Jane Hogan, 39, an Irish national and British subject living in New York, New York, United States, who survived the Lusitania sinking. She sustained an injured ankle. Jane was treated at hospital and released on or about Tuesday the 11th. Mary Garry, the mother of Dr. Joseph Garry, who was lost with the Lusitania, wrote Jane inquiring about the fate of Richard Preston Prichard for his mother Gertrude. Jane said that as she was in third class and he was in second, that she never saw him.
Jane was from Derreen, Mullagh, Miltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland, and had been living in the United States for 20 years before the Lusitania sinking.
In her account of the sinking, she relates that she was on deck at 2 o’clock the afternoon of 7 May 1915 when the Lusitania was torpedoed. She heard a crash and saw men fall on the deck at her feet. She ran as fast as she could to the “first cabin” [editor’s note: I presume this means “first/saloon class” where the lifeboats were], where a gentleman placed a lifebelt on her. When she saw men fall, she felt that something was wrong with her section of the ship that prevented the lifeboats from being lowered, which would place her on the port, or “high,” side of the ship where the lifeboats had swung inboard and could not be lowered. She recalled seeing six women holding each other as the crew tried to lower the lifeboats and the water swept them away.
Jane went down with the Lusitania and recalled that her pocketbook was swept out of her hand. Flotsam from the wreckage hit her in the water, leaving her with black bruises on her left arm and swollen arms and legs, and a sprained ankle. The suction of the sinking had also torn her clothes off of her, leaving her “not a stitch of clothes” in the water. A second class passenger gave her another lifebelt, which she wore until her rescue. She was in the water for about five hours before she was rescued around 7 o’ clock that evening.
She lost her box of possessions which she valued at 300 dollars, but fortunately she had stitched her money to the inside of her corset. Cunard offered to buy her clothes, but she declined the offer. When she was interviewed by the Clare Journal, she stated that she was wearing her sister’s clothes. At the time of her interview ten days after the sinking, she was under the care of Dr. Hillery and Nurse Hogan.
Related pages
Contributors:
Senan Molony, Ireland
Anthony Richards, UK
Judith Tavares
References:
Clare Journal, 17 May 1915, page 3.
Irish Independent, 18 May 1915, page 5.
Letter from Mary Garry to Mrs. Prichard, dated 26 January 1916, Imperial War Museum Collection.
Molony, Senan. Lusitania: An Irish Tragedy. Mercier Press, 2004, page 39.
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