Helena Bertha Grace Rice, known as ‘Lena,’ was born in 1866 and raised in Marhill, near the village of New Inn, Tipperary, Ireland. In the grounds of the family home, a large Georgian mansion, there was a tennis court where Lena and her sister Annie learnt to play tennis. Both girls also played regularly at Cahir Lawn Tennis Club. In May 1889, Lena played in her first tournament outside Tipperary, at the Irish Championships at Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in Dublin. She was narrowly beaten in the semi-final, by five times Wimbledon champion, Blanche Bingley Hillyard, but she partnered with Willoughby Hamilton and won the title in the mixed doubles competition.
At the Wimbledon Championships later that year, Lena reached the final where once again her opponent was Blanche Bingley. During the two-hour match, Lena won the first set and had three match points, but Blanche managed to win the next three match points, 4-6, 8-6, 6-4 and the game. Lena returned to Ireland ‘disappointed and exhausted.’
Despite losing the singles final to Louise Martin at home in the Irish championships, Lena was back in Wimbledon on 4th July, 1890, competing in the Ladies Singles Championship finals. Only four competitors entered that year, the smallest entry for any competition at Wimbledon. As the defending champion Blanche Bingley could not compete that year because she was pregnant, Lena’s opponent was May Jacks. Lena walked onto the Centre Court wearing the acceptable attire for ladies’ tennis at the time; a floral patterned full-length skirt, a blouse with long sleeves, tightly clinched at the waist, a bustle, corset and a long petticoat, a boater hat and leather high-heeled boots on her feet.
In the final game, when May Jacks lobbed the ball at her opponent, instead of waiting for the ball above her head to drop to waist height before returning it, as was expected at that time, Lena leapt into the air and smashed the ball over the net, where it bounced inside the baseline, winning the match in one stroke. The astonished spectators gasped and after a pause burst into applause. Lena had not only introduced the forehand smash, but had also become the first Irishwoman (and remains the only one to date) ever to win Wimbledon.
She retired following her victory at Wimbledon and after her mother’s death in 1891, having lost her father 23 years earlier, she remained unmarried and lived a quiet life alone at Marlhill, until her death from tuberculosis on 21st June, 1907, her 41st birthday. She is buried alongside her parents in the small graveyard at New Inn.
October 24th 1901 would prove to be quite an eventful day for Annie Edson Taylor, as not only was it her 63rd birthday, but it would also be the day when she would be the first person ever to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Born in 1838 in Auburn, New York, Annie and her seven siblings enjoyed a comfortable upbringing as her father Merrick Edson owned a flourishing flour mill. Her father died when she was just twelve years old which left the family distraught but not penniless, as he had left a substantial amount of money, providing the family with financial security.
Annie was able to train as a teacher, during which time she met her husband, David Taylor. Several years after their marriage their son was born, but he died within a few days. David went to fight in the Civil War and was fatally wounded in 1864, leaving Annie a widow at the young age of twenty-five.
Annie’s life changed dramatically. She spent the following years moving from one city to another in various teaching jobs, but as she tried to maintain the lifestyle that she’d grown accustomed to, her savings and wages soon dwindled as did the work and eventually she became desperate. Her future looked bleak with a strong possibility of spending the remainder of her life in a poorhouse.
In July 1901, Annie read in the New York World that the Pan American Exposition was taking place in Buffalo, New York and that many people would also be flocking to see the nearby Niagara Falls. It was then that the idea of her daredevil stunt came to her. She would attempt to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, a feat that no one else had ever accomplished. She hoped that her daring plan would generate enough money to bring her financial security.
She found a company to design her barrel and enlisted Frank M. Russell, a successful promoter of carnivals and other events, to publicise her stunt. Newspaper reporters were keen to interview Annie and find out why a sixty-two year old woman would attempt such a dangerous stunt. She told one reporter, ‘I might as well be dead as to remain in my present condition.’ When asked if she was contemplating suicide, she replied, ‘Not by any means, I am too good an Episcopalian to do such a thing as that…I entertain the utmost confidence that I shall succeed in going over the Falls without any harm resulting to me.’
Annie’s custom built oak and iron barrel was 4 1/2 ft high and 3 ft in diameter and lined with cushions and straps to secure her inside. A rubber tube connected near the top of the barrel supplied Annie with air. As a test run she first sent the barrel over the Horse Shoe Falls with a cat inside. The cat survived the experiment and the barrel withstood the drop of 158ft. Annie was delighted and more determined to take the risk.
