Miss Kristina Sofia Laitinen was a passenger on Titanic.
Early life[]
Kristina Sofia Laitinen was a native of Riistavesi, Kuopio in Finland, where she was born on October 12, 1873. Her parents were Pekka Laitinen and Hedvik Asikainen. She was often just addressed by her second name, Sofia.
After Sofia had moved to Helsinki from the village of Riistavesi outside Kuopio in 1905, where she worked for three years at a school for the blind. After that, she worked at Missionärshuset for a while and then she became a housekeeper for the merchant K. Koskinen.
She had no opportunity for education, apart from the school for confirmation, but she was always willing to learn something new and spent her free time reading. She had a couple of school friends.
One of her friends emigrated to America in 1911. She lent her friend some money on the condition that the friend would arrange for a ticket to be sent to her, to enable Sofia to travel over as well. In November, she got her ticket but couldn't decide whether to go or not, so the trip was postponed. Once she had decided to leave, the departure was set for April, on the Titanic.
Sofia had a sense of impending disaster. One night she dreamed that she fell into a well with ice-cold water.
Titanic[]
She made her way to Southampton where she got aboard the new ocean liner. Sofia had a ticket for Third Class. She was 28 years old at the time and thusfar had been an unmarried woman her entire life.
On board the Titanic, she shared a cabin on the aft part of the ship with Anna Sofia Turja, Hedvig Turkula, Helga and Hildur Hirvonen as well as Katariina and Maria Jussila.
On April 14 Titanic had an unfortunate contact with an iceberg. After the collision, Sofia and the other women received reassuring messages from stewards who claimed that nothing was wrong and they could stay in the cabin. But soon enough, Helga's brother Eino Lindqvist came from the bow part and said that they had to dress warmly and go up on deck.
Sofia and Anna Turja saw another Third Class passenger named Maija Panula, who had several children with her on the voyage but some were missing during the evacuation. She was crying in despair and wondering what to do.
The small group may have gotten separated in the crowds, but Sofia and Anna Turja were together and were waiting for a while on the starboard side of A-Deck, but then parted ways. Anna thought it was safer and warmer to stay, while Sofia preferred to go up to the Boat Deck. It was packed with people up there. Somehow Sofia never got into a lifeboat, which meant that she was lost in the disaster and her body was not found. Anna Turja did make it off safely, surviving the ordeal.
No one in Finland sought compensation for her through the authorities there, but her mother did receive £60 from the charity fund in March 1913.