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Millvina Dean was the youngest passenger to ever be on the Titanic, at nine weeks old. She was also the last living normal survivor of the sinking to die and the last British survivor.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Eliza Gladys Dean (her official name), was born on the 2nd of February 1912 in Branscombe, Devon, England.

She was the daughter of Bertram Frank Dean and Eva Georgetta Dean. In April 1912, she was only nine weeks old and was, with her parents and brother Bertram, about to emigrate to Wichita, Kansas, USA; where her father hoped to open a tobacconist shop.

Aboard the Titanic[]

Dean's parents decided to leave the United Kingdom and emigrate to the United States; they were planning to move to Wichita, Kansas, where her father had relatives, and his cousin owned a tobacco shop that he was going to co-own. They were not supposed to be aboard the Titanic, but due to a coal strike, they were transferred onto Titanic which they boarded at April 10th, in Southampton. She, her parents and brother had ticket #C.A. 2315, £20 11s 6d. They were Third Class Passengers.

When the Titanic sank after she struck an iceberg, Millvina, Eva, and Bertram were all rescued in lifeboat 10. Her father did not survive, and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

Post-Disaster[]

They returned to England aboard the Adriatic. Onboard, Millvina became quite a spectacle: that such a tiny baby could have came through the ordeal alive. Even First and Second Class passengers queued to hold her, and many took photographs of her, Eva, and Bertram, several of which were published in contemporary newspapers.

Millvina and Bertram were raised and educated on various pension funds. Millvina attended Greggs School, Southampton. She did not know that she had been a passenger on the Titanic until she was eight years old and her mother was planning to remarry.

Later Life[]

Millvina never married, working for the UK Government during World War II by drawing maps, and later serving in the purchasing department of a Southampton engineering firm.

She lost her mother in 1975, her mother died on 16 September 1975, reaching the fantastic age of 96. Her brother died on 14 April 1992, age 81, the 80th anniversary of the iceberg collision.

It wasn't until she was in her seventies that she became a Titanic celebrity: she was in great demand to appear at conventions, exhibitions, in documentaries, radio and TV programmes.

In April 1996, Millvina visited Belfast, Northern Ireland for the first time; as guest of honor for a Titanic Historical Society convention. She was the last normal living-survivor. She lived in retirement in Southampton and was kept very busy attending conventions, appearing in documentaries, TV series, and radio shows, as well as signing autographs and relating her tales to school groups. In 1997, she was invited to travel aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 to the United States to complete her family's voyage to Wichita, Kansas.

Dean staunchly refused to see James Cameron's film ''Titanic' (1997). She recalled having nightmares after seeing 'A Night to Remember' (1958), the film based on Walter Lord's book, and did not wish to imagine her father as one of the people in the crowd of passengers stranded on the sinking liner. She declined invitations to the premieres of Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)

In April 2008, Dean had accepted an invitation to speak in Southampton at an event commemorating the 96th anniversary of the sinking, but ill health resulting from a respiratory infection forced her to cancel.

In December 2008, at age 96, Dean was forced to sell several of her family's possessions to pay for her private medical care following a broken hip. These included a letter sent to her mother from the Titanic Relief Fund, and a suitcase given to her and her mother in New York following the sinking. Their sale raised approximately £32,000. In February 2009, she announced that she would be selling several more items to pay for her increasing nursing home costs which she said exceeded £3,000 a month.

Death[]

In response to the escalating cost of Dean's care, The Millvina Fund was set up in April 2009 by the Belfast, British, and International Titanic Societies with the exclusive aim of taking care of her nursing home bills. It was given a boost by the Irish author and campaigning journalist Don Mullan at the opening of his worldwide Nokia photographic exhibition, A Thousand Reasons for Living (featuring a portrait of Dean), in Dublin on 22 April 2009.

Millvina died on 31 May 2009 after a short illness, pneumonia, and like her mother she reached a very high age, 97. Coincidentally, she died exactly two years before the one-hundredth anniversary of Titanic's launching: 31 May 1911. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered from a launch at the docks in Southampton where the Titanic set sail on 24 October 2009.

Mullan introduced an additional portrait of Dean's hands, as she signed a card for a Titanic autograph collector, which he produced as a limited edition of 100 copies. He made the edition available at €500 each and then challenged the director and stars of the film Titanic (1997)James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet – singer Celine Dion, and the corporations Sony Music, 20th Century Fox, and Paramount Pictures to match him euro-for-euro to support her with her bills. DiCaprio and Winslet led the way with a joint contribution of US $20,000. Cameron and Dion donated US $10,000 each.

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