Two sources reveal a side of middle-class married life in nineteenth-century Preston that is far from the usual, idealised picture of the Victorian home. The first are letters from a Lancashire priest to a Catholic convert and the second is a newspaper report of the scandalous bankruptcy of the convert’s wastrel husband.
The letters were from John Lingard, a 63-year-old priest and author of a widely-read History of England, to Mary Lomax. They began when she was aged 20 and recently converted to Catholicism and continued until his death aged eighty in 1851.. The two became close and intimate friends.
Lingard’s letters survive and have been edited for the Catholic Record Society by John Trappes-Lomax and now provide an incredibly rich source for historians of Catholicism of the period. The letters range in style from playful teasing to a serious discussion of the issues facing Catholics in Victorian Britain.
While Lingard’s letters survive, Mary Lomax’s do not. It is possible that Lingard destroyed them, for in one of his letters he writes, addressing Mary as ‘Excellenza’:
‘What is your address? Did you not give it to me in your penultimate letter? Yes, you did: but I burn your letters, because I know not into whose hands they may fall, if I do not.’
The bankruptcy case was heard at Lancaster in 1855, when the disreputable life of Mary’s husband, Thomas Lomax, the son of an old Lancashire Catholic family, was laid bare along with a detailed description of the collapse of his fortunes.
Mary Lomax (1814-1875) was born Mary Frances Sanders in 1814, the daughter of a vicar and niece of a banker. As a teenager, she became friendly with a married couple, both converts to Catholicism, and in 1834 she too converted. Her family disowned her, banished her from her home and her uncle wrote her out his will, in which she was due to inherit £8,000, a small fortune at that time. A Catholic priest persuaded a friend of his, a Miss Mary Anne Butler of Pleasington Hall near Blackburn, to provide her with a home. It was while living there that she met John Lingard.
John Lingard (1771-1851) was living a retired life as a priest at Hornby, near Lancaster, working on his 13 volume History of England. It’s a much-neglected work today, but his treatment of the reign of James II and what has been described as its ‘brief sunshine’ of tolerance for Catholics is still very useful. He was highly regarded in Vatican circles and it is thought Pope Leo XII wished to make him a cardinal.
Thomas Lomax (1816-1865), the husband of Mary, was born at the family home, Clayton Hall, Clayton-le-Moors. He inherited £16,000, which at the time would be considered a fortune. According to the editor of the letters, he proved ‘an unsatisfactory husband’. Indeed, he seems to have been a thoroughly disreputable character, to judge by family correspondence included in the Catholic Record Society volume:
‘Tom Lomax was sent to Lancaster about 10 days ago for assaulting a woman on the streets of Preston – I hear his brothers are going to get him out before the Lancaster Assizes.’
That was in 1844, and it was followed by this:
‘Tom Lomax has got out of Lancaster once more. I hear J. and Jas. Lomax are to pay for his forfeited recognisances only £200, besides damages to the girl he attacked. Tom will never learn better – I hear they think of removing him nearer to Clayton, so as to have him in view and removed from Preston.’
Mary Lomax was more circumspect and charitable in her assessment of her husband’s character, although the letters suggest she had mentioned her marital difficulties to Lingard. The following is found in a letter she wrote to a granddaughter, quoted by John Trappes-Lomax:
‘Though his education was inferior and his training deficient, his habits were pious. He possessed great good nature, unlimited generosity, and (as far as such things go) good looks … I never felt I could look down from the cold heights of a snowy spiritual mountain – from a very exalted degree of holiness and virtue – on the continual though desperate falls of another.’
The Lingard letters contain references to Preston and its residents, including members of the Trappe family, notably Francis Trappe, who was briefly a priest at St Wilfrid’s in the town and became involved in long-running disputes with the Catholic hierarchy.
Lingard was intensely interested in such disputes within the Catholic community in Preston, writing in a letter to Mary Lomax:
“I thank you for your information respecting the turmoil in Preston. I am not surprised at it. The discipline of the Jesuits and of all the religious orders is the most absolute despotism. I never could admire it. It is extremely useful to superiors, and saves them much trouble that they might otherwise experience.’
Much more is revealed about the marriage in the report of Thomas Lomax’s bankruptcy hearing, which tells of a life falling apart:
‘Among the insolvent debtors who appeared at this court yesterday to apply for their discharge was Mr. Thomas Lomax. The insolvent described himself in his schedule as “formerly of Ribblesdale-place, Preston, afterwards a lodger at Slaidburn, near Clitheroe, then of the Swan Inn, and the Rose and Crown Inn, Clitheroe, aforesaid; then of Victoria-street, Blackpool; and late a lodger at 57, Fishergate.’
Drink seems to have been at the root of Thomas Lomax’s problems for among his 207 creditors were 78 publicans.
For a full transcript of the hearing: Charles Lomax of Preston – bankruptcy
Thomas Lomax had married Mary at St Mary the Virgin in Blackburn in 1837. The bankruptcy report suggests the couple were ill-matched, for in 1842 a deed of settlement was drawn up to formally recognise their separation, and to provide Mary Lomax with an income to live on her own.
