This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Allison family" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

TheAllison family was a Canadian family of first-class passengers on board theRMSTitanic, which struck an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912.

The family consisted ofHudson Joshua Creighton Allison (9 December 1881 – 15 April 1912);^[1] his wife,Bess Waldo Allison (née Daniels; 14 November 1886 – 15 April 1912);^[2] their daughter,Helen Loraine Allison (5 June 1909 – 15 April 1912);^[3] and son,Hudson Trevor Allison (7 May 1911 – 7 August 1929).^[4] Of the family, only Trevor survived.

The Allison family, bound forMontreal, booked first-class passage on theTitanic. They boarded the ship inSouthampton along with four servants: a maid, Sarah Daniels (no relation to Bess); a nurse,Alice Cleaver;^[5] a cook, Amelia Mary "Mildred" Brown; and a butler, George Swane. Hudson and Bess occupied cabin C-22, Sarah and Loraine occupied C-24, and Alice and Trevor occupied C-26. Two second-class cabins were booked for George and Mildred.^{[citation needed]}

Hudson and Bess were dining companions with MajorArthur Godfrey Peuchen. At dinner on 14 April, they brought Loraine to the dining room with them so she could see how pretty it was.^{[citation needed]}

After the ship struck the iceberg, Hudson left to find out what was going on. While he was gone, Alice took Trevor and went to collect the rest of the servants in second class. Hudson returned to find them gone. He delivered Bess and Loraine toLifeboat Boat 6 and apparently left before it was launched. Major Peuchen recalled how they were almost rescued:^{[citation needed]}

Mrs. Allison could have gotten away in perfect safety, but somebody told her Mr. Allison was in a boat being lowered on the opposite side of the deck, and with Loraine she rushed away from the boat. Apparently she reached the other side to find that Mr. Allison was not there. Meanwhile our boat had put off.

George saw Alice, Mildred and Trevor safely intoBoat 11, which left the ship at around 1:45 am, nearly an hour after Boat 6 had. Sarah had gone up on deck early to investigate the commotion and was hurriedly placed into a boat by a steward who promised to inform the Allisons of her whereabouts. Varying stories claim that Alice panicked and grabbed Trevor, without informing Bess that she was leaving, and that Bess refused to leave the ship without him, though it is possible that the entire group went up on deck together, and that Alice and Trevor were simply lost in the crowd.^[6]

Hudson, Bess, Loraine, and George perished in the sinking. Whether or not George found the Allisons and informed them that Trevor was safely off the ship is unknown; if he did, it is likely the information came too late for any of them to leave the ship. Bess was one of only four first-class women (includingIda Straus, Edith Corse Evans, andAnn Elizabeth Isham) who perished, while Loraine was the only child of first and second class to do so. Hudson's body was the 135th recovered by theMackay-Bennett; George's was the 294th. Hudson's body was transported toChesterville, Ontario, to be buried in the family plot in Maple Ridge Cemetery.^[7]

Alice and Trevor were met inNew York City by Hudson's brother, George, who, along with his wife, Lillian, took custody of the now orphaned Trevor. He died on 7 August 1929, at age 18 offood poisoning. He was buried beside Hudson.

In 1940, a woman namedHelen Loraine Kramer claimed that she was Loraine Allison^[8] and that, at the last minute, her parents gave her up to a man calling himself Hyde (whose identity she said to be that of the shipbuilderThomas Andrews), who raised her on a farm in theAmerican Midwest. Her claim, however, was not accepted by the Allisons. Eventually, she moved away, dying in 1992,^[9] and they never heard from her again.^[10]

In December 2013, the Loraine Allison Identification Project announced results ofmitochondrial DNA testing performed on a sample donated by a female-line descendant of Kramer and descendants of the Allisons. The test was performed by DNA Diagnostics Center, a facility accredited bythe American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. The results were negative, demonstrating that no genetic relationship existed between Kramer and the Allisons.^[11]

A 1912 German silent film about the disaster,In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice), includes the Allison family story, but not by name.

The Allisons were major characters in the 1996 miniseriesTitanic. The subplot regarding them was highly fictionalized and filled with historical inaccuracies: for example, it added the story of the long-standing myth that Alice (portrayed byFelicity Waterman) was a child murderess who stole Trevor in a fit of panic, thus forcing the rest of the family to remain on the ship looking for him until it was too late. Their other servants (Sarah, Mildred and George) were not featured in it; the only one shown travelling with them was Alice.^{[citation needed]}

The Allisons are also portrayed in the 2012 miniseriesTitanic.

• Canadian families
• People from Montreal
• People from the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry
• Deaths on the RMS Titanic
• 20th-century Canadian people

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from July 2014
• All articles needing additional references
• Use dmy dates from June 2023
• Articles with hCards
• No local image but image on Wikidata
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from July 2014
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022