EDITH ROSENBAUM
12 June 1879 - 4 April 1975
TITANIC
Edith Rosenbaum (Edith Russell) was an American fashion stylist and correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily. She was born in Ohio, US into a wealthy Jewish family. In 1911, her wealthy fiancé and herself were in a car accident, he died and she suffered a concussion. During World War I, she worked as a journalist for the American Red Cross. Edith owned Pekingese dogs and Edith would travel with them overseas.
Edith was remembered for surviving the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic and taking her toy pig with her onto the lifeboat. Edith had to return to New York for work and boarded the Titanic on 10 April and travelled in a First Class stateroom and had another room for all her baggage. After the Titanic hit the iceberg she went onto the deck and sat on the lounge watching the evacuations taking place. She saw her room steward and told him she heard that the Titanic was going to be towed to Halifax and she was concerned about her luggage. She handed him her keys and he told her to, ‘kiss your trunks goodbye’. Her room steward returned to give her the toy pig which was given to her by her mother. The White Star chairman told her to get onto a lifeboat and she boarded onto lifeboat number 11 which carried the most amount of passengers. Her toy pig played the tune ‘the Maxixe’ when you twist its tail, Edith used it to calm the children who were on the lifeboat, the youngest was 10 months old.
Edith survived the Titanic disaster and sued White Star for the loss of her luggage.
She helped give her account of the Titanic sinking to Walter Lord who wrote, ‘A Night to Remember’ in 1955. She died in 1975, aged 95 and Lord inherited her toy pig. When Lord died in 2002, the toy was donated to a London Museum. In 2001, James Cameron found her cabin with its dressing table mirror still intact. The children's book ‘Pig on the Titanic’ Gary Carew was published in 2005.
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