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Snippets
Sni’ppets, n. detached fragments of knowledge or information, short fragments from books, odds and ends: OED
Charlotte’s Money
On a spring day in 1810, twenty-three-year-old Charlotte Wynne, only surviving daughter of co-heiress Martha née Aubrey, married Jonathan Elford son and heir of Sir William Elford of Bickham Devon.
The marriage settlement of 9 May assured Charlotte of an annuity of £200 after Jonathan died, and when her mother died, she stood to inherit £10,000.
Martha and her sister Elizabeth had sold their estate in Liss in Hampshire. This brought them some £40,000. [Check out Lyss Place for Pam Buttrey’s fascinating history of that estate] So, for Martha and her daughter Charlotte, money was no problem.
On the occasion of his marriage to Charlotte, Jonathan bought Upland, a house surrounded by seventeen acres near Plymouth.
All seemed set for a happy and prosperous union, but fate determined otherwise.
By tracking what we can of her life with what little documents are available, we see what difficulties lay ahead for her. For a start, she is recorded as being ‘blind’, or as we would put it less bluntly today, ‘visually impaired’.
Three years after their marriage, Jonathan made a will. He was then only 37, so was he suffering from a life-threatening disease? He lived for another ten years, but in the meantime, the Plymouth Bank of which he and his fathers were partners, teetered on the brink of collapse with Jonathan and Sir William seriously overdrawn.
Before Jonathan died in 1813, he added a codicil to his will directing his trustees to put all his lands up for sale if necessary, in order that his ‘dear wife’ should have an additional £200 a year.
His father had stood surety for him, and when the Plymouth Bank finally collapsed after his death in 1825, the lands which were to produce the additional money were put into the hands of Sir William’s creditors.
Now a widow, Charlotte was probably forced to sell Upland, which she did, for £5,000 and doubtless paid back the £2,000 which Jonathan had borrowed to buy it.
While Sir William Elford was declared bankrupt and all his property acquired by his creditors, Charlotte could at least rest easy with the money she had, plus the £10,000 just inherited from her late mother.
Amidst all the doom and despair swirling through the Elford family, Charlotte stood apart as a wealthy but lonely widow, while disputes over her annuity were thrashed out in court.
Help came when she met a cultivated Italian émigré who took up the cudgels on her behalf.
We shall follow the path of her marriage to him, and their subsequent relationship in the forthcoming Sons & Spouses, now in preparation.
D Meredith McFadden
‘Lunatics’ – at last!
The fascinating history of Cane Hill Hospital: the Tower on the Hill has been published at last and already sales are beyond my expectations.
I knew that many people would be interested in the life of both patients and staff in an asylum, as such institutions were called until World War One. From 1900 onwards, freedom became increasingly restricted for patients until only a handful of men and no women, went beyond the gates in the 1920s. The book also looks at Cane Hill’s relationship with its local community.
See the Cane Hill book page for further details and Order for how to obtain a copy of this important segment of social and local history.
Pam Buttrey
‘Lunatics’ & ‘Leaders’
Life is busy at present, researching and writing the histories of an asylum and a railway station, both important in their own ways.
From 1889, Cane Hill Hospital in Coulsdon was one of London County Council’s asylums. Thousands of Londoners were sent there, many never to return.
Having worked with one of the clinical teams preparing patients to finally leave Cane Hill Hospital before it closed, I researched Croydon’s pauper lunatics admitted there until 1899 as part of my MA.
With that behind me, I have traced the history of this important institution from the 1870s until its closure in 1992.
The History of Cane Hill Hospital will be published in November 2010.
Meanwhile, I am unearthing the history of another place: Droxford Station where Winston Churchill met with General de Gaulle and General Smuts just before D-Day – with important consequences for the ending of World War II, and Britain’s entry into the EEC!
Pam Buttrey
A Gap Filled
Over the years I’d been researching Morgan Aubrey’s life – a long one, covering almost all the Elizabethan era. I had thus come to know him very well. So much so that Morgan, as a person, came to life in my mind. I knew what he looked like and even the sort of man he was. I can still visualise him. It was because of his vivid presence, albeit imagined, that I could put his thoughts into words on the pages of Salt & Silk.
I had traced nearly all aspects of his life, bar one, that was his entry into the Guild of Salters.
One day, just as I had almost completed the final draft of the book, I found myself in the City of London Archives, tucked away at the back of the Guildhall Library.
Sitting along one wall on the wooden floor were hundreds of old boxes full of card indexes.
As always, I asked the question of the helpful assistant – did she have anything on Morgan Aubrey, Salter, Citizen of London, Alderman, etc.
Yes, one of the files in the first box was devoted to him. The card she showed me looked disappointingly bare for a man with such a long life, but it did have some mysterious letters and numbers at its top. These she recognised immediately and asked me to wait while she found the book they referred to. She disappeared into the nether regions.
I held my breath. To my astonishment, when she emerged, she bore in her hands, a huge, leather-bound book, nearly three inches thick, which she deposited carefully on a table. The code on the card told her which of the hundreds of hand-written, parchment pages referred to Morgan Aubrey.
At last, there he was. The spidery Elizabethan writing declared that he had become apprenticed to James Peel and had been received into the Company of Salters on Thursday the 19th day of December in the Year of our Lord, 1560.
Now I knew the name of his Master and the date of his acceptance into his Guild.
I gazed on the dusty page, much as Morgan himself must have done with pride almost four hundred and fifty years ago.
The most important gap in Morgan Aubrey’s life that I lacked, had at last been filled.
To read how he not only made money as a Salter, but also survived the religious and political upheavals of the time, go direct to Order and buy your copy of Salt & Silk – chronicles of the Aubreys of Clehonger.
D Meredith McFadden
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