Spent two days at Heron Corn Mill pursuing hunches. The Matilda Betham research has steered me into reading about women and insanity. As mentioned in a previous post, Elaine Bailey has written about this in Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century ed. by Thomas Knowles and Serena Trowbridge in respect of (Mary) Matilda Betham, (the poet, diarist and miniature portrait painter and early feminist), I managed to get the book and found an interesting link about about a conference where she presented her work here: Silence in the Archives which I wish I could have attended but it came during preparation and presentation of The House another work about a silent archive.
Gladly, to take this further, I was given Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady: Women Madness and English Culture 1830-1980 for Christmas and have just finished reading it. It post dates Betham’s incarceration but is an interesting interweaving for me with regard to the research I had pursued to date on my own female ancestors’ history in connection with this theme and this new project for Heron Corn Mill in Beetham, Cumbria. So I think I will be digging deeper here. Another driver for me has been to try to account for the female stories in and around Beetham. Hence I have latched onto Saint Lioba (Leoba), St Walberga (correction Ethelburga) , Princess Alexandra, Matilda Betham and Jennet Frances Thexton (1852 – 1926),
described as having a commanding personality, I won’t qualify her existence through her father and her husband but will just say that having read today a pamphlet entitled: Beetham Church and the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels (NH Webster 1988) I learned that she took her mother’s name to inherit the Haverbrack estates and it seems she did quite a lot with her money or a least maybe her wealth afforded her plenty of free time for philanthropy: She was involved in the Mother’s Union, the W I, the Girls Friendly Society, the District Nursing Association, a school manager and a Sunday school teacher, a PCC member and Diocesan Synod representative. She was also instrumental in the building of the new school in 1904 (1905) – date and opening disputable) on the site of the old toll house that is now known as Beetham Church of England School (with V.R on a plaque on the wall rather than E.R – another example of a woman (albeit a dead queen) taking precedence over her male son. Jennet Frances died on this day (15 January 1926 – 90 years ago exactly) Pretty coincidental that I should read about her today.
Oh, by the way – her married name was Jennet Frances Hudson-Frith (Hudson being her mother’s name and Frith being her husband’s). Interesting that names carry money but not actions and achievements. There is capital in a name.
So she joins my cast of ladies of Beetham. Whether she stays the course we’ll have to see.
She is commemorated by a panel in the north west window of the church and by the altar rails : “the latter a final contribution to the choir and sanctuary to which she and her family had given so much”
Beetham Church and the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels (NH Webster 1988)