Violet Madeleine Mellinger

Violet Madeleine Mellinger was a thirteen year old girl who was a passenger on *Titanic*. She was often adressed as 'Madeleine'.

Her mother was Elizabeth Anne Maidment. Her father was Claude Leinard Deschamps Mellinger and had been a clerk as well as a journalist in Londons Street Fleet. Between 1908 and 1910 he left for Australia after being involved in a financial scandal. He broke off all contact with his wife and daughter, who now had to look for work to provide for her family. Meanwhile Violet was given lessons on a girl's school in Wimbledon, nearby London.

Elizabeth wanted to take a job as housekeeper for the American family Colgate in Benningtom, Vermont. She had seen an advertisment that offered They had founded the toothpaste brand that we know today. One day Elizabeth came from Southampton to the school to bring Violet some news. Violet was told to make preparations to get to Southampton by Wednesday, because they would go aboard *Titanic* to travel to America. It would be her first time to take voyage on a ship. She had seen the large passenger liners before at the coast in Bournemouth, but this was something quite different. She was nothing less than thrilled by the prospect of taking voyage with this magnificent new liner.

She and her mother travelled in Second Class to meet the new employers. Violet's cabin was on starboard side on E-Deck, to her own account.

Sunday afternoon they went to their cabin to do their dressing up. Then they took the elevator and arrived at the Second Class Dining Saloon. Violet remembers seeing a man with two toddlers. It turned out to be Michel Navratil and his sons that would later be named: 'the *Titanic* Orphans', since their father was lost in the sinking and it was unknown who the mother was, untill she found out via the newspapers that her boys where on the ship. But he had taken the alias of Hoffman. Walking through a large hallway, she saw Captain Smith, who reminded her of king Edward VII because of the beard, and that's how she later knew for sure it was him. She asked a steward what he and other crew members were doing there and she was told that they did inspections of the watertight doors.

A superintendent of the Fillmore Farms also took voyage on *Titanic*. His name was Charles Cresson Jones. He was a First Class passenger, but he went to Second Class to see Elizabeth and showed them pictures of Bennington. Madeleine hoped that somehow the wealthy Mr. Jones would become her stepfather.

Later that afternoon, a church service was held and she enjoyed the singing very much. After that, she and her mother were on Deck for a stroll but soon they felt it was too cold and would retire to their cabin. Still inspired, she was singing 'For those in peril of the sea' in her bunk. She had been gifted a book with Anglican prayers and songs as well.

When *Titanic* hit the iceberg in the late night, she and her mother had slept through it, but she heard a loud bang on her door and a steward shouting at them, ordering them to get warmly dressed, collect the lifebelts and appear on the Boat Deck. She and her mother had managed to do so and left the sinking ship in lifeboat 14, which wasn't nearly filled to capacity. She lost her precious comforting doll Brickle in the sinking, it was still next to her berth in a net when she left her cabin. Even in her seventies, she was still haunted by the image of her beloved doll sitting alone forever in the dark ocean.

Her focus was on the ship as she remembered the rockets shooting off from the ship, looking for somebody to come and help them and she saw her lights one by one dipping under, and heard the downright terrifying screams when all the people got into the water when the ship sunk underneath them. She also found the starlit sky to be very dark with very bright stars. The cold was cutting through her.

Later, the Mellingers were told to climb from lifeboat 14 to lifeboat 12 to create room so Fifth Officer Lowe could go back for a search and rescue mission.

Onboard the *Carpathia*, Madeleine frantically rushed around the decks trying to find her mother who had been taken to the ship’s hospital unconscious with hypothermia and frostbite on her feet. She must have forgotten to put on her shoes when she left her cabin. Madeleine would write that her mother suffered a nervous reaction all her life and “lost her hearing due to the shock.”

Charles Cresson Jones didn't survive the disaster. After disembarking from *Carpathia* in New York, they met up with the now widowed wife of Charles Cresson Jones in Bennington. They returned to England after that.

In 1915 she and her mother migrated to Canada to settle in Toronto. She got married to banker David Daniel Mann, on 1 October 1921. They had 4 children together, all sons.

On 15 April 1939 Madeline, her mother would have a *Titanic* reunion dinner at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. Fellow *Titanic* survivors Emma Bliss and John Collins would be there too.

Madeline helped Walter Lord with his reseach for *A Night to Remember,* by relating her memories. In the 1970s, she was present at the *Titanic* Historical Society convention.

Madeleine died on 27 May 1976 in Toronto. She was cremated near Welland, Ontario at an Anglican Cemetery. Her widower David would live on untill he passed on 1 October 1994.

## Sources

1. 'De Titanic, de ware verhalen' (2012) *Edward P. De Groot*