DEBORAH CASTLE (1816-1902) AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE (PART ONE)

Much is still imperfect in the social relationship between the sexes. But the recent anniversary of the death of Women’s Suffrage campaigner Emily Davison should remind us how far we have come in the last hundred years. And the fight for electoral equality had already been underway for perhaps a hundred years when Ms Davison died from injuries sustained while trying to tie a protest scarf to the king’s horse during the Derby.

I recently came across a Bergen University worksheet of quotations from campaigners for women’s suffrage in 1878. With great pride I found that two of the thirteen voices cited were ancestors of mine of whom I have written here in the past.

Mary Gurney (1836-1917)

One was Mary Gurney, daughter of my great great great aunt Emma Gurney (nee Rawlings) and author of Are We To Have Education For Our Middle Class Girls? Mary wrote in October 1878:

If women householders were not, as at present, excluded from the parliamentary franchise, their influence would be of much value in securing attention in the House of Commons to measures affecting the educational interests of girls.

The other was my favourite forebear, my formidable great great great aunt Deborah Castle. In October 1878, according to the Bergen University document, she declared:

My view with respect to the extension of the franchise remains unchanged. I cannot but think that those women ratepayers who like myself take an interest in social questions, must, as I do, feel strongly the injustice that is done them in being called upon to share in the taxation, without participating in the advantages conferred by property on the other sex, of a voice in parliamentary representation.

Sir John and Lady Deborah Bowring, in 1864, by Disdéri Eugène (who made his name and fortune after photographing Napoleon III in 1859)

Deborah blossomed in middle age. Thwarted in unsuitable love as a young woman, she seemed condemned to stay at home dutifully caring for her aging parents. The death of her widowed mother in 1856 finally released her, and four years later she married the radical but elderly Sir John Bowring (1792-1872). As Lady Bowring, Deborah emerged from the shadows of spinsterdom to become a radical voice in her own right, speaking from platforms on women’s issues and the Unitarian Church, of which both she and John were followers. She grew a reputation as "a woman of vigorous grasp of mind and efficient action."

Deborah, eleventh of thirteen children, was christened in Lewins Mead Unitarian Chapel in Bristol in 1816, in a sort of job lot with her three older siblings Charles, Caroline and Ellen. (Her other siblings were also christened there in similar batches.) A year after her christening, the pastorship of Lewins Mead passed to Dr Lant Carpenter, a campaigning educationalist who had taught Deborah’s husband at his previous appointment in Exeter and whose sermons must surely have influenced her thinking as she grew up in Bristol.

 Dr Lant Carpenter (1780-1840), c1830, from the memoirs published in 1842 by his son Russell Lant Carpenter; and Mary Carpenter (1807-1877), c1870, by Cyrus Voss Bark

Dr Carpenter’s eldest daughter Mary, although nine years Deborah’s senior, must have been a friend. Mary is remembered today as a campaigner for women’s rights and a social reformer who founded the ragged school movement. Besides her father, a formative influence on Mary was a meeting with Hindu reformer Ram Mohan Roy, who had fought since the early nineteenth century for property inheritance for Indian wives, education for Indian girls and an end to the practice of Indian widows immolating themselves on their late husbands’ funeral pyres.

(Mary met Roy while he was staying in Bristol with “Miss Castle and Miss Kiddell.” Roy died of meningitis at Catherine Castle’s home in 1833, and Catherine died in 1834, her will the subject of much speculation by Deborah’s brother Charles in a letter about which I have written here before. Catherine’s mother was Catherine Kiddell, and by the will a Miss Kiddell, presumably a niece of the mother and cousin of Catherine Castle, inherited an eyebrow-raising £7000. Mary’s father Dr Carpenter was left £3500, while Deborah, Charles and their eight surviving siblings had to share a mere £11,000 between them!)

Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833)

I digress. Mary Carpenter and Deborah Castle shared with Mary Gurney a zeal for social and educational reform and in 1869 the Misses Carpenter and Castle also shared a stage in Bristol at the first Ladies Conference of the Social Science Association. Their contributions illustrated tensions within the Women’s Movement – should women simply take a greater public part in traditional feminine philanthropic “caring” roles? or should they campaign for greater rights? More on that clash of ideologies in my next post.

