Ann Eliza Isham

Notes

1. It has been suggested that Miss Isham brought on board with her a dog (possibly a Great Dane), and some believe that it was her refusal to leave her dog. that led to her death. It has been further suggested that she was the woman observed to have had her arms frozen around her dog in the water following the sinking. However, no firm evidence has been found to support the claims.

Comment and discuss

1. Ann Elizabeth "Lizzy" Isham was a single, middle-aged woman from Chicago and one of the only 4 adult women First Class passengers who died in the disaster. As the previous posts show, her exact fate is bit of a mystery. The various hypothesis include that she slept through the whole disaster till it was too late, was unable to get out of her room because the door jammed or she was accidentally locked-in by a steward, simply refused to believe that the ship was in danger till it was too late, refused to board a lifeboat without her pet Great Dane and even that she was actually rescued by decided not to identify herself and lived out an obscure life. In his article Mr Bigham explores all possibilities based on what little evidence... Read full post
2. As you can see from my post above, that report about a steward telling someone about a female passenger to dress warmly and go above which she refused, started with May Birkhead, a journalist on board the Carpathia, who claimed to have spoken to the aforementioned steward. If true, the steward was probably Charles Cullen and the report said that he referred to her as a... Read full post
3. Just a note on this - I think you underestimate some heavy sleepers, there ARE people who sleep thorough ANYTHING or are able to drop off again within seconds of being jolted asleep. And I say this as somewhat who slept through a fire drill in a hotel.... like through the alarm!! I also have terrible waking apathy... i.e. it takes me a while to 'come too' and face the day, and there's often nothing I want more... Read full post
4. George Wright who was traveling by himself, was supposedly a heavy sleeper. It has been speculated that he went to sleep on April 14 and simply never woke up.
5. Yes, I know that some people can be very heavy sleepers and extremely difficult to wake-up (I am a retired doctor). Mildred Brown, the young cook in the Allison entourage, was reportedly one such and her colleague George Swane (who sadly was lost himself) and roommate Selina Cook had great difficulty in persuading her to wake-up and get dressed. But they succeeded and Mildred made it to Lifeboat #11 and survived. With regard to sleeping though the entire Titanic sinking, that would be almost impossible for a sober person - and while I don't know about George Wright, I doubt if Ann Isham was inebriated. The gradual tilt of her cabin floor caused by the progressive sinking of the Titanic's bow would have woken Ann Isham at some stage, even if she had not been the one... Read full post
6. All, The fate of this mysterious lady has intrigued everybody. What happened to her? A member of a prominent family, 50-year-old Ann Isham, nicknamed "Lizzie," probably knew others in first class aboard Titanic but no one - at least no one who survived - remembered meeting or seeing her. Even old Col. Gracie (bless his snoopy heart) whose cabin was next to hers, never noticed her coming and going from her room. According to Col. Gracie, Ann "Lizzie" Isham: "...is the only one of whom no survivor, so far as I can learn, is able to give any information whatsoever as to where she was or what she did on that fateful Sunday night..." Don Lynch, in contact with her family some years ago, reported that no correspondence connected with Lizzie's death had been preserved by her loved ones. Very odd, in my opinion. With such a dearth of information, one's imagination is permitted to run riot. Did she really board the Titanic at... Read full post
7. As above. Mr Bigham and other researchers have long said that Ann Isham boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg strictly alone. She did not even own a dog. There was a couple from Vermont, Mr & Mrs Canfield, who had been visiting Paris earlier and had met Lizzy Isham. Unsubstantiated reports say that the Canfields planned to join Ann Isham on the Titanic' s maiden voyage to New York but for... Read full post
8. For all the first class passengers who brought dogs and other animals with them, here follows a detailed list made by a friend of mine:

   
9. There is another aspect to the possibility of over sleeping that has not been discussed - sleeping pills. Sleeping pills at the turn of the century were stronger than they are today, and the strength varied from pill to pill. Nothing was computerized and as uniform and accurate as today. Sleeping pills of the past often contained morphine along with a barbiturate to alleviate aches and pains. Overdoses were common. There is the possibility that she had taken a sleeping pill earlier that night. Many people who normally do not take them, will use them because they have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar circumstances. The pitching and rolling of a ship, the vibration of the engines may be too much for a person who is not used to life at sea. I've seen people pass out on aircraft on long overnight flights because they had taken one - they are twice as effective at cruise altitude as they are at sea level. On some occasions, they had to be wheeled out by the crew in a wheelchair to... Read full post
10. ... Read full post
11. Has anybody guessed a time when flooding would have made her escape from the room impossible? I assume that stewards would have started knocking on doors telling people to get up and get dressed and put their life jackets on shortly after midnight. Perhaps as the ship sank, enough warping was present to jam the door to her cabin after everyone had left that area before that area was flooded. Its my understanding the walls were wood along with the cabin doors. Poor woman...
12. There is one other possibility, although if the May Birkhead interview is correct, then that would rule it out. And that was the possibility that the woman was already dead in the cabin before the collision. I tend to believe the Birkhead interview, as there would be no reason for the steward to lie about his verbal exchange with "the woman". If anything, it might have put him in legal jeopardy because he did not alert staff to forcibly evict the woman from the cabin and put her into a boat. Knowing that there was a woman down there, and that the ship was sinking, is tantamount to criminal negligence, per US law. So he had nothing to gain from telling this story, and everything to (possibly) lose by telling it. Witnesses like that are usually truthful. My own best guess is that she was told, ignored it, and went to bed. Then either she awoke when the water was in the cabin, or if before, got trapped in the cabin by a jammed door, and by that time there was nobody around to... Read full post
13. I also believe that the Birkhead story could be true and that the steward was Charles Cullen. At that time, they would not have known how many lived or died with any degree of accuracy nor the status the Titanic tragedy was going to get in the future. It follows therefore that neither had any reason to make-up that story at the time. I doubt if Cullen would have been in any trouble even if he had beed called to testify and had mentioned the encounter, even identifying the passenger. He had done his duty by warning her firmly and had other passengers and duties to attend. Also, depending on the time that encounter took place, Cullen himself... Read full post
14. I have thought of another possibility and that is that Miss Isham was very ill and was returning home after many years in Paris to see her brother and other family members for the last time. Perhaps when she realised that there was no hope for the doomed ship she decided to go down with it. Rather than to endure a painful illness she may have felt that it was better to get it over and done with. I feel that throughout the voyage she deliberately ignored her neighbour, poor old Colonel Gracie in the adjoining cabin. He would have been quite annoying for an independent and intelligent woman, especially if she was ill and in pain. I wish that the Great Dane story was true! I wonder who he belonged to?
15. The part about Ann Isham deliberately and tactfully avoiding Gracie is a virtual certainty IMO, as her cabin, C-49, was next to his C-51 and unless she had tried as I believe she did, she could not have avoided bumping into him. Gracie was an intrusive nosy parker and intelligent, independently minded women like Ann Isham, Edith Evans and Edith Rosenbaum would have found his overbearing "old world gentleman" attitude very annoying. Like Ann Isham, I think Rosenbaum also kept her contact with Gracie to a minimum; so did Edith Evans for a while but her association with the 3 Lamson sisters, whom Gracie had already taken "under his wing", meant that sooner or later Miss Evans had to put up with him. As we have all read, he "helped" all... Read full post

Showing 15 posts of 150 total. View all.

Link and cite this biography