82 replies to this topic

[Vitesse2]

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present what appears to be the definitive answer regarding the birth and death dates of Lucy O'Reilly Schell: born Paris October 26th 1896, died Monte Carlo June 8th 1952.



Source: Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835-1974 via Ancestry

Edited by Vitesse2, 08 July 2012 - 09:51.

[Vitesse2]

Can you confirm it is definitely "Philip" rather than "Phillipe" on the grave? I've never seen him referred to by the English version of his name.

A Philip Schell was among more than 500 US and other citizens of American countries who arrived at New York from Lisbon on the Swedish liner Drottningholm on June 30th 1942 (Source - New York Times 30th June 1942 - if anyone has free access to the NYT or US shipping records, could they check this?)

This does look to be Lucy's son. From the passenger manifest, where he appears as Philip Marcel Schell, there are indications that he was a US citizen born abroad, with a US passport issued at Nice.

[speedman13]

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[AdamFerrington]

Reviving a 15 year old thread….

from the days when some serious research was done here, in case anyone is interested.....

 

Below are official U.S. Foreign Service documents showing the birth and death details for both Laury Schell and Lucy O’Reilly Schell

 

 

Edited by AdamFerrington, 17 July 2021 - 20:42.

[bradbury west]

Thank you, Adam

RL

[Doug Nye]

Lucy's house at 15 Avenue Hector Otto up the hillside in Monte Carlo seems to have succumbed to the dreaded developers, but No 13 survives, perhaps providing a worthwhile impression of the likely cake-icing appearance of the erstwhile Schell home.  Google Earth Streetview:

 

 

Where she died at 3 Avenue des Citronniers, Monte Carlo, has either suffered a similar fate or formed part of the surviving building here:

 

 

Where Laurie Schell passed away in Sens at 11 Boulevard Aristide Briand is somewhat less exotic... but adjacent to the junction of a major road and a side road.

 

 

Fascinating documents Adam...

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 17 July 2021 - 20:28.

[Doug Nye]

Hmm - the officially documented location of poor Laury Schell's demise is some 6-7 miles south of Pont-sur-Yonne which is quoted as the accident site.  Was he carried to the nearest doctor, or did he pass away in an ambulance? Fine details of the fatal road accident and the assistance that he and his wife may or may not have received are unknown to me.

 

DCN

[AdamFerrington]

Hmm - the officially documented location of poor Laury Schell's demise is some 6-7 miles south of Pont-sur-Yonne which is quoted as the accident site.  Was he carried to the nearest doctor, or did he pass away in an ambulance? Fine details of the fatal road accident and the assistance that he and his wife may or may not have received are unknown to me.

 

DCN

Yes, Doug - the form above states that the road accident was indeed at Pont-sur-Yonne.

 

So Laury’s place of death - 11 Boulevard Aristide Briande in Sens - must either have been a doctor’s residence, or, more likely, the point that the ambulance taking him to hospital had reached when he died.

Edited by AdamFerrington, 18 July 2021 - 13:57.

[Doug Nye]

Pont-sur-Yonne, I believe, not 'Yvonne'...

 

DCN

[AdamFerrington]

Pont-sur-Yonne, I believe, not 'Yvonne'...

 

DCN

Of course

Corrected.

[Vitesse2]

Lucy's house at 15 Avenue Hector Otto up the hillside in Monte Carlo seems to have succumbed to the dreaded developers,

 

DCN

 

It seems there has been some renaming/renumbering of streets in Monaco since 1939. The December 1st 1938 edition of the Journal Officiel de Monaco says that the Schells had purchased an apartment in a building called Palais Zigzag on Av Hector Otto. In November 1938 l'Auto had reported that Laury was travelling to Monaco, to recuperate from his previous road accident in September of that year.

 

The address of Palais Zigzag - assuming it's the same building, and why wouldn't it be given that it still has the name plate? - is now 3, rue Honoré Labande, which connects Av Hector Otto to the rue de Castillon. Presumably that change is at or near the point where the Franco-Monégasque border intersects the road. Today the Av Hector Otto is a U-shaped road connecting the Moyenne Corniche to the Bvd du Jardin Exotique, but presumably it wasn't in 1938! The only historic Monaco street map I can find online theoretically dates to 1921, at which point that whole area seems to have been undeveloped.

 

http://www.vidiani.c..._Carlo_1921.jpg

 

Léon-Honoré Labande was a French librarian, archivist and historian who was official archivist to the Prince's Palace of Monaco from 1906 until his death in 1939. Presumably he is the one after whom the road has been (re?)named.