CATHERINE CASTLE (1812-1834) AND THE READING OF THE WILL

My 3x great grandfather Thomas Castle was a partner with his brother Michael in the Bristol Distillery of which I wrote earlier. Along with their brother Robert they were as a result prominent local citizens whom other prominent local citizens wanted to see in positions of power in the community.

At a time before general suffrage, electorates were small and more or less corrupt clubs of privileged burghers. There was in those days (the start of the nineteenth century) a political practice strange to modern minds, of nominating and even electing people for public office without their consent. Thomas, the younger of the three, was not unusual therefore in refusing to serve when he was elected an alderman of Bristol Corporation on two occasions, in 1812 and 1820. Michael also refused when he was voted in twice, in 1798 and 1806, although he relented when elected for a third time in 1809. He remained a member thereafter until his death in 1821, having also served terms as sheriff and mayor of the city. Robert, the eldest, had that eldest-child sense of responsibility and accepted his election from the start, in 1794. He was sheriff twice and as Mayor of Bristol died in office in 1803.

Michael Castle (1768-1821)

died intestate, a warning to us all!

At least his daughter Catherine didn’t make that mistake.

All this power and influence created enormous wealth in the Castle dynasty. Robert and Thomas had large families whose members inherited their wealth and married with many of the other prominent and powerful Bristol families of the day. Michael however left only one child, a daughter Catherine who died, unmarried, on 11^th December 1834, just three weeks after her twenty-second birthday.

Which is where I come in. Having inherited a suitcase full of nineteenth century Castle correspondence, I came across a letter to gladden the heart of any family historian – one dated 28^th December 1834 which begins, “I know you are very anxious to hear the result of today’s proceedings, and I am just returned from the reading of the Will.”

The same letter ends with a postscript – “Do not mention to anyone our suspicions of underhand work with respect to poor Kate’s Will, as it is better that it should not come from us; but you shall hear all particulars when you return and then judge for yourself.” In between, Charles Castle (a son of Thomas) writes to his sister Julia in scandalized tones about its terms. He is convinced that “there is some thing not quite right about the Will …, that there has been some undue influence over Kate’s mind. … [We] have suspicions of some others who shall remain nameless.”

This is all based on the fact that Catherine’s mother’s side of the family, the Kiddells, are rather better provided for than her Castle cousins are. He reports that Julia, Charles and their eight surviving siblings, and perhaps also the surviving children of Robert Castle, will share £11,000 – a pretty large bequest in 1834, I would have thought. But Charles goes on to point out that each Kiddell is getting at least £3000 apiece, as are various family retainers and business associates. One Mr Harris, a much disliked associate of Kate’s late father nevertheless described in the will as “the particular friend of my late father,” gets £10,500, almost as much as the whole Castle tribe. Another, the mysteriously named Sea Griffin, gets £30,000. “There is also a small quantity of plate left to Hinton Castle. That is all the Castles get from their sick relation.”

A hearse and four makes quite a statement at a funeral.

(This one is from horse-drawn carriage specialists Absolutely Fabulous)

There was certainly plenty of money floating about. The will reading immediately followed the funeral, which “was conducted on the most expensive scale. Six coaches and four, a chariot and four and a hearse another, and about six private carriages. In the chariot were Dr Carpenter & Mr Ackland; their followed two coaches filled with pall bearers, then the hearse then a coach containing uncle Henry, Hinton, Robt and Michael. Then a coach with Wm & yr humble servant, Sanders & Harris. How the remaining two were filled I do not know. Harris was “sighing like a furnace” the whole way from Stapleton to Brunswick Square, and I understand from Michael and Uncle Henry, who went up at separate times with him to see the Coffin before the procession started, that he was exercising his bellows in the same manner there.”

Charles and Julia’s father Thomas had died seven years earlier, presumably leaving similar legacies in favour of his own nearest and dearest instead of his brother Michael’s. So I’d say Charles and Julia didn’t have too much to complain about. But there’s nothing like a will for stirring a family up, I’ve found! And in the midst of Charles’s trouble-making, even he is forced to admit that “as far as regards myself I am very well satisfied. It is I think more than we had reason to expect.”

At one point in the letter Charles breaks off from legacy gossip to pass on a snippet of shocking Bristol news. Its nature may explain the readiness of the Castle cousins to believe in skullduggery concerning Kate Castle’s will. More in my next blog!