History written by the losers

They say that history is usually written by the winners, but if the losers become powerful there is also the good chance they can re-write it to suit themselves.

Following on from an earlier blog about what really happened during the Rape of Nanking, this article by author Isobel Wolff recently appeared in BBC magazine online about the female prisoners of war in the Far East who never get the coverage that their male counterparts do in literature.  The article also drew attention to the fact that British politician Nick Clegg's mother suffered imprisonment as a child. Daily Mail article here.

Several years ago, there was the excellent TV series Tenko and also the Australian film Paradise Road which was inspired by extraordinary women like Margaret Dryburgh and Betty Jeffrey which didn't receive the recognition it deserved, partly because distributors were cagey about offending Japan. See this 1997 article from the Los Angeles Times for comments about the film.

So, is it fine to keep alive the memories of some event like the Holocaust, but less politic to remember other outrages against humanity because of causing offence as a result of changing diplomatic alliances, trade and economics?

A Russian childhood friend of my mother, whom she last saw in Surabaya in 1941, disappeared into a Japanese POW camp somewhere in Java and was never heard of again. Maybe by some miracle she did survive the ordeal, but does what she suffer matter less than what happened to the survivors of Auschwitz or other similar camps in Europe?

There has been the occasional flurry of petitions and media reports into the "comfort women" of the Japanese, but these stories soon seem to disappear from the front pages. Why? One might go so far as to detect some sort of racism at play here because the majority of victims were Asian women and perhaps if a lot more Western women other than the Dutch had suffered, the international campaign for justice might have been more vigorously pursued. Read here about Jan Ruff O'Herne.  There are various Youtube videos available about her, such as this one.

Just yesterday, this article appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun regarding "errors" in an American history text book that "dishonor" Japan in which it is stated:

' ... References to comfort women in the textbook read: “The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as two hundred thousand women age fourteen to twenty ...” and “The army presented the women to the troops as a gift from the emperor ...” These descriptions disregard historical facts.

The recruitment of comfort women took place mainly through private-sector business operators. Investigations by the Japanese government have discovered no document that proves women were forcibly taken away by the wartime army to serve as comfort women. ...'

Sadly, there is no justice forthcoming for those very elderly women, most of them in Korea, Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere, still hoping for a genuine apology and compensation from Japan. 

It seems the "historical facts" of the Japanese nation remain different from those of their victims. Once the first-hand accounts are no more, will these women then be written out of history altogether?

For anyone interested in this topic, Google searches will find many articles and some confronting images on the controversies surrounding comfort women. 

It is difficult to find a really good list of books about women who were imprisoned by the Japanese or forced into being comfort women, but here are a few:

Surviving Tenko, the Story of Margaret Turner

The Real Tenko

A Woman's War

On Radji Beach (about the massacre of Australian nurses, with only one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkel whose biography is Bullwinkel)

White Coolies

Song of Survival

The Comfort Women

Comfort Woman

A dark and stormy marriage - legacy of a woman of courage

“It was a dark and stormy night ...” is one of the most famous parodies of opening lines in literature and was originally coined by author Edward Bulwer Lytton. He is also the author of other famous phrases such as “the almighty dollar”, “the great unwashed” and that famous one much used in recent weeks as a result of tragic events in France, “the pen is mightier than the sword”. 

Some of his phrases can be adapted when it comes to describing the sufferings endured by his wife. Their dark and stormy marriage was often at the mercy of the almighty dollar and even mightier pens - in the courts as well as generating many columns in the press.

The lively and witty Rosina Anne Doyle was born in Limerick in 1802, the younger child of an Irish Baron and his wife, Anna Wheeler , a early advocate for feminism. Anna's marriage was a disaster and she abandoned her husband to live in Guernsey where her uncle was Governor. Rosina grew up in an extraordinary society, full of free-thinkers, Bohemians and exiles from the French Revolution. She had a few years of extra education in London before falling under the spell of a dandy with golden tangled curls and the tangled full name of Edward George Earl Lytton Bulwer Lytton (no wonder he became famous for purple prose). 

