Richard Fry

Richard Fry

Richard Fry was a passenger on the RMS Titanic that died on during the sinking of the ship on April 14, 1912.

Early life

Richard Fry was born at 45 Henry Street in Pentonville, London, United Kingdom on November 23, 1872.

Richard and his entire family shifted from London to the northeast of England around 1880 and settled in Coatham, a village near Redcar in north Yorkshire. The family appeared there on the 1881 census living at Station Road. They would move before the turn of the century to Sheffield in southern Yorkshire and appeared there on the 1891 census living at 39 Spring Hill, Hallam in that city. Richard was not listed with his family and is recorded elsewhere as a footman in the home of a wealthy manufacturing family in Meltham near Huddersfield in western Yorkshire. His mother is believed to have died shortly after the 1891 census was conducted and his father was still living by the time of the 1901 census, then a visitor with his youngest daughter Rosalind, at the home of his eldest daughter Keziah (then Mrs Sidney Harris) and her family in Hallam, Sheffield. What became of him is not certain.

By the time of the 1901 census Richard was a butler to the wealthy Pilkington family of Rainford Hall in Rainford near Prescot in Lancashire.

He was married on August 24, 1904, in St Anne's Church, Aigburth, Liverpool to Mary Ann Burton, a native of Cardiff, Wales. He was then described as a butler and his wife as a domestic servant. The couple had two children: Winifred, and Ronald.

Titanic

Richard was the personal valet of J. Bruce Ismay and had reportedly been in his employ for close to a decade. He boarded the Titanic at Southampton, with Mr. Ismay and Ismay's secretary William Henry Harrison. During the voyage, he occupied cabin B-102 in First Class.

Richard Fry died in the sinking and his body was lost to the sea.