Charlotte Constance Blood nee James (1840 – 1935)

On 27 January 1859 my third great aunt Charlotte Constance James, eighteen, married Francis Gamble Blood, twenty-nine, at St Andrews Church, Clifton, Gloucestershire. He was a captain in the 69th regiment. The marriage was performed by Charlotte’s step-mother’s brother, the Reverend Charles Dighton, Rector of Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire.

Cheltenham Examiner 2 February 1859 page 8 from the British Newspaper Archive retrieved through FindMyPast

Captain Francis Gamble Blood served in the East Indies from 21 April 1860 to 23 May 1864. He was promoted to Brevet Major on 28 December 1865 and retired on 6 May 1869. On his return to England, in December 1869 he was appointed lieutenant of the 1st Somerset Regiment of Militia.

On 9 November 1869 their son John Neptune Blood was born at Cheltenham. He was baptised on 25 February 1870. His middle name is a Blood family name. At the time of his baptism his parents were living at Royal Parade Cheltenham.

In June 1870 the newspapers, including The Times and papers from the Bristol and Cheltenham area, began reporting a divorce case, Blood v. Blood. Charlotte Constance Blood was suing for judicial separation on the grounds of the adultery of her husband, which was said to have taken place in February 1870. She was granted custody of their son John.

Cheltenham Mercury 25 June 1870 page 2 from the British Newspaper Archive retrieved through FindMyPast

Divorce laws had changed since the divorce of Charlotte’s parents in the late 1840s. The marriage reforms of 1857 created a court that could dissolve marriages under certain carefully defined circumstances. Only adultery was recognised as grounds for divorce. A husband had merely to prove simple adultery but a wife had to prove adultery compounded by some other marital offence such as cruelty or desertion. The court could, and did, rescind provisional divorce decrees if it became convinced that there was evidence of collusion between the spouses. This law remained the basis for divorce in England until 1937.

Divorce was relatively unusual: in the five year period 1869 – 1873 only 289 divorces were filed per year.

Charlotte Blood nee James sought and gained a judicial separation from her husband and custody of her child. Perhaps she did not have the evidence to prove cruelty or desertion as well.

Despite collusion being illegal there seems something odd about the tale. Captain Blood appeared to make every effort to be discovered in his adultery.

In 1881 John Blood was a boarder at Holywell and Bath Wells House, Hanley Castle Worcestershire. I have not found Charlotte Constance Blood on the 1871 or 1881 census.

On the 1881 census taken on 3 April Francis Gamble Blood, Major of Foot retired, was a boarder at 7 Berners Street, Marylebone, London. On 20 May 1881 he was admitted to the Munster lunacy asylum at Fulham. He died there on 14 August 1881. Newspaper notices, such as that in the Cork Examiner of 20 August 1881 stated he died of inflammation of the lungs. “BLOOD – August 14, of inflammation of the lungs, Major Francis Gamble Blood, late of the 69th Regt.,son of the late Colonel J. Aylward Blood, late of the 68th Light Infantry.”

On 23 December 1881 administration of his estate was granted to his widow Charlotte Constance Blood: personal estate 12,820 pounds. At the time Charlotte Constance Blood was living at Ferneyfield, Mitcheldean.

Huntley Court

In 1884 Charlotte Constance Blood bought Huntley Court in Gloucestershire. She became a manager of Huntley school.

Her son John Neptune Blood was educated at Rugby College, Rugby, Warwickshire from 1884.

In 1891 Charlotte Constance Blood, widow living on her own means, was residing at Huntley Court with her son, a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, and four servants: a housekeeper cook, a parlour maid, a house maid and a kitchen maid.

John Neptune Blood graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford University with a Master of Arts (M.A.) and Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.).

In 1893 John Neptune Blood was admitted to the Inner Temple, entitled to practice as Barrister-at-law.

In 1901 Charlotte Constance Blood, living on own means, was residing with her son, a barrister-at-law, in Huntley. The household included three servants: a cook, parlour maid and groom.

Huntley Court was transferred from Charlotte Constance Blood to her son in 1907.

In 1911 her son, a barrister-at-law, was listed as head of household. There was a visitor from Ireland and 5 servants: a butler, cook-housekeeper, housemaid, kitchen maid, and under housemaid.

In 1925 John Neptune Blood sold Huntley Court. Mother and son then lived in Gloucester.

