A corner shop in the heart of Bootle has links to Titanic history.
Number 12 Linacre Lane is now home to Aden Gulf News which is run by Ahmed Qasem. The 34-year-old has worked at the store since 2017 and took over around 18 months ago.
Despite the long hours, getting to the shop 5am and finishing at 9.30pm. Ahmed, originally from Yemen but now living in Bootle, said he loves working there.
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Speaking to the ECHO, he said: "I know all the public and people around here and have been here a long time. It is a good area."
Ahmed said he believes corner shops are important in the community. He told the ECHO people rely on them and this was seen during the pandemic when they were the places people could go to buy essential items.
As part of our new series on corner shops and convenience stores that form important parts of our community, we spoke to Ahmed. If you want us to feature a shop in future stories, email olivia.williams@reachplc.com.
The building has been a corner shop for around 35 years Ahmed told the ECHO, however it is also steeped in history for a surprising but heartbreaking reason. A dad who lived at 12 Linacre Lane, and was married with eight children, perished in the Titanic disaster.
Thomas Peter O'Connor was born in Liverpool in 1868 and was working as a ship's bedroom steward on the ill-fated liner. He married his wife, Emily, in the February of 1892 and the couple had a total of eight children with only four living past infancy.
According to his page on encyclopedia-titanica.org, Emily was working as a greengrocer and they lived at number 12, Linacre Lane at the time of the voyage. Thomas was on board the Titanic for her delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton.
When he signed-on again, in Southampton, for the voyage to New York on April 4, 1912. More than 100 members of Titanic’s crew on her tragic maiden voyage – about 9% – were from Merseyside or had close links with the area.
Most of her key officers and crew had originally sailed from Liverpool for White Star. RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line.
The liner left Southampton on April 10, 1912, calling at Cherbourg in France and Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, before heading west. On April 14, four days into the crossing and about 375 miles south of Newfoundland, Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40pm ship's time.
The crash caused the hull to buckle inwards along her starboard (right) side and exposed five of her 16 watertight compartments to the sea. Passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which launched only partially loaded with a disproportionate number of men left aboard because of a "women and children first" protocol.
At 2:20am, the ship broke apart and sunk with well over one thousand people still onboard. Thomas O'Connor died in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified.
It's estimated between 1,490 and 1,635 people died in the disaster from around 2,208 people thought to be onboard. Approximately 688 who perished were thought to be crew members. Just under two hours after Titanic sank, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived and brought aboard an estimated 710 survivors.
Thomas' widow, Emily, placed the following memorial to her husband in the Liverpool Echo on 15 April 1939: "In sad but loving memory of my dear husband, Thomas O'Connor (Tom), who lost his life in the Titanic disaster, April 15, 1912. R.I.P. (Sadly missed by his sorrowing wife and children)--49, Linacre-lane, Bootle."
Emily never remarried and continued to live in Liverpool, later living at 49 Caldwell Road, Allerton where she died on October 28, 1962 aged 93.
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