Campaigning journalist William Thomas Stead (1849-1912) of Cambridge House, Wimbledon Park Road South (now Church Road) died when the Titanic sank at 2.20am, 15 April 1912.

But his attitude to other people’s deaths was pretty unconventional.

An ardent spiritualist and member of the Theosophical Society, his Wimbledon home was known as a “psychic centre” and was used to host séances.

He may have foreseen the Titanic disaster many years before it happened [see earlier Wimbledon Guardian story] but just the year before the ship went down he also claimed to be in regular touch with his son Willie who had died, age 33, 18 months earlier in 1909.

Stead wrote: “I am here to tell you that the reality of my son’s continued existence and of his tender care for me have annulled the bitterness of death.

"…When my boy was here, our offices were connected by telephone and it is much the same now.

"He writes to me through several mediums, he shows himself to my friends, I myself have seen his materialised face.

"He is here tonight beside me. I am as sure of that as I am of the fact that I am speaking to you.”

There’s no record of whether Willie warned him not to board the Titanic.

Nor whether Edward J. Smith, captain of the doomed ship, was aware that Stead had written a story 20 years earlier in which the commander of another White Star liner which hit an iceberg was also called Edward J. Smith.

In fact little is certain of what happened to Smith except that, like Stead, he went down with the ship.

It is clear that he was ultimately responsible for the failed command structure and never issued a general "abandon ship" order.

He had no plan for an orderly evacuation and there was neither a public address system nor a drill, even for the inadequate number of lifeboats that were on board.

Neither Stead nor Smith later appeared to any spiritualists to explain their respective fates. Nor since his demise, has J. Bruce Ismay (1862-1937).

President of the White Star Line, Ismay’s remaining 25 years after the disaster were blighted by the fact that he did survive while 1500 others didn’t but he may have been criticised unfairly.

He never had a chance of saving his reputation because years earlier he had fallen foul of the dominant American press magnate of the time, William Randolph Hearst.

A number of prominent American society figures had been on the ship and Hearst’s newspapers condemned Ismay out of hand, even though the British Inquiry Report into the disaster concluded that he had helped many other passengers before finding a place for himself on the last lifeboat.

He retired from the White Star Line in 1913, became a recluse and ended up in a grave at Putney Vale Cemetery.

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