Berthe Leroy in 1905
Berthe Leroy was a maid and a First Class passenger on Titanic.
Early life[]
Berthe Leroy was a native of Hersin-Coupigny, Pas-de-Calais in France, where she was born on August 10, 1884. She was the daughter of miner Jules Alexandre Leroy and Marie-Adeline Calonne, a house maid. Berthe had 3 older brothers and one older sister.
Berthe lost her father very early, when she was only 4. He died on September 22nd, 1888.
At the age of 19 Berthe left her small town to look for a job in Paris.
At the beginning of 1910 she was asked to join the staff of Mrs. Mahala Douglas, wife of Mr. Walter Donald Douglas, to be her travelling companion. They travelled widely across the continents.
In April 1912 they were on a trip across Europe and Mr. Douglas had decided he wanted to celebrate his birthday in the US and so they saught the first available tickets for passage home.
Titanic[]
The party boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg after buying tickets at the White Star Line office in Paris. Berthe shared a First Class cabin, C-142, with Augustine Serraplan, who was the personal maid of Mrs. Lucile Carter. Berthe was 27 at the time.
She sent a postcard to her mother from Queenstown, telling her not to worry and that she was enjoying her time on what she described as a wonderful ship. Berthe had wonderful memories of her brief time onboard. A whirlwind of evening parties, gala dinners and events in the honour of various passengers.
On April 14, late at night, the unthinkable happened when the ship had come into contact with an iceberg. Berthe recalled that she heard the impact of the collision, which woke her from her sleep, but thought it was the rumble of a storm. Augustine was reading and the two women weren’t concerned. There were multiple knocks at the door of their cabin with the order to leave the ship but Berthe confessed in an interview in 1966, that she dismissed this as a joke being performed, possibly by a man on the ship that had some affection for her.
Later, she noticed the ship was tilting forward and as the man persisted at her door, she put a dressing gown over her nightgown and hurried out. She had just one slipper as she could not find the other. The corridors were deserted and unlit and she navigated by reading the brass cabin numbers glinting in the dark. She hoped to find her employers on deck, which took too much time. She found her way to lifeboat 2. In the dark she did not realise her employer Mrs. Douglas was also onboard.
Berthe later stated she never heard the band perform ‘Nearer My God to Thee’. Lifeboat 2 was the first to be met by Carpathia a little after 4 A.M. The few hours spent on the cold open ocean in the small boat meant that Berthe contracted severe pneumonia and she took six weeks to recover. After arriving in New York on the rescue ship, she was compensated $50 by the Titanic Relief Fund after examination by the American Red Cross.
Later life[]
In 1919 Berthe was in Boston seeking musicians to hire for a party. In the crowd she spotted a face she knew from her childhood in France. He was Gaston Bourlard de Labourse. She recruited him for the party and they were married in 1928. Gaston became a butler to Mrs. Douglas.
Berthe continued to travel without event in the rest of her life, although in a letter to her brother, Samuel, when sailing on the Lusitania she admitted to ‘feeling a little bit anguished sometimes.’ Which was not unjustified, as this vessel would meet her fate in 1915 after a torpedo struck her.
Leroy narrowly escaped disaster once again in her life after running out of a burning hotel in Florida.
She remained in the employment of Mrs. Douglas and they traveled between Minnesota and Pasadena. She met many famous names as guests of her employer, including Walt Disney. Berthe sometimes returned to France, but became an American citizen on July 14th 1942. Mrs. Douglas passed away in 1945. Following her death, Berthe and Gaston retired to Santa Barbara, California.
Gaston passed away in 1955. Berthe returned to France to visit her family during the summer on 1964 and decided to settle her affairs and and stay in the country permenantly. She got back to her native town of Hersin-Coupigny, Pas-de-Calais. As she got older she was in frail health but she stayed close to her family. In April 1966 she did an interview given her testimony of the events on that fateful night on Titanic.
In the first half of 1967 she suffered a severe heart attack but she recovered. Berthede de Labourse passed away on Thursday, 4 July 1972 in her residential town of Hersin-Coupigny, Pas-de-Calais, which was on American Independence day. Despite having lived almost a decade in France, she kept her American nationality to the end. She reached the age of 87.