Eleanor Emily Robinson 1857-1912
Early life 1857-1879
Eleanor Emily Robinson was born in January 1857 at Richmond Cottage, on Holt Hill in Birkenhead, the second child of James Robinson and Sarah Owen. She was baptised at St Mary's parish church on 29 January the same year[1]. Her father, a chief engineer on a steamship, was away at sea for long periods throughout her childhood. Other members of the household included her older brother Samuel James (b.1853), her two younger siblings Florence Anne (b.1859) and Arthur Owen (b.1861), and an Irish servant named Ann McKenna.
As far as can be told, she was known to family and friends for most of her life by her middle name Emily, and possibly Em for short[Note 1]. This may have been a personal choice that she made when she was old enough to express it. Another explanation may be that when she was a baby her then three-year-old brother Samuel found Emily easier to pronounce, and so the name stuck. The first name Eleanor may have been in honour of her father James's maternal grandmother Eleanor Sanderson, although since the latter died fifteen years before James was born, this seems less likely. The name Emily was apparently new to the family, and was a rather popular "modern" name at the time[Note 2].
By 1871 the family had moved, now living in nearby Tranmere at 9 Chestnut Grove. At age fourteen Emily was still in school. This was before the introduction of compulsory schooling, and free education was rarely available beyond the age of twelve[3], so her attendance was almost certainly paid for by her parents. Emily's maternal grandfather Samuel Moses Owen was also staying with them at the time. A retired pub landlord, he had possibly been living with the Robinsons since being widowed in 1866, although he would move out again by 1872 when he remarried. Notably the family was no longer employing a servant, possibly because they could no longer afford to, or perhaps because Ann had mainly been employed as a nanny to look after the children when they were younger.
We have no record of what Emily did during the 1870s. She probably finished school at fourteen or sixteen. There is no evidence that she was ever in work herself. Her elder brother Samuel had by now become a merchant apprentice, while her younger brother Arthur followed in their father's footsteps with a nautical career, first going to sea in 1876 at the age fourteen.
Family life in Tranmere 1880-1890
In February 1880 Emily acted as witness to her brother Samuel's wedding to Ada Mary Foster[4]. It was possibly at this wedding that Emily first met her future husband John Coleman Kenworthy, who was a second cousin of the bride. John was by all accounts quite an intense and driven individual, possessed with unorthodox religious views and a passion for social justice. We sadly have no record of Emily's own convictions, spiritual or political, but we can assume she was receptive enough to John's beliefs for him to have made a positive impression.
They may have bonded further over having had similar childhoods, as they were both the children of seafarers. Both would also come to experience the loss of a relative at sea. John's father, a clipper-ship captain, died mid-voyage of a stomach illness in 1881. In February 1883, Emily's brother Arthur died of pneumonia on board the steamship Myrtle Home, aged just twenty-two. These tragedies and the subsequent grieving process may have brought Emily and John even closer together. They married at St Catherine's church in Tranmere on 11 September 1883, with John's brother George and Emily's sister Florence acting as the official witnesses[5].
The couple set up home at 11 Frodsham Street, several doors down from Emily's parents and sister Florence. John was a commercial bookkeeper with a steady income, but his interest in socialist politics was deepening. He had become a follower of the philosopher and economist John Ruskin and joined the Liverpool Ruskin Society the same year as his marriage[6]. Although relatively low-key at this point, her husband's political activities would eventually come to shape the entire course of Emily's life.
Emily gave birth to her first child, Gertrude Emily, in July 1884. Gertrude's middle name was of course the same as her mother's, but her first name was new to the family, and reflects the growing late-Victorian trend of selecting obscure and often Germanic given names for children[8]. Gertrude was baptised around the age of three months at Tranmere parish church[5]. This could perhaps be taken as early evidence of religious disagreement between husband and wife, since John had been raised a Methodist and was critical of the established church. It is also possible that Gertrude was taken for baptism by Emily's parents, rather than Emily herself. None of Emily and John's subsequent children are known to have been baptised, Anglican or otherwise.
The couple's second child was born a year later in July 1885, and named Hilda Margaret. The name Hilda is again a new one to the family, and another old Germanic name. The middle name Margaret may have been chosen in honour of Emily's paternal grandmother Margaret Liddell, although since the latter died in 1847 Emily would never have known her. This was a perhaps coincidental repetition of the situation with Emily's own first given name of Eleanor being that of her father's grandmother. Perhaps James regretted never honouring his mother in either of his daughter's names, and had requested that Emily do so.