On 7 December 1935 Charlotte died aged 95. She was buried at Huntly, Gloucestershire.

Her son, John Neptune Blood, never married. He died on 29 September 1942 in Gloucester.

Gloucester Citizen 30 September 1942 page 4 retrieved from the British Newspaper Archive through FindMyPast

Coincidences

I suspect that Charlotte did not know much about Philip Champion Crespigny, the man her mother had run away with. In 1870 Charlotte was living in Royal Parade, Cheltenham, a few doors away from her mother’s father-in-law, Charles Fox Champion Crespigny, who lived at 11 Royal Parade with Charlotte Blood’s half-brother, Constantine Pulteney Trent Champion Crespigny  (1851 – 1883).

On 14 July 1869  Constantine joined the 69th regiment less than two months after Francis Gamble Blood had resigned on 6 May.

Related posts

• Charlotte Constance James born 1840

Sources

• Savage, G. (1983). The Operation of the 1857 Divorce Act, 1860-1910 a Research Note. Journal of Social History, 16(4), 103-110. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.slv.vic.gov.au/stable/3786994
• ‘Huntley’, in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 12, ed. A.R.J. Jurica (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 174-196. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol12/174-196.
• British Army Service Records retrieved through FindMyPast for Francis Gamble Blood born 1829. Wo 76 – Regimental Records Of Officers’ Services 1775-1914 Regiment: 69th Foot.
• Baptism record retrieved through ancestry.com John Neptune Blood Baptism Date 25/02/1870 Baptism Place Cheltenham, St Mary Gloucestershire England Father Frances Gamble Blood Mother Charlotte Constance Blood
• Census records retrieved through ancestry.com
  • John Blood Birth date: abt 1870 Birth place: Cheltenham Residence date: 1881 Residence place: Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, England  Detail Class: RG11; Piece: 2919; Folio: 46; Page: 28; GSU roll: 1341700.
  • Francis Gamble Blood Birth date: abt 1830 Birth place: London, London, Middlesex, England Residence date: 1881 Residence place: Marlebone, London, England Detail Class: RG11; Piece: 133; Folio: 57; Page: 44; GSU roll: 1341030.
  • Charlotte Constance Blood Birth date: abt 1841 Birth place: Newnham, Gloucestershire, England Residence date: 1891 Residence place: Huntley, Gloucestershire, England Detail Class: RG12; Piece: 2007; Folio 76; Page 2; GSU roll: 6097117.
  • Charlotte Constance Blood Birth date: abt 1841 Birth place: Newnham, Gloucestershire, England Residence date: 1901 Residence place: Huntley, Gloucestershire, England Detail Class: RG13; Piece: 2418; Folio: 31; Page: 5.
  • John Neptune Blood 1911 census Class: RG14; Piece: 15215; Schedule Number: 18

Charlotte Constance James born 1840

My third great grandmother Charlotte Frances Dana (1820 – 1904) married John James (1808 – 1855), a solicitor from Newnham on Severn in west Gloucestershire, on 14 May 1839 at St Peters church, Worfield near Albrighton Shropshire.

They had three children, Charlotte Constance (1840 – 1935), John Henry (1841 – 1842), and a still-born son born 2 July 1842 .

In November 1847, discovering she was pregnant by her lover Philip Champion Crespigny, Charlotte deserted her husband and daughter Charlotte Constance and fled to France. Their daughter Ada Isadora was born at Paris on 15 May 1848. [At the time, France was in the throes of a violent revolution. Paris especially was greatly disturbed in June 1848 and it has been estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed or injured.]

Before 1857, when the Matrimonial Causes Act reformed divorce law, divorce in England was expensive and difficult to obtain. I have written previously on the Divorce of John James and Charlotte Frances née Dana.

