What started off as a horrible, but common, story of two children kidnapped from their mother, may have ended up with a wink from Karma. Two orphans, survivors of the Titanic’s demise, were believed to have been the children of the mother whose children were taken. Here is the account:
French Woman May Claim “Titanic Orphans”
Girl Who Would Adopt Them Weeps
Nice, France, April 23 — The mystery of the “orphans of the Titanic” perhaps is cleared up.
The “orphans of the Titanic” are two chubby faced, curly haired, laughing, French babies, who, from the high decks of the sinking Titanic, were tossed into the lap of Miss Margaret Hays, of New York, as she sat in the last of the lifeboats.
The children are boys, one four years old, the other two. They talk French. The older answers to the name of Louis, but has not been able to give his last name.
They were just two nameless, but highly lovable, little orphans who came to Miss Hays as from heaven itself.
Mme. Jeanne Navratil, wife of a tailor living here, says they probably are her children, Louis, 4 years old, and Lola, 2.
Two months ago, Mme. Navratil quarreled with her husband over what Mme. Navratil chose to regard as excessive attention that gentleman paid to another woman.
Navratil did not stay to see the quarrel out. He left his wife, and shortly afterwards contrived to kidnap the children.
Mme. Navratil had no money wherewith to trace her husband or children, inasmuch as her late helpmeet had taken the precaution of taking all their money and her jewels before his departure.
Mme. Navratil heard a rumor that her husband was going to America, and that he intended taking the children with him.
She also heard he had forbidden the children ever to mention the name of their mother, and a vague rumor as to the position the “other woman” now occupied in the household of Pere Navratil.
But she had no money, and what can a woman do without money?
In the second cabin of the Titanic there was a passenger who went by the name of Hoffman. He had two little children with him. He told other passengers he was a widower.
And the long arm of coincidence again works here — the name of Navratil’s closest friend is Hoffman.
Mme. Navratil is going to find out if the “Titanic orphans” are her children, and, if they are, claim them.
Source: (1912, April 23). French Woman May Claim “Titanic Orphans”. The Day Book.
