Edith Haisman

Edith Haisman was born Edith Eileen Brown on October 27, 1896 in Cape Colony, South Africa. She was the daughter of Thomas William Solomon Brown and Elizabeth Catherine Ford. Her father Thomas owned and operated a hotel in Cape Town, South Africa. Edith boarded the RMS Titanic as a second class passenger along with her parents in Southampton, England with an ultimate destination of Seattle, Washington, where her father planned to open a new hotel business. On that fateful night of April 15, 1912 Haisman and her mother Elizabeth survived the sinking of the Titanic by being placed together in Lifeboat 14. Her father Thomas sadly went down with the ship. In the wake of being rescued by the Carpathia, Edith and her mother Elizabeth briefly stayed at the Junior League House in New York before traveling to Seattle to live with Edith's aunt Josephine Acton. Haisman and her mother then returned to South Africa, where Edith lived with relatives in Cape Town after her mother remarried and moved to Rhodesia. Edith met Frederick Thankful Haisman in May, 1917; the couple married on June 30, 1917. Haisman gave birth to a son in August, 1918 and went on to have nine more children altogether. Edith and her husband Frederick lived in both South Africa and Australia prior to settling down in Southampton (Frederick died in 1977). Haisman's popularity as a Titanic survivor grew as she got older and in her latter years she attended several ceremonies held to commemorate the tragic sinking of the ship. Edith died at age one hundred in a nursing home in Southampton on January 20, 1997. One of the oldest living survivors of the Titanic, Haisman at the time of her death was survived by four sons, two daughters, and over thirty grandchildren and great grandchildren.