CityLife

Stranger than fiction

IT has all the ingredients of the raciest 19th century novel - a young heiress cruelly deceived, a well-connected but penniless bounder, a flight to Gretna Green by horse and carriage and thence to France, followed by a trial splashed luridly across newspapers to the scandalised horror of the middle classes in their drawing rooms.

But The Shrigley Abduction is a true story, though stranger than fiction. For, in March, 1826, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a 30-year-old former diplomat with one elopement already to his name, arranged for 15-year-old Ellen Turner to be spirited away from her boarding school and, within 36 hours of their first meeting, had tricked her into marrying him.

His foolhardy crime would earn him national notoriety and a three-year jail sentence.

"The more we read the contemporary newspaper accounts of the abduction and trial, the more intrigued we became," says Abby Ashby, from Timperley, former head of history at Jeff Joseph Technology College, Sale, who co-wrote The Shrigley Abduction with the college's former head of English, Audrey Jones, from Hale Barns.

"We could see a lot of parallels with things that happen today. This became not just a local scandal but a national scandal, which captured the newspapers' imaginations for several years."

First-time authors Ashby and Jones were on a course organised via Keele University when they were set the task of making a presentation on Georgian history. A friend suggested the Shrigley abduction, pointing them towards a couple of paragraphs in a history book. They started digging and became hooked on the story.

The project burgeoned into three years' research in which they obtained the diaries of Wakefield's grandmother from a museum in Wellington, New Zealand, and tracked down a descendant of Wakefield in Devon.

The writers were particularly intrigued by the abductor himself. "We thought he was a charismatic man, very clever with words. Obviously, he committed an evil crime, but we still warmed to him," Ashby admits.

Ellen Turner was an only child, her father William having done so well in calico-printing in Blackburn that he bought Shrigley Hall, near Macclesfield, demolished the old Elizabethan house and built a new family home (now a hotel) on the estate.

Ellen was sent to a ladies' seminary in Liverpool, to tutor her in the social niceties which would ensure she made a good marriage. "From the one portrait reputed to be of her, she was not a particularly attractive person, and we did find one account of her which described her as a fine, big, romping girl who bounded down stairs and nearly knocked an elderly relative over," says Ashby.

Wakefield was a headstrong young man, a minor diplomat who came from Quaker stock and was related to prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. While living in London, he had eloped to Scotland with a 16-year-old neighbour, Eliza Pattle, who bore him two children before dying.

Wakefield's stepmother Frances Davies, daughter of the headmaster of Macclesfield School, had suggested Ellen as a likely candidate for Wakefield in his search for a wealthy bride. His accomplices arrived at Ellen's school on the pretext of taking her home because her mother was ill.

Instead, she was taken by carriage to Manchester where, stopping at the Albion Hotel, in Piccadilly, she was introduced to a Captain Wilson, who told Ellen he would take her to her father. But, as the carriage set off again, Captain Wilson revealed himself to be Wakefield, told Ellen that her mother was not ill after all and that he would explain everything in due course.

As they travelled up through Saddleworth, Halifax, Settle and Kendal, Ellen was, it seems, easy in Wakefield's company. By the time they reached Gretna Green, he had persuaded her that her father was financially ruined, that Wakefield's uncle had extended a loan to Turner, and the only way to ensure the family's security was for Ellen to marry a "man of honour", namely Wakefield, which she did.

Ashby

"He genuinely was arrogant enough to think that her father would accept the marriage," says Ashby. By the time Ellen's incredulous father read a newspaper announcement of the couple's marriage, Wakefield and Ellen were in Calais, to where a possé of Ellen's uncles and a Bow Street Runner were dispatched to bring her home. Wakefield allowed Ellen to go, and assured her family that the marriage had not been consummated.

Wakefield stood trial in Lancaster, where he and his brother, William, who was also involved in the abduction plot, were both jailed for three years.

"Editors had people posted at stages between Lancaster and London, and amounts of money were offered for the first person to get the news of the verdict back to London," says Ashby.

"If they had fast teams of horses and galloped through the night, you could perhaps get it there in 15 hours.

"Something else which struck modern parallels was that when Ellen Turner was in court, three ladies accommpanied her, all dressed identically so that she could be smuggled out of court without attracting too much public attention." All this long before the days of newspaper photography.

WHAT makes the Shrigley abduction so fascinating is the lurid way in which it was reported by the newspapers of the day.

"We just loved the phrases they used and all the pontificating about whether Ellen Turner could have escaped from the clutches of Edward Gibbon Wakefield," says Ashby.

"Some suggested she must have enjoyed the experience, otherwise she would have raised the alarm. Most were very indignant and said it was a heinous crime and he should be put to death."

So, why did Ellen marry a stranger, twice her age with so little complaint? Wakefield's ploy, that a marriage had to be struck to save her family from ruin, would be quite plausible to Ellen in her day, says Ashby.

But, she adds: "It was a pretty dull life then, being at a girls' boarding school, and she probably got caught up in the romance of it, because he was this charismatic person and it was quite an adventure."

Surprisingly, jail was the making of Wakefield, who wrote with compassion about his fellow prisoners' sufferings.

He developed a fascination for the idea of emigration to Australia and New Zealand, founding the New Zealand Company, which encouraged thousands of new settlers to go there. Wakefield himself moved to Wellington in 1853, and died there nine years later.

Ellen's marriage to Wakefield was annulled by Act of Parliament and she soon exchanged one grand Cheshire home for another by marrying Thomas Legh, to become mistress of Lyme Hall, Disley, aged just 17.

In quick succession she had three pregnancies - a stillborn son, a healthy daughter then another stillborn son.

That last stillbirth claimed Ellen's life, too. She was laid to rest, aged only 19, at the Legh family chapel in St Oswald's Church, Winwick, her stillborn son in the crook of her arm.

The Shrigley Abduction, by Abby Ashby and Audrey Jones, is published by Sutton.