Annie with her barrel and cat
Just after 4 p.m on October 24th, 1901, several thousand spectators gathered to watch Annie perform her daring stunt. She was secured inside the barrel and set adrift further upstream from the Falls. Weighted by a 200-pound anvil, the barrel floated along the river, through the rapids. The crowd gasped as the barrel tumbled over the brink and plunge into the deep water below. Hidden by the heavy mist, the onlookers waited anxiously for the barrel to appear. When it slowly came into view, the waiting rescue boat and crew retrieved the barrel and pulled it on to the rocks.
The lid was broken open and Annie raised her arm and waved her hand to let the onlookers know that she was still alive. Amazingly she emerged just dazed and shocked with only a cut behind her ear. However, she declared that she would ‘rather face a cannon knowing I should be blown to pieces than do it again.’
Although Annie’s stunt did bring her some financial relief, sadly it wasn’t to last and she lived her final years in poverty until her death in 1921.
Mrs Julia Martha Thomas was a small, nervous lady in her fifties, who lived alone at 2 Vine Cottages, Park Road, in Richmond, Surrey. She liked to give the impression that she was a ‘lady of means’ and often claimed to be better off than she actually was, dressing in smart, expensive clothes and jewellery and employing a domestic servant. But, as she had a reputation for being difficult, Mrs Thomas had trouble finding and keeping servants and although she placed an advertisement in the local newspaper, she had no response.
However, a few months later, on 29th January 1879, through the recommendation of a friend, thirty-year-old Kate Webster, who unbeknown to Mrs Thomas, had an unscrupulous past, moved into 2 Vine Cottages to start work as a live-in domestic servant. Mrs Thomas was fanatical about cleanliness and would often criticise her new employee’s work, which led to frequent, heated arguments and within a few weeks she gave Kate notice to leave.
Kate Webster
A few days later, on 2nd March, having spent her afternoon off drinking in the nearby public house, Kate returned home that evening where a terrific row broke out between the two women. Shortly after, Mrs Thomas left the house to attend the Sunday evening service held in the local church on Richmond Green, where according to witnesses, she seemed very upset and agitated throughout the service. Later that evening, when Mrs Thomas arrived home from church, there was another huge row, during which Kate lost her temper and pushed Mrs Thomas down the stairs. ‘She had a heavy fall.’ Kate later confessed:
‘I felt that she was seriously injured, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and, to prevent her screaming, or getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat, and in the struggle, she was choked. I threw her on the floor. I then became entirely lost and without any control over myself, and looking on what had happened, and the fear of being discovered, I determined to do away with the body as best I could.’
Kate dragged Mrs Thomas’s body into the kitchen, cut it up and boiled the dismembered parts in a pot on the copper range. Afterwards, she burned the bones in the fireplace, put some of the body parts into a wooden box and the decapitated head into a black cloth bag, then scrubbed the house and the copper pot to try and erase any evidence.
Two days later, dressed in Mrs Thomas’s black silk dress and gold jewellery, Kate went to visit her old neighbours, Henry Porter and his wife Ann, in Hammersmith, West London. Apart from an occasional visit, the Porters had not seen Kate since she had left the area six years before and at first failed to recognise the smartly dressed woman on their doorstep. Kate sat down at their kitchen table, carefully placing the black bag she was carrying underneath and happily chatted away while she shared a drink with the Porters. She told them she had been married and her name was now Mrs Thomas, but sadly her husband had since died, and she was now a widow. However, she had been fortunate, as her aunt had recently died and left her a nice, comfortable home in Richmond, along with all her belongings, which she needed to sell as she was going back home to Ireland to look after her father who was very ill.
Residence of Mrs Thomas at Richmond
Later that evening, Henry Porter walked with Kate to the railway station in Hammersmith, while his unsuspecting son Robert, carried the black bag. They stopped at several public houses on the way and during the evening, Kate made an excuse to slip away and dump the bag into the river. Later that night, Robert accompanied Kate on the train back to Richmond and helped her carry the wooden box along the road to Richmond Bridge, where Kate said she was meeting a friend to pick it up. After telling Robert to go on ahead to the station, Kate dumped the box in the Thames.
