September 2, 2015 • 28 mins
We love to talk about shipwrecks, but Violet Jessop was a shipwreck survivor -- several times over. She traveled the world aboard some of the most famous ocean liners of all time.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from hostworks
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast Tray C. V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Shipwrecks long time favorite thing
on our show from way before Holly and I joined,
(00:22):
and today we're taking a slightly different approach to the
perennial favorite of shipwrecks. We're going to talk about a
shipwreck survivor. Her name is Violet Jessup. She survived a
whole lot, and I don't want to spoil it, so
that is all I'm saying for the intro. Violent Constance
Jessup was born on October two of eight seven, near
(00:42):
Bahia Blanca, Argentina. Her parents, William Jessup and Catherine Kelly,
had emigrated there from Dublin in the mid eighties with
the goal of starting a sheep farm. Her life at
first was extremely modest. Her father didn't really have enough
money for a whole herd of sheep, so they were
living in what was basically a one room structure of
adobe bricks. Violet's crib was made out of a gin box.
(01:06):
After a while, when it became clear that he wouldn't
be able to buy enough sheep to make the farm
self sustaining. Violen's father instead took a series of other jobs,
first working as a customs officer and then working for
a railroad line. This did put the family on more
solid financial footing, but in spite of that, Violet and
the rest of her siblings who were born afterwards she
(01:28):
was the oldest, they had a number of medical catastrophes,
and really, regardless of what their income had been like,
these catastrophes would have basically been unavoidable at the time.
Violet and her younger brother Ray, at the time when
it was just the two of them, both got scarlet
fever and Ray actually died of it. Violet later got
tuberculosis and then also got typhoid fever. Two of her
(01:52):
brothers nearly died of diphtheria. She had four brothers and
one sister who survived to adulthood, but she had other
brothers in a sister who died while they were still children.
Violets tuberculosis caused her lungs to hemorrhage, and so even
after she was old enough to go to school, a
doctor actually recommended that she stay home. Later, when Violet
(02:13):
was in the hospital and seemed as though she might
not recover. It was recommended that she go to the
mountains where the air might give her a few more months.
They really did think she was going to die. Her
lungs had been seriously hemorrhaging for a long time. So
after having lived in Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires, Violet's
father got a transfer to Mendoza, Argentina, which is in
the foothills of the Andies Mountains, and Violet's health did
(02:37):
get stronger. In Mendoza, she seemed to have an aggressively
stubborn will to live, and after a while she was
doing well enough to explore their sprawling adobe house with
her pet armadillo. I find that wildly charming. Eventually she
was well enough to go to school, which she did
gleefully until her father's death when she was in her
early teens. She really wanted to think so badly. She
(02:59):
wanted to be want to go to school, and she
wanted to have a sister, but instead she had a
series of brothers, then a sister who tragically died of
meningitis when she was a baby, then a sister who
lived to adulthood. So when Violet's father died, her mother
decided to take the family to England, even though people
worried that Violet's lungs would not be able to handle
(03:19):
the English air. This was such a big concern that
one of her Argentinian teachers actually offered to adopt her.
At this point, Violet was about sixteen years old. They
had a difficult time, however. Violet's mother had actually been
pregnant when her father died, and the baby died shortly
after it was born. In spite of the help of
(03:40):
Violet's aunt and uncle, they were her mother's sister and
her husband, the family had real trouble finding a place
to live. There were six children and a mother with
no source of income beyond a very small widows pension,
and eventually it was decided to put the boys in
a Catholic orphanage so that they could be educated and
raised within their religious faith. Placing the boys in an
(04:01):
orphanage actually allowed their mother to go find work, and
she got work as a stewardess in the Royal Mail Line,
where she worked for five years. This gave her an income,
although because the Royal Mail Line was providing long distance
passenger service across the ocean. It meant that she had
long absences and separations from the rest of the family.
(04:22):
While her mother was away, it was up to Violet
to look after her surviving little sister, Eileen, although this
was interrupted by yet another hospitalization for gallstones. Eventually, the
two sisters boarded in a convent where they could stay
together and be educated. Violet continued to live on at
the convent after finding work as a governess. Violet's own
(04:44):
health and the various illnesses of her siblings, the death
of her baby sister Molly from a ningitis. All these
things combined together to lead her to want to study nursing,
and while she was living in the convent, she set
her sights on taking an exam that would allow her
to further in her education and pursue a career. But then,
after her mother had spent five years working as a stewardess,
(05:06):
her health became too fragile to continue, and so violent,
recognizing that her family needed a source of more income
than she could possibly provide by being a governess, applied
to be a stewardess herself like her mother, and she
did so at the Royal mail Line. We're going to
talk about what happened once she became a stewardess on
(05:27):
board these ocean liners after a brief word from one
of the sponsors who keeps our show on the air.
When Violent Jessip first applied to be a stewardess, the
man who interviewed her was not optimistic about her chances.
He told her she was both too young and too pretty.
She promised him that she would be as dedicated, careful
(05:48):
and unassuming as possible if he would just give her
the job, and finally he told her the next opening
was in fact hers, Although it might take some time
for a vacancy to open, Jessup and her mother got
to work assembling a wardrobe that would be as boring
and unattractive as possible. Cracks me up that she had
to take those steps. Her memoirs talk about her just
(06:09):
trying to find the most dowdy, gray, unappealing outfits possible.
