The Band That Played On

by Steve Turner

  Memorial to Jock Hume and Titanic steward Thomas Mullins on the river front in Dumfries.

  13

  “IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE

  A LEGAL CLAIM.”

  On April 30, 1912, the day before writing to Leon Bricoux, Charlie Black had written a letter to Andrew Hume in Dumfries regarding his late son John Law Hume:

  Dear Sir,

  We shall be obliged if you will remit to us the sum of 5s– 4d, which is owing to us as per enclosed statement. We shall also be obliged if you will settle the enclosed uniform account.

  Yours faithfully,

  C. W. and F. N. Black

  The account was for the alterations and cleaning needed to get his uniform ready for the Titanic after arriving back in Liverpool on the Carmania. The total was nine shillings and threepence. Hume had signed a receipt at the shop of J. J. Rayner permitting C. W. & F. N. Black to deduct the sum from his wage account. Presumably, as the Titanic voyage was incomplete, the Blacks didn’t consider him eligible for full payment. This left him in their debt. Incensed by the callousness of the demand, Andrew Hume forwarded it to the Amalgamated Musicians’ Union (AMU), who published it in the June issue of the Musicians’ Report and Journal. Beneath it the editor added the single line: “Comment would be superfluous!”

  The full implications of the new hiring arrangements instituted by the Blacks were now being felt. No longer employees of the shipping line, the musicians were not covered by insurance taken out for employees, nor were they covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act (1906), which generally gave a worker “a right against his employer to a certain compensation on the mere occurrence of an accident where the common law gives the right only for negligence of the employer.”

  The AMU, which had already been at loggerheads with the Blacks over their wage decrease and monopoly of the shipping lines, fought hard for the musicians to be remembered and for their families to be given adequate welfare. Instead of raising money for “useless” plaques and memorials that “in six months’ time … will be taken no more notice of than any other memorial stone, and everyone will forget the deed that caused the memorial to be erected,” it channelled donations to a convalescent home for musicians, believing this to be a more fitting memorial. One of its most effective fundraisers was a poster with pictures of all eight musicians beneath the inscription “The Heroic musicians of the Titanic who died at their posts like men—April 15, 1912” and with a verse from “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Priced at threepence and printed on art paper, more than eighty thousand copies were sold in the first month.

  Anxious relatives turned to the AMU when they became frustrated. In June, Percy Taylor’s wife, Clara, wrote: “I have not yet received anything from any fund.” Martha Woodward, Wes’s mother, claimed to be in the same position. Ronald Brailey wrote to Charlie Black on May 24 raising the issue of compensation and Black replied: “I cannot advise you in the matter of compensation. If you think you have a legal claim, will you please give me notice in writing of that, and it will in due course be dealt with by our insurance company, but under such awful circumstances it is practically impossible for the alleged claims to be settled for several months.” The AMU couldn’t imagine why “awful circumstances” could impede the speedy settlement of a legitimate claim. Weren’t insurance companies in the business of “awful circumstances”?

  Poster created by Amalgamated Musicians’ Union.

  The only policy covering the musicians was one the Blacks and White Star took out jointly from the recently established (1907) Legal Insurance Company, but it soon transpired that the insurers were quibbling over the scope of the word dependent. Wives and children were obviously dependents, but could working fathers, such as Andrew Hume and Ronald Brailey, honestly describe themselves as such? This meant that neither of the two main parties—White Star and the Black brothers—was making immediate contributions to the families. Outraged by this, three of the fathers—Leon Bricoux, Andrew Hume, and Ronald Brailey—mounted a legal case against C. W. & F. N. Black in June 1912, arguing that as workers who had lost their lives while carrying out their duties and through no fault of their own, their sons should be covered by the strictures of the Workmen’s Compensation Act. There had never been any suggestion that they’d brought about their fate through negligence or misbehavior.

