The Titanic sank On This Day 14/15 April 1912

Streatham connections:
Sir Walter Jack Howell KCB Assistant Secretary to the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. Lived "Redlynch", Streatham Common. Witness at the Titanic inquiry after it sank on its maiden voyage in 1912

​(Image Carl Vandyk NPG x18604 © National Portrait Gallery, London)

Mr Richard William Smith, a 57-year-old widowed tea broker (for Reinach-Nephews and Co) residing at 53 Stanthorpe Road, Streatham was killed in the disaster. He had embarked from Southampton on 10 April, occupying first class cabin A-19. His body, if recovered, was never identified. His estate, worth £1,708, 6s, 5d, was administered to a widow named Susan Hepburn, the identity of whom is not clear. 
Image is believed to be Richard Smith and his friend Emily Nicholls on the deck of the Titanic.

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Laura Francatelli (1882-1967)- Streatham resident at 72 Strathbrook Road who survived the Titanic sinking. She married Swiss Hotelier Max Haering. They lived in Streatham and she died in London on 2nd June 1967. A first class passenger's account of the sinking of the Titanic has been published for the first time nearly 100 years after the disaster. (Source Telegraph 1 October 2010)
Laura Francatelli wrote of hearing an 'awful rumbling' as the famous liner went down and 'then came screams and cries' from 1,500 drowning passengers.
Miss Francatelli worked as a secretary for baronet Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his wife Lady Lucy Christiana and travelled with them on Titanic. The employee told of how the three of them boarded one of the last lifeboats containing just five passengers and seven crew - and admitted they didn't consider going back for survivors. Wealthy baronet Sir Cosmo later paid the crew members £5 each - about £300 in today's money - and some say this was blood money for saving their live