Frances Page-Turner (1753 -1828) apprentice Milliner and Later wife of the 18th Century Dandy, Sir Gregory Page-Turner 3rd Bt 1748-1805.

 

Frances Page-Turner (1753 -1828) (nee Howell) was the daughter of Joseph Howell from Elm Wisbech Cambridgeshire & Emneth Norfolk, he is recorded as being a prosperous farmer who owned 9 farms in this region.   Law Advertiser Vol 5. said,

‘.. A freehold and copyhold estate situated at Emneth in Wisbech St Mary in the County of Norfolk late belonging to Joseph Howell esq deceased containing stable outbuildings 203 of arable and pasture land.    also Nine farms 1441 acres farm houses and buildings…’    Joseph Howell is also listed as Church Warden at Emneth as listed in the  parish records for 1781 held in the Local History Centre in Wisbech.

Very little is known about her early life, but we know that Frances was apprenticed to a St James’s Milliner supported in this capacity by her father. St James’s was well known location in London for Textiles, Millinery, fashion, shoes and Hats.

We know from many contemporary accounts that Sir Gregory Page-Turner 3^rd was a man of fashion who enjoyed a cultivated and astute eye for fashion from his love of tight fitting trousers to highly elaborate frock coats and the latest elaborate hats. It is without doubt that Sir Gregory’s fashion interest brought him into contact with his future wife Frances an apprentice Milliner who worked in St James’s.

Sir Gregory Page-Turner, 3rd Baronet (16 February 1748 – 4 January 1805)

A young man driving (right to left) one of the new high two-wheeled gigs. Its small body is poised high on springs above the large wheels; the driver leans forward to whip his pair of high-stepping horses, which are about to descend a precipitous hill. He wears the plain high-crowned hat which was so great a novelty in 1781 and top-boots. On the panel of the gig is a draped escutcheon with a monogram or cipher. In the foreground are bushes and rough ground with a milestone, "Miles XXI". 23 July 1782. Inscription Language: Inscription Content: Lettered with title and "Designed by H.W.Bunbury Esqr.. / London, Publish''d July 23d, 1782 by J R Smith, No. 83 Oxford Street, London" Etching and mezzotint. The satirical print refers to Sir Gregory Page-Turner 3rd Baronet 1748? 4 January 1805 who inherited a substantial fortune and was known to be a man of fashion who frequented the Vauxhall gardens he was a wealthy landowner and politician in late 18th century England, serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Thirsk for 21 years. ''Sir Gregory Gigg, was also satirized on the stage or the City Beau'' is the title of a song in O''Keefe's Son in Law, played at the Haymarket 1779, the songs only being printed. He was one of the greatest beaus of his day, and generally beyond the reigning fashion. Red heels and feathered hats were then common, but he once appeared in Vauxhall Gardens in a pink silk suit, so exactly fitted to his body, that he was followed by a crowd os spectators, who debated aloud whether the young  Baronet had been crammed into, or sewn up in the dress he then wore.

It has been estimated that more than 500 women traded as millinery proprietors in London. These are only three of nearly 100 trades represented by guilds and listed in the mid-eighteenth-century guides which advised parents on the likely costs and benefits of children’s apprenticeship in the various London trades and it is Likely that Joseph Howell will have referred to one of these guides in order to find a suitable apprenticeship for his daughter Frances. (A General Description of all Trades, 1747; Campbell, 1747; Collyer, 1761;   These silversmiths, printers, and milliners are only those who traded in their own names since those who worked with a husband and predeceased him were hidden under coverture. A marital business partnership is visible usually only in retrospect, when a widow took over ‘her husband’s’ concern and ran it for decades, suggesting that she had been deeply involved with it during marriage too.

 Their businesses, like most in the eighteenth century, were generally located on the ground floor of the owner’s residence. But these women were not just retailers: they were also manufacturers and wholesalers. For example, the shoemaker Ester Glover (Figure 1) advertised to ‘merchants or country Chapman’. Chapman distributed goods to sell in rural areas door to door (Spufford, 1981, ch. 5). Anne Askew (Figure 2), another shoemaker, 1725 advertised goods for export by ‘merchants trading to the plantations’. The milliner Edith Ridout (Figure 3) also offered a long list of ‘ready-made goods for exportation’ overseas. Millinery shops, run by men as well as women in the eighteenth century, made and sold high-quality clothing and accessories. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did millinery come to mean hat-making (Erickson, 2011, pp. 154–155). These women were not small artisans: they were running highly capitalized concerns.

Figure 1. Trade card of Esther Glover, shoemaker, © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 2. Trade card of Anne Askew, shoemaker (1735), © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 3. Trade card of Edith Ridout, milliner, © Trustees of the British Museum.

The careers of 26 businesswomen are discussed here, their trade cards supplemented by parish registers, tax records, wills, guild records, and specialist secondary literature. Those with more unusual names were of course the easiest to trace.