Jessup's first post was aboard the Orinoco, which traveled to
the West Indies better known today as the Caribbean. This
was really physically demanding work. Ocean liners of this era
were a lot more about utility than about vacationing, so
today somebody might get on a similar ship to basically
(06:31):
tool around the Caribbean on a pleasure cruise, but most
people on ocean liner needed to get from one place
to another, typically across an ocean. Uh. It was not
about taking time off and relaxing. It was about enduring
a long voyage to get to where you needed to go,
and not a lot of ports of call with um
(06:52):
exciting activities to partake it with transatlantic travel. And then
also we don't really talk about it as as much
in this episode, but the people who were in actual
cabins who she Violet would have been working with as
a stewardess, they were in the minority. There were a
lot of people in steerage and very unpleasant accommodations. However,
in spite of these differences between how we look at
(07:15):
cruising now versus how these liners were functioning then, the
role of stewardess was very like that of a cabin
steward today. Violet would have cleaned cabins, run errands for passengers,
delivered meals, generally, kept things neat and tidy, and looked
after sea sick passengers. Sometimes it's involved being up all
night with people who were ill, Violet Jessup found that
(07:38):
getting her sea legs was basically a matter of sheer willpower,
but even once she was accustomed to the motion of
the sea, the work itself was exhausting. She also didn't
get a lot of formal training on the Royal Mail
Line aside from what she picked up herself on the job.
On her very first voyage, she hurt her thumb, which
got infected just as a very severe storm put everybody
(08:02):
crew included in their births with with sea sickness, and
unfortunately the people who were stricken ill at this point
included the doctor, so she wasn't able to be treated
for this infected thumb for a while. As she describes
them in her memoirs, Violet's first years as a stewardess
were quite difficult. In addition to being on her feet
doing physical labor on a moving ship all day long,
(08:24):
she was also basically confined confined there with both the
passengers and the rest of the crew from time to time.
This led to trouble. On the milder end, there were cliques,
in fighting and frustrations among the crew to deal with.
She also had to fend off the romantic and physical
advances of both passengers and superiors, and in one case,
she had a lengthy stay aboard a ship with a
(08:46):
bow after he revealed that he had no respect for
her religious beliefs, knowing that she was going to break
up with him for it once they got to shore.
She describes her favorite times and all of these early
journeys as being and they were in port, especially because
at this point, you know today you can do laundry
on a ship, but this was not the case at
(09:06):
the time, so stays in port were lengthier before the
ship departed again. This meant that she got to explore,
she got to see new things, and basically travel a
little bit during the time that they were not at sea.
So while these long stretches at sea were exhausting and
she was very often sick, not just seasick, but she
still continued to have trouble with her health, she also
(09:29):
delighted in exploring the ports and the cities where they
stopped as her career progressed. This included trips to New
York City, which she loved, and she also got to
go back to Buenos Aires and say hello to the
hospital staff who had been sure so sure that she
was going to die of tuberculosis when she was a child. Eventually,
(09:50):
Jesseph was serving aboard a ship with a married captain
who had previously made advances toward her, which she had rebuffed.
The second time around, he he found halt with everything
that she did and eventually had her dismissed for flirting
with the officers, something she had not done. But she
also had no way to disprove this assertion and no
way to pursue any sort of recourse. So out of work,
(10:15):
she went to find another stewardess job, and she found
one at the White Star Line. She did not really
want to work for the White Star Line. Its ships
sailed the North Atlantic, and she had heard plenty of
horror stories about that being a particularly rough crossing with
bad weather and threats to ships uh from the bad
weather and from icebergs, And she hadn't heard anything bad
(10:38):
at all about the company itself. She just knew that
the hours were long, and because of the White Star
lines reputation, exceptional service was both expected and demanded. So
it was this combination of exhausting work, extremely high standards
for the quality of the work, and the treacherous treacherousness
of the seas. However, because she had been dismissed from
(10:58):
her previous post, she wound up applying for companies that
were not at the top of her list, and she
wound up being hired by the White Star Line. She
served aboard the Majestic, the Adriatic, and the Oceanic on
roots that went to New York. Violet Jessup really proved
her worth to the White Star Line. She was hard working,
she was dependable, gracious, kind. She was beloved by her passengers,
(11:21):
many of who went on to mention her and her warm,
steadfast attention to them through illness and rough season o
their trials, specifically in letters to family and friends. So
she was chosen to serve on the Olympic aboard its
maiden voyage as part of a hand pick best of
class crew. This was a job that started well before
the departure, as the crew readied the ship to sail.
(11:43):
The Olympic was launched on October after nearly two years
of construction, and at the time it was considered to
be the best and most luxurious ship in the Atlantic.
It's maiden voyage took place the following June, after Its
construction was completed in sept Timber of that year. As
the Olympic was outbound from Southampton, it collided with the
(12:04):
HMS Hawk near the Isle of Wight. Violet was aboard.
We could logically conclude that she was uninjured, as she
does not mention this in her memoirs at all. Yes,
does not seem to have been a big deal enough
to even talk about as she was writing her memoir. However,
the damage to the Olympic was extensive and took about
two months to repair, but once it was seaworthy again,
(12:27):
Jessip was back on board again part of the stewardess crew.
After a year on the Olympic, Jessip was once again
hand selected for a maiden voyage crew in nineteen twelve.
It was aboard the White Star lines next best in
class ship, the Titanic. Jessip was in her bunk sleepily
trying to concentrate on her devotions on April fourteenth, nineteen twelve,
(12:51):
when the Titanic famously struck an iceberg. After the crash,
there was a temporary silence and then her roommate stoically said,
sounds as a something has happened. They both dressed, and
Jessip expressed her disbelief when a steward named Stanley told
them the ship was sinking. From there, they began escorting
passengers to the boats. Her recounting of this part of
(13:13):
it sounds almost impossibly calm. Jessip and her roommate took
their passengers to the lifeboats, and then, with nothing else
to do, they went back to their cabin, and it
was there that Stanley found them again, told them that
the boat really was thinking this was no longer a
matter of just precautions, and insisted that they go up
to the decks as well. He even rummaged through Jessep's
(13:34):
closet to try to find some warmer clothing for her
to wear. As Jessep made her way to the deck,
the full seriousness of this situation had really not reached
people yet. Everything was being described as precautionary and boats
were being lowered without many people aboard. But while on deck,
the ship started to noticeably shift, and before long someone
(13:55):
handed Jessip a baby, and she and her roommate and
were put into lifeboat six. From her position in the lifeboat,
Jessip saw the Titanic go down, and she and the
rest of the people in her boat were rescued by
the Carpathia. The following day, a woman who was presumably
the baby's mother snatched the baby literally out of her arms.
