Ellen TURNER [33380]

  General Notes:

The Provinces.
The funeral took place at Great Harwood near Blackburn, yesterday, of Miss Mary JJ Turner, 85, the last member of the family of the late Mr William Turner, formerly of shrink the park, Chester, and member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1832 to 1841.
Her death severs the last personal link in an extraordinary romance in which the distinguished colonial legislator and author, Edward Gibbon Wakefield was the principal actor. This episode involved questions of abduction, criminal prosecution, and a special act of Parliament. Her sister Ellen, the heroine, who was heiress to considerable property, was at school at Liverpool in the early part of 1827 and under the pretence that her father was very ill she was taken away to Manchester by a person representing himself as a servant. There she was joined by Wakefield, who told her her father was ruined by the failure of a bank, and promised if she would marry him to give £60,000 to save him from imprisonment. This she consented to, and the ceremony was performed at Gretna Green. Hearing of her abduction her two uncles followed the couple to Calais and brought her home. Wakefield was subsequently prosecuted at Lancaster, and with a brother who was implicated, sentenced to three years imprisonment, and in the following month the House of Lords passed the bill annulling the marriage.
The Standard Mar 25, 1899.

  Research Notes:

Image courtesy of Fox Family Tree Ancestry

Ellen married Edward Gibbon WAKEFIELD [1655] [MRIN: 11925], son of Edward WAKEFIELD [1637] and Susannah CRUSH [1638], on 8 Mar 1826 in Gretna Green Scotland. The marriage ended in annulment. (Edward Gibbon WAKEFIELD [1655] was born on 20 Mar 1796 in Old Jewry City of London, died on 16 May 1862 in Wellington NZ and was buried in Bolton St Cemetery Wellington.)