I can't find a source now (of course), but I was at the Titanic Museum in Belfast this summer, and the information there indicated (through my hazy memory) that "women and children first" didn't come out of some noble sense of chivalry, but of a maritime disaster in the 1850s where every single woman and child on board died.
I can't remember the name of the ship, and maybe it's a mis-telling of the Birkenhead story, but the museum's version was that the loss of women and children in the earlier disaster led to such revulsion that it became practice to instead prioritize women and children.
EDIT: Aha, it was the Atlantic in 1873 that I'm thinking of. So both stories can be true, since the Atlantic sinking occurred between the Birkenhead and the Titanic.
I can't remember the name of the ship, and maybe it's a mis-telling of the Birkenhead story, but the museum's version was that the loss of women and children in the earlier disaster led to such revulsion that it became practice to instead prioritize women and children.
EDIT: Aha, it was the Atlantic in 1873 that I'm thinking of. So both stories can be true, since the Atlantic sinking occurred between the Birkenhead and the Titanic.
https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/opinion/columns/2012/12/19...
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1873/apr/03/mainsection.fro...