(14:16):
After finding her, Jessip eventually learned returned to England aboard
the Lapland, and she had a very strange experience much
later in her life where someone called her on the
phone claims to be the baby, laughed and hung up,
And it's very unclear whether that was really the baby
the Titanic or not yet that that'll weird you right out.
(14:41):
Can you imagine getting a call like that? But Jessup's
time as a stewardess, despite this tremendous event, was not over,
and we're going to talk about her next position after
we have a brief word from another one of our
fabulous sponsors that keeps us going. So I have told
you that I am working on starting a sewing blog online.
I feel slightly, um uh, a little stunted in this
(15:05):
arena because even though I'm using Squarespace, which is super
easy for most people, I find myself going, how do
I do that? Here's what's awesome. You can go to
their help section and search almost anything, and they have
videos on how to do a lot of it, and
they have like step by step and they have people
there to help you all the time. So even somebody
like me that's feeling a little clunky monkey about the
whole thing totally can handle it. Uh. Squar Space is
(15:27):
going to let you build a simple, powerful, beautiful website.
Squarespace has state of the art technology to power your site,
so they're going to ensure maximum security and stability. And
what I really love is that the design is responsive,
so that no matter what you're looking at on it,
if it's your phone, if it's a tablet, if it's
a regular computer, your website is going to scale to
look great no matter where you're viewing it from. And
(15:48):
if you want to look at commerce, every website that
squarespace offers comes with powerful e commerce capability, so you
can start a trial here's what's really cool with no
credit card required, so you can just build that web
site without really stressing over whether or not you're wasting
your your monthly fee on trying to build it, which
is where I'm at right now. So when you go
to square space and we encourage you to do so,
(16:09):
make sure to enter the offer code history to get
ten percent off your square Space account. Show your support
for the show, and again you're saving ten percent. So
it's great, square Space, Build it beautiful. Violet Jessep's voyage
aboard the Titanic had obviously been terrifying, and consequently she
felt as though she needed to get back to work
on a ship immediately or she would never be able
(16:31):
to do it at all. However, obviously, jobs at the
White Star Line were very hard to come by because
it's flagship vessel had just sank, and after she got
a letter from Ned that's the old Bow that we
alluded to earlier, Jesseph took a job aboard another line
as a way to secure passage to Australia, where Ned
was living. Her roommates graciously agreed to cover for her
(16:53):
while the ship was imports so that she could go
spend time with Ned, and she had hoped that the
two of them could clear the air, but nothing actually
came of this. She returned to her post and she
went back home as planned. The the editor who edited
her memoirs kind of sort of meditates for a while
on how her life might have been different if she
had wound up marrying ned rather than briefly marrying some
(17:18):
other person later on, who's apparently was not a very
good marriage, and she hardly refers to in her memoir
at all. In nineteen fourteen, after Great Britain declared war
on Germany, Jessa decided to join the British Red Cross.
She became part of the Voluntary Aid detachment, where she
started as a junior nurse, finally taking on the nursing
profession she had so wanted to pursue when she was
(17:39):
a child. She trained at a hospital before once again
being assigned to a ship, and this time it was
another White Star vessel, the Britannic. The Britannics construction had
started about six months before the sinking of the Titanic.
It had been conceived as even bigger and more luxurious
than that ill fated vessel. Uh since the Titanic sank
(17:59):
so early the construction of the Britannic, a number of
safety improvements were included as this new ship was being built,
including additional lifeboats and watertight compartments. The Britannic was actually
scheduled to begin passenger service in nineteen fifteen, but instead
it was requisitioned for military use, and the Olympic, which
(18:20):
we talked about Jessip previously serving on, was requisitioned as well.
The Britannic became a hospital ship and it served from
December nineteen fifteen through June of nineteen sixteen, when it
was briefly released from the war service, before being requisitioned
again that August. On November twenty one, nineteen sixteen, the
Britannic sank after presumably striking a mine in the water,
(18:42):
not far from Greece. At the time, people thought that
it could have actually been struck by a torpedo, and
once again Violet Jessup was calm. She went to her
cabin and she gathered up her prayer book, her toothbrush,
a ring that had belonged to ned, and her clock.
She made a pouch to the front of her apron
by folding it up to keep all of these little
(19:03):
items secure, and then she clipped her life belt on
over her coat and she got onto a lifeboat. So
JIP's recounting of the Titanic is quietly tragic. She counts
the lights on the deck is the ship sinks, realizing
that it's all lost, but her account of the Britannic
sinking is horrifying, and in a way this is a
(19:23):
little incongruous, because more than people died on the Titanic,
but only about twenty eight died in the seeking of
the Britannic. The difference is that those last moments, as
as Violet witnessed them, were terrifying and brutal. The Britannics
propellers were still turning in the water, and this just
(19:45):
created chaos. It was churning up the water, it was
sucking men and debris toward the propellers, and even though
she was in a lifeboat, Jessup realized that if she
did not get out and swim, her lifeboat was going
to hit the propellers as well. She had always instructed
(20:05):
passengers not to put their life belts on over their
coats in case they needed to take their coats off,
and we just mentioned that she did the opposite of
what she told them, and that was nearly fatal. In
spite of her life belt, the weight of her coat
pulled her underwater. She fought her way up, and she
struck something with her head from below, until finally she
(20:26):
caught someone else's arm and she was pulled above the water.
One of the ship's motor boats picked her up, and
she and others wound up on a tiny island with
the Britannics doctors patching one another up, and though she
was injured, she was safe thanks to the rescue efforts
of other nearby boats. Only twenty eight people, as Racy said,
we're killed out of the more than one thousand people
(20:47):
that were on board. So previously she had immediately gotten
to work as a stewardess again after the thinking of
that Titanic, but this time she knew that it was
going to be hard to find a stewardess job until
the war was over, so this time she stayed ashore
for about three years. She found a job on land
as a clerk, but she had some trouble concentrating. She
(21:07):
didn't really think much of it until a lot later
when she got an X ray for a tooth that
was bothering her, and she learned that her skull had
been fractured as she was trying to get away from
the Britannic. So we don't know exactly at what point
in her life uh she discovered this skull fracture, but
we do know that she didn't stay on land forever.