Letters quoted in the Parliamentary debate make two mentions of their daughter. Charlotte wrote in her farewell letter to her husband: “I cannot live, John, and feel myself a blight upon you and our sweet innocent child…Oh, live to protect and guard our child. She will be a comfort and a blessing to you.” To her servant she wrote “Do not be frightened, Estcourt, at my going away. I know you will be kind and good to my darling child. Let her believe I am gone home – though it is to my long and last one. I leave you money (£5), which will pay all till your master comes again. I ask you to be kind and good to the child, and do not let her feel for her poor mother.”

from the report in The Times, 21 March 1849, page 7 , on the debate before the House of Lords on the James’s divorce

Divorce law at the time required that there should be no evidence of joint collusion between husband and wife in organizing the divorce proceedings. At first sight, the divorce of John and Charlotte James is a model petition for divorce, fulfilling all the requirements: evidence of adultery, including the birth of a child which is not the husband’s; good – indeed excellent – marital relations right up to the time of separation; generous and most affectionate conduct by the husband, even acknowledged by Charlotte Frances’s parting letter; an attempt to pursue Philip Crespigny for criminal conversation damages.

It seems likely that for several weeks beforehand, John James, Charlotte Frances and Philip Crespigny were conspiring in the elopement and the divorce. John James would not have wanted to continue with an adulterous wife and someone else’s child, and everything that happened on the Isle of Wight (where Charlotte Frances James had been staying before her flight to France) and subsequently, must have been arranged in collusion. Whether the witnesses were suborned or simply deceived by the married couple acting a charade is impossible to tell, though we may suspect the number of people aware of the truth would have been kept to a minimum: bribery is one thing, blackmail an unwanted complication.

The weakest point was Charlotte Frances’s farewell letter. She may have intended to confirm the good conduct of her spouse and their mutual affection, but the exaggerated style fitted badly with the events that followed. One feels she should have taken some advice and guidance, though it must be acknowledged that the requirements for a successful petition of divorce – that the husband must have behaved well and there be mutual affection, but that adultery must be proved – are somewhat contradictory. On the
other hand, as Disraeli commented upon being told about J.S. Mill’s affair with Mrs Harriet Taylor, ‘The plan of having a husband and also a lover is not entirely without precedent’.

Charlotte Constance James was born 6 July 1840 at Newnham in Gloucestershire. She was seven years old when her mother abandoned her on the Isle of Wight in the care of a servant. The letter to the servant suggests that she be told that her mother had died. Mother and child never saw each other again.

On the 1841 census when she was an infant, she was listed as Charlotte. At the time of the 1851 census when she was ten years old she was listed as Constance. It may be that she had always been known by her middle name or it may be that after her mother left she was known by her middle name not her mother’s, now taboo.

In 1851 Constance James was living in her grandmother’s house in Clifton, a suburb of Bristol, with her father and uncle.

1851 English census Class: HO107; Piece: 1952; Folio: 383;Page: 33; GSU roll: 87352 retrieved through ancestry.com

24 The Mall Clifton

The Mall Gardens, Clifton , Gloucestershire opposite 24 The Mall where young Constance James probably played

Her grandfather, John James, a lawyer, had died on 20 March 1849 at Clifton. Her uncle Charles, also a lawyer, died in late August or early September 1851 at the age of 34 and was buried at St Peters, Newnham.

On 22 July 1852 Constance’s father remarried at Newland, Gloucestershire, to Arabella Veronica Deighton (1826 – 1923). On 3 June 1853, Vera Maria James, half-sister of Constance, was born.

On 23 March 1855 John James died, only 47. Constance was then 14 years old.

On 17 February 1858 Charlotte’s step-mother remarried in Bombay, India to Stanley Napier Raikes (1824 – 1891), a Captain of the 18th Regiment of Native Infantry.

On 27 January 1859 Charlotte Constance James married Francis Gamble Blood at St Andrews Church, Clifton, Gloucestershire. He was a captain in the 69th regiment. The marriage was performed by her step-mother’s brother, the Reverend Charles Dighton, Rector of Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire.

Cheltenham Examiner 2 February 1859 page 8 from the British Newspaper Archive retrieved through FindMyPast

I will write separately about Charlotte Constance Blood née James’s adult life.

Charlotte Frances Dana married Philip Crespigny in Paris on 18 July 1849. They had five children between 1848 and 1858. They sailed for Australia on 3 December 1851 and never returned to England. When they emigrated, they left behind an infant son, Constantine Pulteney Trent Champion de Crespigny who had been born on 5 May 1851. It would appear that they considered he would not be strong enough to survive the voyage. He was brought up by his Crespigny grandparents in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and was reunited with his parents in 1875 at the age of 24.

Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny née Dana, photograph in the collection of my father Rafe de Crespigny

Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny died on 9 November 1904 at her son-in-law and daughter’s property at Eurumbeen East, near Beaufort, Victoria, Australia. Philip Champion Crespigny died at Brighton, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, on 14 September 1889 from general paralysis, which had lasted nearly 13 years.

 

A spa in Bath and visit to Clifton

We were staying in Bath. One of its attractions is the Thermae Bath Spa, built on the site of the Roman baths, and supplied, as were the Roman baths, by warm spring water.

On Sunday Charlotte and I walked down Widcombe Hill and across the River Avon to the Spa for what we expected would be a nice hot plunge. The spa opens at nine o’clock. We arrived at ten past. This meant a queue – the English queue for everything – and so we stood in line for an hour waiting for a change room.

Why hadn’t we booked? You can’t, except for special treatments. And we couldn’t leave the queue for a cup of coffee because we’d have lost our place.

At £40 each I expected something better, but perhaps the Sunday of a Bank holiday weekend in May was not a good time to go. Oh well, the rooftop pool was fun.

The rooftop pool at the Thermae Bath Spa photographed in 2010 from Bath Abbey – image from Wikipedia; photograph by user:Simple Bob CC by 2.0

The Cross Bath adjacent to the Thermal Bath Spa

Looking down Bath Street toward the South Colonnade entrance of the Grand Pump Room. Bath was almost deserted on the Sunday morning except for the queue at the Thermal Bath Spa.

In the afternoon we drove to look at the Clifton Suspension Bridge (designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, completed after his death) near Bristol.

Nearby in Clifton, we found the house of John James (1808 – 1855), the first husband my 3rd great grandmother Charlotte Dana.

John James divorced Charlotte in 1849. At the time of the 1851 census he was living with his mother, brother, and daughter Constance aged 10, at 24 The Mall, Clifton. They had 4 live-in servants. The house overlooks a pretty garden, where I imagine Constance played.

1851 English census Class: HO107; Piece: 1952; Folio: 383;Page: 33; GSU roll: 87352 retrieved through ancestry.com

24 The Mall Clifton

The Mall Gardens, Clifton , Gloucestershire

Divorce of John James and Charlotte Frances née Dana

John James (1808 – 1855), a solicitor from Newnham Gloucestershire, married Charlotte Frances Dana (1820 – 1904) on 14 May 1839 at St Peters church, Worfield near Albrighton Shropshire.

They had two children, Charlotte Constance (1840 – 1935) and John Henry (1841 – 1842).

In November 1847 Charlotte left her husband and daughter and eloped to France from Ventnor on the Isle of Wight with Philip Champion Crespigny. They lived in France under different names including Mr and Mrs Rae and D’Estair. They moved from Havre to Rouen to Paris and then to near St Malo.¹ Their daughter Ada Isadora was born at Paris on 15 May 1848 and christened at the English Protestant Chapel, Saint-Servan-Sur-Mer. Saint Servan is two miles from St Malo. Their son Philip was born 4 January 1850 at St Malo and christened on 14 January. A second son Constantine Pulteney Trent was born on 5 May 1851 at St Malo and christened on 28 May.²

In the mean time John James had engaged a solicitor to pursue his wife and Philip. The solicitor

“stated he had used every effort to induce Mr. Crespigny to put in an appearance to an action for crim. con., but without effect. Indeed, whenever he had reason to think that that gentleman might be in England he had sued out a writ. He had sued out at least seven or eight writs, but in no one instance had an appearance been entered.”¹

In February 1849 the divorce went before the Arches court. The court thought the facts were fully established beyond all doubt, and pronounced for the divorce.³

In March 1849 John James brought a bill for divorce before the House of Lords. Among the lords present were the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham, Lord Campbell, the Duke of Wellington, Lord Stradbroke, the Earl of Mountcashel, Lord Stanley, the Earl of Suffolk, and Lord Ellenborough.¹

The marriage of Charlotte Frances Dana to Philip Champion Crespigny was formalised on 18 July 1849 at the British Embassy in Paris, France. The couple had been living at Fleurtuil in Brittany, a village near St Malo, and Philip C. Crespigny, rentier [i.e. “of independent means”], accompanied by his Dame [lady: probably not wife, which would be Femme] and their child [described as an Enfant, which would indicate a male child, but evidently Ada, who had been born on 15 May 1848] were granted a passport for travel to Paris by the local British Vice-Consul at St. Malo on 30 May 1849.⁴

Divorce for reasons of adultery was first made available in England in 1857. Parliamentary divorce was invented about 1700. Divorce by a private act of Parliament was abolished in 1857. Before 1857 three different legal systems applied: canon law, equity law and common law requiring different lawyers and judges and operating in three separate courts. Before 1857 only Parliament could grant a full legal severance of a marriage allowing both spouses to marry again.⁵

The Court of Arches was an ecclesiastical court located at Doctors’ Commons in London.