Identification of marital status

A businesswoman’s marital status was rarely specified in insurance policies or trade directories, and women in these sources have been assumed to have been never married and widowed, in view of the legal restrictions of coverture. Trade cards too very rarely specify the marital status of the business owner. So, only by their wills can it be determined that Ester Glover was a widow and Anne Askew a single woman. The billhead that Elizabeth Bowen used for receipts simply identified her as a whalebone seller (Figure 4). The entry on ‘whalebone men’ in A General Description of all Trades (1747) classed them as ‘top dealers … esteemed very reputable and genteel’. Like the other trades examined here, apprenticeship to a whalebone seller cost £50 or more, and to set up shop required at least £500, comparable with goldsmiths (A General Description of all Trades, Citation1747, p. 221, p. 139, p. 110). Nothing else has been located to identify Elizabeth Bowen, although she must have been selling to petticoat makers and stay makers since whalebone (actually baleen) was used to stiffen stays and skirt hoops from the 1740s (Sorge-English, Citation2005).

Figure 4. Billhead of Elizabeth Bowen, whalebone seller, © Trustees of the British Museum.

The whale’s oil was used for lamps, and sold for domestic use by wax chandlers like Hannah Jones (Figure 5). That Jones was a widow can be inferred not from her trade card but only by implication from a billhead of 1749 on which ‘Hannah’ was inserted by hand over the crossed-out printed ‘Thomas’. Hannah Jones’ status in the supply of lighting and sealing wax is indicated by her trade card appropriating the arms of the City of London and her shop’s location in the Poultry near the Mansion House, the residence of the Mayor of London. She was included in a 1766 business directory (presumably 17 years after her widowhood) as one of two wax chandlers in London.Footnote 5 Her customers are known to have included the banker Sir Richard Hoare, on the receipt illustrated here, as well as the Duke of Bedford through the 1750s and Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1778.Footnote⁶

Figure 5. Billhead (1749) and subsequent trade card of Hannah Jones, wax chandler, © Trustees of the British Museum.

Occasionally, a trading card with only a last name can be identified as belonging to a woman. The proprietor of ‘Coade’s’ (Figure 6) was the best-known businesswoman of the eighteenth century. Eleanor Coade (1733–1821) manufactured artificial cast stone that was impervious to weather at a much lower price than carved real stone. She never married, worked with all the leading architects and is the epitome of an eighteenth-century entrepreneur (Kelly, 1990, 2004; Wiskin, 2006. For the architectural context of Coade stone, see Stanford, Ci2015). Women as well as men also used a surname with the extension ‘& Co.’ The card advertising the milliners Sandys & Co (Figure 7) can be confirmed as the business of Mrs Susan Sandys because she appeared in 1759 as head of a household in the parish in which the shop was located.Footnote⁷ Mrs Susan Sandys was either single or widowed since the head of a married woman’s household was her husband.

Figure 6. Trade card of Coade’s artificial stone manufactory (1769), © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 7. Trade card of Sandys & Co., milliners, © Trustees of the British Museum.

The most familiar pattern of women in business is that of women who helped in a husband’s business, perhaps learning the trade from him, and then ‘took over’ the marital enterprise as a widow, like wax chandler Hannah Jones. But business skills could also be acquired through apprenticeship as a teenager. Although only a tiny proportion of all London apprentices were female, that amounted to more than one thousand young women over the eighteenth century. Susannah Passavant (c.1711–1790) was born into a Huguenot family of jewelers and apprenticed in 1728 to George Willdey, one of the principal London ‘toymen’, or makers of expensive trinkets for adults. Of Willdey’s fifteen apprentices, more than half were women. Passavant obtained the freedom of the City of London that enabled her to trade in her own right in 1735 and managed the Willdey shops from 1737. In the early 1750s, she opened her own shop (Figure 8), where her clients included George and Martha Washington. She took her first apprentice in 1753 with a premium of £100. Passavant married in her forties, and continued trading under the surname of her husband (Beet, Citation2003; Brouwer, Citation2011. See also citywomen.hist.cam.ac.uk).

Figure 8. Trade card of Susannah Passavant, toy merchant, © Trustees of the British Museum.

Formal apprenticeship was not necessary if a parent trained a daughter. The sisters Martha Sleepe (1717–after 1773) and Esther Sleepe (1725–1762) were trained by their mother and took the freedom of the city by patrimony in their father’s guild, the Musicians’ Company – under whose auspices their mother also traded as a married woman under coverture. In 1747 Martha and Esther printed their cards (Figure 9) as fan-makers (Erickson, 2018, p. 16). The eldest Sleeping sister, Mary Sansom (1715–after 1773), created a trading card in an unusual joint format with her husband, a turner and handle-maker (Figure 10), although the card does not specify that they were a married couple. Because she had lost name recognition when she married, Mary Sansom’s card indicated that she was ‘from Mrs Sleeps’ – that is, that she had trained with her mother in the art of fan-making – to establish her craft pedigree (Erickson, 2018, pp. 16–19).