(21:30):
As for the Olympic, which we've talked about a couple
of times, uh, it was upgraded again after the war
and it resumed service, and once the war was over,
Violet Jessup once again served aboard it, and the Olympic
continued its transatlantic service until ninety five. That was a
little less than a year after it struck and sank
a lightship off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Jessup actually
(21:51):
was not aboard for that one. That would have been few.
It's it's not totally surprising that she was aboard both
the Olympic and that's Titanic because the Titanics crew was
hand picked from other vessels. But having been aboard the Olympic,
the Titanic and the Britannic when all three of those,
like best of line vessels, had incidents, that's a loddly
(22:14):
coincidel that she was on there for all of them.
So file that Jessup spent the part of her later
stewartist career working with the Red Star Line on world cruises,
and she worked aboard five different annual world cruises that
spanned between nine and nineteen thirty one. She went back
to the Royal Mail Line again in nineteen thirty five
(22:36):
and served on the Alcantara until the start of World
War Two. During the Second World War, she worked ashore
as a nurse again, rather than being on another seafaring
nursing ship. At the end of World War Two, Violet
mostly worked at clerical and factory jobs, realizing that her
work as a stewardess was not going to allow her
to retire, and apart from a couple of brief stints
(22:58):
at sea, she was land on until her death on
May fifth of ninetee. She finished the memoir that we've
referenced a few times in nineteen thirty four, which is
one of the reasons why it doesn't include a lot
of her later life, but it wasn't published until two
of her nieces submitted a manuscript uh in the spring
of nine, and then, kind of ironically, the man who
(23:21):
wound up editing it was someone who had previously interviewed
her as he was doing some work on survivors of
the Titanic. So it all comes together in this sort
of small world situation. It's very cool, slightly scary if
you're afraid of ships and sinking I've been on ships
(23:43):
a lot and they don't really frighten me. But when
I got to the part about the Titanic thinking, I
was like, what, Okay, every time I've been on a
ship there's been a mustard drill. There's enough, There are
enough lifeboats for every person on board. The crew has
been exceptionally prompt about escorting everyone to the deck during
(24:06):
the semester deal. But I had this thought where I
was like, what if the ships sank in the middle
of the ocean and there were no other ships around,
and we were stuck in the middle of the ocean.
And then I said, Okay, you need to stop thinking
about that right now. Think about something else. So that
is violent. Jessup. Do you also have a little bit
of listener mail to accompany this episode? I do, uh,
(24:29):
And this is from Jane and she writes to us
about something that a few people have written in about,
so I thought it was something to share with everyone.
She says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to
the podcast archives for over a year now and I'm
just now getting close to catching up. I absolutely love history,
and listening to the podcast has gotten me through many
long flights and car trips, as well as my daily
(24:50):
commute on this subway. Thanks so much for the many
hours of entertainment that you and everyone else who has
worked on the show have provided. I'm a little bit behind,
so I just listened to your podcasts on Plus E
Versus Ferguson and Brown Versus Board. I really enjoyed these
episodes and just happens to have listened to a podcast
from This American Life around the same time that discusses
some of the same issues, episode five sixty two, The
(25:13):
Problem We All Live With. The episode really showed how
the legacy of segregation is still affecting education today, and
there were some moments in it that were particularly heartbreaking
to listen to. I thought you might be interested in
listening to this as well as another of This American
Life episode episode called Three Miles episode five fifty which
discusses some of the same issues. Listening to your podcast
(25:34):
about historical segregation and listening to a podcast about its
modern day effects in the same week was a wake
up call to how historical events continue to have a
huge impact on people's lives. Thank you so much for
all the important work you do, and thank you so
much for handling issues of race, gender, and sexuality with
such sensitivity and respect. Jane, Thank you Jane for writing in.
We had several people who were writing to us about
(25:56):
the Problem We All Live With, which is actually a
two part episode from This American Life. Uh. I listened
to the first part as it was airing on the radio,
And if you listen to This American Life, you know
that normally there are brief segments that are kind of
tied together around the theme. And so we had the
stereotypical NPR driveway moment where we pulled into the parking
spot at the grocery store and then waited for the
(26:20):
end of the segment, and then we realized the end
of the segment was actually the end of the episode.
Um uh, so we had to stop and see our
grocery shopping and not sit in the car for an hour.
But um, the whole thing is definitely definitely, very well
worth listening to. We said pretty briefly in our episodes
about Brown Versus Board, especially the second one about the
(26:44):
aftermath of Brown Versus Board, that a lot of issues
related to segregation are still uh in existence today and
a lot of places are as segregated as they were
before the Civil Rights movement. This really contextualizes all of
that with real stories of real kids and real parents
and real school systems that are affected today. So I strongly,
(27:04):
strongly encourage listening to them. Uh This American Life also
has a much broader reach than Holly and I do.
So it's possible that uh, the the ven diagram of
people who listen to us but don't listen to This
American Life might be a little small, but the episodes
are both so worth listening to that I want to
call them out, specially if you would like to write
(27:26):
to us for a history podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com
slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in
History or tumbler is missed in History dot tumble dot com,
or on pandras attert dot com slash missed in History.
We have a new instagram. Missed in History is our
Instagram name. You may have noticed the theme in all
of these names. We also have a spread shirt store
(27:47):
you can buy phone cases and shirts and other cool
stuff like that. It's a Missing History dot spreadshirt dot com.
