Berthe Antonine Mayné was born on 21 July 1887 in Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of Jean-Joseph-Benjamin Mayné and Sidonie Filée. She had six siblings: brothers Ghislain and François, and sisters Rosalie, Mélanie, Thérèse and Josephine.
A cabaret singer, Berthe met the Montreal ice hockey player Quigg Edmond Baxter in Brussels during the winter of 1911. He convinced her to travel with him to Canada aboard the Titanic. For the sake of propriety, she boarded under the assumed name „Mrs de Villiers,“ occupying first class stateroom C-90 — the origin of the assumed name remains uncertain.
Berthe boarded the Titanic as a first class passenger at Cherbourg on 10 April 1912, holding ticket number 17482, for a fare of £49 10s 1d.
As the ship sank on the night of 14–15 April 1912, Quigg Baxter helped her, together with his mother and sister, toward lifeboat 6. She reluctantly boarded wearing only a woollen overcoat over her nightdress. When she attempted to return to her cabin for jewellery, the socialite Margaret „Molly“ Brown persuaded her not to.
Berthe was rescued in lifeboat 6 and arrived in New York aboard the Carpathia on 18 April 1912. She remained with the Baxter family in Montreal for several months before resuming her singing career in Paris under the stage name „Bella Vielly,“ performing at the Théâtre Marigny in 1913 and later at the Folies Bergère. In 1919, a lover from the wealthy Henricot family bought her a house in Brussels, and by 1924 she had settled permanently back in Belgium, eventually retiring to Berchem-Sainte-Agathe.
In her old age, Berthe told her nephew that she had crossed the Atlantic on the Titanic with a young Canadian millionaire, but no one believed her. Only after her death on 11 October 1962, at the age of 75, did personal documents found in a shoebox confirm that her remarkable story had been true all along. She was buried at Sint-Agatha-Berchem Cemetery.
This artwork by Dodo Newman commemorates Berthe Antonine Mayné, whose extraordinary and long-doubted Titanic story was only vindicated after her death.
Sources: Encyclopedia Titanica, WikiTree.