In October 1885, Emily and John's daughters contracted whooping cough. They were seen to by a doctor, which John would later suspect only made their conditions worse. Assuming John's account is accurate, Emily informed him when he returned home one evening that the children were not expected to survive. Fifteenth-month-old Gertrude was breathing heavily and quickly as her hand clasped and unclasped, while three-month old Hilda lay in convulsions on a nurse's lap. Both girls died the following night. A decade later John would write about how these deaths instinctively fuelled his own belief in the spirit world and "a heart in the universe", but in keeping with a persistent trend throughout his work, there is no mention of how Emily coped with the sudden loss of both her children[7].
In October 1886 Emily's third child was born. She was named Emily Agnes, with Agnes being the name of one of John's sisters. She was followed just over a year later by John Frederick, whose middle name was a tribute to a much-loved uncle of John's. These children would be known as Agnes and Fred. Another son was born in January 1890, and given the name George Clive, to be known as George. Again the inspiration came from the Kenworthys, with George being the name of John's eldest brother. Clive on the other hand was originally a surname, but gained credence as a given name after it was used for a central character in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1855 novel The Newcomes[9]. With the exception of Emily's own name, none of their children would be named after a relative from her side. However this tradition of recycling ancestral names was already dying out, and in fact with the exception of Emily's eldest brother, all of the Robinson siblings had been given names which were apparently new to the family. It may be that Emily was responsible for the more original choices for their children such as Gertrude, Hilda and Clive.
John was becoming ever more involved in writing and politics. His first book, a poetry collection, was published in 1889[10]. In November of the same year the artist, writer and activist William Morris was a visitor to the household[11]. John's "respectable" career was also progressing apace. He now worked as a sales representative for a large frozen meat company, probably that of T.C. Eastman, which imported meat into Liverpool for sale to local retailers[20]. Emily's brother Samuel, who was himself now the manager of a butcher's firm with three outlets in Birkenhead and Tranmere[12], was almost certainly among Eastman's customers, suggesting that John may have gained a foothold in the company via his brother-in-law's contacts. John's talents as a salesman had apparently become a great asset to his employer, and in 1890 he was offered a position marketing their products in the United States, on a then-impressive salary of several thousand pounds a year[13].
Englewood 1890-1892
The family set sail from Liverpool on Christmas Eve 1890 on board the White Star Liner SS Adriatic. They travelled first class, and had between them twelve items of luggage. The passenger manifest is somewhat unclear, but it seems that Emily and John were in one cabin with eleven-month-old George, while a 26-year-old maid named Mary Williams was supervising Agnes and Fred in another[14]. Despite living all her life in a port town and having several relatives in the merchant navy, this was almost certainly Emily's first ocean voyage. The Adriatic had a tragically disaster-prone past. In the 1870s she had sunk no less than three other ships in accidental collisions, one of the ill-fated vessels going down with all hands[15]. A year before the Kenworthys' trip, she had crashed into the New York dock, causing considerable damage and sending bystanders running[16]. In keeping with this ominous record, another point of interest is that she was now under the captaincy of Edward Smith, who would later become well-known for having helmed the Titanic. Thankfully the voyage which brought Emily and her family to the States seems to have been uneventful, and they arrived safely in New York on 5 January 1891[17].
Their new home was in Englewood, New Jersey. Emily must have been pregnant before she left England, as her sixth child William M. was born 14 May 1891. The New Jersey birth records do not state what his middle initial stood for, but I have a strong suspicion that it was "Morris", and that he had been named after the aforementioned socialist whom John held in high regard[18]. Like his sister Hilda before him, he lived for just three months. The cause of death is not stated[19]. I cannot help but wonder if John's scepticism towards the medical establishment was a contributing factor.
John spent a considerable amount of time away from home, promoting the meat company's products on a journey westward across the states[21]. He was also continuing to write and be politically active, compiling a second book of poems, and co-founding a short-lived organisation called The Socialist League[22]. Most significantly of all in terms of impact on the course of his (and by extension Emily's) life, he read a copy of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, and instantly became a firm adherent of the Russian author's brand of Christian anarchism[23]. Inspired, he took the decision to give up his job in commerce, become a vegetarian, and return to England (with family in tow) where he could devote himself to the betterment of humanity and spreading the word of Tolstoy. They had been in the United States for just eighteen months.
It is not known whether Emily ever read The Kreutzer Sonata herself, but if she had done she may have been rather disturbed by her husband's fascination with it. The novella relates the tale of a man who is married for several years and has five children, after which he and his wife continue to be sexually active but use contraception to avoid pregnancy. He then discovers his wife is having an affair and, in a fit of rage and jealousy, stabs her to death. Reflecting on his actions in the book's framing narrative, he blames the entire situation on he and his wife's having surrendered to lust, a message which Tolstoy directly affirms in the epilogue. It was the author's belief that recreational sex led only to misery, and that sex should be engaged in minimally for purely procreative purposes[24]. If anything, John would take this viewpoint even further than Tolstoy, writing in 1898 that even the total extinction of humanity through universal abstinence was a small price to pay for "the gain of perfected human souls"[25]. Unsurprisingly, the couple would have no further children after the death of William in 1891.