If you would like to find out more, about what
we've talked about. State. Come to our parent company's website,
which is how stuff Works dot com and put the
word tight Anek into the search bar. You will find
how the Titanic Work. You can also come to our website,
which is missed in History dot com, and you will
find show notes for the episodes that Holly and I
(28:09):
have done, and an archive of every single episode ever,
and various other cool things that we put up from
time to time. You can do all that and a
whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
missed in History dot com. For more on this, thousands
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from hostworks
dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast Tray C. V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Shipwrecks long time favorite thing
on our show from way before Holly and I joined,
(00:22):
and today we're taking a slightly different approach to the
perennial favorite of shipwrecks. We're going to talk about a
shipwreck survivor. Her name is Violet Jessup. She survived a
whole lot, and I don't want to spoil it, so
that is all I'm saying for the intro. Violent Constance
Jessup was born on October two of eight seven, near
(00:42):
Bahia Blanca, Argentina. Her parents, William Jessup and Catherine Kelly,
had emigrated there from Dublin in the mid eighties with
the goal of starting a sheep farm. Her life at
first was extremely modest. Her father didn't really have enough
money for a whole herd of sheep, so they were
living in what was basically a one room structure of
adobe bricks. Violet's crib was made out of a gin box.
(01:06):
After a while, when it became clear that he wouldn't
be able to buy enough sheep to make the farm
self sustaining. Violen's father instead took a series of other jobs,
first working as a customs officer and then working for
a railroad line. This did put the family on more
solid financial footing, but in spite of that, Violet and
the rest of her siblings who were born afterwards she
(01:28):
was the oldest, they had a number of medical catastrophes,
and really, regardless of what their income had been like,
these catastrophes would have basically been unavoidable at the time.
Violet and her younger brother Ray, at the time when
it was just the two of them, both got scarlet
fever and Ray actually died of it. Violet later got
tuberculosis and then also got typhoid fever. Two of her
(01:52):
brothers nearly died of diphtheria. She had four brothers and
one sister who survived to adulthood, but she had other
brothers in a sister who died while they were still children.
Violets tuberculosis caused her lungs to hemorrhage, and so even
after she was old enough to go to school, a
doctor actually recommended that she stay home. Later, when Violet
(02:13):
was in the hospital and seemed as though she might
not recover. It was recommended that she go to the
mountains where the air might give her a few more months.
They really did think she was going to die. Her
lungs had been seriously hemorrhaging for a long time. So
after having lived in Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires, Violet's
father got a transfer to Mendoza, Argentina, which is in
the foothills of the Andies Mountains, and Violet's health did
(02:37):
get stronger. In Mendoza, she seemed to have an aggressively
stubborn will to live, and after a while she was
doing well enough to explore their sprawling adobe house with
her pet armadillo. I find that wildly charming. Eventually she
was well enough to go to school, which she did
gleefully until her father's death when she was in her
early teens. She really wanted to think so badly. She
(02:59):
wanted to be want to go to school, and she
wanted to have a sister, but instead she had a
series of brothers, then a sister who tragically died of
meningitis when she was a baby, then a sister who
lived to adulthood. So when Violet's father died, her mother
decided to take the family to England, even though people
worried that Violet's lungs would not be able to handle
(03:19):
the English air. This was such a big concern that
one of her Argentinian teachers actually offered to adopt her.
At this point, Violet was about sixteen years old. They
had a difficult time, however. Violet's mother had actually been
pregnant when her father died, and the baby died shortly
after it was born. In spite of the help of
(03:40):
Violet's aunt and uncle, they were her mother's sister and
her husband, the family had real trouble finding a place
to live. There were six children and a mother with
no source of income beyond a very small widows pension,
and eventually it was decided to put the boys in
a Catholic orphanage so that they could be educated and
raised within their religious faith. Placing the boys in an
(04:01):
orphanage actually allowed their mother to go find work, and
she got work as a stewardess in the Royal Mail Line,
where she worked for five years. This gave her an income,
although because the Royal Mail Line was providing long distance
passenger service across the ocean. It meant that she had
long absences and separations from the rest of the family.
(04:22):
While her mother was away, it was up to Violet
to look after her surviving little sister, Eileen, although this
was interrupted by yet another hospitalization for gallstones. Eventually, the
two sisters boarded in a convent where they could stay
together and be educated. Violet continued to live on at
the convent after finding work as a governess. Violet's own
(04:44):
health and the various illnesses of her siblings, the death
of her baby sister Molly from a ningitis. All these
things combined together to lead her to want to study nursing,
and while she was living in the convent, she set
her sights on taking an exam that would allow her
to further in her education and pursue a career. But then,
after her mother had spent five years working as a stewardess,
(05:06):
her health became too fragile to continue, and so violent,
recognizing that her family needed a source of more income
than she could possibly provide by being a governess, applied
to be a stewardess herself like her mother, and she
did so at the Royal mail Line. We're going to
talk about what happened once she became a stewardess on
(05:27):
board these ocean liners after a brief word from one
of the sponsors who keeps our show on the air.
When Violent Jessip first applied to be a stewardess, the
man who interviewed her was not optimistic about her chances.
He told her she was both too young and too pretty.
She promised him that she would be as dedicated, careful
(05:48):
and unassuming as possible if he would just give her
the job, and finally he told her the next opening
was in fact hers, Although it might take some time
for a vacancy to open, Jessup and her mother got
to work assembling a wardrobe that would be as boring
and unattractive as possible. Cracks me up that she had
to take those steps. Her memoirs talk about her just
(06:09):
trying to find the most dowdy, gray, unappealing outfits possible.
Jessup's first post was aboard the Orinoco, which traveled to
the West Indies better known today as the Caribbean. This
was really physically demanding work. Ocean liners of this era
were a lot more about utility than about vacationing, so
today somebody might get on a similar ship to basically
(06:31):
tool around the Caribbean on a pleasure cruise, but most
people on ocean liner needed to get from one place
to another, typically across an ocean. Uh. It was not
about taking time off and relaxing. It was about enduring
a long voyage to get to where you needed to go,
and not a lot of ports of call with um
(06:52):
exciting activities to partake it with transatlantic travel. And then
also we don't really talk about it as as much
in this episode, but the people who were in actual
cabins who she Violet would have been working with as
a stewardess, they were in the minority. There were a
lot of people in steerage and very unpleasant accommodations. However,
in spite of these differences between how we look at
(07:15):
cruising now versus how these liners were functioning then, the
role of stewardess was very like that of a cabin
steward today. Violet would have cleaned cabins, run errands for passengers,
delivered meals, generally, kept things neat and tidy, and looked
after sea sick passengers. Sometimes it's involved being up all
night with people who were ill, Violet Jessup found that
(07:38):
getting her sea legs was basically a matter of sheer willpower,
but even once she was accustomed to the motion of
the sea, the work itself was exhausting. She also didn't
get a lot of formal training on the Royal Mail
Line aside from what she picked up herself on the job.
