Miss C. is naturally desirous that the wearing apparel of her late father should not be offered for sale by public auction…
How am I to entertain my Readers with a
solicitor’s letter? I’m working my way through a stack of them, hundreds,
skimming to see if they contain anything more than an Acknowledgment of Your
Favour of the Fourth Instant, nice work if you can get it. Surely I can find
one - I need just one - and at last:
The gravediggers have done their work and
John Colman lies buried next to the church of St Andrew and All Saints in the
parish of Wicklewood where the Reverend Colman was Clerk for many years. Born
1781, died 1837, twice married and had issue. The Will has been read, Executors
appointed, Solicitors instructed. The executors are employing William Foster in
the county town of Norwich; Miss Colman and her sister Mrs Nealds have
instructed George Waugh of Great James Street in London with whom they already have
some connection. He has been up to Norwich to pore over deeds and now exerts
himself over three pages, claiming cattle and chattels for Miss Colman and a
piece of jewellery for Mrs Nealds. Who is this energetic exception to the
indolent legal rule?
He is in the history books, or at least the
Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Twenty years after his work for the Colman
sisters he stepped out of his house one January morning in 1856 to be
confronted by a client who drew a pistol and shot him in the chest, point
blank. According to the obliging eye witness, the assailant exclaimed,
"You villain, you have ruined me; why did you rob me of my property?"
to which Mr Waugh replied, "Hold him, collar him, he has murdered
me!" which proved to be true.
Charles Broadfoot Westron was promptly
tried for murder at the Old Bailey in February 1856; the proceedings are online
and conclude with “GUILTY. Recommended to mercy by the Jury on account of a
strong predisposition to insanity. Aged 25. DEATH recorded” but
the sentence commuted. He was removed to the Royal Bethlem Hospital where his
photograph on glass is preserved. Quel roman!
Encouraged by this promising beginning, I
proceed to the sisters, Miss Colman and Mrs Nealds. The latter has a helpfully
unusual surname and I start with her. She began life as Adeline Martha Colman,
born 1795 to the Reverend Colman’s second wife Martha Catchpole. In 1816,
shortly after her twenty first birthday, she was married in Wicklewood to the
Reverend Charles Nealds who took her away, fathered three daughters and two
sons, and died on all of them in 1829. The Church of England would provide a
pension but on its upside-down interpretation of the parable of the Widow’s
Mite that would be a pittance in comparison to what it gave to the bishops in
need of a couple of thousand a year what with appearances and palaces to be
kept up.
The death was foreseen. In 1828 Mrs Nealds
had written to the Duke of Wellington, the letter now held at the University of
Southampton where someone has read and summarised it, “Mrs. Nealds' husband,
Reverend Charles Nealds, who was educated at Merton College, Oxford, has been a
clergyman for eighteen years. As Nealds' father died soon after he took orders,
he failed to secure a benefice and still subsists on a curacy, from which he
supports himself, his wife and five children. Nealds has bad health, and is
worried that he cannot make provision for his children. Mrs. Nealds solicits
the Duke's patronage for her husband. Any preferment would be gratefully
received, but Mrs. Nealds asks that her husband be considered for the deanery
of Norwich as she has heard that it has already been refused by two people”.
The Duke acknowledged receipt of the letter and no more. It’s true, it was a
bold move to put forward the name of the ailing stipendiary curate of
Wicklewood for a well-remunerated post in Norwich Cathedral.
But Nealds was dead and what was she to do?
The convention was for the wife to die first, often in childbirth. The husband
would then re-marry someone who would care for his children and produce new
ones. An ideal candidate would be the deceased wife’s unmarried sister,
preferably younger, but this was frowned upon and from 1835 to 1907 illegal.
For those seven decades the topic agitated the greatest minds.
Mrs Nealds’ options were limited; there
were few employments open to her. She could try to re-marry and again place
herself under a man’s protection but she would bring five young children with
her and that would deter. There was, however, one respectable path open and she
was treading it sometime before her husband died on 12th August
1829. In the same year, Mrs Nealds published Poems as "Mrs Charles Nealds",
the dedication to Lady Stafford dated May 19th 1829, followed by a
list of one hundred and sixty-four Subscribers, several requiring more than one
copy and dutifully identified as such. The list must have taken some time to
assemble. One poem from the Print on Demand beside me is dated 23rd
June so it is just possible that publication preceded the death but more likely
that it followed.
A poem in ten stanzas “To My Husband”
concludes:
At night, weigh’d down by woe and care
I bend to God the knee,
Kiss our dear babes, and breathe a prayer
For happiness and thee.
The same poem contains a line which
indicates an early education: When first the rosy finger’d morn returned
me to grammar school form where an elderly Master read aloud passages (in
English) taken from Homer, pausing to marvel at the words “when dawn the
rosy-fingered”.