Exactly why the book had this impact on John, and why his views became so extreme, is worthy of some attention as far as it relates to his relationship with Emily. There are some obvious yet unremarkable parallels between him and the book's protagonist, namely being a young married man with several children, yet any resemblance between Emily and the unfaithful wife is impossible to prove. However a clue as to the state of the marriage at that time perhaps lies in John's own second book, another poetry collection titled Amgiad and the Fair Lady, which was published in August 1891. The titular poem is ostensibly a retelling of the Arabian Nights tale Princes Amgiad and Assad, but John prefaces it with a dedication and epigraph which implies some personal inspiration:
TO MARGUERITE
This wild tale of the East be for thy sake,
Sweet dweller in the West! Hast thou forgot
Those two bright hours of afternoon in May
When - strangers from a thousand leagues apart -
We rode across the prairie side by side,
And held frank speech concerning men and things
From London to the Mississippi? I
Have not forgot, and I shall not forget.
This book of mine, though launched unpublicly
May yet go down to the ocean, to the fleet
Of those stout ships that make the port of fame.
It may be thou wilt hear of it; and This
Be my good hope, that thou may'st read, and know,
And kindly think of him who thinks of thee![26]
We will probably never know who Marguerite was, and quite how deep John's involvement with her was, but these achingly romantic lines with their references to the Mississippi and the prairie would seem to point towards some aborted love affair during one of John's business trips through the States. So it appears that if The Kreutzer Sonata was any kind of metaphor for Emily and John's life, it was John who was (or had wished to be) the unfaithful one. It is however entirely possible that Emily too found some extra-marital companionship in Englewood while her husband was away, and if her infedility predated her husband's, it would certainly explain why John made little attempt to hide his feelings towards Marguerite.
Any fallout from this situation could also be the cause of John becoming so vehement in his views on sex, and his perception that it led to unhappiness. Another factor may have been the coincidental timing of these events with the birth and death of his and Emily's youngest child. William M was born in May, the very month of John's "bright hours of happiness" with Marguerite if the epigraph is to be read as fact. He died in late August, the same month that Amgiad and the Fair Lady was published. Overcome with grief and guilt, and being one to read spiritual significance into chance events, John perhaps felt he was being punished for his prior hedonism.
He would make one brief mention of The Kreutzer Sonata in relation to his wife in the autobiographical novella The World's Last Passage, when he describes his brother George also having become enamoured with Tolstoy's works. Note that John wrote in the third person and changed the names of family members, with Kenworthy becoming "Sewell", George becoming "Grant", and George's wife Florence becoming "Ellen".
[John Sewell] recalled the last letter from Ellen to his own wife, in which she said "Grant has been reading Tolstoy's Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You all summer. He has been through it twice, and I don't like him reading what that horrid man who wrote The Kreutzer Sonata writes. That book, you know, is all against being married and they say horrible things about Tolstoy." Sewell smiled at the simple innocence of his really sweet-natured sister-in-law..."[27]
While the broad outline of events and circumstances narrated in The World's Last Passage line up completely with the known facts, it is impossible to tell whether details such as the existence of this letter from Florence are genuine, embellished, or completely fabricated. The passage does however reveal in John a rather patronising attitude towards the women in his life. If remotely true it would seem to indicate that the two Mrs Kenworthys were in the habit of consoling each other over their husbands' latest philosophical whims, although apparently not without John being privy to their correspondence. It is also sadly reflective of the dearth of information on Emily's character that the handful of sentences quoted above tell us far more about the beliefs and personality of John's sister-in-law than anything in the entire book does about his wife.
Plaistow and Croydon 1892-1896
Emily, John, and their three surviving children arrived back in England on 29 July 1892. Directly below the family on the passenger manifest is someone called M.J. Candlish, aged forty, with the occupation "companion", and a thirty-year-old maid named Mary Stubbs. However there are no clear divisions between each group of travellers, so it is not certain that the companion and the maid were with the Kenworthys[17]. Wealthy or aristocratic women did employ professional companions[28], and while Emily did not quite move in the super-affluent circles in which this was commonplace, it would certainly be understandable if she was craving some additional company by this point. As well as John's frequent absences and attention towards political causes, she had no doubt been missing her friends and relatives during her time away from England.
