Violet Jessup was another great survivor. She survived TB as a child as well as two
shipwrecks, including the Titanic! She also lived to a ‘ripe old age’. Strangely, Jessop’s story has been somewhat
ignored in movies about the great ship.
Born in 1887 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jessop was the
oldest of five brothers and sisters. Her
parents were Irish. Her mother came from
a wealthy Dublin family who lived in smart Merrion Street. Her father was a sheep farmer.
The family moved to England when Jessop was quite young and
she went to a convent school. However,
after her father died and her mother became ill, the young girl realised that
she’d have to go to work. She decided to
follow in her mother’s footsteps and work as a stewardess. This was the start of a long career on board
ships.
Jessop was only 21 and her attractiveness was often regarded
as a potential problem because it might attract unwanted attention from
passengers. Petite with grey-blue eyes
and auburn hair, Jessop had to dress in drab clothes and wear no makeup when
she went to one job interview. She got
the position.
Her first job was on the Orinoco in 1908. In 1910 she moved to the Majestic. She had to work 17 hour days for low wages on
this ship. She was on the Olympic when
it collided with HMS Hawke. Luckily,
both ships were able to limp back to port.
Although Jessop received several proposals from passengers,
she only had one romance. This was with
a warm-hearted, but opinionated Australian engineer called Ned. Unfortunately, he didn’t want to get married
until he was promoted. This was a long
way away and the pretty young stewardess didn’t want to wait.
Jessop liked serving on the Olympic but friends persuaded
her to join the Titanic even though she was concerned about the rough seas and
wild weather. She dressed in a smart,
ankle-length brown suit to join the ship.
The 24-year old stewardess, a devout Catholic, was reading a Hebrew prayer when the iceberg
hit. She was ordered up on deck and helped the passengers in her charge to go up to the deck. She was told
to get into a lifeboat. A bundle – a tiny
baby – was suddenly dropped into her
lap. Eight hours later, she was picked
up by the Carpathia. She felt the baby
being snatched from her arms and she was very upset that she was never thanked
by the baby’s mother.
Jessop then became a Red Cross nurse on the Britannic. When this ship started sinking after being
hit by a German mine, Jessop had to jump to safety. She was sucked under the keel which struck her
head and she then found herself surrounded by severed corpses and badly injured
men. She suffered headaches for years
and learned later that she had had a fractured skull. Jessop thanked her thick reddish-gold hair
for saving her life!
The pretty stewardess did marry. Senan Moloney writes
in his article,
Violet's Barren White Star Wedding, that she married a fellow
steward, John James Lewis, at 36 in London.
The marriage lasted a very short time.
One of her nieces thought that she never stopped carrying a candle for
her handsome Australian.
Surprisingly, Jessop continued to serve as a stewardess on
ships until she was over 60. She then
retired to a thatched cottage in Suffolk
where she loved to garden. She
died in 1971 aged 84.
An Interesting Interview with Jessop's Niece