Over the next two weeks, Kate continued to live at 2 Vine Cottages, impersonating Mrs Thomas and proudly showing off her new home to her friends. Meanwhile, the box containing Mrs Thomas’s remains had floated to the surface of the river and had been retrieved by Henry Wheatley, who had been passing by in his cart. After opening the box and finding the gruesome contents inside, Henry immediately informed the police. The same day, a human foot and ankle was discovered in a dung heap on an allotment at Twickenham. At the inquest held on 10th March, the doctor wrongly concluded that the remains belonged to a younger woman and as no other evidence had been found, the court was adjourned, pending further investigations.
On 18th March, a suspicious neighbour questioned the whereabouts of Mrs Thomas after she saw her furniture being removed from the house. Realising that she was about to be exposed, Kate fled to Ireland, but her past criminal record made it easy for the police to track her down and on 28th March, she was apprehended and escorted back to London, where on 2nd July, she stood trial at the Old Bailey. A week later, she was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Kate protested her innocence blaming John Church, the man who intended to buy Mrs Thomas’s furniture and when the court did not believe her, she tried ‘pleading her belly,’ but after an examination which proved she was not pregnant, she was taken away to Wandsworth Prison to await her execution.
Knowing that there was no possibility of a last-minute reprieve, on 28th July, the night before she was to be hanged, Kate finally confessed to the prison chaplain that she had murdered Mrs Thomas. She was hanged at 9.00 the following morning. A few minutes later, the crowd outside the prison cheered when a black flag was raised on the flagstaff to indicated that Kate Webster was dead.
Despite a thorough search covering the area around Richmond Bridge, the black bag containing Mrs Thomas’s head, was never found. However, over a century later, workmen excavating the garden of renowned naturalist and broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, in Park Road, Richmond, unearthed a human skull. Following carbon dating tests carried out at the University of Edinburgh, the coroner at the inquest held on 5th July 2011, concluded that the skull belonged to Julia Martha Thomas. He recorded a verdict of unlawful killing and the cause of death asphyxiation and a head injury.
A journalist and self-taught anthropologist, Daisy spent most of her adult life studying and campaigning for the welfare of the aborigines in western and southern Australia. Born and raised in Roscrea, Tipperary, Ireland, Daisy emigrated to Queensland in 1884, where within a year she married her first husband, Edwin Murrant. But shortly afterwards they separated and Daisy moved to New South Wales, where she met and bigamously married a cattleman, named Jack Bates. The following year they had a son, Arnold. In 1894, Daisy left both her husband and son in Australia and went to work as a journalist for the Review of Reviews in London. After reading a letter published in The Times in 1899, about the ill-treatment towards the Aborigines in Western Australia, she wanted to investigate it further and returned to Australia later that year, where she would spend the next forty years studying the culture, history, beliefs and customs of Aboriginal life. When the separation from her husband was finalised in 1902, Daisy devoted all her time in researching the remote Aboriginal tribes of south west Australia, camping amongst them in her tent, where she kept a full set of Dickens and a filing system that consisted of metal-deed boxes stored in an over-turned water tank. She was passionate about their welfare and became a loyal friend, who helped to care for them when they were sick, and became affectionately known as Kabbarli or ‘grandmother.’
Daisy spent most of her days with the Aborigines, believing that she was ‘the sole spectator of a vanishing race,’ and maintained a living by writing numerous articles for magazines and newspapers. In 1904, she was assigned by the Western Australian government, to record data on the Aborigines’ language, religion, myth and kinship, an extensive task that took seven years to complete. Her work was published in the Anthropological and Geographical Societies, in Australia and overseas. She also compiled a local dictionary of several dialects. In 1912, she became the first woman to be appointed Honorary Protector of Aborigines at Eucla and in 1933, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire or C.B.E in recognition of her work with the Aboriginal people. Ill health forced her to abandon her nomadic life and in 1945 she settled in Adelaide until her death in April 1951.
Eliza Shirley was just seventeen years old when she left her home in England in 1879 and travelled with her mother, Annie, to the United States, on a mission to establish the Salvation Army in America. Despite William Booth’s reservations at such a difficult venture, he eventually gave the young lieutenant his blessing and Eliza and her mother were reunited with her father, Amos Shirley, in Philadelphia, where he had secured work the previous year.
