A gold pocket watch recovered from the body of one of the richest passengers on the Titanic is being sold 113 years later for £1million.
Isidor Straus and his wife Ida were immortalised in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster movie as the elderly couple holding each other on their bed as the Titanic sank.
On the night of the 1912 disaster, Mr Straus’s devoted wife refused a place in a lifeboat as she didn’t want to leave her husband and said she would rather die by his side.
Mr Straus’s body was recovered from the Atlantic days later and his possessions were logged.
They included his 18-carat gold Jules Jurgensen pocket watch that had stopped at 2.20am – the moment the Titanic disappeared under the water.
The magnificent timepiece, which was engraved with the initials IS, was returned to his son Jesse along with his other personal effects.
Isidor Straus was a co-founder of the Macy’s department store – currently the largest store company by retail sales in the United States.
His watch passed through generations of the family before Kenneth Hollister Straus, Mr Straus’s great-grandson, had the movement repaired and restored.
The watch is now being sold by the family for the first time. It is expected to become one of the most expensive Titanic artefacts ever to sell.
Alongside it is a letter from Mrs Straus written on board the doomed liner shortly after it had left Southampton on April 10, 1912.
In the letter, written on Titanic-headed notepaper to a family friend, she described the magnificence and luxury of the then biggest liner in the world.
She wrote: ‘What a ship! So huge and so magnificently appointed. Our rooms are furnished in the best of taste and most luxurious.’
She then referenced the ‘New York’ incident where Titanic almost collided with the moored liner the SS New York as it left Southampton.
Mrs Straus said: ‘Size seems to bring its troubles. Mr Straus, who was on deck when the start was made, said at one time it looked painfully near to the repetitions of the Olympic’s experience on her first trip out of harbour, but the danger was soon averted, and we are now well on our course across the channel to Cherbourg.’
The letter is postmarked ‘TransAtlantic 7’ meaning it was franked on board in the Titanic’s post office before being taken off with other mail at Queenstown, Ireland.
Mrs Sraus’s body was never found after the tragedy on April 15, 1912, in which 1,520 people died.
Mr Straus was the owner of the famous New York department store Macy’s and the letter was later framed and hung in the office of Kenneth Hollister Straus’s office in the store.
Both the watch and letter have never been seen before and are being sold by direct descendants of the Strauses at Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers of Devizes, Wilts.
The watch is expected to sell for over £1million while the letter is tipped to fetch £150,000.
It is believed that the watch had been a gift from Mrs Straus to her husband in 1888.
The date inscribed on it of February was Mr Straus’s 43rd birthday and 1888 was the year he and his brother Nathan became full partners of Macy’s.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: ‘Isidor and Ida Straus were among the higher echelons of society.
‘Yet despite being one of the wealthiest couples in the world they, along with fellow first class passengers John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, went down with the ship.
‘After Titanic struck the iceberg and started to sink, Isidor Straus refused a place in a lifeboat because there were still women and children on board.
‘Ida’s maid was helped into a lifeboat and was given her boss’s fur coat to keep warm. Ida was offered a place in the lifeboat but she refused to leave her husband.
‘One account stated they were last seen sitting on the deck arm in arm, although in Titanic they were depicted lying side by side on the bed in their stateroom.
A memorial statue to Isidor and Ida Straus currently sits at the intersection of Broadway and West End Avenue in Manhattan.
It depicts a young woman lying on her side on what appears to be a divan, one leg draped over the side.
The watch is set to become one of the most expensive Titanic artefacts ever sold.
A gold pocket watch presented to the captain of the Carpathia, the steamship which rescued more than 700 Titanic survivors, sold last year for a record-breaking £1.56million.
The violin played by Titanic’s bandmaster Wallace Hartley as the ship sank sold in 2013 for £1.1million.
And John Jacob Astor’s gold pocket watch sold last year for £900,000.
The sale takes place on November 22.
