Isidor And Ida Straus Titanic Passengers Scrapbook And Ephemera

A scrapbook and associated ephemera relating to the lives and deaths of Isidor (February 6, 1845-April 15, 1912) and Ida (February 6, 1849-April 15, 1912) Straus, who died aboard the Titanic.

• The scrapbook is debossed with the phrase “News Clippings,” the name of Beatrice N. Straus, and the year 1912.
• Noted items include:
• An autographed letter signed by Ida Straus to her granddaughter Beatrice, dated March 18, 1912.
• A letter from Jewish educator Julia Richman (1855-1912), the first female district superintendent of schools for New York City.
• An 8-page holograph copy of Julia Richman’s speech from the May 12 memorial for Isidor and Ida Straus.
• Three programs from memorial services held honoring the Strauses.
• News clippings pasted into the scrapbook, totaling 36 pages of clippings.
• One page bearing pressed flowers, presumably from a funeral or memorial bouquet.

Isidor was, with his brother Nathan, co-owner of Macy’s department store and a U.S. Congressman; both he and his wife were prominent and wealthy members of New York City’s Jewish community and philanthropists particularly interested in questions of education. The Strauses took passage aboard the Titanic to travel back to New York following a winter spent largely in southern France, and both died when the ship struck an iceberg on April 15, 1912. Famously, Ida was offered a seat in one of the lifeboats, but refused to be separated from her husband. Their deaths, and particularly Ida’s love of and loyalty to her husband, became a subject of numerous newspaper pieces, poems and songs in the months that followed the Titanic disaster, and the story continues to be regularly depicted in film and other media more than one hundred years later.