They wasted no time in looking for suitable premises to hold the meetings for the Philadelphia Corps and eventually found an abandoned chair factory that was filthy and dilapidated. Undaunted, Eliza and her parents worked hard to make the building acceptable for worship and soon it was ready for the first meeting. They distributed handbills around the streets of the city and put up posters announcing that in the Salvation Factory on 5 October 1879, ‘Two Hallelujah Females from England, will speak and sing on behalf of God and precious souls.’
Although only a small number attended the first meeting, their enthusiasm was encouraging and Eliza suggested they hold an open-air meeting to reach more people. On hearing the Shirleys sing their gospel hymns, the growing crowd at first listened in fascination, but malicious heckling from the intoxicated patrons emerging from the nearby saloons soon erupted and continued throughout the meeting.
Despite the opposition, the Salvationists were determined to continue their mission, but the open-air meetings attracted large angry crowds who resented the Army’s ‘invasion’ of their city, and Eliza and her parents were pelted with stones and rotten vegetables. The police offered little protection, so they followed the advice of the mayor and found a private piece of land in a remote area of the city to hold future meetings.
Several weeks later, a fire broke out near the Shirleys’ land, attracting hundreds of people, so they took the opportunity to preach and sing. This time, the audience was more receptive and there were no outbursts of violence. After the singing, a drunken man called Reddy pushed through the crowd and asked the Shirleys if God would forgive a drunk like him. They assured him that he would be forgiven and led him back to the Salvation Factory to sleep off the effects of the alcohol.
When Reddy awoke fully sober, he knelt and prayed with the Shirleys and declared himself to be fully saved. Thereafter, he regularly attended the open-air and indoor meetings, becoming America’s first Salvation Army convert. This was a turning point for the Philadelphia Corps and as the news of his religious conversion spread, the attendance increased at the meetings.
Shortly after, General Booth promoted the Shirleys to captains and Eliza was put in charge of another building in Germantown, Philadelphia. Unfortunately, ill health forced her to return to England. After she recovered, she embarked on a tour around the country to speak about her fascinating experiences in America. She later returned to America in 1885, with her husband Phillip Symmonds, a Salvation Army captain, and continued her Christian work with the Salvation Army for the remainder of her life.
The Salvation Army continued to grow significantly and by the end of the nineteenth century, 798 corps could be found across twenty-seven states of America.
In September 1910, the lesser known aviatrix Lilian Bland, not only flew Ireland’s first powered biplane, but was also the first woman in the world to design, build and fly an aeroplane. Her American counterpart, Amelia Earhart was only just twelve years old at the time.
Lilian was born on 28th September 1878 at Willington House near Maidstone in Kent, England. She came from a long line of Irish descendants, dating back as far as 1670 and in 1900 her father John moved the family back to his native Carnmoney in Co. Antrim. Lilian became interested in photography and would often wander over Carnmoney Hill, her favourite place, where she would watch and photograph the birds soaring overhead and dream of joining them up in the sky.
She was an unconventional young woman, engaging in activities that were not appropriate for a young lady in the Edwardian period. She dressed in breeches, smoked cigarettes and tampered with motor car engines. She rode astride on horses and took part in hunting, fishing and shooting activities, of which she was very skilled.
By 1908, Lilian had established herself as a sports journalist and press photographer for London newspapers. During the summer of that year whilst staying with friends in Scotland, Lilian spent most of her time watching and photographing the seagulls manoeuvring in the skies above her, increasing her longing to be up there with them and her fascination in flying. A postcard of Louis Blériot’s monoplane with it’s dimensions, sent to her by her Uncle Robert from France, further fuelled her aspirations in aviation.
Lilian attended the first official aviation meeting held in Blackpool in 1909, where she took careful detailed notes of the measurements and dimensions of the aircrafts on display. She also observed the aviators in flight, noting that ‘they keep their heads to the wind and turn a corner by drifting round tail-first.’ She read all the information she could in books and magazines, especially Flight magazine, and at her uncle’s well-equipped workshop, set to work designing and building her own plane.
First she built a biplane glider, with a wing span of six feet, that she flew successfully as a kite, which encouraged her to start work on her full-size glider. She used materials of bamboo, spruce, elm and ash and remembering the seagulls in Scotland, she steamed the ash to bend it into shape to emulate the slight curvature at the tip of their wings. Spruce was used for the ribs and stanchions and she soaked unbleached calico in a mixture of gelatine and formalin, to make it waterproof. The skids were also made of ash and the outriggers were bamboo.