Figure 9. Trade cards of Martha Sleepe and Esther Sleepe, fan-makers (c.1747), © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 10. Trade card of Mary Sansom, fan-maker, and John Sansom, turner and handle-maker (c.1743), © Trustees of the British Museum.

The best evidence to date remains slim but suggests that at the level of skilled entrepreneurs taking apprentices in London in the first half of the eighteenth century, about half of married couples shared a business, like the Joneses, and the other half ran separate businesses, like the Sansoms (Erickson, 2008, p. 287). When Esther Sleepe married a musician in 1749 she simply reprinted her trade card as Esther Burney (Figure 11) in a different location, still in the format of first name and surname with no indication of marriage. Her marital status can be identified only because of her previous card, and because she became the mother of the novelist Frances Burney, about whom there is extensive secondary literature (almost none of which deals with her mother) (Erickson, 2018).

Figure 11. Trade card of Esther Burney, fan-maker (after 1749), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

With less well-connected women, internal evidence in the trade cards suggests marriage even where it cannot be confirmed in other sources. Ann Flight (Figure 12) at the ‘Grasshopper’ sold tea, coffee, chocolate, and snuff. Her card used only her surname, but the billhead gave her first name. The card of Anne Barnard at the ‘Tea Warehouse’ is extremely similar in lettering, ornament, and the list of goods sold. It seems likely that Ann(e) Flight married a Mr Barnard and continued to trade, or alternatively that Anne Barnard married a Mr Flight. In either case, she continued her own trade, and the only difference that marriage made to her business was the change of surname. That surname change upon marriage – a practice linked to coverture and peculiar to England and her colonies until the late nineteenth century, when other European countries adopted it – makes tracing married women over their lifetimes particularly difficult (Erickson, 2005, p. 11).

Figure 12. Trade card of Flight, billhead of Ann Flight, and trade card of Anne Barnard, tea dealer, © Trustees of the British Museum.

Women like Ann Flight/Barnard and Esther (Sleepe) Burney, whose cards made no reference to a husband, give the impression that coverture was irrelevant to their business. But there was an opposite extreme. The card of Benjamin Cole (Figure 13), advertising fine fabrics and lace in the 1720s, shows a shop interior with three female customers being served by two women behind the counter. Cole is better known as a printer and engraver; this shop was actually run by his wife, Martha, under his name (they had married in 1723). Later, when Martha went into partnership with another woman, Benjamin apparently agreed to print their trade card as Martha Cole & Martha Houghton (Birt, 2020). This case has been studied in detail, but how many businesses in a man’s name were actually run exclusively by his wife in a similar manner is impossible to tell (there are more examples in Doe [2017, p. 347]).

Figure 13. Trade card of Benjamin Cole (1720s), © Trustees of the British Museum; trade card of Martha Cole and Martha Houghton, Victoria & Albert Museum.

Since half of married citizen couples shared the same business, we might assume that half of all businesses in a man’s name were jointly run by his wife. But no card has yet been identified in which a woman’s and a man’s name on a trading card in the same business were a married couple. Widows appear to be ‘taking over’ their deceased husbands’ business precisely because their names never appear together with their husbands in joint businesses on trade cards or in any other source. Elizabeth Godfrey (c.1700–1771), whose card identifies her only as ‘E. Godfrey’, was the daughter of two silversmiths and was married to two silversmiths in succession. She was registered in her own name only on her first widowhood in 1731, and again in 1741 on her second widowhood when she advertised as ‘Goldsmith, Silversmith and Jeweller to his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland’ (Figure 14) (Glanville & Goldsborough, 1990, p. 139, and for her mother Mary Pantin, 151). But it is implausible that Godfrey ceased to work in the business in which she was trained for the duration of her two marriages. Her parents’ business was her business and her husband’s business.

Figure 14. Trade card of Elizabeth Godfrey, goldsmith, silversmith, and jeweler (after 1741), © Trustees of the British Museum.

The cabinetmaker Grace Mayo (by 1670–1735) likewise ‘took over’ her husband’s workshop when he left her everything on his death in 1701. As a mistress, she was responsible for completing the final two years of training her husband’s apprentice. In 1704 she moved into the fashionable premises of St Paul’s Churchyard, and in 1708 married her former apprentice – at which point Grace Mayo’s business became John Coxed’s. At his death 10 years later, John Coxed left Grace her half of the estate by London custom, but additionally specified bequests of nearly £4000, putting his household at the top of the middle class. He left his business (not cost in the will) to Grace, in partnership with his brother-in-law, T. Woster. Coxed & Woster (Figure 15) produced the largest single group of labeled English case furniture surviving from the first half of the eighteenth century. The firm continued until Grace died in 1735. In a career of at least 34 years running a cabinetmaking workshop, 24 of those years were as a widow. She can hardly have ceased trading during the decade of her second marriage when her name was not on the door.