The law provided for a husband to make a claim against a wife’s lover for damages because of her adultery – an action known as ‘criminal conversation’, or ‘crim. con.’. In later years this action reinforced the claims for a Parliamentary divorce. The original object of the crim. con. action had been to punish the seducers of married women and to compensate the latter’s cuckolded husbands. By 1800, the great majority of actions were collusive, and their true function was to provide a legal smoke screen under which both husband and wife could obtain an undefended Parliamentary divorce and remarry.⁶ Philip Crespigny’s refusal to be party to the crim. con. court case was unusual and threatened to derail the divorce action.⁷

Only the very rich could afford a Parliamentary divorce, the costs running into thousands of pounds.⁸ It is estimated that £5,000 in 1847 would be worth about half a million dollars today.⁹ In the ten years 1841 to 1850 only 43 Parliamentary divorce petitions were brought in England, about 4 a year. There were 85 matrimonial cases in the Court of Arches in that decade.¹⁰

In 1852, John James also remarried to Arabella Veronica Dighton. They had a daughter Vera Maria James. John James died in 1855.

Charlotte Constance James would never have seen her mother again. She married in 1859 to Francis Gamble Blood. They had a son, John Neptune Blood. Charlotte Constance divorced Francis Blood in 1870; it was a wife’s petition.¹¹ Charlotte Constance Blood died in 1935. Her son died in 1942 without issue having never married.

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<sup>1. The Times, 21 March 1849, page 7 (images of the newspaper articles are below) ↩
2. Notes on the family history prepared by my father Rafe de Crespigny August 2001: The record of baptism for Isidora Ada Charlotte, on 4 July 1848, gives her parents with Christian names Philip and Charlotte, but surname as D’Estrée. It seems that this must refer to the first child of Philip Champion Crespigny and Charlotte Frances nee Dana, born before their marriage, but there appears no explanation for the surname. Eighteen months later, on 14 January 1850 Philip Champion and Charlotte Frances had their infant son baptised as Philip Champion, with the surname given as Crespigny. In each case, the address of the father was given as St Malo, and the quality or profession as “Gentleman”. Both ceremonies were carried out by the same Chaplain John Penleaye; one would imagine the British community in the region of St Malo would have been small enough for someone to have noticed the variations. ↩
3. London Daily News, 19 February 1849, pages 6-7, “Arches Court – Saturday” ↩
4. Notes on the family history prepared by my father Rafe de Crespigny August 2001. He also notes that no place called Fleurtuil appears on the Michelin Map of France, nor is there any record of such a place on the Internet; on the other hand, this is true also of the sub-village Crépigny. The writing of the name, however, is a little uncertain: the initial could be an H, or possibly a P, and there is a Pleurtuit in the vicinity of St Malo, some distance up the Rance, about four kilometres from its western bank. ↩
5. Stone, Lawrence. (1990). Road to divorce : England 1530-1987. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press; pages 6, 20, 46 ↩
6. Stone pages 17, 26 ↩
7. The Hull Packet and East Riding Times (Hull, England), Friday, March 30, 1849; Opprobriums of Law ↩
8. Stone pages 354 – 357 ↩
9. Computing ‘Real Value’ Over Time With a Conversion Between U.K. Pounds and U.S. Dollars, 1830 to Present from http://www.measuringworth.com/exchange/ calculated 1 April 2013 ↩
10. Stone pages 424, 432 ↩
11. Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc (Portsmouth, England), Wednesday, June 22, 1870 ↩</sup>

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London Daily News, 19 February 1849, pages 6-7, “Arches Court – Saturday”

The Hull Packet and East Riding Times (Hull, England), Friday, March 30, 1849; Opprobriums of Law

The Times, 21 March 1849, page 7

Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle etc (Portsmouth, England), Wednesday, June 22, 1870