In that regard, it probably came as a disappointment to Emily that the family did not simply return to living in the Tranmere area, with John instead deciding that he wanted to focus his efforts in the East End of London. He was specifically drawn to a Congregationalist foundation called Mansfield House University Settlement which offered recreational and educational facilities to working class people in the Canning Town district[29]. The Kenworthys' new home would be 6 St. Andrew's Road, Plaistow[30]. A modest end-of-terrace house which at time of writing still stands, it is comparable in size and style to their first home on Frodsham Street in Tranmere, although probably a notch down from wherever they had been staying in Englewood when John was earning thousands a year. They were however still willing and able to employ a maid[31], although it is doubtful that the same could be said of their neighbours.
John would later look back on his days in Plaistow as "distressing"[32], but for Emily this was perhaps a relatively tranquil time. Her three surviving children were apparently all in good health. The family made occasional visits to John's brother George in Tranmere, which eldest child Agnes in particular is said to have enjoyed[33]. They would presumably see Emily's parents and siblings at the same time, since all had remained in Tranmere. Although George and his wife had no children, Emily's brother Samuel by now had five. The extended Kenworthy and Robinson families appear to have kept close ties, as Emily's father James would name George Kenworthy as one of the executors of his will at the beginning of 1894[34].
It would not be long before that will was executed. James Robinson died in February 1894, at the age of sixty-nine. He left his estate to his wife, with the agreement that upon her death it be dissolved and divided between their three surviving children. His request hints at the severity of a certain situation which had been developing for some time within the Robinson family - that of Samuel's alcoholism, and his (presumably related) financial troubles. His butcher business had collapsed in 1891[35], and just three weeks before his father's death he had been caught riding the train without a ticket[36]. The will of course does not refer directly to any of this, but James does stipulate that his son's share of the inheritance be released to him in weekly instalments of 25 shillings. Samuel had clearly proven himself incapable of handling money responsibly.
In September of the same year, tragedy struck the family again, this time on John's side. His brother George died after a sudden illness whilst on holiday in Scotland. This loss would hit Emily's husband very hard, and would also add considerable fuel to another of his developing interests – a belief in spiritualism. Emily was apparently away from home when John received the news that George was gravely ill, and would arrive back at the house that afternoon to find that John had boarded a northbound train in hopes of seeing his brother one last time, leaving the children at home in the care of the maid. Thus we have evidence (albeit via John's retelling of events) that Emily occasionally travelled on her own, perhaps to visit family or friends while John was too busy to step away from London. His account of this day in The World's Last Passage demonstrates a rare moment – the only one in the book – in which he directs any specific attention towards his wife. As John "Sewell" wrote a note to "Millicent" (as Emily's fictionalised counterpart is named) to explain his sudden departure, "he imagined the effect upon Millicent"[37]. He does not elaborate on what this effect might be, whether her own fear of George's death, her frustration at John's absence, or a combination of the two.
John's lack of attention towards his wife in this autobiographical work stands in contrast to some quite detailed and even affectionate portrayals of its numerous other characters, not just family members, but also the household maid and a Scottish woman who had nursed George in his final days. This may be purely circumstantial if we take as fact Emily's absence from the home when John left for Scotland. And yet throughout the body of John's published writings he frequently relates quite personal stories, yet in which Emily is only ever mentioned in passing, an accessory to the major events in John's life.
The World's Last Passage does perhaps contain another nod, not to Emily herself, but someone else in her family. John gave his youngest brother Edward the pseudonym Arthur, the name of Emily's youngest sibling who had died in 1883. This could be coincidence, but I suspect it was deliberate. Arthur had died less than a year before Emily and John were married, so John would almost certainly have known him, and John's compassion towards deceased relatives is central to the book's theme.
Meanwhile, changes were afoot in London. John had recently been appointed honorary "pastor" of an organisation called The Brotherhood Church, at their newly established community in Croydon, and with his salesman-like demeanour he was proving very skilled at winning over new adherents[38]. This, coupled with letters from Leo Tolstoy in which the Russian author allegedly[Note 3] described John as a kindred spirit and gave him the rights to publish his books in English[40], seems to have given Emily's husband an inflated sense of his own importance to the movement and a cast-iron belief in the correctness of his own thoughts. It is hard to imagine that this egotistical streak in John did not occasionally manifest itself at home.
The Brotherhood Church put an emphasis on hard work and self-sacrifice. Chores were still divided according to gendered stereotypes, so if Emily became involved at all she may have been part of Church-member Nellie Shaw's dress-making workshops. The workshop made dresses fitted to "scientific principles"[41], which presubably meant they were more comfortable but less flamboyant than the standard women's fashions of the day. With John's increasingly dogmatic attachment to the "Brotherhood" doctrine, if Emily made no labour contributions and failed to adopt the Church's norms, this would no doubt have driven the wedge even further between husband and wife.
