Florence Kate Thorneycroft
Florence Kate Thorneycroft (née Stears) (July 1, 1879 - January 14, 1950) was born on the first of July in 1879 in Lenham, Maidstone Borough, Kent, England. Her parents were John Stears, an agricultural labourer, and Christiana Filmer.
In later years, she met a man. His name was Percival Thorneycroft who was in the agricultural business. They married on the 26th of December 1899 in Thurnham, Kent. One child, John Frederick was born but he sadly didn't survive infancy.
In 1911 she had lost her father, and they had taken her widowed mother in their home. They still lived in Thurnham.
She boarded Titanic with her husband Percival on April 10, 1912 in Southampton. They travelled in Third Class. An acquaintance they knew from Kent, Charles Robert Guest, joined them. Florence was 32 years at the time.
Her voyage was anything but pleasant. She was pestered by seasickness and in effect couldn't get enough sleep because of this. It's not surprising then that on the night of April 14, she clearly felt a jar and noticed how the motion of the engines ceased. She and her husband Percy then got dressed and moved up, joining a small group of Third Class passengers led forward by stewards. According to her later testimony, she had to leave her husband behind because at some point the men were held back, threatened even, and only the women could continue on the way to the Boat Deck.
She convinced herself he would be allowed up later on. But it turned out later that her optimism wasn't justified. Then she was just thrown into a lifeboat, it is pressumed that it had been lifeboat 10, but this isn't certain. There is a possibility it was lifeboat 12.
When arriving in New York on the RMS Carpathia she didn't want to settle in the USA. She returned to England to her family after a voyage abord the RMS Adriatic on July 5, 1912.
Florence remarried, and she pled her vows to her cousin Albert White in 1913. He was from Kent and a labourer, they never got children.
She has often told people about her story of the sinking, but she developed an early stage of dementia at relatively young age. Her family has said that the cause of this must lie in the traumas she had gotten from that fateful night, and losing her husband would have certainly have taken a part in that too.
She died in 1950 in Bromley, Maidstone, Kent. She reached the age of 70. Her husband Albert survived her and passed 11 years later, in 1961.