A bundle of passionate but unclaimed love letters written a century ago and found in a London bank vault have led to the uncovering of an extraordinary story. Research has revealed the adventures of a spirited young woman who by the standards of the time, or perhaps any time, behaved scandalously. Yet she managed to avoid disgrace, get her man, and go on to lead a respectable life. At first sight Ellen Nelsen's behaviour appears shocking. Among other misdeeds she appears to have been bigamously married twice. Given her circumstances, however, her survival is a triumph of fortitude over betrayal.
A bundle of passionate but unclaimed love letters written a century ago and found in a London bank vault have led to the uncovering of an extraordinary story. Research has revealed the adventures of a spirited young woman who by the standards of the time, or perhaps any time, behaved scandalously. Yet she managed to avoid disgrace, get her man, and go on to lead a respectable life. At first sight Ellen Nelsen's behaviour appears shocking. Among other misdeeds she appears to have been bigamously married twice. Given her circumstances, however, her survival is a triumph of fortitude over betrayal.
Bigamy, Bankruptcy, War and Divorce: The Tangled Life of a Toddington Landlady
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Bigamy, Bankruptcy, War and Divorce: The Tangled Life of a Toddington Landlady
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Overview
A bundle of passionate but unclaimed love letters written a century ago and found in a London bank vault have led to the uncovering of an extraordinary story. Research has revealed the adventures of a spirited young woman who by the standards of the time, or perhaps any time, behaved scandalously. Yet she managed to avoid disgrace, get her man, and go on to lead a respectable life. At first sight Ellen Nelsen's behaviour appears shocking. Among other misdeeds she appears to have been bigamously married twice. Given her circumstances, however, her survival is a triumph of fortitude over betrayal.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750991841 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 06/03/2019 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Glittering Wedding
The Bedfordshire Mercury reported Helen Nelson's wedding at All Saints' Church at Kempston near Bedford on 24 August 1899. Her husband seemed a major catch. He was 24-year-old Edward Randell, proprietor of the Empire Palace of Varieties at Dover, and the son of Edward Randell, of 25 Mark Lane, London.
The bride, the youngest daughter of Isaac Nelson, was bedecked in pearls and diamonds (a gift of the groom), and the bridal party was dressed in the latest fashion. So admired were the gowns that on the Saturday before the ceremony they had been displayed for the public to look at in the windows of E.P. Rose & Son, a department store at 50 High Street, Bedford.
The church was full and crowds waited outside for a glimpse of the wedding party.
The wedding, conducted at noon, was described as one of the most stylish that had been solemnized at Kempston for a long time, and the newspaper report goes into a lavish description of the outfits, costumes and flowers. There is a long list of guests and gifts, including a description of the jewels given to the bride by the groom. She in turn gave him a silver-mounted hunting crop.
But this grand occasion was not all that it seemed. There was a notable absentee from the ceremony – the bride's father, Isaac. The bride was instead given away by her older brother, Thomas Nelson. Another oddity was that the best man, named as Percy Stevenson of Birmingham, was 'prevented at the last moment from attending owing to a sudden illness' and was replaced by a local man, Reginald Stratton.
Close examination of the guests listed in the report has failed to find any relation of the groom, even though every seat in the church was taken. Neither of Mr Randell's parents were present at the ceremony. There were some guests which the paper describes as 'from the theatre', who were probably invited by the groom, but the rest seemed to be Helen's friends and relatives.
The absence of the bride's father, and his omission from the list of people who brought gifts for the couple, is both surprising and intriguing. The King William IV pub, at 36 High Street, Kempston, where the wedding breakfast was to be held, was about a mile from All Saints' Church. According to a report of the wedding in the Dover Express, the wedding breakfast was provided by a Mr A. Mann (this was Alfred Mann, a cook from Bedford), but even if Isaac had been organising the reception, it seems likely that if he wanted to attend the ceremony he could have done so. There is no record of Isaac being ill, so perhaps his policeman's instinct told him that the groom was not all that he seemed. Nevertheless, because Helen was under 21, he must have given his consent to the match otherwise the wedding could not have taken place. Perhaps this says a lot about the personality of the bride, and Isaac's inability to resist his youngest daughter's strong will to marry.
Adding to this rather odd set of circumstances is that the bride and groom did not attend their own reception. They had their wedding photographs taken, a rather unusual and expensive innovation at the time, and then left for their honeymoon directly from the church. As the paper put it: 'Almost directly the ceremony was over and they had responded to the abundant congratulations the wedding couple were driven to the Bedford L. & N.W. Station and by the 2.48pm train started on their way to Scarborough, where the honeymoon is to be spent.' After the honeymoon they were to go to Dover, where they would set up home.
Despite the absence of the happy couple, sixty people attended the reception held at the bride's home, the King William IV, where Isaac had erected 'a large marquee in the garden'.
The paper reports an extensive list of guests alongside a description of the lavish gifts the couple had received from them in order to set up their new home in style. There is, however, no explanation of the peculiar aspects of the wedding, particularly the absence of the bride's father.