Figure 15. Trade cards of G. Coxed and T. Woster, and of Elizabeth Bell, cabinet makers, © Trustees of the British Museum. The wear on these cards is due to their being pasted inside furniture.

On the face of it, it may appear logical that the husband’s name alone appeared on the card for a business shared with his wife since under coverture her business belonged to him and he was liable for her debts. But legal liability cannot explain the custom, because a married woman running a different business from her husband – such as Esther Burney – might print her card with no indication that she was married, and so who was legally liable.

The question of legal liability was tested in the case of Jane (Holt) Cox (c.1728–after 1803). The daughter of a Doncaster linen draper, she was apprenticed in the London Clothworkers’ Company in 1745. In 1755 she began trading as a milliner, taking on her own apprentices, in shops near the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange (Collins, 2013, 72–73). At the end of the seventeenth century, nearly half of all the shop space within the Royal Exchange itself was rented by women. Many of these shops were devoted to millinery and other textile businesses. Jane Holt married first in 1763 (age c.35), to a hatter, and printed her trade card as Jane Cox (Figure 16). The following year her husband was declared bankrupt, and his creditors seized her goods. Her own creditors objected, and in a protracted legal case that coincided with the births and deaths of her first two children, Jane Cox was declared a feme sole (unmarried woman) for business purposes: her business assets were separate from her husband’s, and she was liable for her own debts but not his. She began trading again the same year and taking more apprentices, with premiums of £70. Rebuilding commercial credit in that way can have been no small task. By 1772 Jane Cox was in partnership with a former apprentice Anna Maria Moore (Figure 17). At the end of that year Cox, after 18 years trading in the fashionable heart of the City, remarried and left London, her business activity thereafter unknown (Collins, 2013. For another feme sole trader case, see Hunt, 1996, pp. 140–141).

Figure 16. Trade card of Jane Cox, milliner (c. 1763), © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 17. Trade card of Jane Cox and Anna Maria Moore, milliners (c.1772), © Trustees of the British Museum.

The Marriage of Frances Howell and Sir Gregory Page-Turner 3^rd Bt and their subsequent children.

 2^nd Jan 1785  -  Sir Gregory Page-Turner Married Frances Howell by special license at his residence and St Georges Hannover Square by the Revd  James Burslem, LL.D (died 1787)  of Wisbech incumbent from 1779, her marriage registration has her as a resident of St Georges Hannover Square. Frances had five children over 9 years, her children were born as follows.

 

28^th Sept 1785 Gregory Osborne Page-Turner born, and baptized Oct 20^th 1785

(depicted standing on the cradle and in his mothers arms opposite his father in the preliminary pencil sketches for the 1787 full length portrait by Richard Cosway)

 

15^th Jan 1787 Frances Stacpole Page-Turner (depicted in the cradle of the full-length portrait by Richard Cosway and in the preliminary pencil sketches)

 

 12^th Sept 1789 Sir Edward George Thomas Page-Turner was born  and baptized Oct 5^th

 ^9th Aug 1791   Anna Leigh Guy Page-Turner born bap 21^st Aug

 15^th Feb 1794 Francis William Martin Page-Turner was born  and baptized on March 22^nd

Francis William Martin Page-Turner capt of XII Hussars 1794-1818 

son of Sir Gregory Page-Turner 

from miniature by D Englehart 1817

 

Detail Baroque Whicker Rocking Cradle 

large Winged Cherub at the  base 

& two supporting Cherubs holding the canopy. 

Frances Stacpole Page-Turner born 15^th Jan 1787 

holding a silver and red coral childs Rattle.

                      

Detail showing the Large Red Upholstered Studio Chair 

located to the right of Frances Page-Turner, this is similar to

 Richard Cosway's studio chair is now in the V&A collection made by Matthias Locke

The armchair  From the studio of Richard Cosway About 1755 This chair appears in several portraits painted by Richard Cosway (1742-1821). It epitomizes the Rococo style in English furniture. It matches an undated drawing by the carver and designer Matthias Lock. The outlines of the chair are entirely composed of curves and the legs show the fashionable, curving 'cabriole' form with naturalistically carved paw feet. Lime and pine, carved and gilded, modern silk damask upholstery Designed and made in London by Matthias Lock (born in London, about 1710, died there in 1765). This chair was at one time in the possession of the artist Richard Cosway (d.1821) and appears in three of his portraits.(pre October 2000) This chair appears in a portrait attributed to Richard Cosway, of Elizabeth Draper (1744-1778), better known as Stern's 'Immortal Eliza'. It is one of the finest known examples of the type known as 'French chairs', designs for which were published in Chippendale's Gentleman and Cabinetmaker's Director.(pre-1980) 

Frances Page-Turner lived at The Page-Turner London residence in Hanover Square and Battlesden House Bedfordshire one of their 3 country estates.

