The Petticoat Patrimony project in Wakefield looks at the hidden stories and legacy of Eliza, Anne-Mary and Helen Edmonstone. The sisters were direct descendants of the indigenous peoples of Demerara and, as curators and enablers of Charles Waterton’s life, were victims of historical patrimony. Petticoat Patrimony seeks to redress this and challenge existing perceptions of Waterton, slavery, gender and racial stereotypes.
Previous articles in this series are available here.
Despite it all
Despite the patrimony Eliza and Helen suffered throughout their lives, despite the eccentricities and imposition of Waterton’s personality, despite the chaos they were constantly exposed to, and despite the betrayal by their nephew Edmund (as detailed below), the boy they had raised and nurtured, the sisters did their utmost to preserve Charles Waterton’s legacy.
Without Eliza and Helen Edmonstone, Waterton’s natural history collection, many of his private letters and their own herstories would have entirely disappeared.
After his death on 27 May 1865, Eliza and Helen should have been in receipt of £10,000 and the entire estate of Walton Hall. Waterton had left everything to them in his will which was proved on 17 August 1865. Their nephew Edmund Waterton used ancient patrimony laws to challenge this and had it overturned, taking possession of Walton Hall by 21 December 1865, making his aunts, homeless.
Eliza and Helen moved to Middlesex to give Eliza time to pursue, through the courts, compensation for the loss of £3,100 plus interest. This was the value of the loan Eliza had lent to Waterton in 1849 to buy land around Walton Hall. Once that matter was settled, the sisters returned to Bruges in Belgium. They lived just a mile away from the English Convent where they had both been sent to school to convert to Catholicism decades before.
Words are important
The injustice of the way they were treated by Edmund Waterton and a patriarchal system set up to empower men, stays with me as once again I visit the archives underneath Wakefield Library. I want to look through the last remaining papers and letters which Helga Fox and I had spent some time on months before.
I already know the Edmonstone women deserve a blue plaque for the role they played in the development of the famous Waterton nature reserve, but I need some clarity as to what will go on the plaque as a permanent legacy. Words are important. At the back of a dusty set of files I re-discover three letters by Norman Moore, in a bland manilla folder.
Everything seems to go in slow motion and all I am aware of is silence. I recognise the name. Moore was the young friend Waterton refers to in several of his letters. He was just at the beginning of an esteemed career. He had been there when the barrel of rum holding the gorilla from Manchester Museum had arrived at Walton Hall in 1865 and whose description of how the skin peeled away from the muscles due to decay, is reminiscent of a gothic novel.
I notice the date of the letters, written just four years after Waterton’s death. The handwriting is clear and legible and the content utterly gripping. He’s writing, I realise, on behalf of the sisters to someone called Peter Williamson Esquire of Philadelphia. It seems Williamson is in possession of letters Waterton had written, over many decades, to George Ord.
I couldn’t believe it. Could these possibly be the same letters edited with notes by R A Irwin? The same letters that gave an incredible insight into Waterton’s private attitudes and opinions and which showed a life separate to the narrative he spun for himself through his own publications?
First letter from Norman Moore
I read the first letter, holding my breath and hardly believing what I was beginning to realise.
Rue De Visuse Sae Bruges
April 15th 1869
Dear Sir,
I write by the request of the Misses Edmonstone, Mr. Waterton’s executors, to say that they would be particularly obliged if you could let them have Mr. Waterton’s letters to the late Mr. George Ord of Philadelphia. The Misses Edmonstone, his sisters in law, lived with Mr. Waterton for thirty five years, they take the deepest interest in everything concerning him and desire to preserve as many as possible of his letters. I am engaged upon a collection of the letters and papers and a small memoir of the late Mr Waterton. No letters, except such as might seem fit to his executors, would be printed. If you will kindly write to the Misses Edmonstone at the above address, and inform them if they may have the letters, they will be much obliged. The best way of sending the letters may then be decided on. The Misses Edmonstone were intimately acquainted with Mr Ord and Mr Waterton’s letters to him contain frequent mention of them as “my sisters” or “the ladies”.
Thanking you for the courtesy you have shown to the friend of my friend Mr. Fitzgerald.
Remain, dear Sir
Yours truly
Norman Moore.
My brain struggles to catch up with what I have just read. Eliza and Helen have just become key curators of the most insightful, private and fascinating set of letters available about Waterton and from which we learn about his utter contempt towards, amongst other things, women with opinions.
Waterton views of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Most specifically, and this has never been picked up by other writers on the subject, his utter distain towards Harriet Beecher Stowe whose lecture tours across the north hosted by anti-slavery societies about her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin caused Waterton to describe her as “canting, cunning and culminating”.
I reach for my copy of Letters of Charles Waterton by R A Irwin. There it is, on page 102, the letter which has infuriated me for such a long time. It is riddled with denials about slavery and imbued with engrained misogyny. The particular section that irks me so much, from his letter to George Ord on 8 October 1853, reads:
“So, at last, your canting cunning and calumniating Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her holy husband have left your Grandfather’s meadows to pass the evening of their life in the well-cultivated fields of the United States! She has the art of humbug at her finger-ends. I was in Leeds the other day when she was to receive money and thanks at a public meeting from the Mayor of the Borough. I was invited to the farce but I would not go. Having once just dipped into that lying romance called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, I soon saw that it is a made up book, and I am sure that it contains much of the old trash, in a new dress, which used to be sent to Sir Fowell Buxton on slavery. I strongly suspect that Mrs Stowe is not the entire author of ‘Tom’s Cabin’ There have been more hands and heads than one or two at work on it.”
