Money for widows and orphans
Early Newfoundland benefit fund dismissed by author Cassie Brown as a pittance
Plenty of “big names” came forward in mid-June 1914 when “a benefit euchre and reception” was put together in Brooklyn, N.Y. to help widows and children left destitute after the sealing disasters in Newfoundland that spring.
So devastating was the news early that year of the loss of life from among those aboard the Newfoundland and the Southern Cross, that it touched hearts and pocketbooks well distant from the stricken Newfoundland fishing outports. In her 1972 book “Death on the Ice,” author Cassie Brown wrote, “every major town on the east coast had lost some of its men.”
A program printed for the 1914 benefit in Brooklyn gives a list of donors of prizes, and no doubt including financial contributions to “the Fund,” yet to receive its name as the Permanent Marine Disasters Fund (PMDF). The list includes “Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, the White House; Mrs. Martin H. Glynn, Ex. Mansion, Albany; Mr. James A. Farrell, President, U.S. Steel Corp., and Hon. Wm. R. Hearst, the N.Y. American.”
The fundraiser was held at the Borough Park Clubhouse. That building is long gone but a photograph of it may be seen by Googling “Past and present, the Borough Park Clubhouse.” You will conclude the event must have been a class act.
Author Brown also wrote, “The Permanent Marine Disaster Fund was launched immediately, but out of it, crippled survivors, and widows and orphans were paid a mere pittance.”
I will come forward 14 years from that summer and look in on the PMDF again. A handbill prepared in July 1928, presumably for distribution in Newfoundland, reported on the progress of the fund in bullish terms. People had “willingly responded to every appeal made by the committee.” Reading that, however, I still hear Brown’s comment in the background.
During the year 1927 there were 354 beneficiaries under the PMDF but these people would not necessarily have all sprung from the toll of the Newfoundland and the Southern Cross disasters.
Other tragedies would have added new dependents. In fact, the handbill reported that from the “terrible gale in August last when over 60 fishermen and seamen were drowned, there will be a large addition during 1928 to the number of beneficiaries.”
The handbill went on to report that “the annual grants are necessarily small … $40 to widows for five years and $25 for each child until the age of 15.”
The fund was largely the brainchild of John A. Robinson, publisher of The Daily News (founded in St. John’s in 1894). The newspaper called for an ongoing fund — more than a one-time collection.
In The Telegram in April 2006, Bert Riggs, archivist with the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University, wrote of Robinson, “he was the leading proponent of the creation of a philanthropic body to assist the widows and orphans of Newfoundland men lost at sea, especially in the wake of the deaths of so many sealers and crew members from the Southern Cross and the Newfoundland in 1914.”
The program I referred to above, printed on the occasion of the fundraiser in New York, was a dignified little booklet for the event largely supported by “the sons and daughters of Newfoundland abroad.”
A few advertisements helped with the cost of the booklet, including several from New York firms that likely had Newfoundland connections. Among those were the New York Fish Company, wholesale dealers in fresh fish, smelts, etc. They were to be found at the Fulton Fish Market; there was also Warner & Prankard who were wholesalers in lobster, fresh fish and soft crab. The Red Cross Line and Bowring & Company advertised their 12-day allexpense northern cruise for $60 and up, “visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia, the land of Evangeline and St. John’s, Newfoundland, the Norway of America.”
The program included a brief article about Newfoundland and its sealers, commencing thusly: “in March, 1914, the ships of the Newfoundland seal hunting fleet, while anchored to the floating icebergs of the North Atlantic, were unexpectedly enveloped in a blinding storm of snow, wind and Arctic cold.”
It provides a dramatic word-picture of our sealers: “hundreds of heroes jump the bulwarks of their ships and skirmish the floes for miles in every direction … every minute their lives are in jeopardy in pursuit of their adventurous avocation … these toilers of iron nerve and hardened muscle prove themselves of tender heart and acquit themselves as men.”
It may well be said that Cassie Brown saw different characteristics in some of those players in the tragic drama of the Newfoundland. After citing a list of eight “ifs,” where any one occurring would have made a salutary difference, she wrote, “so long as the men were regarded as expendable and the seals as the thing that mattered, it was bound to happen, sooner or later.“
Looking at that 1928 handbill again, a widow with three children would receive $115 annually. Today, that is the equivalent of $1,610. Enough, said the 1928 handbill, “to help keep the wolf from the door.”
Just as an aside, the total net worth of those Americans subscribing to the little fund in 1914 would be interesting to know. For example, the mother of William Randolph Hearst wanted him to be satisfied with an allowance of $10,000 per month from the family fortunes as he, in his 30s in 1895, dabbled in the newspaper business. Again, to give the equivalent value: $10,000 in 1895 would be just over $287,000 today. (My source? “The Uncrowned King — The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst” by Kenneth Whyte, 2008).