There is very little information about Frances Page-Turner apart from an account on the Royal Academy Summer exhibition where Richard COSWAY’s fine full-length Portrait of her was exhibited in 1787. The Portrait was painted at Richard Cosway’s studio Schomberg House, 80-82 Pall Mall located in the same area where London’s Milliners and fashion houses were located a place frequented by Sir Gregory Page-Turner and his new wife Frances.

There’s a description in the Book titled Artists and their Friends in England 1700 to 1799 by William T Whitley where Sir Joshua Reynolds the then President of the Royal Academy describes a visit in 1787 a visit to the Summer Exhibition by George III. He is involved in a rather veiled criticism of Richard Cosways portrait of Lady Page-Turner and her son Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner. 

“Cosway was the painter of the whole length of Lady Turner (Page-Turner) which was the subject of Royal Criticism in 1787, and a note in the review of the Academy exhibition of that year in the St Jame’s Chronicle perhaps explains why the king imagined that he saw a want of refinement in Cosway’s sitter. The St James chronicle commenting upon no 93 Portrait of Lady and Child, by Cosway says: “ This is said to be lady Page, formerly the buxom milliner of St James’s street”. The husband of this lady was Sir Gregory Page Turner, who added the name of Page, whose splendid house on Blackheath he inherited and pulled down. Sir Gregory Page-Turner was a man of immense wealth and many eccentricities, who after returning from a Continental tour undertaken in his youth was fond of appearing in places of public resort dressed extravagantly. He once went to Vauxhall in a suit of pink silk so exactly fitted to his body that he was followed by a crowd of spectators who debated aloud whether the young baronet had been crammed into, or sewn up in, the dress he then wore.” 

Richard Cosway was elected full academician to the Royal Academy in 1787 His only solo work at the exhibition was a portrait of Lady Page-Turner  and her child (No 93.) It was also 2 years after his appointment as principal painter to the King. It was his last Academy exhibit until he showed his portrait of General Paoli Eleven years later, although the Cosway name was represented by Maria in 1788, 1789, and 1796. The reason for his absence was obscure but may have reflected a certain pique on the part of the husband  Whose Academy reviews were sometimes less flattering than those relating to his wife’s exhibits. 1787 is  Fairly representative. While the morning herald reported (no 93) “as much distinguished for likeness and fine finishing as any at the Royal Exhibition this year” the St James’s chronicle took a less cozy view. It began by describing Lady Page-Turner as “formerly the buxom milliner of St James’s street” and then criticized the drapery as being “heavy and dirtily coloured”. The correspondent found “the productions of Maria ..much superior to those of her husband and the portrait of herself, no 251 though a symptom of the family variety, possesses considerable merit. Barnett  Richard and Maria Cosway  Westcountry books the Lutterworth Press 1995, pp 101-102

1787 Summer Exhibition with Richard Cosway's Portrait of

Frances Page-Turner hung on the back Wall

The St James Chronicle and The King’s comments were also very direct remarking that the vulgarity of Lady Turner’s look showed her origin. Interestingly, St James’s Street is the location of Lock and Co the oldest hatter in the country and undoubtedly it was an area where the high-end Milliners carried out their trade in the 18^th century. The Strand and St James’s had numerous seamstresses, milliners, and tyre women (retailers of women’s clothing and accessories to adorn women’s coiffures) Unfortunately, there is no record of Lady Turner’s actual place of employment either at Lock and Co or at any other location. But the comments made by the king and the St James’s Chronicle seem to indicate a social put down possibly as Frances was “Trade”. It is however an intriguing thought that Sir Gregory Page-Turner a highly fashionable and extravagantly dressed gentleman should fall for a seamstress or milliner from St James’s.

Cosway exhibited oils, miniatures, and drawings at the Society of Artists, winning numerous prizes, whilst continuing to learn from Reynolds and Hudson. Understanding that the location for his studio was to be part of his success as a society artist, in 1768 he took up residency in London’s fashionable Piccadilly, at 4 Berkeley Street. Over the next two years, Cosway completed his signed self-portrait and was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools and in 1770 became an associate and later a full academician, exhibiting his work until 1806.  Cosway enjoyed a long friendship with the Prince of Wales, later King George IV. As an experienced connoisseur and virtuoso, Cosway advised the prince on his art collection, thereby sculpting his aesthetic taste. The relationship was most certainly mutually beneficial, with the prince introducing Cosway to a fashionable and influential circle of patrons. In 1785 Cosway was given the official position of ‘Miniature Painter to the Prince of Wales’, a post he kept until he fell out of favour in 1811.  Cosway had married the Anglo-Italian artist Maria Cosway, née Hadfield, in 1781 and the pair had one child, Louisa Paolina Angelica, who tragically died in 1796 after a short illness. The Cosways wielded great influence over London's fashionable elite and from 1784 established a salon at their home at Schomberg House, Pall Mall, which also displayed their impressive collection of old master paintings, drawings, prints, furniture, sculptures, and other objets d’art.

