Millvina Dean

Millvina Dean
Millvina Dean signing autographs at the Titanic Convention in Southampton of April 1999.
Born	Elizabeth Gladys Millvina Dean (1912-02-02) 2 February 1912 London, England
Parent(s)	Bertram F. Dean and Georgette Light
Relatives	Bertram Vere Dean (brother)

Elizabeth Gladys “Millvina” Dean (born 2 February 1912) is, at age 96, the last remaining survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic that occurred 15 April 1912. She was the youngest passenger on board, and possesses no recollection of the sinking. However, she represents the last living link of the Titanic disaster.

Family

Millvina Dean was born in London to Bertram Frank Dean and Georgette Eva Light. She had one older brother, Bertram Vere Dean, who was born in May 1910. She has one of the oldest wrinkles in the world, located on her forehead above her right eye.

Titanic voyage

Millvina's parents decided to leave England and emigrate to Wichita, Kansas where her father had family living and where he hoped to open a tobacco shop. The Deans were not supposed to be aboard the Titanic, but owing to a coal strike, they were transferred to the ship and boarded it as third-class passengers at Southampton, England. Millvina was barely two months old when she boarded the ship. Millvina's father felt the ship's collision with the iceberg on the night of 14 April 1912, and after investigating, returned to his cabin telling his wife to dress the children and go up on deck. Millvina, her mother, and brother were placed in Lifeboat 10 and were among the first steerage passengers to escape the sinking liner. Her father, however, did not survive, and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

Return to England

Millvina Dean, right, and her brother Bertram

At first, Eva, Millvina's mother, wanted to continue on to Kansas to fulfill her husband's wish of a new life in America, but after losing her husband so tragically and being left with two small children to care for, she just decided to go home. Millvina, her mother, and brother, returned to England aboard the RMS Adriatic. While aboard the ship, Millvina attracted a lot of attention by being such a small child and surviving the disaster. An article in the Daily Mirror newspaper dated 12 May 1912 described the ordeal:

She was the pet of the liner during the voyage, and so keen was the rivalry between women to nurse this lovable mite of humanity that one of the officers decreed that first and second class passengers might hold her in turn for no more than ten minutes.

Millvina and her brother were raised mostly on pension funds and educated in neighbouring Southampton schools. It was not until she was eight years old, and her mother was planning to remarry, that Dean found out she had been a passenger on the Titanic. Millvina never married, and worked for the British government during the Second World War and later as a purchaser for a local engineering firm.

Other careers she has had were as a cartographer, a secretary and an assistant to a tobacconist.

Millvina's mother, Eva, died on 16 September 1975 at the age of 96 (her own current age), and her brother, Bertram, died at the age of 81 on 14 April 1992, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the Titanic striking the iceberg.

Retirement and Titanic events

It wasn't until Dean was in her seventies that she became involved in Titanic-related events. Over the years she has participated in numerous conventions, exhibitions, documentaries, television and radio interviews, and personal correspondence. In 1996, she visited Belfast for the first time, and in 1997, she was invited to travel aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 to the United States to complete her family's intended voyage to Wichita.

In 2006, she fell and broke her hip, which led her to miss the commemoration of the 95th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking in 2007. Southampton's mayor paid her a special visit, where he presented her a large bouquet of flowers.

In December 2007 Dean openly criticized the BBC for allegedly 'poking fun' at the Titanic tragedy in a Doctor Who Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who), although she had not seen the program, nor any details about its content. Speaking from her nursing home, she said: "The Titanic was a tragedy which tore so many families apart. I lost my father and he lies on that wreck. I think it is disrespectful to make entertainment of such a tragedy." A spokeswoman for the show said: "No offence was intended. Voyage of the Damned is set on a spaceship called The Titanic and not a boat."

Dean had previously attended a premiere for the film A Night to Remember with five other survivors. She recounted that all of them "hated it", because their fathers had all died in the disaster, and the film was too painful for them to watch. Dean did not attend any further screens of subsequent Titanic films, even when offered a private screening of James Cameron's film with Prince Charles, stating that she "had no intention of seeing it, no matter who was there."

Dean had accepted an invitation to speak in Southampton in April 2008 at an event commemorating the 96th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, but ill health forced her to cancel.

Last living Titanic survivor

Dean became the last living survivor on 16 October 2007, when Barbara West Dainton of Truro died. While Dean favoured her association with the Titanic and its enthusiasts, Dainton never participated in any Titanic-related event at all and avoided all related publicity.

External links

• Millvina Dean Criticizes the BBC
• Titanic Survivor gets Mayoral Tribute
• Barbara Dainton, 96, Among Last From Titanic, Is Dead