Arthur Peckham Burroughs was born in Lewisham, London on October 13, 1877 to Mary Jane Agnes Peckham from Lymington and Arthur Burroughs, a draughtsman from Lewisham. His parents never married, which must have caused quite a scandal at the time. Later that year Mary married Tom Rickman, a carpenter from Lymington. Mary and Tom married in Southampton and set up home in Bullar Street. They had two more children in quick succession. Arthur would have a brother and a sister, named Harry and Rose. The little family lived at various addresses around St Mary’s and Northam during Arthur’s childhood.
By 1901, Arthur appears to have found work at sea, probably as a fireman. Two years later he married Harriett Jane Howells, a Lymington girl like his mother. The couple married in St Denys, and moved into 73 Adelaide Road. Over the next seven years they had three children, Arthur John, Harry and Gwendoline Agnes.
He was 34 years old at the time.
Arthur left the Philadelphia to join the Firemen on Titanic on April 6th. He would have earned £6 a month for the hard, hot and dirty work of shovelling coal into the ship’s boilers.
On April 14, Titanic had an unfortunate collision with an iceberg. Water gushed into the ship and she couldn't stay afloat.
Like the majority of the Firemen on board, Arthur was lost when the ship sank. It’s likely he was still down in one of the Boiler Rooms trying to keep the pumps and lights working to ensure that as many passengers as possible would be evacuated safely. His body was never identified but he is remembered on a family headstone in the Old Cemetery in St. Denys.
Harriet remarried in 1915. She had two children with Albert Edward Mullins, a dock policeman. They were Edward Ernest and Edna. Harriet died in Southampton in 1949. All of Arthur’s children remained in Southampton. They went on to have their own marriages and families. Arthur's sons Arthur and Harry became mariners.
Sources[]
Special thanks and credits to Marie Keates for allowing me to use a large part of this information of her blog:
https://iwalkalone.co.uk/titanic-tales-from-st-denys : Titanic tales from St Denys – I Walk Alone