In the summer of 1784, Thomas Gainsborough, at No. 82 Pall Mall, got new neighbors, fellow artists, when Maria and Richard Cosway took a lease on Dr. Graham’s former Schomberg House premises at No. 81. Both were painters, and Richard Cosway, like Thomas Gainsborough, was a member of the Royal Academy. Richard had become very wealthy as a leading painter of portraits, particularly miniatures, and he had already come to the attention of the Prince of Wales. But prior to taking up residence at Schomberg House, he and his wife were living in a small house on Berkeley Row, off Berkeley Street. While still living there, in a letter to a friend in Italy, he complained about the narrowness of the street on which he lived and the fact that his windows looked out on the large blank wall that surrounded Devonshire House. But even worse was the fact that he did not consider his home suitable for receiving the Prince of Wales or any of his noble and wealthy patrons, since he had no entrance hall and only a very small sitting room. Richard Cosway was a notorious libertine and was considered the most licentious of all the members of the Royal Academy. Such a man would have had no qualms about making his home in the former Temple of Hymen. In fact, he was probably rather pleased at the prospect. Of course, Dr. Graham’s old rooms at Schomberg House had to be refurbished and re-fitted before the Cosways could take up residence there. And Richard Cosway made sure the rooms, especially those in which they received guests, were quite lavish and ornately decorated so that he would never be embarrassed by his home as he had been in Berkeley Row. Their friend, the talented painter, Angelica Kauffman, painted lush mythological scenes on the ceilings of two of their larger rooms. Richard Cosway took great pains to ensure that his new home was more than grand enough to entertain the Prince of Wales, as well as his wealthy and aristocratic patrons, not to mention the many members of the beau monde who were regularly accepting invitations from the now very prominent and socially successful Cosways.

 

It is generally believed that the young Maria Hadfield married Richard Cosway, who was eighteen years her senior, in an arranged marriage, in 1781, at the behest of her mother and the artist, Angelica Kauffman. Maria was the daughter of a wealthy English innkeeper who lived in Italy and his Italian wife. Maria had lived in Italy for most of her life, coming to England with her widowed mother in 1779. She was a successful painter of historical and mythological scenes, though after her marriage she also began painting miniatures and did a number of book-illustrations. In addition, she was an accomplished musician and composer and she hosted regular concerts and recitals on Sunday evenings after she had settled into her new and very elegant home at Schomberg House. Maria Cosway was described as a graceful, golden-haired beauty with a lively, outgoing nature and an intelligent mind, in addition to being very accomplished as both a painter and a musician. She was also fluent in both Italian and French, as well as had many friends from across Europe. Her musical evenings quickly became perhaps the most popular evening events in London. Maria herself was frequently the principal performer, but there were also numerous occasions when she introduced celebrated musicians and singers newly arrived in London at these evening musicals. Her concerts were attended not only by the famous and fashionable among the English, but many international luminaries regularly attended as well. The Prince of Wales himself came often to these musical evenings. There is more than one contemporary record relating that on most Sunday evenings, Pall Mall, in the vicinity of Schomberg House, was thronged with carriages and sedan chairs to the point that it was often impassible.

Schomberg House Pall Mall

Mr and Mrs Cosway At their Pall Mall House

A little over a year after moving into Schomberg House, Richard Cosway was appointed Miniaturist to the Prince of Wales, in part because he had recently painted miniature portraits of both the Prince and his morganatic wife, Maria Fitzherbert. It was this miniature of Mrs. Fitzherbert that the Prince was to wear for the rest of his life. He also ordered that it be placed over his heart when he was buried. Already a vain and pompous man, Cosway became even worse after this royal appointment and began signing his work " R. dus Cosway, R. A. Primarius Pictor Serenissimi Walliae Principis pinxit." Essentially, "R[ichard] of Cosway, R[oyal] A[cademician], Principal Painter to His Serene Highness the Prince of Wales, painted this." Such a grandiose signature made Cosway the butt of many jokes, though he seems to have been largely unaware of them.

 

There was also talk around London at about this same time that the Prince of Wales was very attracted to the young and lovely wife of his official miniaturist. Although for some time, the Prince seemed equally taken with both Richard Cosway, who had also become his informal artistic advisor, and the beautiful and talented Maria Cosway, who shared his interests in both art and music. Many people in the upper ranks of society became extremely envious of the Cosway’s nearly unfettered access to the Prince of Wales at his home in Carlton House. There was even a rumor making the rounds that there was a secret passageway between Carlton House and Schomberg House. Since the back of the Schomberg House garden was barely two blocks from the back of the Carlton House garden, the idea of this secret passageway did not seem beyond the realm of possibility to many. However, no substantive evidence of the existence of such a secret passageway has ever been found.