[Vitesse2]

Hmm - the officially documented location of poor Laury Schell's demise is some 6-7 miles south of Pont-sur-Yonne which is quoted as the accident site.  Was he carried to the nearest doctor, or did he pass away in an ambulance? Fine details of the fatal road accident and the assistance that he and his wife may or may not have received are unknown to me.

 

DCN

L'Auto's report of the accident is quite basic and doesn't give any real location detail, but it does say that both Laury and Lucy were first taken to a clinic 'dans la ville', which - in context - would mean in Sens. It appears that Laury expired there. Lucy - 'fortement contusionnée' - was later admitted to the Clinique Saint-Raphaël in Rue Eugène Millon in Paris. There are various postcard views of this clinic for sale at present, including this one, which places it at 3-5 Rue Eugène Millon. The building is still there and is now a psychiatric clinic, the Centre Eugène Millon.

 

 

Source: l'Auto, October 19th 1939, page 4 https://gallica.bnf....ury Schell.zoom

[AdamFerrington]

…..it does say that both Laury and Lucy were first taken to a clinic 'dans la ville', which - in context - would mean in Sens. It appears that Laury expired there.

The official document posted above gives exactly when and where Laury Schell died :-

At 11am on October 16th 1939, at 11 Boulevard Aristide Briand in Sens

 

So there is no need for ‘guessing games’ based upon newspaper reports in relation to Laury’s death….

[Doug Nye]

Even such official documents are only as accurate as the report that was accepted for their creation. Pont-sur-Yonne is itself quite an extensive settlement, and so the use of that name alone in recording the locationof the initial accident is really too non-specific.  It's interesting that the document is far more specific in the reported location of Schell's death.

 

One telling comment on the document relating to Lucy's demise is that her passport was reported to have been in the hands of her son Harry O'Reilly Schell and that he had been asked to surrender it to the consulate but had so far failed to do so.  

 

Hah!  That is entirely in keeping with what all who knew him have ever told me about louche, irrepressible, happy-go-lucky, busy, peripatetic, utterly independent, almost completely unconcerned 'Arree...sliding happily down the bannister of life...

 

DCN

[Vitesse2]

And that address presumablty refers to the 'clinic' mentioned by l'Auto. But we cannot know whether the building currently on that site is the one which was there in 1939, can we? Sens seems to have been the scene of heavy fighting during the fall of France in 1940, as the French army attempted to use the Yonne as a barrier.

 

http://www.histoire-...ts-de-sens.html

 

Another website, only available on Wayback, says that the railway station at Sens had been bombed on June 7th.

 

https://web.archive....Sens-89387.html

 

From its style, I'd suggest that the house now known as 11 Boulevard Aristide Briand is post-WW2. It is only about 150 metres from the river, although on the opposite bank to the railway line.

[Vitesse2]

Even such official documents are only as accurate as the report that was accepted for their creation. Pont-sur-Yonne is itself quite an extensive settlement, and so the use of that name alone in recording the locationof the initial accident is really too non-specific.  It's interesting that the document is far more specific in the reported location of Schell's death.

 

DCN

Somewhat O/T, but ... Somehow, my late father managed to register my birth with the wrong house number on the certificate. At the time, my parents lived in a house numbered 5. My birth certificate says 34. Even today, the road they lived in doesn't even have a number 34 - at the time the highest number was 20, but it's been extended along what used to be a footpath and there's now a number 29. 34 was however the number of the house where my father was born and brought up! 325 miles away ...
 

[Doug Nye]

Not at all rattled then?

 

I should confess that at our wedding I started to sign the Register beside the word 'Bride' (or 'Wife', whatever the darned thing specified - wrong one anyway)

 

As I say, not at all rattled...

 

DCN

[BRG]

In one of the Indycar threads, someone mentioned (in the context of place-names in California that were Indycar drivers eg Dixon CA) that Schellville, close to Sonoma (aka Sears Point etc) race track, was named after the descendants of Harry Schell, who had a large ranch there.  Can anyone confirm this?  Or was it a wind-up?

[Vitesse2]

In one of the Indycar threads, someone mentioned (in the context of place-names in California that were Indycar drivers eg Dixon CA) that Schellville, close to Sonoma (aka Sears Point etc) race track, was named after the descendants of Harry Schell, who had a large ranch there.  Can anyone confirm this?  Or was it a wind-up?

See Rick Kelly's post 18 above. Not his descendants, of course. His ancestors.

 

https://localwiki.or...ley/Schellville

[BRG]

See Rick Kelly's post 18 above. Not his descendants, of course. His ancestors.

