🥃 The Wrong Wife
Email newsletter originally sent to subscribers on 29 August 2024
Now, some of you may know that I enjoy hanging out in graveyards. Nothing weird there, then 😉
They’re (usually) such calm and tranquil places, offering a welcome break from all the noise in the world. And, when searching for gravestones, the information they provide can offer valuable insights into those individuals’ lives, often saving me significant research time.
Whilst returning home from a trip down to the south of Englandshire, I took a wee detour to St Mary’s Church in Caterham, Surrey, on the search for a specific gravestone.
St Mary’s, Caterham
Spoiler alert: I didn’t find it. The cemetery is huge and, to be honest, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
One gravestone I did manage to locate, though, was that of Clarissa Ann Thornton who, in 1868, became the first Mrs Guimaraens.
Clarissa Ann Guimaraens’ gravestone
Clarissa (or Clarice as she was often known) had married Frederico Alexandre Guimaraens, the son of the owner of one of Portugal’s largest port houses.
In 1822, Frederico’s father, Manoel, had acquired the well-known port company, Fonseca.
But Clarissa’s gravestone wasn’t the one I was looking for.
After she died in 1892, five years later, at the age of 56, Frederico remarried. With his new wife being 24 years younger than him, it was perhaps inevitable, really, that Frederico would pop his clogs before her. And when he died in 1923, he left a small fortune to his second wife as well as to his four children, from his first marriage.
In 1927, the second Mrs Guimaraens died, leaving an estate worth £3221 - the equivalent of approximately £170,000 today.
And so the gravestone that I was searching for was hers; the last resting place of Laura Josephine Guimaraens.
Née Pattison.
And the executor, and main benefactor, of her estate was her eldest, unmarried brother.
Robert.
After the collapse of Pattisons Ltd, in 1898, Robert had declared himself ‘penniless’. But, thanks to his sister, it appears as though that didn’t remain the case. Financially, at least, Robert Pattison managed to spend the final years of his life quite comfortably off indeed.
Slà inte!
Justine