171/464 01 May 90 22:14:16
From:   Kirsten Emmott

 >  Regarding your comments on "women and children first", I hope
 >  mother plays a somewhat more vital role in parenting, but this
 >  is changing rapidly.  Today, I agree that men and women should
 >  draw straws for lifeboat seats.
  
      I can never resist anwering this sort of discussion with the 
facts on the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.  I wish I had the exact figures, 
but they go something like this: the ship had a first class of rich people, a 
second class, and a third or steerage class consisting of mobs of Irish 
immigrants who got on at Liverpool. There were 1500 lost.  Of the eight 
children in first class, all survived.  Of twenty or so children in second 
class, all but one survived.  Of the some hundreds of women in the first and 
second classes, nearly all survived, plus a lot of female crew.  However, among 
the 1500 lost were (I believe) about 400 women and -over 200- children,  mostly 
in steerage class.  About 200 (male) crew survived, loaded in order to row the 
lifeboats, since the rich could not be expected to row themselves. 

 The "millionaire's boat" contained but 14 people, and lots of luggage. 
It rowed away from the ship "so as not to be swamped" and made not attempt to 
pick up the dying women and children.
  
 The lifeboats were loaded BY CLASS.  The poor were not allowed 
up on deck until all the boats had gone. When they tried to rush the stairs, an 
officer held them back at gunpoint.

   RICH women and children first, maybe.

  (There have been shipwrecks where women were saved and nearly all 
the casualties were men -- such as the that of the cruise boat Princess Alice 
in the Thames River about 1905-- but the Titanic wasn't one of them.

   When people tell us how we used to be helped into carriages and 
given the best place everywhere,don't forget Sojourner Truth.  It was never 
true for SOME of us. 

--- Opus-CBCS 1.12
 * Origin: PSG Vancouver (1:153/4.0)