You’ll recognise the surname no doubt, but probably haven’t a clue what makes Benjamin Guggenheim a top bloke in my grand scheme of things ?
Benjamin Guggenheim was the fifth of seven sons of the extreeeeeeemely wealthy Meyer Guggenheim who made his money in mining and metals – lots of money, pots of money, so much money that they bathed in money, every morning, too much money to count, the Guggenheims didn’t need to count their money, there was enough of it to last for several generations thereafter.
So Benjamin did what all of us would do with his fathers very generous allowance and eventual inheritance – he sat on his arse and spent it on a lavish lifestyle – top bloke.
Although he described himself as a businessman his business investments involved nothing more complicated than a man in the street stopping him and asking for some money that he would surely invest at a high profit for Benjamin, after which the man in the street was never seen again, that sort of investment.
And thats how he spent most of his inheritance, it just sort of slipped through his fingers without him noticing, a bit like my money does, but his money had many many more zeroes on the end of it.
And yet there was still oodles and oodles of money left in 1912 when he was 47 years old, and wishing to travel back to one of his homes in New York from one of his homes in Paris, the Paris home being bought because he was “associating” with a Madame Aubert, a Parisien chantreusse, it being the done thing for rich inheritors to “put it about a bit” – he booked five berths on the RMS Titanic for its maiden voyage to New York, a state room for he and his butler, and other one next door for his totty and the maid that he employed for her, and steerage class for his chauffeur, poor bastard, £340 he spent on tickets, a mere pittance for a man like Benjamin Guggenheim, he probably spent more on cigars every day but most of the steerage class passengers had saved or borrowed for years to raise their £7 fares.
Guggenheim and his butler slept through the collision with the iceberg but were awakened by their room steward Henry Etches sometime later who ever so politely requested that they don their lifejackets and prepare to abandon ship, urged on by Victor Giglio his butler, Guggenheim tried on the heavy cork vest and famously declared “It looks dreadful” and when he discovered that it spoiled the line of his dress overcoat he removed it.
Having persuaded his Parisien totty and her maid into lifeboat number 9 and with the realisation that there were pitifully few boats and likely that most of them were to perish he then returned with Giglio to his stateroom and ordered the butler to prepare evening suits for the pair of them.
When dressed properly for dinner complete with white bow tie, top hat and cane Guggenheim and his butler attended the first class deck and awaited their fate, the last known words that he spoke were to a lady who was boarding one of the last lifeboats, he gave her a letter and asked her to tell his wife that both he and his butler “Were dressed in their best and prepared to go down like Gentlemen”.
What a bloke, top man.
Guggenheim and his butler spent their last hour promenading on the first class deck as if out for a stroll and when the Titanic disappeared below the waves so did Guggenheim and his butler, for their bodies were never found, and nor was Pernod the chauffeur.
Madame Aubert and her maid were picked up by The Carpathia where she sent a Marconigram to Paris stating “Moi sauvee mais Ben perdu” (I’m saved but Ben lost), no mention of the servants of course, and she lived a wild life building a reputation for parties in the 1920’s that were often interrupted by the police calling, sounds like she had fun spending Guggenheims money then – she died aged 77 in 1964, sounds also like a top bloke, I’ll have to research her next.
Yes folks, I’ve discovered the RMS Titanic archives on t’interweb – what larks Pip…
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PS – Late Edit – Henry Etches, room steward to Guggenheim, the man who tried to make him wear a lifejacket was picked up from lifeboat number 5 and survived the disaster, top man Henry, women, children, and ships employees first – remarkably many of the ships crew ended up in lifeboats and survived – top blokes all of them.
A couple of years back we visited the Titanic exhibit at the science museum. Interesting. They gave us little name tags as we entered the exhibit and upon leaving we had to check a register to see if we had survived.
I did not.
I never understood why the need for women and children first, the world is certainly poorer for the loss of a fine male of the species like Benjamin Guggenheim, his bone idle and yet sartorially correct bloodstock is now lost to us, hence the reason why so many of us are so scruffy.
Lets get the record straight once and for all.