There is a sad and rather peculiar story regarding the Cosway’s young daughter which is often reported as having taken place in Schomberg House. However, when the dates of the Cosway’s occupancy of No. 81 Pall Mall are compared with the dates of this little girl’s birth and death, it is clear the location of this unhappy incident was not Schomberg House. On 4 May 1790, Maria Cosway gave birth to her daughter, and only child, Louisa Paolina Angelica, in Schomberg House. Maria’s confinement was extremely difficult and for a time her life was in danger. Both she and her baby survived, but Maria was probably suffering from severe post-natal depression and was advised to travel for her health. She followed her doctor’s orders, and leaving both her husband and her daughter in London, she traveled across Europe for nearly four years. In her absence, it seems that Richard became inordinately fond of his little daughter. He painted a touching portrait of little Louisa as a toddler, with her mother behind her, though at that time Maria was still abroad. Maria Cosway returned to London in 1794, and she, too, came to love her little girl quite dearly. But sadly, in July of 1796, Louisa died, rather suddenly, of a throat infection. Her father, nearly inconsolable with grief, commissioned a small but elegant marble sarcophagus just her size made by the renowned sculptor, Joseph Nollekens. When it was finished, Cosway had his daughter’s embalmed body placed in this grand sarcophagus. He then had the sarcophagus placed in his palatial principal drawing room. But that drawing-room was not in Schomberg House. Louisa was born in Schomberg House, but about a year later, in 1791, while his wife was still abroad, Richard Cosway moved out of Schomberg House to a new home in Stratford Place. It was there that Louisa died, in 1796, and it was in the drawing room there that her sarcophagus was kept by her father. After several months, Maria was able to persuade her husband to allow their daughter to be buried. Louisa was then laid to rest in Bunhill Fields, and the empty sarcophagus was returned to Nollekens for safekeeping.

 

Most art historians are of the opinion that Richard Cosway painted the majority of his best works during his years at Schomberg House. During his residence on Pall Mall, probably since he was then serving as artistic advisor to the Prince of Wales as the Prince developed his art collection, Cosway had also taken up the purchase, restoration, and sale of a large number of paintings and various antiquities. However, he seems to have purchased more art than he sold. When he made the decision to remove from Schomberg House, he also decided to sell this vast and valuable collection. Once again, just three years after the sale of Gainsborough’s art collection, the employees of Christie’s Auction Rooms, just next door to Schomberg House, were to be seen for several days carrying all these valuable objects of art from No. 81 Pall Mall down the street to Christie’s Great Rooms in preparation for their sale.

With the departure of the Cosways from No. 81 Pall Mall, the most glamorous and certainly the most risqué period in the history of Schomberg House came to an end. Yet we have not yet reached the time when architectural embellishments from Mrs. Coade’s artificial stone manufactory were added to the house. That is yet to come, along with the more mundane history of Schomberg House during the period of the Regency. Next week, the end of the story of Schomberg House, including its eventual, almost complete, destruction.

 Frances Page-Turner was a devoted mother and was mentioned frequently in contemporary accounts when it came to managing her son’s mental health and illness. Her son possibly suffered from porphyria the same mental illness suffered by King George III.

John Deane stated, that he was President of St. Mary‘s Hall, Oxford, In 1805, and a part of the following year, Sir Gregory Page-Turner was his pupil. He seemed well disposed to pursue any course of study which witness pointed out, and he was capable of doing so with advantage and effect, An attack of rheumatic gout, which Sir Gregory experienced about two months after his admission, made him somewhat irritable, and he then showed a greater degree of waywardness and self-will than he had done before. Witness remembered him using a harsh expression on his mother, who was then with him in college. “Witness told him it must not be. repeated. He immediately replied that he really suffered so much pain, that when his mother came in and teased him with questions he always felt as if he was afraid of being trodden upon.

Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner was found to be a lunatic, and with his debts unpaid he was put into the King’s Bench Prison, the court ordering that personal property be sold to satisfy his debtors. His brother, Captain Edward Page Turner, took over the management of his affairs and between April and June 1815 there were five auction sales at Phillips Son & Neale in London of goods and chattels belonging to Sir Gregory. In August his mother Frances Page-Turner offered to settle the remaining debts in order that he might be released from prison, which implies that at that time he was once again behaving normally. By December he was considered to have fully recovered from his lunatic state and was duly released, having spent more than a year in prison.

Already an Enquiry had been ordered into Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner’s mental condition. On 28th April 1818, he married Helen Eliza Bayfield, the only daughter of John Wolsey Bayfield, a captain in the 1st Surrey Militia. They spent most of that summer in London at their house on Portman Square, but before long paranoia seems to have consumed him once more: on 8th December he attempted to take legal action against his mother, his two brothers, and an uncle because they had conspired together to take out the commission of lunacy against him, but nothing came of it.

The witness corroborated the preceding evidence proving a letter from Sir Gregory to Mr. Maberly, dated 4th November. 1822, authorizing him (Mr. Maberly). in the event of his (Sir Gregory’s) becoming ill again, to call in certain persons whom he mentioned to take care of him. and not allow his wife or mother to have any control over his person or property.