On her very first voyage, she hurt her thumb, which
got infected just as a very severe storm put everybody
(08:02):
crew included in their births with with sea sickness, and
unfortunately the people who were stricken ill at this point
included the doctor, so she wasn't able to be treated
for this infected thumb for a while. As she describes
them in her memoirs, Violet's first years as a stewardess
were quite difficult. In addition to being on her feet
doing physical labor on a moving ship all day long,
(08:24):
she was also basically confined confined there with both the
passengers and the rest of the crew from time to time.
This led to trouble. On the milder end, there were cliques,
in fighting and frustrations among the crew to deal with.
She also had to fend off the romantic and physical
advances of both passengers and superiors, and in one case,
she had a lengthy stay aboard a ship with a
(08:46):
bow after he revealed that he had no respect for
her religious beliefs, knowing that she was going to break
up with him for it once they got to shore.
She describes her favorite times and all of these early
journeys as being and they were in port, especially because
at this point, you know today you can do laundry
on a ship, but this was not the case at
(09:06):
the time, so stays in port were lengthier before the
ship departed again. This meant that she got to explore,
she got to see new things, and basically travel a
little bit during the time that they were not at sea.
So while these long stretches at sea were exhausting and
she was very often sick, not just seasick, but she
still continued to have trouble with her health, she also
(09:29):
delighted in exploring the ports and the cities where they
stopped as her career progressed. This included trips to New
York City, which she loved, and she also got to
go back to Buenos Aires and say hello to the
hospital staff who had been sure so sure that she
was going to die of tuberculosis when she was a child. Eventually,
(09:50):
Jesseph was serving aboard a ship with a married captain
who had previously made advances toward her, which she had rebuffed.
The second time around, he he found halt with everything
that she did and eventually had her dismissed for flirting
with the officers, something she had not done. But she
also had no way to disprove this assertion and no
way to pursue any sort of recourse. So out of work,
(10:15):
she went to find another stewardess job, and she found
one at the White Star Line. She did not really
want to work for the White Star Line. Its ships
sailed the North Atlantic, and she had heard plenty of
horror stories about that being a particularly rough crossing with
bad weather and threats to ships uh from the bad
weather and from icebergs, And she hadn't heard anything bad
(10:38):
at all about the company itself. She just knew that
the hours were long, and because of the White Star
lines reputation, exceptional service was both expected and demanded. So
it was this combination of exhausting work, extremely high standards
for the quality of the work, and the treacherous treacherousness
of the seas. However, because she had been dismissed from
(10:58):
her previous post, she wound up applying for companies that
were not at the top of her list, and she
wound up being hired by the White Star Line. She
served aboard the Majestic, the Adriatic, and the Oceanic on
roots that went to New York. Violet Jessup really proved
her worth to the White Star Line. She was hard working,
she was dependable, gracious, kind. She was beloved by her passengers,
(11:21):
many of who went on to mention her and her warm,
steadfast attention to them through illness and rough season o
their trials, specifically in letters to family and friends. So
she was chosen to serve on the Olympic aboard its
maiden voyage as part of a hand pick best of
class crew. This was a job that started well before
the departure, as the crew readied the ship to sail.
(11:43):
The Olympic was launched on October after nearly two years
of construction, and at the time it was considered to
be the best and most luxurious ship in the Atlantic.
It's maiden voyage took place the following June, after Its
construction was completed in sept Timber of that year. As
the Olympic was outbound from Southampton, it collided with the
(12:04):
HMS Hawk near the Isle of Wight. Violet was aboard.
We could logically conclude that she was uninjured, as she
does not mention this in her memoirs at all. Yes,
does not seem to have been a big deal enough
to even talk about as she was writing her memoir. However,
the damage to the Olympic was extensive and took about
two months to repair, but once it was seaworthy again,
(12:27):
Jessip was back on board again part of the stewardess crew.
After a year on the Olympic, Jessip was once again
hand selected for a maiden voyage crew in nineteen twelve.
It was aboard the White Star lines next best in
class ship, the Titanic. Jessip was in her bunk sleepily
trying to concentrate on her devotions on April fourteenth, nineteen twelve,
(12:51):
when the Titanic famously struck an iceberg. After the crash,
there was a temporary silence and then her roommate stoically said,
sounds as a something has happened. They both dressed, and
Jessip expressed her disbelief when a steward named Stanley told
them the ship was sinking. From there, they began escorting
passengers to the boats. Her recounting of this part of
(13:13):
it sounds almost impossibly calm. Jessip and her roommate took
their passengers to the lifeboats, and then, with nothing else
to do, they went back to their cabin, and it
was there that Stanley found them again, told them that
the boat really was thinking this was no longer a
matter of just precautions, and insisted that they go up
to the decks as well. He even rummaged through Jessep's
(13:34):
closet to try to find some warmer clothing for her
to wear. As Jessep made her way to the deck,
the full seriousness of this situation had really not reached
people yet. Everything was being described as precautionary and boats
were being lowered without many people aboard. But while on deck,
the ship started to noticeably shift, and before long someone
(13:55):
handed Jessip a baby, and she and her roommate and
were put into lifeboat six. From her position in the lifeboat,
Jessip saw the Titanic go down, and she and the
rest of the people in her boat were rescued by
the Carpathia. The following day, a woman who was presumably
the baby's mother snatched the baby literally out of her arms.
