Thomas Francis McCaffry in March 1912, taken from a photo where he, Mark Fortune, John Hugo Ross, Thomson Beattie are feeding pigeons with another, unidentified man.
Thomas Francis McCaffry was one of the victims of the sinking of the Titanic.
Early Life[]
Thomas Francis McCaffry was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada on 5 February 1866 and was one of the children of James McCaffry and Mary Ann Campbell. Thomas was of Irish-Scottish descent. Thomas began his career in the banking business, and was a junior at the Union Bank of Canada in Trois-Rivières. In 1885, he was clerk in Montreal. After he had risen to the top, they sent him to the Union Bank in Neepawa, Manitoba to be its manager.
In 1887, he moved to Winnipeg to manage another branch. This is where he met Thomson Beattie, another young gentleman in the big business. Thomson was a real estate agent, who was living in a mansion with a doctor, and they became close friends, so much so that many said they were "inseparable", arousing many rumors. It was said: "Beattie and McCaffry resembled each other, dressed the same and were often mistaken for brothers. The Winnipeg Free Press commented on how similar they were, and noted that the two 'were almost inseparable.' " They also befriended John Hugo Ross, who was in the same office as Thomson Beattie, and apparently Beattie had an affair with Ross his secretary, Maud McCarthur.
In 1900, Thomas quit his job to head the gold analysis office opened by the Dominion Government. In 1907, he left that job again to become manager of the Union Bank branch in Vancouver.
A year later, in 1908, he traveled with his friend Thomson to the Agean Sea and in 1910 they traveled to North Africa.
In early 1912, he and Thomson left with their other friend, John Hugo Ross to set sail aboard the RMS Franconia to spend the next 4 months touring the Middle East and Europe. In February they went to Cairo and visited Luxor and Aswan. After leaving Cairo they went to Naples and were sightseeing Venice.
Titanic[]
After he end of the tour in March, Ross fell ill and McCaffry and Beattie were tired, so they decided to return home, changing their reserved tickets for the Mauretania to tickets for the Titanic which had gained popularity as a new ship.
They boarded the Titanic as First Class passengers at Cherbourg. Beattie and McCaffry shared cabin C-6, but they would later transfer to cabin A-8. Since John Hugo Ross had cabin A-10, it is possible that they moved close to him, as he was feeling ill during the voyage and hardly ever left his cabin.
On April 14 on the late night, Titanic hit an iceberg and started sinking.
Later, on April 15 at the late hour around 2:00 A.M., McCaffry and Beattie helped with the difficult work of preparing Collapsibles A and B.
Beattie managed to leave the ship and swim to Collapsible A, but died overnight because of the cold. McCaffrey had not made it to the lifeboat and had mostly perished in the freezing water. His body was later recovered by C.S. Mackay-Bennett. John Hugo Ross most likely went down with the ship. He had been seen by Major Arthur Peuchen, wearing pajamas and when Peuchen tried to presuade him to get prepared since the ship had struck an iceberg, he had not taken the situation serious, and moved back to bed, where he must have stayed to meet his end.