  The case came to court on November 1 at Liverpool County Court, where Judge Thomas concluded that since the musicians were not signed to the ship’s articles they were not legally crew members. Therefore, they were not employees of White Star. They were employees of C. W. & F. N. Black, but they couldn’t successfully sue the Blacks because there was no evidence of negligence on their part. Thomas declared: “The ship owners did not treat the bandsmen as members of the crew. Their duties on board were in the nature of supplying a luxury, and their engagement was not directly by the owners. In these circumstances it would be a wrong application of the word ‘seaman’ to say they came within the act.”

  It was clearly with a heavy heart that Thomas decided in favor of the respondents. At the end of his summary he said:

  I wish to add this observation. Although I have felt compelled to hold that the Workmen’s Compensation Act does not apply to the bandsmen, yet I cannot forget that these brave men met their death while performing an act which was of the greatest service in assisting to maintain discipline and avert panic. I hope the committee which is administering the Titanic Relief Fund may consider whether it is possible for them out of that fund to give such relief as may prevent the dependants from suffering from the fact that they have no legal claims under the Act.

  Auguste Krins and his wife, Letitia, filed a claim for $25,000 against the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, owner of the White Star Line, as it petitioned for its liabilities to be limited. In common with other passengers and relatives of passengers, they employed the New York attorneys Hunt, Hill, and Betts. Their argument was that the company should not be spared having to pay compensation for the death of their son because it was caused “by the wrongful acts, neglect, fault and negligence” of the company and its agents and servants. Part of their claim read:

  Georges Krins in 1908.

  In failing to make said vessel seaworthy and properly manned, equipped and supplied, and in failing to provide sufficient life boats and in failing to man such life boats as were provided with sufficient and properly drilled crews, and in failing properly, after said collision, to take proper measures for the rescue of said Georges A. Krins, and other persons on board the Titanic, and otherwise, and such loss and destruction of lives and property was with the privity, faulty and knowledge of the petitioner, and occurred without fault on the part of the said Georges A. Krins.

  The claim was submitted in April 1914 but, according to the family, was unsuccessful.

  Andrew Hume tried other ways of obtaining compensation. He managed to get £92 from the Mansion House Fund, set up to help families of those killed, but a personal letter to J. Bruce Ismay elicited nothing. He then wrote to the U.S. Commissioner’s office requesting a $2,500 settlement. In a three-page letter he detailed the liabilities he’d been left with. His son had gone on the Titanic, he said, with two violins—a G. B. Gaudagnini1 valued at £200 and a Tomaso Eberle2 at £125—taken on approval “with the purpose of choosing one of these as a life instrument. Neither violin was insured.” Then there was the matter of the £500 house at 42 George Street, Dumfries, the mortgage of which had been bought with Jock in 1909, Jock expecting to bring in at least £100 a year in wages. There was still £300 of the mortgage remaining unpaid. “As I am now 50 years of age it is most unlikely that [I] can hope to clear it off without some assistance, the £92 paid being such a small portion.” What he didn’t mention was that he’d offered his house as security to the owner of the violins.

  Andrew Hume’s situation was further complicated when on October 18, 1912, Jock’s fiancée, Mary Costin, gave birth to a daughter she defiantly named Johnann Law Hume Costin. Johnann autom
atically became a Titanic dependent and this weakened any claim Andrew may have had to being the legitimate recipient of any monies due.

  Midway through her pregnancy Mary applied to the Mansion House Fund for help and her request was passed to the Daily Telegraph’s Titanic Relief Fund. She filled in the right forms and was told to enter the child’s name on the register of dependents as soon as it was born. She did this on the day of Johnann’s birth. Two months later she went to court to request a settlement from the estate of John Law Hume. The court found John Law Hume to be the father of the child and said that Mary Costin was entitled to recover 2 pounds, 2 shillings expenses, plus 6 pounds, 10 shillings per annum for ten years from the estate.

  However, according to Andrew Hume, his son had not only died intestate but in debt. Mary sent the figures to the Titanic Relief Fund who passed them to the Liverpool office that dealt with Scottish cases. Her plea was regarded sympathetically and in January 1913 it granted her the total amount, 67 pounds, 2 shillings. Unfortunately, the check was mailed to Andrew, who’d given the fund the impression that he had already paid her out of his own pocket and therefore needed reimbursing.