 

https://localwiki.or...ley/Schellville

Ah, right, I had overlooked that post from 14 years ago    I will hasten to the other thread to correct it!

[RobertE]

Apropos of nothing, but I found it curious...

 

I'd been researching Harry Schell for my book on the BRP and I wanted to know more about Phillipe, so I called Gerard Crombac. In response to my question, he replied:

 

"Well, basically, he was a pimp..."

 

Not at all what I'd been expecting!

[Vitesse2]

Digging into Gallica again, it looks like the most comprehensive report of Laury's fatal accident is actually in the October 20th 1939 issue of La Bourgogne républicaine, which is only available on their premium site Retronews. From the snippet view on Gallica it looks like there was at least a third person in the car - Mlle Jacqueline Hanki (Lucy's niece?) - and possibly a fourth, since it seems to say that three people were injured. The description suggests that they were travelling towards Paris and that the crash took place to the south of (peu avant) Pont Sur Yonne.

 

One word which stands out in that snippet is Picquet. Possibly coincidence, but there is a large hospital in Sens called Clinique Paul Picquet - according to its website it was founded in 1913, although it was apparently situated at 11 Boulevard du Mail.

 

However, the October 19th issue of Excelsior says that Laury was taken to 'l'hôpital de Sens' and died an hour after being admitted.

[Doug Nye]

Was it a single car accident or collision with other vehicle(s)????

 

DCN

[Jim Thurman]

See Rick Kelly's post 18 above. Not his descendants, of course. His ancestors.

 

https://localwiki.or...ley/Schellville

 

Yes, I meant to type that Harry Schell was "a descendant." I can only plead fatigue and hastiness for my error (since corrected). I was surprised when Rick Kelly turned that up, as I was not aware of any family tie to California.

Edited by Jim Thurman, 19 July 2021 - 19:19.

[Vitesse2]

Was it a single car accident or collision with other vehicle(s)????

 

DCN

The snippet view doesn't provide enough clues, I'm afraid. I did have a trial subscription with Retronews a while back but it didn't seem worth continuing at €99 pa as it's mostly small regional papers. All the reports I've found say accident rather than collision or carambolage though.

[AdamFerrington]

All the reports I've found say accident rather than collision or carambolage though.

Was it a single car accident or collision with other vehicle(s)????

It was a collision.

 

"At the entrance to the town (Pont-sur-Yonne) a petrol tanker had been delivering fuel to the Brasserie Tourtel (it is still there), which was also a petrol station.

Having delivered its fuel, the tanker was turning out of the yard of the Brasserie in the direction of Sens, when a powerful car appeared, travelling towards Paris.

This car, a Delahaye, hit the right side of the tanker 'avec une grande violence'.

The four occupants, 'gravement blessés' were immediately treated by Dr. Robert, from Pont, and were then taken to the clinique Picquet in Sens

They were :-

M. Laury Schell, 44 y.o.,

His wife, née Lucy O'Reilly,

Mlle Jacqueline Hanki (she was Lucy's nephew's wife - not her niece),

(all three American in origin)

and their chauffeur, M. Andre Combeau aged 37.

 

About two hours (not one hour) after being admitted to the clinique, M. Laury Schell died.

The other travellers are in a serious condition."

 

Who the actual driver of the car was is not mentioned, but it very likely was the chauffeur, Andre Combeau.

 

Here is the brasserie - Le Relais Tourtel - today

 

The Relais Tourtel is located where the purple marker is, to the bottom right of the map, just south of the bridge at Pont-su-Yonne.

 

 

Edited by AdamFerrington, 20 July 2021 - 03:51.

[Doug Nye]

Very interesting Adam. The presence of a chauffeur is interesting - I am not alone in having assumed that Laury was driving, enthusiastically as ever.  The old Relais is some 6 1/2 miles from the Sens address at which poor Schell was found to have died.  In this Google Earth view dated August 1919 the Relais looks reasonably newly abandoned.

 

Looking south towards Sens - invitingly straight, fast road... The arched entrance on the right is identified on the GE site as being No 20 - the Relais to the left as No 18... Somewhat confusingly if one dials in No 29 as on the Relais Tourtel ad above - the website presents the same place, same views, under that number also.

 

 

Looking north back into Pont-sur-Yonne itself.  They would have come out of that curve exiting the small town/village itself and the dead straight road south opened up ahead of the driver - pedal to the metal then...?

 

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 20 July 2021 - 08:29.

[Vitesse2]

Surely they were travelling northwards, Doug? As I mentioned the description says peu avant, and if they were travelling at speed then the building on the right could have blocked any view of the emerging tanker until the last moment. The tanker would have been far more visible if they were travelling southwards. And like most high-class European limousines of the time the Delahaye would almost certainly have been RHD, further restricting the driver's field of vision to his right.