As John's activities came to focus ever more around Croydon, the family probably also moved to that district, although I cannot find an address for them there or an approximate date of when they moved. The children may have attended some Brotherhood Church events (perhaps ones specifically aimed at children). Agnes, who by this time would have been eight or nine, would become friends with Constance Foster[42], the daughter of left-leaning Congregationalists in Croydon.
In the winter of 1895-6 Emily and John were apart for another long stretch, as John embarked on what he would refer to as a "pilgrimage" to visit his hero Leo Tolstoy in Russia. He was gone for over a month, and would return with even more enthusiasm for putting Tolstoy's theories into practice, and even more assured of his status as a favoured disciple of the Russian author[43]. Another sudden change in the family's lives was on the horizon.
The Purleigh Colony 1896-1899
Key members of the Brotherhood Church had been seriously discussing the idea of founding a rural intentional community based on Tolstoyan principles since at least the spring of 1895, so if Emily was at all kept in the loop, she would have known what was coming. In the Autumn of 1896 various wealthier members of the church clubbed together to buy 10 acres of land and some run-down buildings near the village of Purleigh in Essex, with John contributing £100[44]. They would live and work on this "colony" in what they held to be a true spirit of Christian Brotherhood.
Despite John being such a central figure in all the Brotherhood Church did, Emily and her family did not initially become colonists themselves. In the early years of the project's existence John divided his time between Croydon and rented accommodation in Woodham Ferrers[45], a few miles from Purleigh. It is not known whether Emily and the children stayed in Croydon, Woodham Ferrers, or moved back and forth in tandem with John. The decision not to commit fully to being part of the colony was probably mainly to do with John still being incredibly busy giving talks, editing the Brotherhood's newspaper and producing English-language editions of Tolstoy's works. By October of 1897 it appears that the family moved into more permanent accommodation in Woodham Ferrers, with an address of Hill Farm[46]. It was probably a blessed relief to Emily that John did not insist on them living on the colony, where the ramshackle collection of houses did not even have running water[47].
John was nevertheless the colony's de facto leader, and its authority on matters of doctrine. It would not take long for splits and tensions to appear. Arguably the biggest of these would be around Tolstoy's views on sex, upon which we know that John took a rigidly orthodox position. In 1898 a number colonists who were of a more sex-positive opinion left to form a new community in Whiteway, Gloucestershire. This detail of the colony's history would probably be largely irrelevant to Emily's story were it not for the possible impact of John's hard-line stance on sex to their marriage, and the fact that years later their sons Fred and George would themselves become part of that new colony at Whiteway. As with so many topics in Emily's life, we have no inkling of her own opinion on what the colonists referred to as "the Sex Question"[48].
While that question was under debate in Purleigh, another drama was playing out amongst Emily's relatives. Her brother Samuel's drinking and carelessness with money had apparently gone so far that in May 1898 his wife Ada was granted a separation order on grounds of his "persistent cruelty and neglect". The court heard that Samuel was suffering from delirium tremens, and frequently "ill-treated his wife". The financial situation in the family was so dire that friends of Ada from her hometown of Manchester were supplying the children with clothing[49]. Divorces were still quite difficult and costly to obtain, but a legal separation order allowing her to live freely away from him was the next best thing[50]. They may have later reconciled, since Ada would give birth to another child – purportedly Samuel's - in 1905. They were however living separately at the time of the 1911 census, albeit only a mile and a half from each other.
In November of 1898 the Kenworthy family would finally come to settle at Purleigh. Activities had wound down in Croydon, and John and the other colonists had been hard at work constructing new buildings. One of these, a single-storey residence known as The Grey House, was envisaged by John as his permanent base of operations[51]. It would become Emily's home for the next eleven years. Thankfully, the land now had running water.
Despite her residence there it is not clear if Emily was ever a member of the colony in the full sense, since no official list of all colonists from any period exists. The sixteen-article Colony Constitution, drafted in 1899, describes a formalised process by which someone could join or leave the colony. Major decisions could only be made by unanimous vote of all colonists[52]. They were known however to sometimes host visitors, everyone from international celebrities of the Tolstoyan movement to transient homeless people. In the absence of any evidence of Emily engaging with the colony or sharing its goals, she was probably more of an unofficial permanent guest. There is nothing to suggest her presence was questioned.