Humphry Repton (1752-1818) the great Landscape designer briefly mentions Frances Page-Turner. In his memoirs, Repton provided a remarkable description of a visit to Battlesden in 1806, and a glimpse into the nature of its owner: approaching the house with his son, along a lane newly planted with trees too close to allow easy passage, they found the front door locked and had to enter through the kitchen, much to their chagrin. The visitors were introduced to Gregory Osborne Page-Turner’s widowed mother (Frances Page-Turner, who was sitting in the window seat of a large, lofty cedar parlour.

 “The room was decorated with fluted Corinthian pilasters and had five windows, of which three were blocked up. The furniture appeared to have been formally crimson velvet. but every chair was Covered with old newspapers. books, rolls of parchments or some other litter or lumber. She cleared for us two chairs to sit down on by overturning their contents upon the uncarpeted floor, making a great dust, and astonishing sundry spiders and flies who must have long considered the chairs as their own property. After the usual first ceremony betwixt strangers, I requested to see the house, for which I was expected to plan some alterations."

 The Gardens of Battlesden House with the Page-Turner family

Another, once magnificent drawing now in the Woburn Abbey collection . is dated 1818. In common with many of Shepherd's watercolours  for Page-Turner, it is on a much grander scale than his normal work: measuring 450mm by 900mm, it depicts the parkland with a capital-trellised aviary, a greenhouse and a Gothic ruin, the artist‘s label on the reverse  stating it to beer a sketch made in 1812. The figures in this picture have tentatively been identified as Sir Gregory, facing the viewer with arm outstretched indicating his additions to the park; on the left of the group his wife Helen, in a wedding dress; his mother Frances, Lady Page-Turner next to him holding the hand of an unidentified child; and Sophia, the fiancée of his younger brother Edward George Thomas. Who had his back to the viewer.  The architectural historian John Harris also speculates that the figure raking the ground to the right of the group might be Joseph Paxton 1803-1865) whose first employment was as garden boy to Sir Gregory, and that the watercolour was possibly drawn to celebrate Page-Turner‘s wedding and the engagement of his younger brother.“

 

Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner, facing the viewer with arm outstretched indicating his additions to the park; on the left of the group his wife Helen, in a wedding dress; his mother Frances, Lady Page-Turner next to him holding the hand of an unidentified child; and Sophia, the fiancée of his younger brother Edward George Thomas. Who has his back to the viewer. 

Rudolph Müller, The Protestant Cemetery in Rome 

with the Tomb of Frances Page-Turner top right 

Frances Page-Turner died in Rome in 1828 and she is buried in the Cemetery for Foreigners . Since the height of the Grand Tour, non-Catholic foreigners dying in Rome have been buried in front of the pyramid-tomb of Caius Cestius.

“The most beautiful and solemn cemetery I have ever beheld” declared the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.  

 Five years after it opened, visitors entering the New Cemetery would have seen a massive new tomb silhouetted against a tower of the Aurelian city wall (Zone 1.16.12). A cuboid ‘Roman ’-style monument rests on a three-stepped pedestal which itself stands on several courses of a brick base. Surmounting this monument of some 3m. in height was a tall, slender cinerary vase in marble that made the tomb even more conspicuous. It is recognizable in early artwork and photos, for instance, the paintings by Gustavo Witting and Julius Zielke and the view of De Guimps’s grave (; detail shown here). An inventory of 1830 lists the Page Turner tomb ‘con vaso cinerario sopra’. When the urn disappeared is not known. The tomb’s inscription tells us that, as a ‘tribute of filial love’, her affectionate daughter Anna had the monument erected to the Dowager Lady Page Turner (1753-1828), widow of Sir Gregory Page Turner. Sir Gregory (1748-1805) at the age of twenty had inherited the title of 3rd Baronet of Ambrosden in Oxfordshire – he added ‘Page’ to his Turner surname in 1775 after being left property by a great-uncle. Soon after inheriting his title Sir Gregory made the Grand Tour in 1768-69 with a student friend, Richard Paul Jodrell, and the experienced William Patoun as their guide. He described his travels in letters written to an uncle, James Leigh. The portrait of him painted in Rome by Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787) has become a classic image of the Grand Tourist. The artist has typically inserted a view of the Colosseum, books, a copy of Nolli’s map of Rome, and a bust of Minerva, a prop that he used for several of his Grand Tour portraits. Sir Gregory’s stance recalls that of the Apollo Belvedere statue.

 Anna who dedicated the monument in Rome in 1828 was in fact the youngest of their five children, but two of them had already died young. As the tomb inscription explains, she was the wife of Henry Winston Barron, a member of an Irish Catholic family from Waterford who later entered British politics. In his book Queen Victoria and Italy (1859), he mentioned having visited Rome for long periods on three occasions. Possibly one of those coincided with the death of Frances Page-Turner and his wife’s dedication to her mother of one of the most distinctive monuments in the early years of the New Cemetery.