A RARE portrait of an early suffragette and Titanic survivor has been discovered by an auctioneer whose own ancestor shared a lifeboat with her after the liner sank.

    Elsie Bowerman was a survivor of the Titanic disaster, a leading suffragette and the first woman barrister at the Old Bailey.

    Timothy Medhurst was researching her astonishing life when he happened upon his connection with her.

    The expert’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Hitchens, was a quartermaster on the doomed ship and was in lifeboat number six, along with Bowerman and about 22 others.

    He was apparently overruled by the strong females on the boat who demanded they be allowed to row in order to keep warm.

    The portrait of Bowerman, in Women’s Scottish Hospital uniform, was unearthed by a Dorset family having a clear-out and they had no idea who the subject of it was.

    Medhurst said, “This small portrait is an amazing snippet of history in which you can see a woman of survival, dedicated to equal rights.

    “It is a wonderful thing to be able to look at the same lady who would have looked at my great- great-grandfather over 100 years ago on board a lifeboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

    Bowerman joined Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) two years before boarding the Titanic in 1912.

    After her return to the U.K. she continued her work with the WSPU, then in World War I joined a Scottish women’s hospital unit and witnessed the Russian Revolution at first hand.

    She subsequently became secretary of the Women’s Guild of Empire and was the first female barrister to practice at the Old Bailey.

    In World War II she worked with the Woman’s Royal Volunteer Services as well as the Ministry of Information and the BBC.

    In 1947 she went to the United States to help set up the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

    She died in 1973 following a stroke and a blue plaque now marks the site in St. Leonards, East Sussex, where she lived.

    Now the portrait of Bowerman that measures 9 cm by 7 cm is going under the hammer at Duke’s auction house in Dorchester.(SD-Agencies)