Even if she did not throw herself into life at the colony, this small cottage surrounded by fields would have been very unlike any of the urban terraces Emily was accustomed to living in. A three mile walk across rugged country roads to the nearest railway station[53], it would certainly have become more difficult for Emily to travel independently and see her relatives. We can also assume the household was no longer employing a maid, since such a thing would have been very much frowned upon among the self-reliant Tolstoyans. However there was probably now somewhat less work to do at home, with far fewer childcare needs now that youngest child George now almost nine years old. It is quite likely that Emily and now twelve-year-old Agnes were doing the housework between them. Much as the colonists thought of themselves as being liberated from societal constraints, many tasks continued to be segregated along gendered lines[54]. George and Fred possibly helped out with cultivating the land, as both would go on to work in farming as adults.
The colony itself was now in a near-terminal decline. Having never fully recovered from the Whiteway exodus of 1898, members continued to leave in dribs and drabs, although the project was never officially abandoned. Many ex-colonists would point the finger at John for the colony's failure, saying that he had been an intolerant and dictatorial figure[55]. His presumption that he was Tolstoy's mouthpiece in England drew resentment, especially from fellow colonists Aylmer Maude and Vladimir Chertkov, both of whom had far closer ties to Tolstoy. For his own part, John would characteristically blame the colony's downfall on the hedonistic "lusts" of its former members[56].
Throughout this biography I have struggled to avoid overshadowing Emily's story by telling too much of John's. However one further tale from these waning days of the Purleigh colony is worth repeating for the unique and vivid portrait it gives us of Emily's husband, as he was in his own home. By this point all prospective colonists (of which there were presumably not many) had to report to John for a suitability interview. This account is from one unsuccesful applicant.
The spiritual leader of the colony sat at an easel, painting very deliberately [another of John's pursuits, but one that is not well-documented], and with his eyes upon his apparently so careful work, between each stroke of the brush he threw at me some new, tranfixing question. Head of a movement generated in a well-to-do London suburb, the tall, severe man at the easel was free, and as one who could neither understand nor tolerate any failure to find personal freedom he spared no arrow. Did I not admit the falsity of existing economic and social relations? Could any man live by falsehood? Was not truth life and life truth? Could I not trust to truth for my living? Would God, being absolute truth, let any man serve truth and starve?"[57]
In between the sales-pitch bluster of John's own writings and the figure of a chaotic megalomaniac as told by his former associates, we see here a different facet of his personality - one of calm, calculated arrogance, the self-assured ruler of a tiny domain.
Continued life at the Grey House, 1899-1909
For many years Emily had no doubt endured her husband's ever-changing priorities, his self-importance, and his obsessive puritanism, but it was in these years immediately following the colony's collapse that we start to see evidence of serious decline in John's mental health, in which all his antagonistic personality traits became magnified as his grasp on reality faded. As has so often been the case, we can only hazard guesses as to Emily's experiences in this time, through looking at the recorded activities of her husband.
Despite his unpopularity with the former colonists, John was still in frequent demand as a speaker, and was often away from home. Besides politics, he was becoming increasingly well-known in spiritualist circles. This new focus manifested itself at home too, as by his own account John would spend hours engaged in "automatic" writing, which he believed was the result of various deceased intellectuals dictating their thoughts to him from beyond the grave[58].
On the 1901 census (conducted 31 March) we find Emily and Agnes the only occupants at the Grey House. Fred and George were by now attending a Quaker boarding school in Saffron Waldon, and John was away in London, staying with the manager of a publishing firm. It is not clear why John was there at that time, but he must have either been there for some time or used it as an official address, as it would still be given as his place of residence in July that year. John had also made another trip to see Tolstoy in Russia in 1900[59]. It appears that by this point, he and Emily may have been apart more often than they were together.
In May 1901 Emily's brother-in-law William Stratford (husband of her sister Florence) died very suddenly whilst at sea. His will, dated May 1892, named John and George Kenworthy as both the executors and the recipients of his entire estate, with the instruction that they hold the money on behalf of Florence until he and Florence's eldest child reached the age of twenty-one, whereupon the money would be divided equally between said children. With George dead, the entire sum of £975 was passed to John[60]. At the time the will was written, John had still been working as a salesman in the United States, and William could not have predicted how far his brother-in-law's lifestyle would change. With John apparently having sunk every penny he had into his political projects, it is hard to imagine that there were not some members of the family who doubted that the money had been left in safe hands. However there is no evidence that the will was contested or that John was ever challenged for failing to hold the money.
It is not clear why William did not simply leave the money to Florence. Sexism may appear to be the obvious answer, but it was quite normal for men to bequeath their estates to their wives, and had been for centuries. Besides, the will does not specify that the children receiving their inheritance at the age of twenty-one had to be sons (and as it turned out, William and Florence's two surviving children were both girls). It does make me wonder if, like the eldest Robinson sibling Samuel, Florence had a tendency to drink or be reckless with money.