Irwin notes on page 12 that Waterton felt that “Mrs Stowe was a dangerous mischief maker. The fact that Lincoln addressed her as ‘the little woman who started a great war’ should be sufficient confirmation of the correctness of that opinion”.
Not Waterton’s finest hour.
Waterton’s views of Frances Milton Trollop
Whilst churned up by feelings of injustice about how this side of Waterton is so often ignored and sidelined to suit a particular narrative, I revisit his letter to George Ord about Frances Milton Trollop whose Domestic Manners of the Americans in 1832 divided opinion across many continents and whose highly critical narrative of the treatment of enslaved peoples influenced the rise of the anti-slavery movement across the Atlantic and beyond.
Waterton writes in his letter dated 1 October 1832:
“I have just read the first volume and struggled half through the second of the most arrant trash that ever came from the pen of woman. Mrs Trollope (a fit name) has published two volumes on the Domestic Manners of the Americans. The jaundiced old jade convinces me that she is either the most ignorant or the most duped of all our fools who visit America; or that I must have been asleep and in a dream from the day I landed in your country to the day I left it. Her volumes are certainly not worth reading and, of course, not worth answering.”
Those who have been following this series may recall that the following year, in 1833 Waterton wrote that he had “Never possessed a slave in [his] life”.
The irony does not escape me.
Second letter from Norman Moore
I turn to the second of Moore’s letters dated 1 July 1869. I hear the staff start to shuffle towards their own end of day duties and feel a small wave of anxiety kick in. I only have today to get to the bottom of this.
The handwriting is good but somewhere in its journey to the here and now it’s been overlaid by a carbon imprint so it’s hard to read in places. After I’ve read it through the first time, I rub my eyes in astonishment. It’s a reply from Moore to Williamson, who has clearly responded to the first letter. In it, he says:
“The Misses Edmonstone in answer to your question desire me to inform you that Mr Waterton has left a son, the present Mr Waterton and a grandson now seven years old. As the present Mr. Waterton, who resides abroad, takes no interest in Natural History the late Mr Waterton left the whole of his Natural History Collection to his sisters in law, the Misses Edmonstone and they were also his executors. They have settled the whole of this property upon Mr Waterton’s grandson. The present Mr Waterton was only a child when Mr Ord was in England and as far as the correspondence refers to family affairs it is they who are concerned all letters referring to Natural History they intend to have bound up with Mr Waterton’s other scientific letters which will go with the collections, to his grandson.”
He then gives instructions as to where Waterton’s letters should be sent, to ensure their safekeeping.
That’s it then. It’s indisputable. Despite it all, Eliza and Helen ensured the survival of Waterton’s greatest work. I quickly calculate the time they had to pack the entire natural history collection up and realise that they must have worked quickly after Waterton’s death to ensure the safety of the collection. All under the threat of eviction.
As the lights go off in the archives and the staff finish packing away for the day, I hear whisperings and catch my name, “Give Sarah as long as you can before we close, just make sure the collection goes back”. They are really very kind.
Ensuring Waterton’s legacy
The final letter is dated 22 September 1869 and confirms that the letters had arrived from America. Moore states that the letters “throw much light upon Mr. Waterton’s life and will be carefully preserved by his family”.
The reality hits me. Without Eliza and Helen, the entire contents of the natural history collection – which Wakefield Museum housed for decades (but has now returned to Stonyhurst College), and upon which the city has built an identity both environmentally and culturally – is a direct result of the women’s actions at a time of extreme stress and insecurity. It’s a real testimony to their reliance and ability to forgive, despite it all.
Eliza died in Belgium age 62 on 27 Oct 1870, effects under £3,000
Helen died on 7 September 1879, also in Belgium, effects under £4,000
Honouring the Edmonstone sisters with a blue plaque
Eliza and Helen changed the direction of Wakefield’s fortune. This is why the blue plaque telling their story, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the patrimony that tied them forever to their father’s role in the slave trade, will sit proudly alongside all the other stories of the women in the Forgotten Women of Wakefield series as part of our campaign for blue plaque parity.
We hope the plaque will be sited on the footprint of the house of Waterton’s sister, Mrs Carr who lived on Westgate, as the Edmonstone women visited the house frequently. Their legacy is now one of visibility and, as you cannot be what you cannot see, I hope their story inspires others to look deeper, challenge perceptions and provide an alternative view to an established narrative.
I feel a bit emotional as I reach the end of this story. I’m so grateful that, Anne-Mary, Eliza and Helen have at last found their place in history. The library staff wait quietly, patiently. And so, I stretch my hunched shoulders, shuffle papers, pack up my laptop, say goodnight and pad out into the early evening air into what has become, despite it all, a most extraordinary day.