But the match was not approved of by Edward's mother, as she considered Rosina to be flighty and nothing but an “Irish adventuress”. According to some references, it was a wild, unbridled on-off affair and their marriage in 1827 was of the necessary shotgun variety. Edward's mother made good her threat, cancelled his allowance thus forcing him to earn a living by his writing. As they were both passionate and extravagant individuals, it was inevitable the marriage would buckle under financial stress and Edward's infidelities, although Rosina also instigated tit-for-tat flirtations. She is reputed to have said on one occasion:

“I went to my husband's rooms which he kept in order to have undisturbed communication with the Muse. I found the Muse in white satin seated on his knee.”

Worse, was the domestic violence that took place in their last home together, Berrymead Priory, Acton (see below for another interesting link to this house).

Rosina - from an image at Knebworth House, home of the Lytton family

Rosina apparently received a vicious kick in the side from Edward shortly before her daughter was born and was even bitten in the cheek by him. Divorce was not easily obtained during this era, but a separation agreement was drawn up. 

One of the cruel, tragic consequences of this arrangement was that Rosina was forced to part from her children. Between 1838 and her death in 1882 she saw her son Edward briefly once or twice and she had to request special dispensation even to visit her dying daughter Emily in 1848.

Edward - also from Knebworth House collection

For a woman used to a certain status in society, the money Rosina received from Edward was a pittance and she spent her life one step ahead of creditors and living in modest circumstances around the country. A study of the Census Returns bears this out, where she is often classified as a lodger in spite of being the wife of a baronet. The only way she could supplement her income was to become a writer herself, and many of her works were a form of revenge on her husband and his family. She wrote of the plight of separated wives and the ill treatment of women generally by their husbands.

Over the years the acrimony between the pair only worsened. When her husband was canvassing for re-election to parliament, she took to the hustings to vilify him. Humiliated and furious, Edward forced Rosina to be confined in Inverness Lodge, a “hospital for mentally defectives” (lunatic asylum). Only through the efforts of her friends and members of the public concerned by her treatment, was she eventually released.

In 1880, a book that was extremely scandalous for the times appeared, entitled A Blighted Life, Rosina's autobiography of everything cruel that was done to her. Edward had passed away some years before, but Rosina's son and the Lytton family were outraged. Rosina seems to have backtracked on its publication and issued a retraction with the long-winded title of Refutation of an audacious forgery of the Dowager Lady Lytton's name to a book of the publication of which she was totally ignorant. It probably made little difference.

Meanwhile, Rosina continued to write – essays and historical novels (under a male pseudonym) - until she died in 1882, isolated, in debt and unmourned by her family and the society which she had embarrassed by her actions. She left a paltry £405.10s. – compare that to her husband's estate of between £70,000-£80,000.

Rosina's grave remained unmarked until 1995 when her great-great-grandson, 2nd Baron Cobbold of Knebworth, arranged for a tombstone to be erected. It bears the inscription she wanted. “The Lord will give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.”

There is no better summary of Rosina's legacy than that written by Marie Mulvey-Roberts in the Oxford Dictionary of Biography:

“Rosina had brought about her ‘hard bondage’ through her refusal to conform to the duties of a Victorian wife, which required women to ‘suffer and be silent’. By drawing attention to the plight of married women and separated wives through her novels, pamphlets, and journalism, Rosina contributed towards the mounting pressure that eventually brought about legislation designed to protect the interests of women. Rosina Bulwer Lytton represents far more than a case history of a hysteric or an unorthodox minor Victorian novelist. For her undoubted talent and extraordinary courage in speaking out against injustice she deserves a permanent place in women's history, as she has provided an often unrecognized source of inspiration to those who have followed. Her most immediate legacy was passed to her granddaughter Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869-1923), who became one of the heroines of the Edwardian women's suffrage movement.”

 A large number of works by and about Rosina Bulwer Lytton can be found at Internet Archive. 

Text of A Blighted Life here, although there is also a recent reprinting of it available via Amazon.

Note:  Most curiously, Berrymead Priory, this house of “sad memories” for Rosina and Edward, was also the brief marital home in the ensuing decade of another “Irish adventuress”, Lola Montez, and George Trafford Heald - another couple doomed by violent passions and blighted by the unjust divorce laws of the age in which they lived. I explore this relationship in some detail in my novel Her Fatal Touch: the Life and Loves of Lola Montez, currently being revised for a new e-edition out soon.

