When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Violet Jessop — a 24-year-old ship’s stewardess — set to work helping passengers into boats. Then she returned to her cabin until she was ordered on deck to take her own place in a boat. In the chaos, she was handed an unknown baby. 

The next day, when the shipwreck survivors gathered aboard the rescuing RMS Carpathia, a woman came and took the baby from Jessop without saying a word. 

It wasn’t Jessop’s first voyage. At 17, she had applied to be a ship’s stewardess with the Royal Mail Lines but was told she was too young and too pretty to get the job. She was eventually taken on, but she was instructed to avoid makeup and to wear dowdy clothes to appear less attractive. Nonetheless, in her own early-20th-century, Jessop was eventually fired from the position for refusing a ship captain’s advances.