Famous in her later years as the last of the survivors of the Titanic disaster, Dean traveled on the doomed ship when she was only two months old.
When she set sail in a third class Titanic cabin, she was headed from her native England to a new life in Kansas, U.S.A. She was one of the few third class passengers to escape on a lifeboat.
After surviving the sinking of the Titanic, she returned to England on the RMS Adriatic. She went on to work for the English government during the World War II years and to find additional employment as a cartographer.
Born Elizabeth Gladys Millvina Dean, she was the daughter of Georgette Light and Bertram Dean and the sister of Bertram Vere Dean. Her father perished in the sinking of the Titanic, but she and her mother and brother lived well into the late 20th century, though her brother died, coincidentally, on the eightieth anniversary of the disaster.
She and Eva Hart were both child survivors of the disastrous maiden voyage of the Titanic.