Family records provide some additional information about Mary Lomax and her husband. Their first child, Mary, was born a year after the wedding and the 1841 census records the couple living at Inglewhite Lodge in Goosnargh, by which time they had a second child, Richard. They had four servants. The previous year, they had been living at Dilworth House, near Longridge, for an entry in the Preston Chronicle of 14 March 1840 reports the birth of a son to ‘the lady of Thomas Lomax Esq.’ at that address.
Following the separation, Mary Lomax moved into Number 21 Ribblesdale Place, where, according to an announcement in the Preston Chronicle on 22 August, 1846, the couple’s third daughter, Gwendoline Elizabeth, died aged five months. Ribblesdale Place was only just being developed at the date, and it is unclear which Number 21 was of the completed houses.
Thomas Lomax told the bankruptcy hearing that they had reconciled, ‘We came together again in 1851’. That year’s census records Thomas Lomax as the head of the Ribblesdale Place household, living on ‘income charged on property’, with Mary and two of their children. There was also a cook and a housemaid.
There must have been earlier attempts at reconciliation, for family records reveal that Mary gave birth to her second daughter, Helen, in 1844, and to her third daughter, Gwendoline, in 1846. The couple had five children, four of whom survived infancy. Yet the reconciliation does seem to have been fairly recent in 1851, for an entry in Mannex’s directory for Preston published that year implies the couple were still separated. There is no mention of Thomas Lomax, only the following entry, ‘Lomax Mrs Mary, 21 Ribblesdale Pl.’
Thomas’s family were clearly concerned to protect the interests of Mary and her children, for, according to the bankruptcy report, another settlement was drawn up assigning the bulk of Thomas’s money to Mary, with his brother, James, as the trustee.
The bankruptcy hearing was told of the circumstances that dictated that move:
‘In 1851, a considerable sum of money was raised by Mr. Lomax’s brother to be distributed amongst his creditors, when every one of them was expressly cautioned against trusting him for the future […] Referring to the deed of 1851, when the insolvent and his wife came together again, the learned gentleman said it was no wonder that Mrs. Lomax should require some additional security for the support of herself and family, and that she would not go back to him unless she was supplied with the means of a respectable maintenance. It was only reasonable that those means should be given to her, and that all should not be spent in recklessness. It was nothing but prudent on her part, and an act of charity towards her children, to say she would not go back to her husband unless she had that life-interest conveyed to herself.’
The settlement was clearly a wise move as Thomas continued his spendthrift ways, not revealing to his creditors that he had been cut off from his funds. This is from the bankruptcy hearing:
‘The subsequent acts of the insolvent were intended to be fraudulent. He had contracted all those debts in a course of reckless extravagance whilst in a state of intoxication, and could not have had any intention of liquidating them, knowing that he had no property and was without the means to do so.’
Whether Thomas finally mended his ways is not known, but it seems the couple continued to live together, for by the time of the 1861 census, the couple had moved to a more substantial property, Marsh House, on what was then the outskirts of the town. No children are recorded on the census form and only one servant, a cook.
Until the bankruptcy few in Preston would have been aware of the couple’s difficulties, for their mentions in the Preston Chronicle portray them as respectable members of the town’s gentry. Mary Lomax served on the committees of Catholic charities, such as the one set up in 1852 to raise funds for St Walburge’s Church, then being built on the Maudlands (Preston Chronicle 28 August 1852).
Another report in the Preston Chronicle (2 October, 1852) lists Thomas Lomax among those given commissions in the Third Regiment of the Royal Lancashire Militia. His fellow officers came from the highest rank of Preston society, such as James German, mill owner of Whittingham, and Henry Newsham Pedder, partner in the Preston bank.
Throughout all her difficulties, Mary Lomax continued her correspondence with John Lingard. When he died the Preston Chronicle (2 August 1851) reprinted a letter that Mary Lomax wrote to the Times. This contains information about Pope Leo XII’s offer of a cardinal’s hat to Lingard. It also shows the close relationship between the correspondents, for she writes, ‘Since my acquaintance with him I have been nearly every year his guest at one time or another.’
Her charitable work also continued up until her death. A notice in The Belfast Newsletter records the death of a Countess Lomax on 15 October 1875, widow of the late Thomas Lomax esq., at Naples. Mary Lomax had been first dame appointed to the Catholic Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre in 1871.
An article on the order, which still exists and is described as ‘at the service of the living stones in the Holy Land’, contains the following:
‘It is at this point in history [about 1868] that the name of our first Dame appears, Countess Maria Francisca Lomax, who went to see Monsignor Valerga eager to obtain information about the Order in order to make it known to her entourage.
‘In reality, the real reason for her visit was to ask him if he could confer on her the honour of being able to wear the medal of the Holy Sepulchre, as custodian of the works of the Patriarchate, knowing that women could receive this type of honour.
‘At the Patriarch’s refusal, this persevering Dame requested a private audience with His Holiness to ask for the medal of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The Holy Father agreed to grant it to her, confirming her right to wear it as Dame Guardian of the Order.’
So, Mary Lomax ended her life as wedded to Catholicism as when she joined the Church as a teenager.
Full transcript of Thomas Lomax’s bankruptcy hearing: Thomas Lomax of Preston – bankruptcy