The family consisted of Hudson Joshua Creighton Allison (9 December 1881 – 15 April 1912);[1] his wife, Bess Waldo Allison (née Daniels; 14 November 1886 – 15 April 1912);[2] their daughter, Helen Loraine Allison (5 June 1909 – 15 April 1912);[3] and son, Hudson Trevor Allison (7 May 1911 – 7 August 1929).[4] Of the family, only Trevor survived, rescued by his nursemaid Alice Cleaver.
History
The Allison family, bound for Montreal, booked first-class passage on the Titanic. They boarded the ship in Southampton along with four servants: a maid, Sarah Daniels (no relation to Bess); a nurse, Alice Cleaver;[5] a cook, Amelia Mary "Mildred" Brown; and a butler, George Swane. Hudson and Bess occupied cabin C-22, Sarah and Loraine occupied C-24, and Alice and Trevor occupied C-26. Two second-class cabins were booked for George and Mildred.[citation needed]
Hudson and Bess were dining companions with Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen. At dinner on 14 April, they brought Loraine to the dining room with them so she could see how pretty it was.[citation needed]
On 14 April 1912, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and started to sink.[6] After the ship struck the iceberg, Hudson left to find out what was going on. While he was gone, Alice took Trevor and went to collect the rest of the servants in second class. Hudson returned to find them gone. He delivered Bess and Loraine to Lifeboat Boat 6 and apparently left before it was launched. Major Peuchen recalled how they were almost rescued:[citation needed]
Mrs. Allison could have gotten away in perfect safety, but somebody told her Mr. Allison was in a boat being lowered on the opposite side of the deck, and with Loraine she rushed away from the boat. Apparently she reached the other side to find that Mr. Allison was not there. Meanwhile our boat had put off.
Brave Nurse and the Babe She Saved: Alice Cleaver with Trevor Allison (1912)
George saw Alice, Mildred and Trevor safely into Boat 11, which left the ship at around 1:45am, nearly an hour after Boat 6 had. Sarah had gone up on deck early to investigate the commotion and was hurriedly placed into a boat by a steward who promised to inform the Allisons of her whereabouts. Varying stories claim that Alice panicked and grabbed Trevor, without informing Bess that she was leaving, and that Bess refused to leave the ship without him, though it is possible that the entire group went up on deck together, and that Alice and Trevor were simply lost in the crowd.[7]
In other accounts, Cleaver took Hudson Trevor into her lifeboat, but didn't tell anyone. Speculation claims this confusion could have led to the Allison family perishing, as the mother Bess would not want to leave her son behind.[8] Testimony from that night has speculated as to why she never alerted the Allisons to her departure from her room, but Cleaver herself never spoke of the incident.[9][10][11][12]
Hudson, Bess, Loraine, and George perished in the sinking. Whether or not George found the Allisons and informed them that Trevor was safely off the ship is unknown; if he did, it is likely the information came too late for any of them to leave the ship. Bess was one of only four first-class women (including Ida Straus, Edith Corse Evans, and Ann Elizabeth Isham) who perished, while Loraine was the only child of first and second class to do so. While Bess and Loraine's bodies were lost, Hudson's body was the 135th recovered by the Mackay-Bennett; George's was the 294th. Hudson's body was transported to Chesterville, Ontario, to be buried in the family plot in Maple Ridge Cemetery.[13]
Alice and Trevor were met in New York City by Hudson's brother, George, who, along with his wife, Lillian, took custody of the now orphaned Trevor. He died on 7 August 1929, at age 18 of food poisoning. He was buried beside Hudson.
Alice Cleaver
Alice Catherine Cleaver ((1889-07-05)5 July 1889–(1984-11-01)1 November 1984) was a survivor of the RMSTitanic and nursemaid for the Allison family. She is best known for rescuing Hudson Trevor.[9]
Cleaver was born in London on 5 July 1889. Her father Joseph Cleaver was a postman, and her mother was Lavinia Alice Cleaver (maiden name Thomas).[11] When she was 22, Cleaver was hired by the Allison family to be a nursemaid for their youngest child, Hudson Trevor. She traveled first class on the Titanic with them (under ticket No. 113781)[11] and boarded in Southampton. She stayed in the same room as Trevor so that she could care for him, which was right next to the parents in first class.[10]
Little is known about her later life, as she refused to give interviews after surviving the disaster.[10]
Identity confusion
There has been some confusion over the age and identity of Alice Catherine Cleaver, with some mistaking her for Alice Mary Cleaver, a woman who was convicted in 1909 for the murder of her own child.[10][11][12] This misconception was printed as fact in at least two books about the sinking of the Titanic, Titanic: An Illustrated History (1992) and Titanic: Women and Children First (1998), and was included as part of the plot for the 1996 television mini-seriesTitanic,[12][11] in which Cleaver was portrayed by Felicity Waterman as an emotionally unstable young woman with premonitions of the disaster, who then sees the opportunity to rescue baby Trevor from the sinking ship as a saving grace from her tumultuous past.[12] Cleaver was portrayed by Izabella Urbanowicz in the 2012 miniseries Titanic in a more historically accurate fashion.[citation needed]
Cleaver's age has also been debated due to descriptions of her being a competent nursemaid and a good maternal figure, which Titanic Lives author Rob Rondeau believes were indicative of an older woman.[10]
Claim by Helen Loraine Kramer to be Loraine Allison
In 1940, a woman named Helen Loraine Kramer claimed that she was Loraine Allison[14] and that, at the last minute, her parents gave her up to a man calling himself Hyde (whose identity she said to be that of the shipbuilder Thomas Andrews), who raised her on a farm in the American Midwest. Her claim, however, was not accepted by the Allisons. Eventually, she moved away, dying in 1992,[15] and they never heard from her again.[16]
In December 2013, the Loraine Allison Identification Project announced results of mitochondrial DNA testing performed on a sample donated by a female-line descendant of Kramer and descendants of the Allisons. The test was performed by DNA Diagnostics Center, a facility accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. The results were negative, demonstrating that no genetic relationship existed between Kramer and the Allisons.[17]
In media
A 1912 German silent film about the disaster, In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice), includes the Allison family story, but not by name.
The Allisons were major characters in the 1996 miniseries Titanic. The subplot regarding them was highly fictionalized and filled with historical inaccuracies: notably, it depicted the story of the long-standing myth that Alice (portrayed by Felicity Waterman) was a child murderess who stole Trevor in a fit of panic, thus forcing the rest of the family to remain on the ship looking for him until it was too late. Their other servants (Sarah, Mildred and George) are not featured in the series; the only one shown travelling with them was Alice.[citation needed]
The Allisons are also portrayed in the 2012 miniseries Titanic.
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