Isidor & Ida Straus

Born

6 February, 1845 and 1849

Ages in 1912

67 and 63

Aboard

First Class, cabin C-55

Fate

Both lost

Body

Isidor recovered, No. 96

Resting place

Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx

Before the voyage

He came to America from the Palatinate at nine years old and grew up in Talbotton, Georgia, where his father kept a dry goods store. He and his brother Nathan took a concession inside R. H. Macy and Company, became partners in 1888, and owned the store outright by 1896.

He also sat in Congress, finishing a term for New York's fifteenth district in 1894 and 1895, and did not stand again.

He married Ida Blun in 1871. They had seven children and were rarely apart. They shared a birthday, 6 February, four years between them.

That night

Two men swore to what happened at the boats, and their accounts agree.

Alfred Crawford, a steward, testified to the United States Senate that he stood at Lifeboat 8 on the port side. He said Ida stepped onto the gunwale and then went back. He said she told her maid to get in and that she would follow, and then changed her mind and went back to her husband. He gave her words as she said them: "We have been living together for many years, and where you go I go."

Colonel Archibald Gracie testified that he had seen a great deal of them on the crossing and tried to persuade her to go alone. She said no. Isidor said he would share his fate with the rest of the men and would not go beyond. "So I left them there."

Before the boat was lowered Ida gave her maid, Ellen Bird, her fur coat and said she would not need it. Ellen left in Lifeboat 8 and tried to return the coat to the family afterward. They told her to keep it.

What is said, and what is known

They did not die in their bed, holding each other as the water rose. There is no evidence they went back to their cabin at all. That scene is from the 1997 film. Gracie, the only named witness to their decision, put them in deck chairs on the enclosed promenade.

The line everyone quotes, "as we have lived, so will we die together," comes from Gracie's book rather than his sworn testimony, and from a different conversation on a different deck. The words attested under oath are Crawford's, above.

Afterward

Isidor was recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett and logged as body No. 96. His effects included a gold watch, a platinum and pearl chain, a silver flask and forty pounds in notes. Ida was never recovered or identified.

Her family drew water from the wreck site and placed it in an urn beside him in the mausoleum at Woodlawn.

The watch was a gift from Ida for his forty third birthday in 1888 and was taken from his body in the Atlantic. It stayed in the family until November 2025, when it sold at auction for 1.78 million pounds, the most ever paid for a piece of Titanic memorabilia.

The painting

Artist

Dirk Strangely

Year

2025

The panel

16 x 20 inches, wood

The paper

Pages from a 1912 edition of The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters, published months after the ship went down

The paint

Winsor & Newton acrylic

The artifact

Authenticated coal recovered from the wreck of RMS Titanic, ground into pigment and applied to the pupils and the signature. This is the Artifactism™ element of the work.

The gold

24k leaf on Ida's earrings, and on Isidor's glasses and his wedding ring

Status

Original, reserved for exhibition

The squared pattern across the painting is the 1912 pages beneath the paint.

One painting, two souls, and the same coal in four eyes.

Sources: Crawford, US Senate Inquiry · Gracie, US Senate Inquiry · Nova Scotia Archives · Henry Aldridge and Son