Women and children first

Uncommon card · No. 127717

"Women and children first", known to a lesser extent as the Birkenhead drill, is an unofficial code of conduct and gender role whereby the lives of women and children are to be saved first in a life-threatening situation, typically abandoning ship, when survival resources such as lifeboats are limited. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, "women and children first" was seen as a chivalric ideal. The concept "was celebrated among Victorian and Edwardian commentators as a long-standing practice – a 'tradition', 'law of human nature', 'the ancient chivalry of the sea', 'handed down in the race'." Its practice was featured in accounts of some 18th-century shipwrecks with greater public awareness during the 19th century. Notable invocations of the concept include during the 1852 evacuation of the Royal Navy troopship HMS Birkenhead, the 1857 sinking of the ship SS Central America, and most famously during the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. Despite its prominence in the popular imagination,...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Thomas M Hemy, Public domain