"Goddesses of Mercy", Women of the Other Holocaust

On 14 May, 1941, a fifty-four year old spinster turned on the kitchen gas in a house in Indianapolis and did away with herself. It wasn't the first time she had tried - a year earlier on her way home to the United States after close to thirty years missionary service in China she had attempted suicide on the ship. Considering the mental burdens she must have carried and the horrific physical abuses and tortures she had witnessed, it isn't that surprising. Her name was Wilhelmina ("Minnie") Vautrin, known to the Chinese as "Goddess of Mercy" for her actions during the infamous Rape of Nanking (Warning - link contains some graphic images) in which she saved many thousands of Chinese women from rape and murder by the Japanese army.

I am very familiar with the story of the Massacre as I grew up hearing about it from my parents who lived in China at the time and who personally knew some of the witnesses who escaped from Nanking to Shanghai to tell the tale of what they had seen. My father served in the Shanghai Defence Force during 1937 and I still have his albums that contain gruesome photographs that he took of the Japanese carnage inflicted on the civilian population of China.

What makes this event particularly distressing is that, unlike the Holocaust in Europe which is only denied by a recalcitrant few, the majority of Japanese still refuse to acknowledge it ever happened, or at least they minimise the scale of the brutality and dispute the Chinese figures of 300,000 dead.

And as if the rest of the world still doesn't want to know either, just this weekend reports of the first Chinese commemoration seem to have been relegated to the less important mid-sections of Western newspapers. BBC version - Nanjing Massacre

Minnie Vautrin knew the truth of it. And so did Tsen Shui-fang - reputedly the only Chinese woman to keep a secret diary of the events as they unfolded. Their stories are told in two books by Hua-ling Hu.

See Google Books for full biographical details of both women

The other book by Hua-ling Hu.

 Minnie Vautrin is buried in Illinois.

Find-a-Grave

Links to other sites:

Youtube re-enactment of Minnie's testimony.

Detailed history of the atrocities of the Massacre.

John Rabe - German Nazi businessman who saved an estimated 250,000 Chinese.

Several movies:

Article about Chinese film The Flowers of War.

Another Chinese film City of Life and Death

German film John Rabe (apparently Minnie was written out of the script and replaced by a French woman!)

American film Nanking (Mariel Hemingway played Minnie.)

Many books on the subject - just key "Nanking" or "Nanjing" into your search.

www.bookdepository.com
www.amazon.com
www.amazon.co.uk

Off with the Pixies

My lovely daughter Vix -- who is a very talented and perceptive tarot reader (find her on Facebook and see her in action here at New Age Hipster) -- sent me a link to this interesting blog about Pamela Colman Smith. 

An original line drawing by Pamela Colman Smith

What an amazing story - and I can't believe I knew nothing of this woman in spite of having seen her work before in all sorts of publications - possibly as Pixie Smith, the other name she was known by. She is just one of so many female artists who have never had the recognition they deserve. Only through her images for early tarot cards is she now remembered, but she did so much more. This book on The Russian Ballet may be familiar to many:

More images in the full text available at Gutenberg

Being a little dubious about what the blog said about Pamela/Pixie's origins - that her mother was Jamaican and father American, it seems that there have been a lot of errors about her being perpetuated across the Internet. Some state she was born in Manchester, others in London, and some even say that she was adopted, or was the foster daughter of the actress Ellen Terry!  Other sites allege she was Lesbian, others that she was a reclusive and committed Catholic. 

As it seems people have taken these assorted facts and embroidered them to suit their own agendas, there is definitely scope here for a reliable and authoritative biography about this woman. I did some swift research of my own through various genealogical sites and also found a few sources that appear more trustworthy than others.

Her full name was Corinne Pamela Mary Colman Smith and she had solid New England American ancestry on both sides and just because she wrote and illustrated a book on West Indian folklore it seems assumptions have been made that she had to have black heritage! I recommend this website by Phil Norfleet as one of the better ones.

