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Individual:
Co-Founder of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
The below information was found at: http://www.smhall.org/Form8Web/Form8Web/Titanic/John_Jacob_Astor.html
Colonel John Jacob Astor
Running the World
The richest man of all the people aboard the Titanic was Colonel John Jacob Astor, thought to be worth about $100 million at the time. Astor inherited a fortune made by his father in the fur business, and augmented by investments in real estate. Because he inherited his millions, Astor has been depicted as being as lazy as he was rich.
This characterization is unfair, however, since he was a shrewd investor in his own right, as well as an inventor (he invented a brake for bicycles, among other things), a soldier (he saw action in Cuba from 1899-1901 where he was made colonel), and even a novelist (he wrote a sci-fi story about an entrepreneur/inventor who straightens up the tilting axis of the Earth!). Many people did not pay attention to his wide variety of interests though, and saw him as a huge dollar sign.
Income-tax records show Astor owned about 700 pieces of property in Manhattan. Many of these were run-down apartment buildings with poor, working-class tenants. Some, however, were in pretty good shape, including New York's most famous hotel, the Waldorf Astoria!
Madeleine, his Wife
Astor was a little past his mid-40s when he boarded the Titanic. With him was his second wife, 18-year-old Madeleine Force Astor, to whom he had been married to for just seven months. High-toned, proper folks back home were upset by the youth of Astor's bride, as well as by the fact that he married at all after divorcing his previous wife of many years. In fact, the priests of the Episcopal Church to which Astor belonged to refused to conduct the ceremony. The matter was so serious that the minister who eventually performend the service was heckled into early retirement by the religious community!
The circumstances around the wedding started a lot of tongues wagging, so Astor and his very young bride went abroad while things cooled down. They had been on a kind of second honeymoon, traveling in Egypt and France.
More Trouble
The Astors created a big enough stir that they might have wanted to remain abroad even longer. Madeleine, however, was pregnant, and they wanted to have the baby back in the states. The Titanic must have seemed like the perfect ship for returning home in style.
As it turned out, Astor didn't survive the journey. He escorted his pregnant wife to a lifeboat, but failed to get permission from 2nd Officer Herbert Lightoller to stay with her. Lightoller was a stickler for the "women and children first" rule. So Astor promised Madeleine he'd catch a different boat and meet up with her later. Unfortunately, this promise was broken. People wonder whether Astor thought he might be able to buy his ticket into a lifeboat, or if he knew that there was little chance for him to live, but was just attempting to comfort his wife.
Astor's body was among the first to be identified; he was covered in soot, indicating that he was crushed by one of the ship's funnels as it collapsed. Months later, Madeleine had a son and named him John Jacob after his father.
Release the Hounds!
You might think that Astor was just some guy with a lot of money and a fancy hotel. Before he died, however, he performed a selfless act that set him apart from the other passengers: He went out to the ship's kennels and let his Airedale, Kitty, out of her cage. While he was at it, he set the other dogs free as well. Witnesses report that dogs could be seen on deck and, later, swimming in the water.
An Unhappy Life
Madeleine inherited a $5 million trust fund and the use of two mansions, one in Newport, Rhode Island, and the other on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She lost the use of these mansions when she married New Yorker William K. Dick during World War I. She gave birth to two sons by her second husband but divorced him in 1933 in Reno, Nevada.
That same year she married professional boxer Enzo Firemonte, but her third marriage lasted only 5 years before it, too, ended in divorce. She died in 1940 in Palm Beach, Florida, at the age of 47.
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