Elizabeth Catherine Brown was born around 1868 (baptised 11 November 1867) in the Cape Colony, South Africa, the daughter of Frank Edward Murray and Charlotta Hendrika Ford. She had at least four siblings: Edward Stranson, Hendrik Gabriel, Sarah Jane and Johanna Catharina.
On 11 August 1890, at St Mary’s Church in Woodstock, Western Cape, she married the widower Thomas William Solomon Brown, a hotel manager and property owner in Cape Town who already had five children from his first marriage. Together Elizabeth and Thomas had two daughters, Edith Eileen (b. 1896) and Dorothy Beatrice (b. 1899, died of diphtheria in 1906).
By 1912, the family’s business in Cape Town had declined, and they decided to relocate to Seattle, Washington, in the United States, where Elizabeth’s sister lived. Elizabeth, Thomas and Edith boarded the Titanic as second class passengers at Southampton on 10 April 1912, ticket number 29750, for £39.
As the Titanic sank on the night of 14–15 April 1912, Thomas placed Elizabeth and Edith in lifeboat 14 and remained aboard the ship. He did not survive. Elizabeth and Edith were rescued and brought to New York aboard the Carpathia, arriving on 18 April 1912.
Mother and daughter travelled on to visit Elizabeth’s sister in Seattle before returning to South Africa. Elizabeth later remarried a Mr Parrott and relocated to Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). She died on 29 June 1925, reportedly of heart failure, at around the age of 54.
This artwork by Dodo Newman commemorates Elizabeth Catherine Brown’s survival of the Titanic disaster, and forms part of a set of three artworks dedicated to the Brown family, alongside those for her husband Thomas William Solomon Brown and their daughter Edith Eileen Brown.
Sources: Encyclopedia Titanica.