Pamela died in 1951 in Bude, Cornwall, leaving a modest estate of just over £1,000 and it looks as if there is no gravestone or plaque to mark her existence. Norfleet's site also says this about Pamela/Pixie:

"... in my opinion, she chose that area because pixies were believed to be particularly concentrated in the region around Devon and Cornwall. She always thought herself as a pixie who really didn't fit in well among ordinary humans. She once told W B Yeats that she had been able to see fairies in Ireland. I hope that she found and was able to see what she was looking for in Cornwall! "

(New Age Hipster Vix may find it psychically interesting that her own ancestors on her grandmother's side all came from the Bude region - where of course piskeys/pixies and fairies still exist!)

Cats from "In Chimney Corners - Merry Tales of Irish Folklore"

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Not a job for a woman - Aleen Isabel Cust

"I freely admit that the best of my fun I owe to horse and hound"

(Aleen Isabel Cust)

Early female doctors are given a lot of coverage in lists of "firsts", but when I went in search of the first woman veterinarian there was little information available. Almost expecting her to be an American, I discovered that she was, in fact, English – or more correctly, Anglo-Irish.

Aleen Isabel Cust was born in 1868 in County Tipperary, one of six children of Sir Leopold Cust. When her father died in 1878, she came under the guardianship of the very wealthy Widdrington family of Newton Hall, Northumberland **.

The Widdringtons recognised that Aleen was a spirited young woman with a mind of her own and they encouraged her ambitions. She originally trained as a nurse in London, but having loved animals since her childhood was determined to become a veterinary surgeon instead. (Her grandmother, Mary Cust, a lady in waiting to the mother of Queen Victoria, was a cat fancier and wrote the book, The Cat: its History and Diseases (1856). 

Aleen’s family tried to stop her doing something so radical as it was not considered a job suitable for a woman, but having a modest private income at her disposal, in 1894 she moved to Edinburgh, changed her surname to Custance and was admitted into the New Veterinary College, founded in 1873.  

Aleen was a top student, always first in her classes and she won a gold medal for zoology. When she prepared for her first exams, however, she received a blow as the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) decided that a woman couldn’t sit their examinations. The College was divided on the issue and the profession at large became involved in the debate. After much wrangling, she was able to complete her studies but she could not officially call herself a veterinary surgeon. Her professor gave her a high recommendation and suggested she take up an assistant’s post with William Augustine Byrne, a new veterinary graduate setting up a practice in Roscommon, Ireland.

The following paragraph is taken from the Oxford Dictionary of Biography (ODB) and gives some startling information about Aleen’s private life as well:

"He [Byrne] was an engaging personality, handsome, witty, and popular both socially and professionally. The arrival of Miss Cust as his assistant caused consternation and scandalised the priesthood, but her competence and poise won her respect. There is reason to believe that they lived as man and wife and that she had two daughters, born in Scotland, who were later adopted. Aleen never married, though in 1904 she was engaged to Bertram Widdrington, son of her guardian."

Did Aleen really have two illegitimate daughters by Byrne? It seems astonishing, even a bit far-fetched, given the Irish clergy were already scandalised by a woman doing the work she did - what would they think of her having babies out of wedlock as well? Maybe it was some rumour put about to further discredit her, as I am unable to find anything else that substantiates it, but I must defer to the ODB as a respected and authoritative publication and I doubt they would have accepted such a statement without fairly strong proof. What happened to end her engagement to Bertram Widdrington is also unknown, and he married another woman in 1912.

A biography on Aleen Cust by Connie E. Ford (interesting in her own right) was published in 1990, but copies are rare, so I am unable to check if all this information is contained in it and if anyone reading this can tell me more, do please contact me.

After Byrne died, Aleen took over his practice and the ODB further says:

She made her visits riding side-saddle on an Arab stallion, or driving one of her several horses in a gig. When the day's work was done she would dress formally for dinner, and be waited on by her servants.

With the outbreak of World War I, Aleen left Ireland and drove herself to France where she was based in Abbeville and volunteered for three years looking after the countless thousands of horses in transit to and from the Western Front. In 1918, she enlisted in Queen Mary's Auxiliary Corps where she worked as a bacteriologist.

Finally, after the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919, which forbade the exclusion of women from the professions, Aleen Cust could no longer be refused membership of the RCVS and, after a brief examination, she was finally awarded her membership twenty-two years after she had completed her training.