Later relief may have been afforded by her
family and the 1837 inheritance. Then in 1840 she published Summer Rambles
and winter amusements: embracing conversations on history and the productions
of nature by a clergyman's widow which I do not have on my desk and
nor it seems does anyone else. I locate just two copies, one in the British
Library and another listed in the 1858 inventory of books in the royal library
of Hanover which in the recent past had obtained its King in the shape of a
spare son of George the Third. It seems that the book flopped and in 1842 Mrs
Nealds approached the well-endowed Royal Literary Fund for relief but was
unsuccessful for reasons which might be connected to her non-literary
reputation.
The
University of Toronto’s Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry
has this to say, “A damning report from an investigator for the Mendacity [a
Freudian slip; the word should be Mendicity] Society had concluded
that she lived in a furnished house in Swanscombe, Kent, costing more than her
annual income, applied to every charity in sight, and owed money to everyone in
the village, the people of which would “gladly” raise a subscription to get her
out of the place. The family’s conduct was “loose & open to censure.” Thus
spake the well-endowed London Society for the Suppression of Mendicity founded
to discourage mendacious claims to charity, whether in person or by letter, but
more generally obsessed with the moral delinquency of the poor. Its history
deserves a book but does not have one.
Eventually, Mrs Nealds emigrated to
Australia with her three daughters, now grown up, arriving in New South Wales
in 1850. The date is one at which they could have benefitted from an Assisted
Passage. Adeline Martha Nealds remained in Australia, never re-married, and
died there in 1869. And her three daughters?
I feel a novel coming on but it is now the
solicitor’s turn; I simply note that the Wymondham town archives show the Will
ending up in Chancery where I shall leave it seeing as that story has been done
before by Mr Dickens in his tale of Jarndyce v Jarndyce. And I shall also leave the subsequent life of Miss Colman for someone else to discover.
*
Transcription
Addressed to: Wm Foster Esq
Solr Norwich
Datelined: Great James Street
Bedford Row 25th
Octr 1837
Dear Sir
According to the arrangement made when I saw you at Norwich I beg
to send you a statement of the property claimed from the executors of the Revd
John Colman deced & the facts which can be proved in support of such
claims. The following are made by Miss Colman
Two cart mares & foals the original stock having been
purchased by Miss C. of C. Stebbings she having exchanged for the same certain
ponies belonging to herself & paid the difference in cash
Two cows the produce of a calf given Miss C. by Richardson of
Hackford. She has from time to time sold the calves of the two cows and
received the purchase money to her own use.
Five pigs the produce of a sow given Miss Colman by R. Roper &
afterwards sold by her to Ploughman the money received to her own use.
Silver cup cover & waiter given to Miss Colman by her father
on the day it was presented to him & since kept by her in her own
possession. Mrs Nealds & other persons have heard Mr Colman state that he
had given them to Miss C.
A wine funnell given Miss C. by her father a long time since as
family plate.
A chest of drawers given Miss C. by her father when they resided
at Wicklewood Hall and always kept in her own room
A mahogany inlaid table with cedar drawers & purchased by Miss
C. at Mr Wiggs sale at Silfield.
A dressing table & wash hand table purchased at Miss
Catchpole’s sale at Wymondham by Miss C.
A bed & bolster set of drawers dressing table & wash stand
table purchased by Miss C. at the sale of her late sister Miss Cathe Colmans
sale at Wicklewood Hall.
Mrs Nealds also claims a gold watch which belonged to her late
mother & was by her given to Mrs N. & sent to the latter by a nurse.
Miss C. is naturally desirous that the wearing apparel of her late
father should not be offered for sale by public auction & will pay
executors for it such sum as on valuation the same may be considered which I
undertook to say I was sure the executors would not object to & she will
therefore feel obliged by them instructing the auction accordingly
I mentioned to her your communication of her fathers acceptances [debts] to the amount of nearly £100 being understood to be
outstanding at The Lodge & not being aware of more than one to the amount
of £27 or thereabouts, she as residuary legatee of the personal estate requests
you will inform her of the particulars of any of them previously to their
payment
On looking over the deeds with your clerk at The Grove on Friday
last none could be found relating to any estate called The Lodge Estate & I
understand that the testator never had any but that the cottage called The
Lodge was built upon a piece of waste land never allotted which was
corroborated on reference to the award under The Wicklewood Inclosure Act [of 1808].
There are in the book case containing the deeds a number of old
pocket books & letters which should the executors consider useless to them
Miss Colman as residuary legatee will feel obliged by them handing over to her
as containing family memoranda & private observations.
I remain Dear Sir Your obdt. servt. Geo Waugh
1837
George Waugh
For
the Will etc: wymondhamtowncouncil.org/about-wymondham/town-archive
For
the murder of George Waugh and trial of Charles Broadfoot Westron go to
oldbaileyonline.org
Quel roman! is from Roland Barthes La Chambre Claire (1980); translated as Camera Lucida.
Wikipedia:
Society for the Suppression of Mendicity
Wikipedia:
Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907. In his Culture and Anarchy (1869) Matthew
Arnold makes great (or maybe just tiresome) rhetorical play with the deceased
wife’s sister.
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