Titanic passenger’s robe goes on display

A luxurious robe belonging to one of the Titanic’s most controversial survivors has been added to a popular exhibition about the doomed liner.

Fashion designer Lucy Duff Gordon and her husband, Cosmo Duff Gordon, escaped the sinking ship on the so-called “millionaires’ lifeboat” and faced allegations that they bribed crew members not to return to save others for fear the half-full boat would be swamped.

They always vehemently denied the claims, and the bribery accusations were subsequently rejected by an inquiry into the sinking, but the story still entered Titanic folklore and has endured more than a century on.

The intricate, kimono-style robe worn by Duff Gordon on the night of the sinking in April 1912 has been purchased at auction by National Museums Northern Ireland, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and put on display in an exhibition at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, Co Down.

The international designer, who ran the fashion house Maison Lucile, reputedly lost a wardrobe full of other expensive garments in the disaster, including three fur coats.

Encapsulating the social gulf between passenger classes on board the ship, a more modest item from a third-class passenger has also gone on display at the exhibition.

The hat given to Irish-American woman Bertha Mulvihill when she arrived in New York on the rescue ship Carpathia was donated to the museum by her ancestors.

Ms Mulvihill was born in Athlone, Co Westmeath, and moved to Rhode Island, where she worked as a waitress.