  By April 1913 Mary had heard nothing from the fund, so her solicitor, Mr. Hendrie, whose office happened to be beneath the Costin’s flat in Buccleuch Street, contacted it only to discover that Andrew Hume had the money. Percy Corkhill, of the Titanic Relief Fund in Liverpool, reassured Hendrie that “definitely the money was intended for the benefit of pursuer and her child, and not in any sense for defender’s own benefit.”

  Andrew Hume, who had already been given more than £230 from various relief funds, including the Boston Musicians’ Relief Fund based in Brookline, Massachusetts, didn’t want to lose his grip on this money. He initially argued that he had paid Mary, then asserted that she had no legitimate claim. When asked whether his son was engaged to marry Mary Costin, all that his solicitor would volunteer was, “Not known and not admitted.” When she eventually sued him for the money plus expenses at 5 percent per annum, he wouldn’t give in and by the logic of his own argument had to take action against her on the grounds that she was “fraudulently attempting to appropriate the said money.”

  The “Titanic Fund Case,” as the local paper referred to it, was a messy one that dragged on until February 1914, with Andrew Hume emerging as a venial character who had taken advantage of public goodwill for personal gain. A century of inflation means that the amounts involved appear small, so it needs to be borne in mind that the £230 that he had received was almost sixty times his son’s monthly salary as a musician and almost half the cost of his house in George Street, Dumfries.

  The transcripts of the court case show that he knew the Titanic Relief Fund money was owed to Mary Costin, but that once he had banked it, he was loath to pass it on. His excuses for not doing so were decreasingly plausible; at one point he even claimed to have a letter from his son (never produced in court) in which Jock argued that he was not the father of the child.

  The judge decided in favor of Mary Costin and Andrew Hume was ordered to pay expenses. There was an appeal but this ended dramatically when Hume’s lawyer, faced with evidence from a minute book that his client had specifically told the Titanic Relief Fund that he’d already paid Mary and therefore needed the money as reimbursement, had to withdraw from the case. If he’d known of this evidence, he said, he wouldn’t have put up a defence. The judgment against Andrew Hume stood.

  Not all of the musicians died penniless. Percy Taylor left 164 pounds, 4 shillings to his wife, Clara; Wes Woodward left an estate worth 1,195 pounds, 3 shillings, and 5 pence to his mother, Martha; and Fred Clarke left 128 pounds, 13 shillings, and 6 pence to his mother, Ellen. Oddly enough, in light of the number of years he’d spent at sea, Wallace Hartley hadn’t made a will. He died intestate and administration was granted to his father, Albion, to give him access to his son’s 656-pound estate.

  Money from the Titanic Relief Fund was distributed according to need, a dependent wife with children naturally being awarded more than the parents of an unmarried person. In the case of the families of the musicians, Ellen Clarke got the largest amount (£151) because she had been reliant on her son’s income and had no husband. Auguste Krins and Martha Woodward each got £150, and Leon Bricoux and Clara Taylor were given £100 each. Albion Hartley and Ronald Brailey took £70 each, and Andrew Hume got the smallest amount (£50).

  They may have benefited from other independent sources. The American Federation of Musicians sent $1,000, many AMU branches stipulated that 50 percent of the money they’d raised was to go directly to the families, and there were fundraising efforts in cities as far apart as San Francisco and Salisbury, Brooklyn and Bedford. Music halls all over Britain took collections.

