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Last Titanic Survivor Selling Mementos

CNN

posted: 6 HOURS 51 MINUTES AGO

comments: 102

filed under: World News

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LONDON (April 17) -- The last survivor of the Titanic, 97-year-old Millvina Dean, is auctioning off her remaining mementos of the doomed ship to pay nursing home bills.

The auction, which is expected to raise up to $50,000 for her, is set to take place Saturday near her home in England.

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It is the second auction in less than a year for Dean, who was a 9-week-old when the ship sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

Among the items going under the hammer at Henry Aldridge & Son is a canvas bag that might have been used to lift the infant Dean from a lifeboat to a rescue ship, said Alan Aldridge of the auction house.

"Historical documents say she was lifted from the lifeboat onto Carpathia, the rescue ship, in a mail sack," Aldridge said. After her rescue, Dean, her mother and her brother returned to England with a canvas sack, among other possessions.

"There is speculation that this would have been the bag. It's a leather and canvas bag. You would easily get a child or infant in it," Aldridge said, though he added that research by the Smithsonian, the British Postal Museum and the Liverpool Maritime Museum showed no proof that Dean had been taken off the lifeboat in that particular bag.

Given that the auctioneer cannot prove Dean was rescued in the bag, "we expect it to fetch £3,000 ($4,480). If it was the bag she was rescued in, it would be £30,000 to £40,000, ($44,800 to $60,000), but we can't prove it. It depends on what people are prepared to believe."

Aldridge said he was eager to raise as much for Dean as possible.

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"She's in a residential nursing home. She's 97 years of age. She's paying £3,000 a month in nursing home fees," he said -- the amount he hopes her canvas bag will sell for.

"As she said, £3,000 a month is £36,000 a year, which is a lot of money," he said. "When she runs out of money, the state will pay fees for her, but while she can pay her fees, she decides where she gets her care. When the state pays, they decide."

Dean's previous sale, in October, raised just over £30,000, Aldridge said.

"It's made a lot of people aware of her plight; a lot of people have sent her funds," he said.

Dean never married and had no children.

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"There are cousins, but there is no one directly to support her," Aldridge said. "The property she lived in [before she moved to the nursing home] was not hers. She's just an ordinary little old lady.

"If she's lucky, she'll get another four or five years; she's quite a fit lady," he said.

Dean was not available to speak to CNN herself because of a throat infection, Aldridge said.

The auction will include 17 items from her collection, most of them memorabilia related to the Titanic and signed by her but not from the ship itself.

The auction, in Devizes, southwest England, will also include a collection of letters from the estate of Titanic survivor Barbara Dainton-West, estimated to fetch $60,000 to $90,000. The letters include descriptions of her family's trip to board the Titanic and the immediate aftermath of the sinking.

Dainton-West, who was 10 months old when the ship went down, died in October 2007, the auctioneer said.

2009-04-17 10:44:45

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Bgbsm20

07:21 PMApr 17 2009

Too bad. She was spoiled enough to get on the Titanic and is too good for the regular state elder care facilities(free). She has been paying to stay at one of the ritziest elder care facilities of her choice. This story was first mentioned 3 months ago. Get the facts

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SATCHEL0805

07:20 PMApr 17 2009

Are we as Americans going to make the last survivor of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 go through what this lady has to experience just because she is 97 and counting?

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AMueth1

07:17 PMApr 17 2009

BEVESBASIC wrote: The entire English people should take care of this womanCanativesd63 wrote: I thought London had socialist health care???She's trying to avoid that by getting her own money. She doesn't want the government health system to decide her caregivers or her living situation.

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LHornjunkie

07:06 PMApr 17 2009

its obamas fault the titanic sank!

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bulgeinmyplants Click to read Low-rated and possibly explicit material.

Canativesd63

06:43 PMApr 17 2009

I thought London had socialist health care???

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Jmadamspa

06:43 PMApr 17 2009

WHy can't Obama save her ?

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HarVSatan Click to read Low-rated and possibly explicit material.

Kitsudragon

06:29 PMApr 17 2009

some of these comments just has no intelligence pretaining this nice article. You indigients need to just outright get a life and a brain!!

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Gladiator0719

06:25 PMApr 17 2009

Such a shame when money dominates our very lives in every aspect of daily living, such things denigrate the total humanity of what it means to be a human being. Money or lack of it, has started wars, condemnded humans and destroyed lives. We should strive not for material possessions or amassing wealth, but to better ourselves on every level possible. We should live by the honor system and a form of trust and self respondsibilty. Also we should enforce such codes on the lawless few that do not value life or lack respect towards one another. Semper Fi...

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