If Isaac was hesitant about granting his daughter's hand in marriage to Edward Randell, he was very quickly proved right. The 'Dover Millionaire', as Edward was later described in a press cutting in the Kent papers, had a dubious history.
In the wedding report he had given the address of his father as Mark Lane in London. This is a prestigious address, a street in the city near the Tower of London, which at the time was the home of the London Corn Exchange, a very important establishment that set the price for wheat and other grains for most of the country.
At first the authors doubted that the name and address of Edward Randell senior on the marriage certificate could be true. The address seemed far too grand for a father who did not turn up to his son's wedding, but it turned out to be correct – Edward Randell had once been a well-to-do gentleman with a family business in Mark Lane.
The story of the bridegroom's early life is sad, and may explain Isaac Nelson's reluctance to welcome him as a son-inlaw.
Edward Randell Smith was born on 29 January 1878, and at his baptism was registered with the father's name, given simply as Edward, and his surname as Smith, after his mother, Emily Jane Smith, who was thirty-two years younger than the boy's father and appears to have been his mistress.
Edward's parents did in fact marry three years later, on 26 May 1881, in St John's Church, Brixton, when the groom was 63 and the bride 31. The marriage was possible because Edward, who gave his profession as a malt factor, was a widower. He had outlived his first wife, although she had been considerably younger than him. Since she died in 1871, it is puzzling why he felt unable to marry Emily Jane before the birth of their son in 1878.
His new bride was a spinster, with her father being described as a soap manufacturer on the wedding certificate. However, Emily's family had fallen on hard times when she was a young child and she had been admitted to the workhouse at the age of 8, her father having died young and leaving her mother, three brothers and four sisters destitute.
The electoral register of 1881, the year of Edward Randell senior's second marriage, shows that he and Emily were living at The Elms, Acre Lane, Brixton, then a leafy outer suburb of London and still in the county of Surrey. The couple then moved to Knatchwell Road, Camberwell, but after nine years of marriage tragedy struck the young Edward when his father died at the age of 72. Edward Randell senior left an estate of £12,699, 11 shillings and 1 penny to his 40-year-old widow, equivalent to just over £1 million in today's money.
This large sum reflected his status as a man of property and the long lineage of the Randell family, who had been businessmen in the City of London for generations. He also left his gold watch and chain, furniture, linen, plate and plated articles, jewellery, pictures, books and other household and personal effects, liquor and consumable household stores, plus an immediate legacy of £100 cash to be paid on his death to his 'dear wife Emily'.
To John Charles Randell, his nephew, was bequeathed 'the old cabinet saved from the Great Fire of London 1666 and now in his charge and the oval oil painting of my grandfather James Randell now at 25 Mark Lane, aforesaid and I desire that the old cabinet and the oil painting always be kept in the Randell family'.
Along with another £370 of legacies, his widow was to receive the income from his investments to live on. When she died 'all the money, stocks and dividends to be paid to Edward Randell when he attains his 2lst birthday on 29th January, 1899'. It appears that by this stage Edward junior is simply being called Edward Randell – the surname 'Smith' on his birth certificate having been dropped by the family; erasing the inconvenient fact that he was born before his parents were married.
Emily Jane and her teenage son continued to live in Camberwell and it appears that her nephew, William Lack, and one of her half-sisters, Matilda Ward, came to live with them.
But only three years after her husband's death, on 2 February 1894, Emily Jane died at the age of 43. It was three days after her son Edward's 16th birthday. Emily Jane, who had been receiving all the income from her husband's investments, left £1,558 15s 6d, a considerable sum for a girl from a workhouse. Apart from small bequests to her nephew and sister, the remainder of her estate was to pass to her son Edward, on his 21st birthday.
What happened to the orphaned Edward in the five years before he inherited the money is not known, but he appears to have made his way in the world and become a showman. By the time we rediscover him, the young Edward Randell had become a man about town – at least in Dover.
Two months before he married Helen in Kempston, and less than six months after his 21st birthday, an article appeared in The Era, a national weekly paper covering sport and theatre. On 17 June 1899 it described how 'Messrs Engleman and Randell had taken over the management from Mr and Mrs Joe Chevers' of the Chevers' Palace, Dover's music hall. Lavish gifts were exchanged between the old and new owners. Mrs Chevers was presented with a silver salver, silver purse, and diamond and ruby harp brooch from the new proprietors, 'also two handsome bouquets from admirers', while Mr Chevers received a 'silver cigar box, from the new proprietors; diamond pin, from patrons; meerschaum cigar holder, case of pipes, and cigar case, from staff and band'.
The Era reported, 'In a neat little speech Mrs Chevers introduced Messrs Engleman and Randell to the audience, and judging by the applause, these two gentleman already seemed very popular.' The band played 'Auld Lang Syne' and Mr and Mrs Chevers appeared in their own sketch entitled Alphonso's Bride. The paper also reported that in future, the music hall would be known as the Empire Palace of Varieties.