Meanwhile the colony at Purleigh was undergoing something of a revival, as a group of Tolystoyans loyal to John moved to the largely vacated site. This second edition of the colony was if anything more chaotic and short-lived than the first one. The most notable event that occurred during their time there was in the spring of 1902 when, quite admirably, they gave shelter to two homeless people who were suffering from smallpox[61]. What is less admirable however, is that all of the colonists had refused vaccination, and before long many of them were severely ill themselves. One colonist did not survive[62]. As far as I can tell, Emily and her family managed to avoid the disease. While the one photo we have of her is too indistinct to tell, later images of John and the three children show that none of them bore the distinctive pock-mark scars.
Little over a year later, the new influx of colonists would be gone. John had decided they were not hard-working enough, and disagreed with them on several points of doctrine. Now making no secret of his attitude that he was in charge of the colony, he cited the fact that since all the other founding members had departed he alone held the rights to the land, and ordered all but one of them to leave[63]. Shortly after this he tried to sue the Daily News for an unflattering article they had printed about the colony's smallpox outbreak, which only resulted in John being humiliated before the court, and ordered to pay costs[61].
In the spring of 1904 John left England once more, this time for a speaking tour in the United States where he had apparently gained some favour with a number of intellectuals, including the renowned settlement activist Jane Addams. News of this would result in two surviving letters written by John's former friend and Tolstoy associate Aylmer Maude, which give us some insight into the conditions Emily had been subjected to.
Maude, who had prior contact with Addams, had heard that John would be speaking at Addams's settlement centre, Hull House, and wrote her a friendly yet desperate warning about the man she was now associating with. He tells of how John was building up unpaid debts, and threatening to sue anyone who crossed him, before adding that "He worried & neglected his poor wife till she was quite out of her senses;" Here, at last, we have some small yet explicit indication of the impact of John's behaviour on Emily. Maude concludes by saying that "One could do something for the poor wife & children if he were either to get better or worse; but in his then state of mind one could only keep as far as possible away from him"[64]. Maude's implication seems to be that if John's mental state deteriorated further it might be possible to rescue Emily and the children from his influence through a legal or medical intervention.
Six weeks later Maude wrote another letter, this time to Addams's partner Mary Rozet Smith. Apparently Smith and Addams had not entirely heeded Maude's warning, and were housing John at Hull House. Maude further tries to impress upon the couple the dangers of allowing John into their lives, and once again makes reference to Emily and the children:
"[Kenworthy's] violence prevents people from taking steps to get his children educated or his wife supplied with the medical care she needs. For years past we have all been saying that it must end soon: that either he will get better, & cease to be so unreasonable; or else he will be acknowledged to be out of his mind, & then his wife's relations & friends can do something for her & for the children."[65]
These words paint a stark picture, but raise as many questions as they answer. This is Maude's only mention of violence in either letter, and there is no clue as to how exactly John had been violent, or whom to. The way in which Emily's health was compromised is also not disclosed, although it was clearly quite serious. The reference to the children needing to be educated is particularly cryptic. Agnes, Fred and George were at this point aged seventeen, sixteen and fourteen respectively, ages at which most children would then have finished or be close to finishing formal education. We know that Fred and George attended the Friends' School (as did Maude's own son), and while we don't know where Agnes was schooled, later evidence certainly reveals her to be fully literate and deeply knowledgeable. Perhaps, in keeping with his growing distrust in officialdom, John had at some point pulled the children out of school (which would have been a criminal offence with regard to any child who was twelve or younger, unless he could demonstrate that they were being appropriately home-schooled)[85]. Alternatively, or perhaps additionally, Maude may have felt that John was indoctrinating his children, and that they would require some form of re-education to gain a healthier worldview.
Whatever the case, Emily was clearly suffering in an oppressive and even dangerous household, and had been for some time. The two letters also put paid to any notion that Emily was John's willing accomplice. Maude does not implicate her in sharing any of the blame for her husband's actions in Purleigh, and if anything seems to view Emily and the children as John's most unfortunate victims.
The second letter also sheds some light on another significant development in Emily and John's marriage, as it contains the earliest known mention of the latter's association with a woman named Eliza Pickard. Eliza was a former Quaker minister from Leeds who had apparently begun working closely with John. Maude describes her as being "rather eccentric". She was apparently here acting as a go-between for the two men, relaying a threat of legal action were Maude to claim association with or even express any opinions about John[65]. Eliza's loyalty to John would go beyond co-operating as activists, and they would develop an extremely close personal bond, although it is not known how they would have defined their relationship at this earlier point, or how they would have presented it to others. However, the passenger manifest for John's arrival at New York in May 1904 states that his most recent place of residence was Leeds, not Purleigh[66]. Later evidence suggests that Eliza and Emily were well aware of each other, and may have met. Once again however, Emily's voice on the matter is conspicuously absent in the available records.
