Eleanor Thornton

Eleanor Velasco Thornton (15 April 1880 – 30 December 1915) was an English actress and artist's model.

Despite stories that her mother was Spanish, her mother's family were from humble origins in the City of London, and the names Eleanor and Velasco appear to be merely names she adopted when she started working in the office of a motoring magazine, Car Illustrated, after leaving school.

Thornton posed for sculptor Charles Sykes and may[1] have been the model for his Spirit of Ecstasy,[2] which is used as the bonnet/hood ornament on cars manufactured by Rolls-Royce, as well as a precursor sculpture, The Whisperer.

She drowned with hundreds of other passengers on 30 December 1915 when the SS Persia, on which she was travelling with Montagu through the Mediterranean on the way to India, was torpedoed without warning by the German U-boat U-38, commanded by Max Valentiner.

The Probate Registry for June 1916 shows that her sister Rose (1887–1945), by that time the last surviving member of her immediate family, administered her will.