(14:16):
After finding her, Jessip eventually learned returned to England aboard
the Lapland, and she had a very strange experience much
later in her life where someone called her on the
phone claims to be the baby, laughed and hung up,
And it's very unclear whether that was really the baby
the Titanic or not yet that that'll weird you right out.
(14:41):
Can you imagine getting a call like that? But Jessup's
time as a stewardess, despite this tremendous event, was not over,
and we're going to talk about her next position after
we have a brief word from another one of our
fabulous sponsors that keeps us going. So I have told
you that I am working on starting a sewing blog online.
I feel slightly, um uh, a little stunted in this
(15:05):
arena because even though I'm using Squarespace, which is super
easy for most people, I find myself going, how do
I do that? Here's what's awesome. You can go to
their help section and search almost anything, and they have
videos on how to do a lot of it, and
they have like step by step and they have people
there to help you all the time. So even somebody
like me that's feeling a little clunky monkey about the
whole thing totally can handle it. Uh. Squar Space is
(15:27):
going to let you build a simple, powerful, beautiful website.
Squarespace has state of the art technology to power your site,
so they're going to ensure maximum security and stability. And
what I really love is that the design is responsive,
so that no matter what you're looking at on it,
if it's your phone, if it's a tablet, if it's
a regular computer, your website is going to scale to
look great no matter where you're viewing it from. And
(15:48):
if you want to look at commerce, every website that
squarespace offers comes with powerful e commerce capability, so you
can start a trial here's what's really cool with no
credit card required, so you can just build that web
site without really stressing over whether or not you're wasting
your your monthly fee on trying to build it, which
is where I'm at right now. So when you go
to square space and we encourage you to do so,
(16:09):
make sure to enter the offer code history to get
ten percent off your square Space account. Show your support
for the show, and again you're saving ten percent. So
it's great, square Space, Build it beautiful. Violet Jessep's voyage
aboard the Titanic had obviously been terrifying, and consequently she
felt as though she needed to get back to work
on a ship immediately or she would never be able
(16:31):
to do it at all. However, obviously, jobs at the
White Star Line were very hard to come by because
it's flagship vessel had just sank, and after she got
a letter from Ned that's the old Bow that we
alluded to earlier, Jesseph took a job aboard another line
as a way to secure passage to Australia, where Ned
was living. Her roommates graciously agreed to cover for her
(16:53):
while the ship was imports so that she could go
spend time with Ned, and she had hoped that the
two of them could clear the air, but nothing actually
came of this. She returned to her post and she
went back home as planned. The the editor who edited
her memoirs kind of sort of meditates for a while
on how her life might have been different if she
had wound up marrying ned rather than briefly marrying some
(17:18):
other person later on, who's apparently was not a very
good marriage, and she hardly refers to in her memoir
at all. In nineteen fourteen, after Great Britain declared war
on Germany, Jessa decided to join the British Red Cross.
She became part of the Voluntary Aid detachment, where she
started as a junior nurse, finally taking on the nursing
profession she had so wanted to pursue when she was
(17:39):
a child. She trained at a hospital before once again
being assigned to a ship, and this time it was
another White Star vessel, the Britannic. The Britannics construction had
started about six months before the sinking of the Titanic.
It had been conceived as even bigger and more luxurious
than that ill fated vessel. Uh since the Titanic sank
(17:59):
so early the construction of the Britannic, a number of
safety improvements were included as this new ship was being built,
including additional lifeboats and watertight compartments. The Britannic was actually
scheduled to begin passenger service in nineteen fifteen, but instead
it was requisitioned for military use, and the Olympic, which
(18:20):
we talked about Jessip previously serving on, was requisitioned as well.
The Britannic became a hospital ship and it served from
December nineteen fifteen through June of nineteen sixteen, when it
was briefly released from the war service, before being requisitioned
again that August. On November twenty one, nineteen sixteen, the
Britannic sank after presumably striking a mine in the water,
(18:42):
not far from Greece. At the time, people thought that
it could have actually been struck by a torpedo, and
once again Violet Jessup was calm. She went to her
cabin and she gathered up her prayer book, her toothbrush,
a ring that had belonged to ned, and her clock.
She made a pouch to the front of her apron
by folding it up to keep all of these little
(19:03):
items secure, and then she clipped her life belt on
over her coat and she got onto a lifeboat. So
JIP's recounting of the Titanic is quietly tragic. She counts
the lights on the deck is the ship sinks, realizing
that it's all lost, but her account of the Britannic
sinking is horrifying, and in a way this is a
(19:23):
little incongruous, because more than people died on the Titanic,
but only about twenty eight died in the seeking of
the Britannic. The difference is that those last moments, as
as Violet witnessed them, were terrifying and brutal. The Britannics
propellers were still turning in the water, and this just
(19:45):
created chaos. It was churning up the water, it was
sucking men and debris toward the propellers, and even though
she was in a lifeboat, Jessup realized that if she
did not get out and swim, her lifeboat was going
to hit the propellers as well. She had always instructed
(20:05):
passengers not to put their life belts on over their
coats in case they needed to take their coats off,
and we just mentioned that she did the opposite of
what she told them, and that was nearly fatal. In
spite of her life belt, the weight of her coat
pulled her underwater. She fought her way up, and she
struck something with her head from below, until finally she
(20:26):
caught someone else's arm and she was pulled above the water.
One of the ship's motor boats picked her up, and
she and others wound up on a tiny island with
the Britannics doctors patching one another up, and though she
was injured, she was safe thanks to the rescue efforts
of other nearby boats. Only twenty eight people, as Racy said,
we're killed out of the more than one thousand people
(20:47):
that were on board. So previously she had immediately gotten
to work as a stewardess again after the thinking of
that Titanic, but this time she knew that it was
going to be hard to find a stewardess job until
the war was over, so this time she stayed ashore
for about three years. She found a job on land
as a clerk, but she had some trouble concentrating. She
(21:07):
didn't really think much of it until a lot later
when she got an X ray for a tooth that
was bothering her, and she learned that her skull had
been fractured as she was trying to get away from
the Britannic. So we don't know exactly at what point
in her life uh she discovered this skull fracture, but
we do know that she didn't stay on land forever.