Aleen returned to Ireland, but the situation there was no longer welcoming for people of her Anglo-Irish background and so she retired to Lyndhurst, Hampshire. She travelled much during her later years and while visiting friends in Jamaica in 1937 she died suddenly and is buried there.  In her Will she specified that no motorised transport should be used at her funeral, only horses.

The first woman vet in Australia was Isabelle Bruce Reid and it seems the first American was a woman with the curious name of Mignon Nicholson.  She graduated in 1903 from McKillip Veterinary College in Chicago, Illinois, but there is very little to be found on her on-line so this is subject to verification. (There is no Wikipedia entry on her and if you try Googling that name, you can end up with a brand of piano!) There is also this story on Elinor McGrath.

Apart from the ODB entry, more about Aleen can been read in International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950 and here.

A general article here (American) on other early women vets.

** The Widdrington family are a fascinating family. The Hall and its contents were auctioned off in 2009. Read about them in this article from The Newcastle Journal.

Afflicted Widow and Mother

Returning to my interest in shadowy wives of the British Empire, on a recent visit to Bath Abbey, several memorial plaques on its walls spiked my curiosity and this one in particular “erected by [an] afflicted widow and mother” brought tears to my eyes. *

IN MEMORY OF BREVET LT. COLONEL JOSEPH MAYCOCK,
CAPTN. IN H.M. 53RD SHROPSHIRE REGT. OF FOOT,
WHO DIED AT SIMON’S TOWN, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE,
AUGUST 8TH 1860, AGED 41 YEARS,
FROM THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE DURING THE INDIAN MUTINY,
OF 1857, WHILE SERVING ON THE STAFF OF SIR HENRY HAVELOCK,
“THOUGH HE SLAY ME, YET WILL I TRUST IN HIM.” JOB III.15.

AND IN MEMORY OF HIS CHILDREN,
FRANCIS WILLIAM MELLOWES, WHO DIED AT KURRACHEE, SCINDE,
FEBY 19TH 1849, AGED 1 YEAR,
MABEL ROSS, WHO DIED AT SEA, MAY 17TH 1860, AGED 15 MONTHS,
MAUD MARY, WHO DIED AT SEA,
JUNE 14TH 1860, AGED 5 YEARS AND 4 MONTHS,
MABEL MAUD, WHO DIED AT MERTHER, CORNWALL,
NOVEMBER 30TH 1860, AGED 4 MONTHS,
“MINE OWN WILL I BRING AGAIN AS I DID SOMETIME FROM THE DEEP OF THE SEA.”  PSALM LXVIII.22.

THIS TABLET IS ERECTED BY THE AFFLICTED WIDOW AND MOTHER.

Surviving officers of the 53rd Shropshire Regt on return to England in 1861 after the Mutiny
Shropshire Regimental Museum

I was staggered at the thought that this woman had not only lost her husband, but four children as well – three of them in the same year with two whose only grave is the sea. Plus, she had obviously been an army officer's wife in India at the time of the Mutiny and exposed to all the extra dangers and traumas that would have entailed. She suffered tragedy piled upon tragedy.

So who was the unamed wife of Joseph Maycock? Did she have any other surviving children? However did she cope afterwards?

Clearly, to afford a marble plaque in such a prestigious setting as Bath Abbey, she must have had financial means or others close to her, e.g. wealthy in-laws, helped to pay for it. A search of  various ancestral and genealogical websites reveals some of her story.

Elizabeth Mary Selina Brown was born on 15 November 1823 and christened on 17 July 1824 in Secunderabad, India.  Her father was Robert Brown, her mother, Ann. An elder sister, Selma, born the year before did not survive beyond the age of two. It is possible her father was associated with the army but having a common name he is not easy to trace.

On 14 January 1847 at Hingoli, aged 22, Elizabeth married Lt. Joseph Maycock, aged 27, of H.M. 22nd Regiment.  On the marriage register, Joseph’s father is shown as James Dobbin Dottin Maycock ^

From then on, Elizabeth seems to have moved frequently and been pregnant every second year.  Apart from the four children listed on the plaque, she had another two boys who did survive - Francis Mellowes Maycock, her second son born in Karachi in September, 1849 (just nine months after his elder brother died) and Stewart MacMurdo Maycock, born in Dagshai in 1851. Both men went on to serve in the army as well, both retiring in England as full Colonels.  Francis, too, suffered the loss of a child to India, with his only son, Gerald, dying there at the age of 3. Although married, Stewart does not appear to have left descendants.

