At the time of Gladys’s birth her father was a Major in the 16th Lancers, by the time of her marriage to Paul, her father was Major General and Governor of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Paul Crompton's Kensington, London address, which was probably his mother's home where he grew up, was next door to the actor Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving and his actress wife, Mabel Lucy Hackney, who lost their lives in the Empress of Ireland disaster less than twelve months before the Cromptons were drowned on the Lusitania.

The six children’s ages ranged from six months to twelve years. Mrs Crompton had come aboard hugging the youngest in her arms. The nanny was Dorothy Allen.
Why the family were travelling on the Lusitania in 1915 is not known. As they appear to have been moving house they may have taken all their correspondence and photo albums with them, which would have gone down with the ship. They were travelling first class and were the noisy children who drove Theodate Pope out of her original cabin. According to a surviving crewman the children were ill behaved and reduced Dorothy, the governess, to tears at one point as she was trying to organise them to board the ship.

On the Lusitania's final day there were several efforts to warn the Captain of danger; in some cases the details are murky. Alfred Allen Booth, chairman of Cunard and Paul C’s father’s cousin, was becoming gravely concerned about the peril to his prize liner. Sometime on the morning of May 7th he visited Rear Admiral Stileman, the Senior Naval Officer at Liverpool. Bailey and Ryan state that he asked that a wireless be sent to the Lusitania informing her of the sinking of two ships off Coningbeg Light. Simpson says that Booth "demanded that steps be taken to warn the Lusitania. Booth was always reticent as to what Stileman agreed to do, but he came away from that office convinced that the Lusitania was to be diverted into Queenstown. He telephoned his cousin George and told him so, so George Booth sent a telegram to Paul Crompton aboard the Lusitania to await him at the Cunard office at Queenstown. [Simpson here inserts a footnote stating Booth's autobiography, p. 149, as his source]. The telegram told him to disembark there and come directly to London via Fishguard on the Irish packet. Alfred Booth, until the time he died, would only concede that Stileman had agreed to take certain steps, but that the tragedy occurred before they could be put into execution." The person who found this information had not checked Booth's autobiography, but noted it seemed inconsistent to cite this work as the source for the contention that Booth believed his ship was to be diverted to Queenstown, then two sentences later to say that Booth would never explicitly state just what Stileman had agreed to do. [Bailey and Ryan, p. 136; Simpson, p. 145, ch. 11]

The Governess, Miss Allen was lost, and very little detail survives regarding her final seven days. She was seen to be crying on sailing day, which is often attributed to the behaviour of her charges, but since she had worked for the Cromptons for two years at that point and was, presumably, used to the childrens’ high spirits, it is more likely that her tears were induced by some other factor. Fear of the German warning, and of a wartime crossing perhaps?  It is known that the childrens’ boisterous behaviour caused Theodate Pope to evacuate her cabin for quieter quarters, but nothing of Dorothy’s role in this incident, if any, is known.

Samuel Knox of Philadelphia, glimpsed the Cromptons during the disaster: “I saw Paul Crompton, of Chestnut Hill, with four of his little children. He was trying to fasten a belt around the smallest, a mere baby. One of his two older daughters, a girl of about 12, was having trouble with the belt she was trying to put on by herself. 'Please will you show me how to fix this?' she asked unconcernedly. I adjusted it, and she thanked me.” But no one who survived recalled seeing Miss Allen. The bodies of three of the Crompton children, Stephan, John and the infant boy were recovered and buried in Queenstown, but Dorothy Allen was never found.  Her family sent the consulate a description in hopes of identifying her body. They said she was “five feet, blue eyes, stub nose, twenty six years old.”

New York Times  - Lusitania Victim’s Estate.Papers tell of loss of Paul Crompton, his wife and six children. – Special cable to The New York Times.London, Friday, Sept 10. 1915. The grant of letters of administration of the estate of Paul Crompton of Gilstene Rd, Kensington, formerly of Philadelphia, who was lost on the Lusitania states that he died intestate, “together with his wife, Gladys Mary, and his children, Stephen, Alberta, Catherine, Mary, Paul Romilly, John David, and Peter, who all died in the same calamity, and there is no evidence as to which of them survived,” The value of the estate is $150,790

New York Times

June 16, 1915,

Surrogate Cohalan signed an order granting David H. Crompton permission to search for the will of his brother, Paul Crompton, who with his wife Gladys M., and five children, was lost on the Lusitania. In his application to the Surrogate, Mr Crompton stated that he and his mother, a resident of England, were the only next of kin.

The noisy Crompton children would have given their near cousins, the Llewelyn Davies boys quite a bit of competition for rowdiness. They LD boys were the ones adopted by J.M.Barrie after their parents, Arthur Llewelyn Davies and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies passed away. They must have been very aware of the Cromptons presence on the Lusitania as a friend of J.M.Barries was also aboard.  Charles Frohman, the American impresario without whose boundless energy, faith and support the play Peter Pan would never have been staged, insisted on travelling to Britain on board the Lusitaniain in May to help Barrie rescue a new play. When the ship was torpedoed, Frohman refused a place in a lifeboat, and is reported to have said: “Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life,” which was one of J.M.Barries quotes.