Past Events - Lusitania 100yr commemoration

Pictures by Marlow Camera Club

The Marlow Society organised a ceremony to mark the exact 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania by a German submarine on 7th May 1915. This callous act without any prior warning resulted in the death of 1,198 passengers and crew. This incident helped shift public opinion in America against Germany and influenced the eventual declaration of war a couple of years later. Among the dead was the famous American theatre producer and impresario Charles Frohman, whose encouragement and support for J M Barrie's play Peter Pan led to its immediate huge success in London and later round the world. Frohman was a frequent visitor to Marlow and greatly loved our town, so much so that he expressed a wish to be buried in our churchyard by the river.

The Frohman Memorial was erected by his friends and admirers and has stood on The Causeway since 1924. The Marlow Society takes a keen interest in this lovely statue of a mourning nymph and ensures that it is cleaned and kept in good repair. A short service, ably led by Father Michael of St Peter's Church, was followed by poems read by the mayor Suzanne Brown, our chairman Martin Blunkell, Shaun Murphy of the British Legion and Jane Scott. Geoff Wood led this second part of the ceremony and linked the poems with a description of the ill-fated voyage. Our mayor laid a poppy wreath to honour the memory of all those who died and a second was laid by one of our members on behalf of Frohman's relatives in America. Geoff included an imaginative account of the experiences of Charles Frohman and another passenger, Muriel Thompson, during the voyage. Muriel lived locally in Maidenhead and was returning from a holiday in Miami to her family home. Her body was not recovered but she is memorialised in All Saint's Churchyard in Maidenhead.