When xxxxx died, at the age of 81 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Burnaby in 1992, she took with her to the grave her claim to one of the biggest fortune in American history, her connection to one of the most- reported events of the century and a secret involving one of the secrecy surrounded xxxx all her life. Friends who asked personal questions were shunned. She lived, until she was in her 60s, with a woman who had been her nanny, and they moved constantly, from city to city, to avoid the curiosity of neighbors. xxxx had no other family until she ” adopted” when she was in her 70s, a young Lebanese immigrant who had come to rent a room from her in her Kelowna home. She taught him English and occasionally hinted about her secrets, asking him, more than once, to help her claim what was rightfully hers. A claim that xxxxx , now a resident of Canada and medical technician at a hospital in Vancouver, did not understand.
In the end, when she knew she was dying, xxxx wrote notes to him, her adopted son and xxxx’s, his wife. In them, she asked her papers to be destroyed and no notification of her death to be made in the obituary. She hinted that she left them, and especially their son, a large fortune. As she prescribed notes in small coiled notebook, xxxx put in mundance details such as her cremation plans, the name and number of three people who should be notified and revealed of her death, that he name on official record was xxxxxx.
This subtle rewording of her name was never mentioned to the xxxx before, who consider themselves her’s only living relatives now.
They did not know that a lifetime ago, when xxxx was three years old, her last name was also fabricated, spun out of her father’s surname into something totally new. It was to be an identity to disguise what should have been triumphant news: that her father had survived the sinking of the Titanic.
If xxxx father had been a crewman, a second- class passenger, or even one of the first- class passengers with a different name. his supposed death abroad the Titanic would have mattered little. But xxx’s father, it seems likely, was Benjamin Guggenheim and in countless books about the retelling of the story, witnesses say he dressed in his evening suit, uttered some words to be passed on to his wife in New York and sat back and waited to die.
But in his own words, in notes scribed abroad a lifeboat that had rescued him and in a darkened hospital room when he knew he was dying, Guggenheim described how he survived the sinking of the Titanic and how he kept the secret from family back in New York.
Now, for the first time in 96 years, the story of what happened can be told with supported documents written since 1912. From the night the Titanic went down to Guggenheim’s resurfacing on the rescue ship Carpathia where he was reunited with his mistress and then his isolated last hours in a New York hospital.
From events orchestrated when she was a child, xxxx was bound by these circumstance. Raised by a nanny who kept her moving from one city to the next in the United States whether xxxx knew all the fact about her life. She had, in her possession, papers that proved her claim, including a codicil to Benjamin Guggenheim’s will, written on April 19, 1912, five days after he was supposed to have died in the sinking of the Titanic. In that note, Guggenheim included xxxx and her brother xxxx as among his five children and stated they should share in his estate equally. As one of the Poorer of seven brothers in the Guggenheim family, which made its fortune in mining and the lace and embroidery business more than 100 years ago, Benjamin Guggenheim had disassociated himself from the family business to engage in other enterprises, taking his share of the fortune a decade before he died. At that time his share of the Guggenheim fortune was $8 million, but by the time he died, his three daughters received only $450,000 each.
In 1999, one of the Guggenheim family third generation met with xxxx and discussed the subject of xxxx death at her office in New York.
XXXX was accompanied with a reporter from newspaper to investigate the matter, but the Guggenheim threatened her if she exposed the material may bring danger to her family in the future. the truth stayed hidden.
If anyone from the Titanic society wants to know the truth what happened and how the ship really sank and why, write me. What I have in my possession is a new revolutionary and history can be rewrite with the truth only.
Thanks
Reference must be changed.
Millionaire industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim (b. 1865) was among the passengers who died when the Titantic struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. Benjamin was the son of Meyer Guggenheim, a merchant and mining magnate. He worked with his father in the mining business and supervised the building of the Guggenheim Copper and Lead Refinery at Perth Amboy, N.J. Benjamin Guggenheim was a flamboyant personality who, purportedly after turning down a seat on a lifeboat, donned formal evening wear then appeared on the deck of the sinking ship and said, “we’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”