Elizabeth received a widow's pension and it is likely that Captain Joseph Maycock's promotion to Brevet Lt. Colonel may have helped to secure a higher rate for her, but it is difficult to know how much income she would have had. In 1861, the Probate Registry shows that the Captain had effects of "less than £20" in England, with Elizabeth being resident at Westbury-upon-Trym, Gloucestershire, at the time.

In 1870, Elizabeth Maycock of Eldon Villa, Redland, Bristol, is shown as the beneficiary under letters of administration for Mabel Maud Maycock, Spinster, who died ten years before. Elizabeth received less than £300 from this estate. It does seem odd that a four month old baby should warrant letters of administration, but it was obviously some sort of inheritance that Elizabeth had to claim. 

The Census Returns indicate a peripatetic life for Elizabeth. In 1861, she was in Scotland as a "visitor" at Fingask House in Aberdeenshire.  In 1871, aged 46, she lives alone as a "lodger" at 320 Elton Road, Clevedon, North Somerset, and is described as an officer's widow on a pension. Strangely, there is no other individual listed at that address, not even a servant, so one has to wonder if she was perhaps just a temporary minder of the house for somebody else.  Elizabeth can't be traced in the UK 1881 Census and perhaps she was abroad somewhere, but in 1891 she is a "boarder" in a boarding house with other single women in their sixties, at 10 Leinster Square, Paddington.

Visitor/lodger/boarder all seem to indicate a rather lonely wandering existence. Was she estranged from her sons, or did their army service (Stewart MacMurdo spent several years in Canada) mean that she rarely saw them?

We can only speculate as to the state of her mental health after all she had endured. One hopes she had support mechanisms - possibly religion - in that age when a stiff upper lip was mandatory. It also serves to remind those of us who live in modern western societies that we should be eternally grateful for the medical advances that led to inoculations and antibiotics that have almost guaranteed that no mother has to bury child after child or lose a husband at a relatively young age.

One irony is that 70 years after Elizabeth Maycock lived in Elton Road, Clevedon, Somerset, that same road was home to the Naval Laboratories where penicillin was developed.

Elizabeth died in 1892 in Reigate, Surrey, and where she is buried.

There is no image of Elizabeth to be found online, but this painting entitled "The Widow's Prayer" by Frederic Leighton seems to capture something of the all-encompassing grief she must have endured in her younger years.

Cecil French Bequest

 * It has also been recorded on the Gravestone Project website here

^ Who also has a plaque in Bath Abbey detailing his achievements in Barbados. See here

The Bligh Women

William Bligh, 1814.
State Library of New South Wales

History is full of individuals guaranteed to create heated debate whenever they are discussed and one of the most famous is Captain William Bligh who has been the subject of numerous biographies and much historical analysis, including caricature at the hands of Hollywood, although his actions trying to control the corrupt maverick New South Wales Rum Corps have never been given quite the same world-wide attention that the Mutiny on the Bounty has warranted.

But what is known of the women in his life?

In 1780, soon after Bligh returned from the final voyage of Captain James Cook during which he was Master of the Resolution, he met Elizabeth (Betsy) Betham, the Glasgow-born daughter of the collector of customs and water bailiff at Douglas, Isle of Man. It seems there was instant mutual attraction and the couple were married at the parish church at Onchan on 4 February 1781. (The original church was replaced early in the 19th Century.)

Betsy was a refined, cultured and well-educated woman with family connections that would prove a great asset to Bligh’s career. She was the niece of Duncan Campbell, an influential merchant and shipowner who was the overseer of the convict hulks anchored in the Thames and who was also instrumental in the establishment of New South Wales as a penal colony.
It is most likely that it was Campbell who recommended to Sir Joseph Banks that Bligh be appointed for the infamous breadfruit expedition that would eventually lead to the Mutiny. (Bounty had been one of Campbell’s own vessels, a collier named Bethia)

Other individuals known to Betsy and her family who became involved with the Bounty included Thomas Hayward, Peter Heywood, John Hallett and Fletcher Christian, with whom Bligh had sailed twice to Jamaica prior to the fateful voyage to the South Pacific.