Two months later Edward Randell and Helen Nelson were married at Kempston. On the marriage certificate Edward's age was given as 24, although he was actually 21. His profession was given as 'proprietor' and his residence at the time of his marriage as the Empire, Dover. Helen's age was given as 20, although she was in fact just 19.
In view of future events it is worth noting that lavish gifts were reported at both the handing over of the ownership of the music hall and at the wedding. This, combined with the purchase of the music hall, suggests that Edward Randell was already spending a great deal of his inheritance.
CHAPTER 2Bankruptcy and Abandonment
After their honeymoon, Edward and Helen went to live at 3 East Cliff, Dover, a pleasant house overlooking the sea, and the future must have seemed rosy to the new Mrs Randell. Certainly, Edward was continuing to splash his money around and was the life and soul of any party. For example, in a report of the Dover Wednesday Cricket Club dinner of 3 November 1899, it was stated that once the meal was over 'the rest of the evening was devoted to toasts and song. The loyal toasts were enthusiastically honoured, Mr E. Randell, our Dover 'millionaire', standing champagne round for the purpose, and to spare. After this Mr Randell's own health was honoured, and musically. In replying, Mr Randell made a very humorous speech, concluding with the hope of long life for the Dover Wednesdays.'
But all was not as it seemed. It appears that while Edward Randell described himself as proprietor of the Empire Palace of Varieties, he had, along with his partner Jacob Engleman, only taken up a seven-year lease from Mr Chevers, from 12 June 1899, paying a rent of £150 per year. Engleman, who came from Birmingham, knew the business because he had previously been under-manager of the same music hall. He had then left and had successfully run the Lion Hotel in Dover, before returning to take a stake in the Empire.
How Edward Randell came to be in Dover remains a mystery, but perhaps it is more than a coincidence that both the best man, Percy Stevenson, who failed to turn up at Edward's wedding, and Mr Engleman came from Birmingham. Perhaps Edward had spent some time in Birmingham and met Engleman there, although it may be that he just used the name as a convenience since the authors' best efforts have failed to find anyone called Percy Stevenson in that part of the country.
In any case, the two partners had taken over and were running a very modern establishment in the Empire Palace of Varieties, also called the Empire Music Hall. According to the Dover Express at the time, the Empire claimed to have the 'best London artists' and 'electric light throughout', a rare thing in 1899. Seats cost between 6d (2.5 pence) and 10s (50p).
The pair purchased the fixtures and fittings for £1,000 – Engleman providing £400 and Randell £600.
Whether Helen had any inkling of the problems ahead is not known, but less than five months after the couple set up home in Dover, Edward Randell disappeared. He was last seen in Dover on 23 January 1900, a week before his 22nd birthday.
It seems that by this time he was deep in debt, having run through the entire family fortune in less than twelve months. On 9 February, under the headline 'Millionaire Summoned', it was reported in the Dover Express that Edward Randell had been summonsed for non-payment of rates. The paper said: 'Defendant has been described as the Dover Millionaire and some time ago came into a large fortune. The clerk informed the Bench that Mr Randell had sailed for South Africa. The usual order was made.' In other words, the bailiffs would call at the defendant's home with an order to seize goods to the value of the rates owed.
Two weeks later, a notice of bankruptcy appeared in the Dover Express. The Official Receiver's notice said: 'Re. Edward Randell, lately carrying on business at the Empire Music Hall, Market Square, Dover, and residing at 3, East Cliff, Dover, Music Hall Proprietor. Receiving order made 20 February, 1900.' Events then moved quickly. On 6 March, in his absence, Edward Randell was adjudged bankrupt.
It is not known exactly how Helen parted from her husband, but she returned to the family home in Kempston – the King William IV public house. Nor is it known what possessions she managed to save from the marriage. She may have been able to keep the jewels she had been given 'as a gift from the groom' at her wedding, but if Edward had not paid for them yet then the Official Receiver would have claimed them.
At the time of her abandonment by her new husband, Helen was two months pregnant. Whether Edward knew he was to be a father is unknown.
In those straitlaced Victorian times, it must have been a difficult period for a young woman so publicly married at a glittering ceremony to return home just months later, pregnant and on her own. Her neighbours, and regulars at the pub, must have wondered what had happened. Did they know that the dashing young man had absconded and was being pursued by his creditors? While his bankruptcy had been reported in the Dover papers, there is no trace of it being publicly announced in Bedford.
Helen's baby, Irene, was born on 16 August 1900 at Kempston. The father is given as Edward Randell, music hall proprietor, and the mother's address as High Street, Kempston.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Bigamy, Bankruptcy, War and Divorce"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Richard Hart and Paul Brown.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Foreword,
Introduction,
1 A Glittering Wedding,
2 Bankruptcy and Abandonment,
3 Helen Marries Again,
4 The Toddington Landlady,
5 War Changes Everything,
6 Happily Married at Last,
7 The Love Letters,