Molly Brown

American philanthropist

• Born: July 18, 1867
• Birthplace: Hannibal, Missouri
• Died: October 26, 1932
• Place of death: New York, New York

Famous largely for her rescue efforts in the Titanic disaster, Brown used her social connections and flair to further many social causes, mainly in Denver, Colorado. She led fund drives for the city’s first Roman Catholic cathedral, for at-risk youth, and for the establishment of theaters and museums. A fervent campaigner for woman suffrage and for labor rights, she ran for the U.S. Senate in 1914.

Early Life

Molly Brown was born Margaret Tobin to two Irish immigrants, John Tobin and Johanna Collins Tobin, in a four-room hillside house near the Mississippi River in Missouri. She was the second of four children born to the couple. During her childhood, Hannibal was a booming railroad hub, a town for travelers moving West to the newly opened gold and silver mines in the Rockies. The Tobins were part of a bustling but somewhat marginalized Irish Catholic community within the town. John had earlier emigrated from Fermoy, Ireland, to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and had been involved with John Brown’s abolitionist movement according to rumor, as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Johanna was a descendant of Irish resistance fighter Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. She valued education and sent young Margaret and her siblings to a neighborhood school taught by their aunt, Mary O’Leary. At age thirteen Margaret began working, probably for the next several years, in the Garth tobacco factory.

Brown soon would be living in the booming mining town of Leadville, Colorado, in the wake of her half sister Mary Ann’s marriage to a young blacksmith who settled there. Her brother, Daniel, first went to Colorado alone, then asked Brown to join them. Initially Brown kept house for her brother, but soon took a job in the carpet and drapery department of Daniels, Fisher & Smith, a dry-goods store. Brown dreamed of wealth, and of being able to make her hardworking father’s later life comfortable; but she saw no way to attain that wealth except through marriage.

Certainly there were fortunes being made in late nineteenth century Leadville. As luck would have it, however, when Brown fell in love, she fell in love with someone no more wealthy than herself. J. J. (James Joseph) Brown, an Irishman, had worked in the Dakota mines before coming to Leadville. Margaret and J. J. met at a Catholic picnic in May or June 1886 and married on September 1 of that year. Margaret was nineteen years old.

Life’s Work

Margaret and J. J. shared a work ethic, tremendous drive, and the ability to make advantageous connections. J. J.’s career was soon on the rise as a managing engineer for the Ibex Mining Company, and although some of their early marriage was spent in Stumpfville, a town without many amenities, Margaret took music and literature lessons in Leadville. Because of J. J.’s shrewdness or good luck he insisted on drilling deeper in the Little Jonny silver mine, and discovered a huge vein of gold. Suddenly the family by now the Browns had two children, Lawrence and Helen went from comfortable to very rich.

Margaret Brown’s sense of social justice, which she had since her youth, had impelled her to start soup kitchens to cushion the impact of the silver panic on Leadville’s day laborers. With their new wealth, the Browns bought a large house in Denver in 1894, and Margaret began to employ her social conscience in a larger arena. First, however, she had to establish herself within the city’s social elite. In a time and social world where it was unthinkable for women of her class to enter business or politics, the only acceptable arenas for her talents were charitable work, fashion, and entertainment. Fortunately, Brown enjoyed all three.

The social events Brown organized were famous, and very successful as moneymakers. She chaired a huge Catholic fair to raise money for building a cathedral, and followed it up by organizing a “carnival of nations.” All ethnic groups, including African American, Chinese American, and American Indian, were invited to contribute “living history” exhibits to this project. Brown was also enthusiastic about supporting Judge Benjamin Lindsey’s juvenile court, the first in the nation. Brown held benefits to raise funds for the court, and also for “fresh air” programs for homeless city youth. Through the Denver Woman’s Club, she supported public health clinics and community vegetable gardens to feed the poor. During the 1890’s and the first decade of the 1900’s she was involved in almost every philanthropic or arts initiative in Denver, and she was mother to her two children and three nieces, whose mother had died.