 

There's also the address discrepancy: 11 Boulevard Aristide Briand or 11 Boulevard du Mail? Since Laury was admitted to the Clinique Picquet, the latter seems much more likely. The US embassy form was completed five weeks after Laury's death, presumably by a clerk who would have had no knowledge of the exact circumstances. And although there isn't a Boulevard Aristide Briand in Brunoy, the Schells' other well-known place of residence, there is a Rue Aristide Briand, not far from Rue de Cerçay, the location of the cemetery where Laury was interred. OTOH there are lots of roads named after him!

[Vitesse2]

Also, backtracking from the time of death - assuming that is accurate - then Laury must have been admitted to the hospital at about 09.00, which suggests the accident happened at perhaps 08.00 or maybe even earlier. And raises some more questions. Could the driver have been blinded by the rising sun to his/her right? Had they been travelling all night? Monaco to Pont sur Yonne is between 850 and 900km depending on the route you choose and even today Google suggests it's an 8½ to 10 hour journey by day.

[Tim Murray]

The part I don’t understand is this. The Delahaye was travelling north towards Paris, so would have been in the carriageway adjacent to the Relais, which was on the eastern side of the road. The tanker would have pulled out of the Relais across the adjacent carriageway to head south towards Sens on the opposite carriageway, thus presenting its left-hand side to the approaching Delahaye. However, the report posted above by Adam says that the Delahaye hit the right-hand side of the tanker.

[AdamFerrington]

Very interesting Adam. The presence of a chauffeur is interesting - I am not alone in having assumed that Laury was driving, enthusiastically as ever.  The old Relais is some 6 1/2 miles from the Sens address at which poor Schell was found to have died.  In this Google Earth view dated August 1919 the Relais looks reasonably newly abandoned.

 

Looking south towards Sens - invitingly straight, fast road... The arched entrance on the right is identified on the GE site as being No 20 - the Relais to the left as No 18... Somewhat confusingly if one dials in No 29 as on the Relais Tourtel ad above - the website presents the same place, same views, under that number also.

 

 

Looking north back into Pont-sur-Yonne itself.  They would have come out of that curve exiting the small town/village itself and the dead straight road south opened up ahead of the driver - pedal to the metal then...?

 

 

DCN

 

The exact logistics of the accident, as reported, are a little puzzling....

 

As I understand it from the map, the Brasserie Tourtel and its yard were on the right, in relation to northbound, Paris, traffic.

 

The report clearly states that the tanker was struck on its right side,

 

Had it been simply turning left out of the Brasserie yard, onto the Route Nationale, in the direction of Sens, it would have been the left side of the tanker which would have been vulnerable to collision from Paris-bound traffic.

Is it therefore possible that the tanker was actually reversing out of the yard of the Brasserie, across the Paris-bound carriageway of the RN?

In which case the Paris-bound Delahaye would have hit it on the right side, as reported.

Or is the report simply mistaken in noting that the impact was on the right side of the tanker?

 

I suspect we will never know......
 

[Vitesse2]

In 'normal times' the French press would surely have reported any subsequent inquest. I can't find anything relevant during 1940 or 1941 though - perhaps understandably given the circumstances generally.

 

For context, the inquest into the January 1939 crash when Reginald Empson was killed after being ejected through the sunroof of a car driven by Kay Petre after a collision at a crossroads was quite extensively covered by the French - and British - press. Kay was also injured and charged with homicide par imprudence, the equivalent of manslaughter, a standard procedure under French law in such cases. The case came to court in July 1939, with Kay eventually being fined 40 francs. The lorry driver - who faced the same charge - was fined 30 francs, but the court was at pains to point out that the vagaries of French traffic laws meant that both drivers had theoretically had the right of way at the junction.

 

So, could pending legal proceedings related to this crash be the reason Lucy didn't go to Indianapolis in 1940? René Dreyfus just claimed she had 'business to attend to' ...

[Doug Nye]

I stand corrected.  Having only scan read this thread - and beguiled by the notion that Laury Schell was taken south from the accident scene to Sens - I fell entirely under the misapprehension that they were heading south in the Delahaye.

 

Since they were heading north, nearing the end of that long - at the Relais nearly 3,000-yard - straight, the car could have been very near to its maximum speed.  Heavy car - drum brakes - late-1930s tyres - crossing tanker truck - ugh...

 

DCN

Edited by Doug Nye, 20 July 2021 - 12:01.