Life story collated through various online sources by Yota Dimitriadi
Sidney Clarence Stuart COLLETT was 25 years old when he embarked on the RMS Titanic as a passenger in the second class (ticket No. 28034, £13 10s- other accounts list the ticket price as £10 𝓼10). His name is on the ship’s passengers’ list.
He boarded the ship on April 10, 1912 from Southampton to join his family who had immigrated to America. He was meant to travel on the SS St. Louis (American Line) but was too late in booking to secure a berth. He then attempted to sail on the SS Philadelphia but that voyage was cancelled due to the coal strike and his passage was then moved to the Titanic.
Sidney later on described that his aunt (possibly his mother’s sister Mrs Thomas HUNTLEY) instructed him to look after a young woman, Miss Marion WRIGHT (born on 26 May 1885, likely in Reading, Berkshire) who was travelling alone to New York to meet her fiancé, and her companion, Miss Kate BUSS on the voyage.
When women and children were boarding the lifeboats after the ship hit the iceberg, Sidney was able to get on a boat with the two women saying that as he was responsible for them he could not be separated from them. He was rescued from boat nine by the Carpathia and arrived in New York City on April 18th.
Parts of Sidney’s life story are well documented (e.g. read Encyclopedia Titanica: Titanic Surviror and Collett tells his story). It is said that prior to sailing aboard the Titanic he had sent an envelope to his parents with another envelope inside it, with instructions that should anything unforeseen happen to him during his trip to New York, then to open the other envelope. We do not know what this envelope contained. As a Titanic survivor, he was invited to give a number of interviews and talks.
The hazing attack on him instigated by Kent “Dutch” Pfeiffer that disfigured his face for life was also shared widely in the press. At the time of the 1917 US draft (after the U.S. entered the war in April 1917), Sidney also claimed exemption from the draft due to being a ‘Titanic survivor [illegible] incapacitated.’ Some people claimed such unique exemptions and it would have been up to local boards to judge validity, which seems to happen in Sidney’s case.
But why is Sidney buried in Reading Old when he died in a London Hospital?
Sidney’s mother Ann (Annie) CASELY (1849-1939) was born in Essex. She first married Frederick PINFOLD, a commercial clerk, though his death certificate states that he was a manufacturer’s foreman, on 21st December 1873. They had a son, Arthur Hatton PINFOLD, and the family lived in Reading at 21 Crown Street. Unfortunately, Frederick died at the age of 27 from tuberculosis, four years after their marriage and was buried in Reading Old on 26 April 1879 in a ‘reserved’ grave.
After Frederick’s death, Ann and her son moved in with her sister at 146 Southampton Street. Tragedy struck again for Ann the same year as the 3 year old Arthur died on 6 October 1879 from infantile convulsions and diarrhoea. The term ‘infantle convulsions’ was an umbrella term, used to describe a number of diseases around infant deaths. Arthur was buried with his dad.
In 1885 Ann remarried the widower Mawbey Ernest Collett (1851-1922), a coach ironmonger at the time but when the family immigrated to America, Mawbey became a pastor for the First Baptist Church in Port Byron, New York. Ann and Mawbey had five children (2 boys and 3 girls), with Sidney being the second child. His siblings were: Thomas Alfred Fletcher (1886-1964), Violet Amelia (1888-1959), Daisy Ann (1891-1952) and Lily Elizabeth (1892-1974).
At some point Sidney returned to the UK. In 1932 he seemed to have been living in Reading at 43 Crown Street and working as a florist. It was then, on 13 April 1932, that he bought Frank’s grave and its status changed from ‘reserve’ to a ‘family grave’. It may have been at the request of his mother who died in 1939 at her daughter’s house. We do not know how long Sidney lived in Reading but in 1939, he is recorded to be living at 77 Stremmers Road, Southend-on-Sea, along with four other lodgers, professional people ranging from a widowed nurse to a shop assistant and a knitting machinist.
On 20 March 1941 Sidney died at the age of 54 from prostate cancer at the Archway Hospital, Islington. He was buried with his step-brother and step-father on 28 March 1941 in Reading Old cemetery.
Division 39, Row M, Plot 6677