Miss Alice Elizabeth Fortune

Alice Elizabeth Fortune
(Courtesy: Alan Hustak, Canada)

Miss Alice Elizabeth Fortune, 24, was born 10 May 1887, the daughter of Mark and Mary Fortune.

She was still living at home when she was invited by her parents on the Grand Tour. In 12 February, she was sitting on the veranda of Sheapheard's Hotel in Cario when she was approached by a fortune teller who warned her "You are in danger every time you travel on the sea, for I see you adrift in an open boat. You will lose everything but your life." William Sloper, who was there when it happened wrote about it in his memoirs, and said Alice gave the soothsayer some money "and the little man disappeared into the teeming crowd."

She boarded the Titanic at Southampton as a first class passenger. She travelled with her parents, her two sisters, Ethel Flora and Mabel, and her brother, Charles Alexander Fortune. They occupied cabins C-23-25-27.

Her father and brother were lost in the sinking but the women were rescued in lifeboat 10.

At the time of the disaster Alice was engaged to Charles Holden Allen who was born in St. John, New Brunswick on August 28, 1880 and graduated from the University of New Brunswick.

After the sinking, Alice and Charles Allen were married on June 8, 1912. Charles quickly gained prominence in business and governmental affairs of Canada and for some years practiced law in Fredericton, New Brunswick and later was Assistant to the Canadian Manager and Director of National Surety Company in Montreal. They were the parents of one daughter, Mary Marjorie Rutherford (née Allen) who also lived in Chester, Nova Scotia¹.

Alice and Charles had a vacation home in Chester, Nova Scotia and it was to Chester that the couple retired. Alice died on 7 April 1961 and is buried in the cemetery in Chester.

Notes
1. Marjorie married Clark Rutherford in March 1940. They had one son (Robert) on 7 Dec 1941. Clark was lost at sea when the ship he commanded, HMCS Ottawa, was sunk in WW2 in Sept 1942.
Marjorie married again in 1948 to Lawrence Henry Norris. That marriage ended in divorce in the mid-1960's. and Marjorie resumed using her previous married name Rutherford. That was how she was known from then until her death in February 1997 (R.A.R.)

References and Sources
General Registrar of Nova Scotia
Certificate of Death
Alan Hustak (1999) Titanic: The Canadian Story. Vehicule Press, ISBN-1-55065-113-7

Related Articles and Documents

	New York Times  (1912)	WOMEN REVEALED AS HEROINES BY WRECK
	Manitoba Free Press  (1912)	FORTUNE FAMILY PARTED IN BOAT IN GOOD CHEER
	Washington Times  (1912)	DRESSED IN SKIRTS MAN LEFT TITANIC
	Ship to Shore  (1984)	WILLIAM SLOPER'S ACCOUNT OF THE TITANIC DISASTER