The engine bed was made from American elm and was fastened by wires attached to the upper and lower wings, to keep it secure. The fuel tank was housed in the chassis and the canvas pilot’s seat was enclosed and secured by four straps to prevent the pilot from falling out. The controls were a bicycle handle bar. The finished glider had a wingspan of twenty feet and seven inches and weighed tow hundred pounds. Due to some doubt of its flying capability, Lilian, with deliberate irony, named it the Mayfly.
The Mayfly
The Mayfly had its trial flight on the slopes of Carnmoney Hill, where Lilian had enlisted the help of four six-foot tall, burly members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and a young lad called Joe Blain. All five hung on to the Mayfly as the wind took it up into the air. The four constables promptly let go, leaving Joe to hang on and bring the glider back down to the ground. Lilian concluded that if the Mayfly could carry the weight of five men, it could quite easily manage an engine.
Lilian ordered a two-stroke air-cooled engine, from the newly founded A.V Roe Aircraft Company in Manchester, for the sum of £100. After a delay in the order, Lilian, who was unable to wait any longer, travelled by ferry to England and returned to Ireland on the boat train, with her new 20hp engine and adjustable-pitch propeller, much to the astonishment of the other passengers. She wrote in a letter to Flight magazine that ‘it fitted very neatly into a railway carriage and also an outside car.’
Once fitted, the engine was slow to start and the vibration loosened the bolts and snapped the wires between the struts, so Lilian made further alterations to strengthen the biplane, which included fitting a T-bar yoke and a tricycle undercarriage. The Mayfly was dismantled and moved to Lord O’Neill’s parkland at Randalstown, as the field at Carnmoney was too small for it’s first flight. The only drawback of the park was the resident bull, but undeterred Lilian wrote, ‘If it gets annoyed and charges I shall have every inducement to fly!’
As the engine was housed behind the pilot, the Mayfly was started by Joe Blain standing between the tailbooms and swinging the propeller. At first the flight wasn’t very smooth with the plane making faltering hops at short distance, but after several attempts it flew to an altitude of 30 feet and stayed in the air for a quarter of a mile. Lilian was delighted and in disbelief kept checking the wheel tracks on the wet grass to confirm that she had taken off. ‘I have flown!’ she wrote in a letter to Flight magazine.
Lilian Bland in her overalls which she advised were ‘the best things to wear.’
Lilian continued experimenting with further flights and planned to improve the design of the Mayfly. She started a business offering her biplanes for £250 (without an engine) and gliders for £80, but this was short lived as her father who had been worried about her precarious exploits, bought her a Model T Ford motor car. She taught herself to drive and became Ford’s first agent in Northern Ireland.
In October 1911, Lilian married her cousin Charles Loftus Bland and emigrated to Canada. She returned to Kent in 1935, where she lived with her brother Captain Robert Bland, until the 1950s, when she retired to Cornwall, She died at the age of 92 on 11th May 1971 and is buried in the churchyard in Sennen, near Land’s End.
In 1908, the Women’s Social and Political Union or WSPU, adopted the colour scheme of purple, white and green, that would not only distinguish them in their political movement, but would also prove to be a huge marketing success.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, editor of the weekly newspaper, Votes for Women, wrote, ‘Purple as everyone knows is the royal colour, it stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity…white stands for purity in private and public life…green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring.’
One of the intentions of the colours was to promote public awareness of the depth of the belief for suffrage in England. Women were encouraged to ‘wear the colours’ to show support for the movement and to stand out in the crowds during public demonstrations. They particularly wanted the men that were opposed to the movement, to be aware of the connection of the colours to the suffrage, and in this, they succeeded. The characters on many anti-suffrage postcards drawn by male artists of that period were often draped in sashes and banners of purple white and green, presuming that a suffragette would be recognized by her colours, even by the opposition of the movement.
The head of the WSPU was Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Sylvia, was their official artist. She was a painter and designer of very high quality and her imaginative artwork was an invaluable contribution to the WSPU. She designed banners, flags, gifts and memorabilia, including badges and tea sets. The badges and buttons usually had the initials ‘WSPU’ or ‘Votes for Women’ and proved to be very popular, often worn on dresses and other clothing.
