Unsinkable Molly

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Thursday at tomclavin.substack.com. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting. (Check out previous columns while you're at it.)  Likes, comments, and shares help with author discoverability on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          Some of you might be familiar with a 1964 movie titled Unsinkable Molly Brown. I always thought that this Debbie Reynolds musical was fictional. However, this week, which sees the 112^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I can report that there really was such a person.

          Margaret Tobin was born in July 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri. Her parents were Irish immigrants John Tobin and Johanna (Collins) Tobin, and she had four siblings. Called Maggie by her family, she attended Mary O'Leary's grammar school, which was across the street from her home. Nearby was the Hannibal Gas Works where her father worked as a laborer. Their neighborhood was a tight-knit Irish Catholic community, where people traveled westward through the town for the gold fields. 

At age 18, Margaret relocated to Leadville, Colorado, with her siblings Daniel Tobin, Mary Ann Landrigan, and Mary Ann's husband, John Landrigan. Margaret and her brother Daniel shared a two-room log cabin, and she found work sewing carpets and draperies at a dry goods store. It was in Leadville that she met and married James Joseph Brown, nicknamed "J.J.,” an imaginative, self-educated man. They had two children: Lawrence Palmer Brown, known as Larry, and Catherine Ellen Brown, known as Helen.  They also raised three of their nieces: Grace, Florence, and Helen Tobin.

In 1893, the Brown family acquired great wealth when J.J.'s mining engineering efforts proved instrumental in the exploration of a substantial ore seam at the Little Jonny Mine.  His employer, Ibex Mining Company, awarded him 12,500 shares of stock and a seat on the board. In Leadville, Margaret helped by working in soup kitchens to assist miners' families.

The following year, the Browns bought a Victorian mansion in Denver for $30,000 (equivalent to $1,056,000 in 2023). In 1897, they built a summer house, Avoca Lodge, in southwest Denver near Bear Creek, which gave the family more social opportunities. Margaret became a charter member of the Denver Woman's Club, whose mission was the improvement of women's lives by continuing education and philanthropy. Adjusting to the trappings of a society lady, Brown became immersed in the arts and fluent in French, German, Italian, and Russian. Brown co-founded a branch in Denver of the Alliance Francaise to promote her love of French culture. And she lobbied for women's right to vote.

J.J. was not interested in the social life that Brown enjoyed and the couple began to drift apart. After 23 years of marriage, Margaret and J.J. privately signed a separation agreement in 1909. She received a $700 monthly allowance (equivalent to $24,000 in 2023) to continue her travels and political work. She assisted in fundraising for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, which was completed in 1911. She also worked with Judge Ben Lindsey to help destitute children and establish one of the United States' first juvenile courts.

Brown spent the first months of 1912 in Paris, visiting her daughter and as part of the John Jacob Astor IV party, until she received word from Denver that her eldest grandchild, Lawrence Palmer Brown Jr., was ill. She immediately booked passage on the first available liner leaving for New York, the RMS Titanic. Originally, her daughter Helen was supposed to accompany her, but Helen, who had studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, decided to take a side trip to London with friends.  Brown boarded the Titanic as a first-class passenger on the evening of April 10  and sailed for New York City that night.

The ship sank on April 15 at around 2:20 a.m., after striking an iceberg almost three hours earlier. Brown helped other people board the lifeboats but was finally persuaded to abandon ship. More than 1500 of the 2224 people aboard the Titanic perished.

As word of her actions spread in the press, she was dubbed “Unsinkable Mrs. Brown.” Those actions included taking an oar herself in her lifeboat and urging the lifeboat crew to go back and save more passengers. Her urgings were met with opposition from the crewman in charge of the lifeboat. He was fearful that if they were to go back, the lifeboat would either be pulled down due to suction or those in the water would swamp the boat in an effort to get in. After several attempts to urge the crewman, Robert Hichens, to turn back, Brown threatened to throw him overboard.

Upon being rescued by the ship RMS Carpathia, Brown proceeded to organize a committee with other first-class survivors. The committee worked to secure basic necessities for the second- and third-class survivors, and even provided informal counseling.

Two years later, before women had the right to vote, Brown ran for Colorado's U.S. Senate seat. When that did not pan out, she went abroad to serve as the director of the American Committee for Devastated France during World War I. Also in 1914, she contributed to miners and their families during the Ludlow coal mine disaster and she helped organize the International Women's Rights conference that year, held in Newport, Rhode Island.

During and after World War I, she worked in France with the Red Cross to help wounded French and American soldiers and rebuild areas behind the front line. For her work organizing female ambulance drivers, nurses, and food distributors, Brown was awarded the French Legion of Honor.

When J.J. Brown died on September 5, 1922, Margaret told newspapers that although she had met royalty and other great people around the world, "I've never met a finer, bigger, more worthwhile man than J.J. Brown." J.J. Brown left vast, yet complicated, real estate, mining, and stock holdings. It was unknown to the Browns and their lawyers how much was left in the estate. Prior to J.J.'s death, he had transferred a large amount of money to his children who were displeased at all the money their mother devoted to charity. Margaret Brown and her children fought in court for six years to settle the estate. 

In the 1920s, Margaret Brown focused her energy on personal passions, especially the theater. She died in her sleep on October 26, 1932, at age 65, in New York City's Barbizon Hotel. An autopsy revealed a brain tumor. She was buried next to J.J. at St. Brigid's Cemetery, now known as the Cemetery of the Holy Rood, in Westbury, New York, following a small ceremony attended by close friends and family. There was singing, but no eulogy.

Her Denver home has been a museum, the Molly Brown House, since 1971. Tours and programs share the story of not only a Titanic survivor but also a champion for women's rights and suffrage. In 1965, astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young named their Gemini spacecraft Molly Brown in her honor. In 1985, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. And Disneyland Paris features the Molly Brown Riverboat, named after her.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Throne of Grace (with Bob Drury), to be published by St. Martin’s Press on May 7. To pre-order a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.