Betsy had eight children in total, including two sets of twins – one set being her only sons, William and Henry, both of whom tragically died shortly after birth in 1795. Her daughters were Harriet, Mary, Elizabeth, twins Frances and Jane, and Anne – allegedly an epileptic and mentally incapable.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Betham Bligh
Pitcairn Islands Study Center

As Sven Wahlroos states in his Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas: A Companion to the Bounty Adventure: 

She [Betsy] was probably Bligh’s only friend in life. He had two patrons who stood by him: Betsy’s uncle Duncan Campbell and Sir Joseph Banks, but, as far as we know, he had no friends. Bligh did not have the kind of personality required to keep a friend; he was far too preoccupied with proving his own excellence and lack of faults to engage in the giving part of a give-and-take friendship. 

Betsy, however, was devoted to him and stood by him through thick and thin. When stories began to arrive from New South Wales that were uncomplimentary to Bligh, to say the least, she actively campaigned on his behalf writing letters right and left to persons with influence, especially of course to Banks.

Most of their married life they had been apart from each other. When Bligh came back from New South Wales in 1810, his active career was finished and the two of them might have looked forward to spending his retirement years together. But Betsy’s health was broken – some say as a result of the agony she had experienced when faced with stories about her husband which she could not or would not believe. 

She died on April 15, 1812, at the age of fifty-nine, and was buried in the family grave in Lambeth Churchyard where Bligh was to follow her five and a half years later.

William and Betsy Bligh had many descendants including quite a number of Australians.

The same autocratic gaze of her father
Mary O'Connell, daughter of  Captain William Bligh, c 1847
National Library of Australia

Mary Bligh Putland had married Maurice O’Connell in 1810,  her second marriage. She was also the subject of a historical novel by Penelope Nelson and these paragraphs about the book make Mary sound like a woman who knew her own mind and would not be crossed!

Mary caused a sensation one Sunday when lace pantaloons were visible under her sheer muslin dress. She nursed her dying husband at Government House (he had tuberculosis) and was widowed just three weeks before the Rum Rebellion.

She outlined the colony’s growing political tension in letters to her mother. On 26 January 1808, she tried to repel 400 armed soldiers – their bayonets were drawn - with insults and a parasol. She spent a year under house arrest with her father in Government House and shared Bligh’s incarceration at the Barracks in January 1809. Later that year Mary endured cold months marooned at the mouth of the Derwent [river in Tasmania] on HMS Porpoise.

On her return to Sydney in early 1810 she was befriended by Elizabeth Macquarie [wife of the next Governor] and courted by Colonel Maurice O’Connell, Macquarie’s deputy. Despite her father’s initial disapproval, she married O’Connell, and became the mother of a large family. After serving in Ceylon and Malta, the O’Connells returned to Sydney in 1838, living at Tarmons on the Darlinghurst Estate (now St Vincent’s College, Potts Point). After the death of her husband, many years her senior, Mary lived in Paris.

Tarmons, Woolloomoloo, Sydney 1845 (State Library of NSW)

More detail can be read in an article about Mary and her role in the Rum Rebellion by Shirley Seale for the Hawkesbury Historical Society and that has Mary’s contemporaries describing her as:

"... sauciest, daintiest and most determined little spitfire ever to preside at Government House ..." 

"... conceited and extremely affected and proud ..." 

"Extremely violent and passionate, so much as now and then to fling a plate or candlestick at her father's head."

And so it would seem that Mary was definitely a chip off the proud and irascible old block that was her father!

Caricature of Bligh being dragged out from under his bed by officers of the Rum Corps
1808. (State Library of New South Wales)

The name of Bligh can still arouse political controversy today in Australia. Another descendant who learned what it is like to be deposed is the former Premier of the State of Queensland, Anna Bligh, Betsy and William Bligh’s great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter - the direct descendant of Elizabeth, who married her own cousin, Richard Bligh, thus preserving the name.

Campaign advertisement Anna Bligh