Another passion for Brown was travel, especially to Europe. Thus, she happened to be aboard the RMS Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage in April of 1912. On the night of April 14, Brown had already retired to her stateroom when a call rang out for passengers and crew to report to the boat deck. Fate and panic determined the loading of lifeboats. Margaret ended up in lifeboat number six, which was equipped for sixty-five passengers but held only twenty-four that night. Most were women, with a few crew members. Unfortunately, one crew member was Robert Hitchens, the Titanic’s quartermaster, who turned out to be unhelpful. He took “command” of the boat but refused to help with the rowing, and he made dire predictions about the fate of those in the lifeboat. It was then that Brown earned her reputation for heroism. She urged all the uninjured women to keep rowing, knowing they had to be clear of the ship’s wake when it sank. For several dark and terrifying hours she kept them alert and rowing. Finally, after dawn, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia appeared, with the promise of rescue.

Once all the survivors were aboard the Carpathia, Brown set about to organize aid for the needy among them. Steerage passengers on their way to North America had lost all their possessions and did not know where to turn once they disembarked in New York. Brown, who had picked up several languages through tutoring and travel, interviewed them about their particular situations. Once the ship docked, she refused to leave these passengers until their needs were addressed. In the later inquiries, few women were allowed to testify, so Brown published her own account of the disaster. She blamed the White Star company for its lack of emergency drills, and she decried the ship’s policy that put women into the lifeboats as standard, unquestioned practice. Brown became a national celebrity.

By this time the Brown children had grown and Brown had separated from her husband, whose health was failing. Because they were Catholic and had a genuine love bond, they never divorced, but Brown was living a basically independent life. She summered in Newport, Rhode Island, counted the monied classes of two continents among her friends, and took on projects that would have been difficult as a wealthy tycoon’s wife. Among these projects was a run for the U.S. Senate in 1914. Colorado women had been able to vote since 1893, and among Brown’s causes was universal woman suffrage. She hoped to follow in the steps of another Colorado woman, Helen Ring Robinson, the first woman senator. Brown, however, had to cut short her campaign because of the assassinations in Sarajevo, Bosnia, of Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Countess Sophie, which led to the start of World War I. Brown’s brother in law (her sister Helen’s husband) was a German baron, so it seemed a poor time to try for Congress. Instead, Brown traveled to France, where she served with a group of aristocratic American women providing ambulance service to war victims. She was later awarded the French Legion of Honor for this work.

When the war ended, a series of scandals rocked Brown’s family. J. J. died in 1922 without a will. This strained Brown’s earlier happy relationships with her children. She set about to follow up on her long-deferred ambition for the theater. Long a fan of Sarah Bernhardt, she studied the great actor’s methods and reenacted some of her stage roles on tour. Her financial means were less lavish and she was living mostly in hotels. On October 26, 1932, she died unexpectedly at the Barbizon Hotel in New York City. The cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. She died having achieved most of her life’s goals.

Significance

The Unsinkable Molly Brown, as she is known popularly, has been portrayed in works of fiction, and on stage and screen, as an almost mythological character. Wild West stereotypes depict her as an ill-mannered, boisterous woman with the mythical heart of gold. These depictions are inaccurate, to a point. She lacked a formal education, but she educated herself and was refined enough to be welcomed into the households of nobility. However, as expressions of her spirit a woman whose sheer drive overcame a hardscrabble youth and led to a lifetime of accomplishment the depictions come closer to the mark. It is notable that her near contemporary, Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, received similar treatment in the popular press.

Brown’s life shows a determined and lucky woman attaining her goals, despite the social strictures placed on women of the time. Ironically, the very lack of a defined “career” role made it possible for her to excel in many vocations: bravery and heroism in inspiring her fellow Titanic passengers to stay alive, care for the poor and needy, funding education, leading fund-raising projects for public health, and supporting the arts.

Bibliography

Eaton, John P., and Charles A. Haas. “Titanic”: Destination Disaster. New York: Norton, 1996. Encyclopedic account of the Titanic and the disaster. Unparalleled collection of 130 illustrations, including photographs of lifeboats with surviving passengers nearing the Carpathia.

Hine, Al. The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Greenwich, Conn.: Gold Medal Books, 1964. Novelization of earlier stage and film musical. Often inaccurate, but entertaining.

Iversen, Kristen. Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth. Boulder, Colo.: Johnson Books, 1999. First straightforward biography of Brown, based on research examining family papers and Brown’s own writings, and on interviews.

Tank, Robert M. “Mobility and Occupational Structure on the Late Nineteenth-Century Urban Frontier: The Case of Denver, Colorado.” In Social Structure and Social Mobility, edited by Neil Larry Shumsky. New York: Garland, 1996. Describes the social structure of Brown’s life in Denver in the late 1800’s.