Portrait badge of Emmeline Pankhurst
Large fashionable stores in London’s West End, such as Dickens and Jones, Swan and Edgar, Derry and Toms, Lilley and Skinner, Burberry and Peter Robinson, were among the shops that advertised frequently in Votes for Women, often taking a full-page advertisement. This greatly increased the paper’s profits, selling at its peak, forty thousand copies weekly. Votes for Women would support the shops by encouraging readers to wear clothes in the official colours for public processions and so a good business relationship formed between the two.
It was important to the women to be feminine in their appearance and not to appear mannish, as the opposition like to render them. They would often wear dresses of white delicate fabrics, with purple and green sashes. Christabel Pankhurst implored, ‘Suffragettes must not be dowdy!’ In particular, Selfridges stocked a wide range of stylish clothes in delicate fabrics to accentuate their femininity.
The shoe shop, Lilley and Skinner, displayed in their window, shoes in the WSPU colours and Derry and Toms even sold tricolour underwear in purple, white and green! The Elswick Cycle Company in Newcastle, marketed the Elswick bicycle for ladies, enamelled in the WSPU colours. Mappen and Webb, the London jewellers, issued a catalogue of suffragette jewellery for Christmas in 1908. Brooches and badges were also worn in support of the movement, with many commissioned in honour of the suffragettes who were imprisoned for the cause, notably the Holloway brooch, which is now one of a collection in the London Museum.
Expensive dresses, coats, hats, furs and drapery were sold in the West End stores, while other merchandise such as household items, including china, tablecloths, confectionery and birthday cakes, could be bought in other retail outlets.
In addition to individual donations, merchandise in the tricolours proved to be a major factor in the financial success of the WSPU and gained them a stronger political advantage.
Born in 1789, at Knockbrit, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland, Marguerite was the daughter of Edmund Power, an unsuccessful merchant and former magistrate, who through his own carelessness had fallen into debt. When Marguerite was just fifteen, despite her desperate pleas, her father forced her to marry an army officer, Captain Maurice St. Leger Farmer, in exchange for a significant sum of money. The Captain was an extremely disagreeable man with a violent temper and for three months he repeatedly punched, starved and imprisoned Marguerite in her own home, until she fled to her aunts in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford. She spent the following years staying with various friends and family, until she finally settled in London in 1816, where she met Viscount Mountjoy, Charles Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington, who adored her. A year later, the drunken Captain fell from a window and died, leaving Marguerite free to marry the Earl.
Marguerite had become known in London society for her beauty, charm and wit and enjoyed her rich, extravagant lifestyle, entertaining the elite in their luxurious mansion at St. James’ Square. It was during this time that she wrote her sketches of London society, Sketches of Scenes in the Metropolis, published anonymously in 1822. In the same year, the couple set off on the Grand Tour of Europe, travelling in ‘a kind of sumptuous caravan,’ accompanied by a throng of servants and Marguerite’s younger sister, Mary Ann Power. They were joined in Paris by the dashing Count d’Orsay, an amateur artist, who would later become Marguerite’s lifelong lover. During the tour, they met several distinguished people including Lord Byron in Genoa, who became a close friend of Marguerite and who inspired her to later write Conversations with Lord Byron. In Naples, they metIrish writer and abolitionist, Richard Robert Madden, who later became her biographer and in Florence, Walter Savage Landor, author of Imaginary Conversations.
In December 1927, Count D’Orsay married Harriet Gardiner, the Earl’s daughter from his previous marriage and the following year they moved to Paris, but shortly after, the Earl suffered a stroke and died. Marguerite returned to London with D’Orsay and his wife, where despite the scandal, they all lived in the Blessington’s house at St. James’s Square. But by 1831, Harriet could not tolerate the situation any longer and left to live with her aunt and to avoid adding further fuel to the gossip, D’Orsay moved out soon after, but continued his liaison with the Countess. Although the Earl had left Marguerite ample money to live on in his will, it wasn’t enough to sustain their extravagant lifestyle and she soon fell into financial difficulty. She supplemented her income by writing for various periodicals, becoming one of the first writers to have her work serialized in the Sunday Times. Her first novel, Grace Cassidy, published in 1834, was followed by her biographical travel books, The Idler in Italy in 1839 and The Idler in France in 1841, bringing her success and a substantial income. But by 1849, Marguerite had fallen into debt and fled to Paris with D’Orsay to escape creditors, where a month later she suffered a heart attack and died a few hours later. She was laid to rest in a pyramidal tomb designed by D’Orsay, where later in his death, he too was buried at her side.
Women's History Bites 