  Charlie Black, to his credit, tried to make amends by raising money. In a letter published in the Cork Examiner, he explained what his agency had done:

  Sir—In justice to all concerned, we shall be grateful if you would kindly give publicity to the following: These men [the band] were insured with the Legal Insurance Company Ltd, who took steps to ascertain the dependents, and in two cases where dependency was evident settlements were immediately made. They were compelled to repudiate certain claims on the grounds of “doubtful dependency,” and matters were delayed in consequence. Although the court held that no legal liability held at all, the company have generously made ex gratia payments to the amount of nearly £700. [The wording makes it unclear whether “the company” referred to is C. W. & F. N. Black, White Star, or Legal Insurance.] In addition to the above, £1555 has been distributed from a fund organised by ourselves for the benefit of the relatives, and to our knowledge they have further benefited by a sum of over £1200 raised by concerts and from other charitable sources, making an approximate total of £3450. We are further in a position to state that their needs will be still further sympathetically considered by the distributors of the National Fund. We wish to give publicity to these facts to refute the suggestion in various papers that the dependents of these brave men have been in any way badly treated.

  The AMU used the strength of feeling against the Blacks after the Titanic disaster to challenge the agency. An executive committee resolution was passed on June 22, 1912, that “the price for ocean liners be £6.10.0 per month and 10/-towards the cost of uniforms. To become operative from September 1, 1912.” Material in the AMU magazine indicates that this demand was not met:

  Messrs. C.W. & F.N. Black have, we understand, given our members the choice between leaving the Union and leaving their service on the liners. Those members who are loyal have nothing to fear. The Union will support any member who is victimised. In the meantime, members are warned against playing for Messrs. Black until they pay the proper rate, £7 per month. It may be necessary to warn members against playing for them at all, no matter what the price, if they decline to come to terms with the Union. Members having any information to give that will be useful in this campaign should write to the General Secretary.

  There was no further mention of the issue in either the executive committee minutes or the AMU journal, but passenger and crew lists show that contemporaries of the Titanic musicians, such as Seth Lancaster and Edgar Heap, were no longer entering America as passengers after October 1912. The First World War would have interrupted their business for at least four years and the final blow to their supremacy came when Cunard shifted its transatlantic operations from Liverpool to Southampton in 1919.

  Patrick Stenson, author of a biography of Commander Lightoller, tried digging around for information on Charlie Black in 1985 to help his friend Walter Lord who was writing The Night Lives On. By then there were only a few very old musicians who could remember him, but with these men there was lingering resentment over the way he gained a stranglehold over the entertainment industry of the big ships. “If you wanted to take your cello to sea you had to go through Charlie,” Stenson reported back. “If you were not already an established musician on his books you
would be auditioned and if suitable would be found a berth in one of his many seagoing orchestras. He wasn’t quite ‘Mr Ten Per Cent’ as, once taken on, you worked for him and he paid the wages. I’m told that for reasons relating to this arrangement he wasn’t always a man who saw eye to eye with his musicians.”

  14

  “A NATURAL FRUIT

  OF THE EVIL OF THE AGE.”

  Why did the Titanic sink? Was it God punishing humans for their arrogance and pride or an inevitable result of a series of individual human blunders that combined for one horrendous moment? Was the lesson to be learned one of increased vigilance, improvements in shipbuilding, and closer attention to safety measures or one of increased humility, improvements in moral character, and closer attention to the needs of the poor, weak, and needy? In the world of 1912 these were not mutually exclusive concerns. Senator William A. Smith, of the Senate Investigation Committee, could just as easily talk about improving the moral caliber of merchant navy seamen and of Titanic victims being swept “before the Judgment Seat,” as Dr. Ernest Stires of St. Thomas’s Church on Fifth Avenue in New York could talk about the need for extra lifeboats and regular ice patrols in the Atlantic. There was no expanse separating the temporal and the eternal.

  Inquiries were set up in both Britain and America and almost no one, from the White Star Line executives to the sailors on the Titanic, escaped blame. The ship was going too fast in an area known to be strewn with floating ice, and in ignoring repeated warnings from other ships, Captain Smith had shown an “indifference to danger.” Once the ship had struck ice, he hesitated before sounding the alarm. The crew was poorly coordinated during the rescue operation; the lifeboats, which weren’t adequately equipped, were also not filled (only 712 of 1,084 available spaces were taken up); the nearest ship, the Californian, had ignored distress signals.