Third-class cabins on Titanic were a significantly better lot than accommodations offered to emigrants just a few years earlier.

At the height of the 19th century, tickets purchased by emigrants migrating to the United States and other nations in the Western Hemisphere only promised "conveyance" to the New World. Food, bedding and utensils were seldom included in the price of passage and even the matter of a berth to sleep in was a dicey proposition. Onboard Titanic, the situation was considerably improved. The White Star Line's publicity enticed the emigrant traveler with the promise that, "the interval between the old life and the new [would be] spent under the happiest possible conditions."

Titanic's third-class accommodations were located on E, F, and G-decks forward and D, E, F, and G-decks aft, well down in the Ship. Six occupant cabins housed families or same sex passengers. Further conventions dictated that women and children were sequestered aft in the Ship. Single men were berthed forward in an open space far away from the females.

The cabins were provided with heat and electrical lighting as part of the cost of passage.  This seems obvious to us today, but in London, poor apartments still had gas lamps attached to coin-slot meters. The poor had to pay for light as they used it and when the penny's worth of gas had been burnt, the light went out.

Proper beds with spring and chain mattresses were also provided along with blankets and pillows; but no sheets--that came after World War I.  But many of the cabins did have portholes (87/0172) and washbasins (00/0178) filled from a brass cistern (94/0205).  Conspicuously missing, however, were bathtubs.  There was only one tub for all third-class men, and another for the women.  This was not stinginess on the part of White Star, but a social reality. The poor of the time were convinced that frequent bathing brought on lung disease, and so the demand for bathtubs was limited.

Traveling in this class was William Henry Allen, 35, a toolmaker who boarded in Southampton.  Allen perished in the sinking, but his suitcase (00/0404) was retrieved during Expedition 2000.