THE last remaining survivor of the Titanic disaster is selling her treasured mementoes of the liner to pay for her nursing home fees.

Millvina Dean hopes to raise more than 3,000 pounds from auctioning off the Titanic-related items.

The 96-year-old from Southampton has spent the last two years living in a nursing home and now needs to raise funds in order to remain there.

She is selling a 100-year-old suitcase that was filled with clothes and given to her destitute family when they arrived in the US after being rescued.

She is also auctioning off rare prints of the Titanic that have been signed by the artists along with compensation letters sent to her mother from the Titanic Relief Fund.

Miss Dean was a two-month-old baby at the time of the 1912 disaster and is the last person in the world to have survived it who is alive today.

She has been living in a private nursing home in Ashurst, in the New Forest since having a hip operation two years ago and now needs to raise money to carry on staying there.

Miss Dean said: "I was hoping to be here for two weeks after breaking my hip but I developed an infection and have been here for two years.

"I am not able to live in my home anymore.

"I am selling it all now because I have to pay these nursing home fees and am selling anything that I think might fetch some money.

"The fees are quite expensive. The more money I can get from the auction the better."

The Dean family were third class passengers on Titanic and were emigrating to Kansas where Bertram Dean, 27, was to open a tobacconists.

After the luxury liner struck an iceberg Millvina, her baby brother, also called Bertram, and their mother Eva, 32, were put into lifeboat 13.

Millvina was the youngest person to escape the Titanic and was lowered into the lifeboat in a sack.

The family were rescued by the ship Carpathia but Mr Dean drowned in the disaster on April 15, 1912 along with 1,523 others.

Mrs Dean was given the wicker suitcase and its contents by the people of New York as they had lost all their possessions and money in the sinking.

Miss Dean, a spinster, said: "The case was given to my mother when we were in New York and she brought it back with us.

"It wasn't in too bad a condition and I used to take it away on holidays with me.

"When the wreck of Titanic was found 20 years ago I was invited to conventions all over the world and I took it with me then."

Andrew Aldridge, of Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers of Devizes, Wilts, said: "The suitcase is a very emotive and unusual item and epitomises what the people of New York did for the Titanic survivors.

"It also highlights what state the survivors were in when they got to New York. Many people lost everything down to the clothes they were standing in.

"The letters give us an interesting insight in to what happened to the families and how the benevolent funds were given out.

"The prints are rare, limited edition prints. Realising she was one of the last survivors of the Titanic the artists sent them to her to sign and she kept hold of a couple of them."

The framed prints include the Titanic leaving the White Star dock in Southampton and one of it arriving in Cherbourg.

The collection of letters dates 1912 from the Titanic Relief Fund to Mrs Dean explain that she will be awarded one pound, seven shillings and six pence per week.

Miss Dean is the last survivor of the Titanic after Barbara Dainton, from Cornwall, died in October last year aged 96.

The auction will take place this Saturday