Alice Cleaver

Cleaver with her protégé Trevor Allison (1912).

Alice Catherine Cleaver (born July 5, 1889 in Kentish Town , St Pancras , London , † November 1, 1984 in Winchester , Hampshire ) was an English nanny who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and was the subject of a criminal case shortly afterwards due to a name mix-up that attracted media attention.

Life

Cleaver was the daughter of the postal worker Joseph Cleaver and his wife Lavinia Alice Thomas. In order to contribute to the family income, Cleaver began working as a babysitter for neighboring families as a teenager . She enjoyed a good reputation and was soon working for various wealthy London families.

In April 1912, she was hired by Montreal-based Canadian multimillionaire Hudson JC Allison as a nanny for his two young children. It was a last minute decision; the actual nanny had given notice at short notice. Allison went on 10 April 1912 in Southampton with his wife Bessie, daughter Lorraine (two years) and son Trevor (eleven months) and three other employees (a maid, a cook and a chauffeur) as passengers aboard the RMS Titanic to to return to Montreal. The services of the cook and the chauffeur were not required during the trip; these two employees were therefore placed in second class. The rest of the group (the Allison family, nanny Alice Cleaver and maid Sarah Daniels) lived in two adjacent luxury first class cabins on C-deck.

Why the group was separated on the night of the downfall has never been fully clarified. When the ship went down on the night of April 15 after the iceberg collision, Cleaver, with baby Trevor in his arms, apparently went to the second class area to notify the other two employees of the situation. On the way there, she was presumably intercepted by crew members and, since she was believed to be the child's mother, placed in lifeboat No. 11, which was located in the aft boat deck area belonging to the second class .

Bessie Allison grew increasingly restless after Cleaver did not return. The family was unaware that their son was already safe. Hudson and Bessie Allison were seen searching the boat deck for their child to the end. Bessie Allison refused a place on a lifeboat, nor did she put her daughter on one of the boats. Hudson and Bessie Allison and their daughter Lorraine were killed in the downfall. Lorraine was the only first and second grade child not saved.

After landing in New York , Cleaver initially gave a false name to protect the child (Jean) and pretended to be his mother. Trevor was claimed by his father's brother, George RB Allison, chairman of the United Theological College in Montreal, and his wife, Lillian. After the fall, Cleaver was first hailed as a lifesaver and heroine, and appeared on the front pages of many newspapers and magazines with Trevor. However, a misunderstanding arose later. She was accused of being a wanted child murderer. In 1909 she threw her illegitimate son from a moving train and thus killed him. Cleaver vehemently denied the allegations. The bereaved relatives of the Allison family could not imagine that their relatives had hired a wanted murderer. Ultimately, the allegations turned out to be false; Alice Catherine Cleaver had been mistaken for a woman named Alice Mary Cleaver. By this time she was already in prison for the crime, where she died of tuberculosis in 1915 . However, as the international media continued to spread misinformation about Cleaver in this regard, several complaints by Cleaver's family emerged.

Although the story turned out to be baseless, it found its way into various publications on the subject of Titanic . In the book Titanic: An Illustrated History and in the 1996 film Titanic , the story of Alice Cleaver as a murderer is taken up.

Alice Cleaver married the widowed factory owner Edward James Williams on June 22, 1918 and had two daughters with him. She died in 1984 at the age of 95.

swell

• Alice Cleaver biography
• Walter Lord . A night to remember . R. & W. Holt (non-fiction book, first published 1955)