(21:30):
As for the Olympic, which we've talked about a couple
of times, uh, it was upgraded again after the war
and it resumed service, and once the war was over,
Violet Jessup once again served aboard it, and the Olympic
continued its transatlantic service until ninety five. That was a
little less than a year after it struck and sank
a lightship off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Jessup actually
(21:51):
was not aboard for that one. That would have been few.
It's it's not totally surprising that she was aboard both
the Olympic and that's Titanic because the Titanics crew was
hand picked from other vessels. But having been aboard the Olympic,
the Titanic and the Britannic when all three of those,
like best of line vessels, had incidents, that's a loddly
(22:14):
coincidel that she was on there for all of them.
So file that Jessup spent the part of her later
stewartist career working with the Red Star Line on world cruises,
and she worked aboard five different annual world cruises that
spanned between nine and nineteen thirty one. She went back
to the Royal Mail Line again in nineteen thirty five
(22:36):
and served on the Alcantara until the start of World
War Two. During the Second World War, she worked ashore
as a nurse again, rather than being on another seafaring
nursing ship. At the end of World War Two, Violet
mostly worked at clerical and factory jobs, realizing that her
work as a stewardess was not going to allow her
to retire, and apart from a couple of brief stints
(22:58):
at sea, she was land on until her death on
May fifth of ninetee. She finished the memoir that we've
referenced a few times in nineteen thirty four, which is
one of the reasons why it doesn't include a lot
of her later life, but it wasn't published until two
of her nieces submitted a manuscript uh in the spring
of nine, and then, kind of ironically, the man who
(23:21):
wound up editing it was someone who had previously interviewed
her as he was doing some work on survivors of
the Titanic. So it all comes together in this sort
of small world situation. It's very cool, slightly scary if
you're afraid of ships and sinking I've been on ships
(23:43):
a lot and they don't really frighten me. But when
I got to the part about the Titanic thinking, I
was like, what, Okay, every time I've been on a
ship there's been a mustard drill. There's enough, There are
enough lifeboats for every person on board. The crew has
been exceptionally prompt about escorting everyone to the deck during
(24:06):
the semester deal. But I had this thought where I
was like, what if the ships sank in the middle
of the ocean and there were no other ships around,
and we were stuck in the middle of the ocean.
And then I said, Okay, you need to stop thinking
about that right now. Think about something else. So that
is violent. Jessup. Do you also have a little bit
of listener mail to accompany this episode? I do, uh,
(24:29):
And this is from Jane and she writes to us
about something that a few people have written in about,
so I thought it was something to share with everyone.
She says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been listening to
the podcast archives for over a year now and I'm
just now getting close to catching up. I absolutely love history,
and listening to the podcast has gotten me through many
long flights and car trips, as well as my daily
(24:50):
commute on this subway. Thanks so much for the many
hours of entertainment that you and everyone else who has
worked on the show have provided. I'm a little bit behind,
so I just listened to your podcasts on Plus E
Versus Ferguson and Brown Versus Board. I really enjoyed these
episodes and just happens to have listened to a podcast
from This American Life around the same time that discusses
some of the same issues, episode five sixty two, The
(25:13):
Problem We All Live With. The episode really showed how
the legacy of segregation is still affecting education today, and
there were some moments in it that were particularly heartbreaking
to listen to. I thought you might be interested in
listening to this as well as another of This American
Life episode episode called Three Miles episode five fifty which
discusses some of the same issues. Listening to your podcast
(25:34):
about historical segregation and listening to a podcast about its
modern day effects in the same week was a wake
up call to how historical events continue to have a
huge impact on people's lives. Thank you so much for
all the important work you do, and thank you so
much for handling issues of race, gender, and sexuality with
such sensitivity and respect. Jane, Thank you Jane for writing in.
We had several people who were writing to us about
(25:56):
the Problem We All Live With, which is actually a
two part episode from This American Life. Uh. I listened
to the first part as it was airing on the radio,
And if you listen to This American Life, you know
that normally there are brief segments that are kind of
tied together around the theme. And so we had the
stereotypical NPR driveway moment where we pulled into the parking
spot at the grocery store and then waited for the
(26:20):
end of the segment, and then we realized the end
of the segment was actually the end of the episode.
Um uh, so we had to stop and see our
grocery shopping and not sit in the car for an hour.
But um, the whole thing is definitely definitely, very well
worth listening to. We said pretty briefly in our episodes
about Brown Versus Board, especially the second one about the
(26:44):
aftermath of Brown Versus Board, that a lot of issues
related to segregation are still uh in existence today and
a lot of places are as segregated as they were
before the Civil Rights movement. This really contextualizes all of
that with real stories of real kids and real parents
and real school systems that are affected today. So I strongly,
(27:04):
strongly encourage listening to them. Uh This American Life also
has a much broader reach than Holly and I do.
So it's possible that uh, the the ven diagram of
people who listen to us but don't listen to This
American Life might be a little small, but the episodes
are both so worth listening to that I want to
call them out, specially if you would like to write
(27:26):
to us for a history podcast at how Stuff Works
dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com
slash miss in history and on Twitter at miss in
History or tumbler is missed in History dot tumble dot com,
or on pandras attert dot com slash missed in History.
We have a new instagram. Missed in History is our
Instagram name. You may have noticed the theme in all
of these names. We also have a spread shirt store
(27:47):
you can buy phone cases and shirts and other cool
stuff like that. It's a Missing History dot spreadshirt dot com.
If you would like to find out more, about what
we've talked about. State. Come to our parent company's website,
which is how stuff Works dot com and put the
word tight Anek into the search bar. You will find
how the Titanic Work. You can also come to our website,
which is missed in History dot com, and you will
find show notes for the episodes that Holly and I
(28:09):
have done, and an archive of every single episode ever,
and various other cool things that we put up from
time to time. You can do all that and a
whole lot more at how stuff works dot com or
missed in History dot com. For more on this, thousands
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.