In August 1905 Emily's mother Sarah died at her home in Tranmere. Her will is somewhat difficult to interpret. She initially wrote it in 1893 and made her youngest child Florence both executrix and sole beneficiary. In 1902 she added a codicil, bequeathing specific amounts to several of her grandchildren - £10 each to Sidney and Arthur, the two eldest sons of Samuel (skipping over second child Maud); £5 to Emily's daughter Agnes; and £10 and £5 respectively to the eldest and youngest of Florence's surviving children. Why these five grandchildren and none of the others is unclear, although it is possible that the others had been given similar sums while their grandmother was alive for one reason or another. The codicil then states "should my daughter Eleanor Emily Kenworthy have died before me or should be of unsound mind at the time of my death all moneys standing in my name at the time of my death shall be equally divided between my other two children Samuel James Robinson and Florence Annie Stratford, my son's portion to be paid as stated in his father's will". This is rather confusing as neither Emily or Samuel had previously been mentioned as beneficiaries, so there was no specific instruction on how the money would be divided were Emily still alive and well. The fact that Sarah only makes provision for the death or mental unsoundness of Emily but not the other two siblings is also strange, and perhaps suggests that Emily's health was such that death or mental breakdown appeared imminent. In contrast with the conditions of William's will four years earlier, Sarah seemed quite happy for Florence to directly inherit money, while reaffirming her husband's stipulation that Samuel should only receive his in increments. Her estate was fairly substantial, totalling £1645[67].
Emily's eldest child Agnes was now eighteen years old, and seems to have made the most of her independence. By the autumn of 1905 she was staying in Liverpool with John's mother Amelia, and working for a charity called the Food and Betterment Association. If this was her attempt to escape tensions within the family, it would not be entirely successful.
At some point either before or during her tenure in Liverpool, Agnes had spent some time in Leeds, where she paid a visit to the aforementioned Eliza Pickard. Eliza had in her possession a watch belonging to Emily which had been given to her by John to "take care of" when he left for America in 1904. Why Emily could not keep the watch herself is never stated, but clearly John had decided either with or without his wife's consent that it was safer in Eliza's hands. When Agnes was in Leeds, she requested – or as Eliza would later put it, "demanded" - the watch. Eliza let her have it, "to use and look after", apparently with Emily's consent[68].
During this stay in Leeds, Agnes also apparently spent some time with several of the second wave of Purleigh colonists who had been expelled in 1903. Unsurprisingly, this drew the ire of her father, and in October he wrote (from Eliza's address) to Agnes's employer at the Food and Betterment Association in which he states:
"As far as I can judge [Agnes's] conduct with regard to her mother + myself has been very wrong, and of such a kind that it will be a service to her if she can be shown how and where it is wrong, by being made to feel its proper consequences."
He goes on to state that his daughter had been influenced by "indiscreet and wrongly intentioned people", by which he presumably means the ex-colonists, and accuses her of spreading malicious lies regarding himself[69].
Shortly after this Agnes wrote to her employer, apologising for his being caught up in the matter, and requesting that he not write to her father until he had heard her version of events. Her letter also contains a brief mention of Emily's health: "I have had such unfavourable reports of my mother's health, that I feel very anxious about her"[70]. Her employer seems to have honoured her request, as he wrote back to John in early November saying he had spoken to Agnes and was satisfied she was not talking to anyone about her father[71].
The matter appears to have become dormant for a couple of months. However in January 1906 Eliza would fire off a sternly-worded letter to Agnes on John's behalf, claiming that since Agnes was still in possession of her mother's watch after having been asked to return it, she was guilty of "nothing less than stealing". She then goes on to express her disappointment that Agnes had been associating with the former Purleigh colonists, who were guilty of practicing "very gross immorality". Finally, she relays a claim from John that "someone" (we never learn who) had told him that Agnes had been seen "in a very compromising situation with Mr Ferris"[68].
"Mr Ferris", would have been Tom Ferris, one of the most outspoken of the former colonists, and sixteen years Agnes's senior[72]. Both he and Agnes would write to Eliza refuting the claims against them[73]. The truth is impossible to gauge, although to Eliza a lack of hard evidence probably did not matter, since in her view Ferris and his group kept such an "improperly conducted house... that any lady whom [Ferris] induced to visit there must inevitably be a subject of scandal"[74]. These letters have been preserved only because Eliza sent copies to Agnes's employer, which led to them being stored in the charity's files and subsequently the Liverpool Record Office. They conclude with a final letter from Agnes's employer to John in February 1906 (in reply to a non-extant inquiry from the latter), stating that Agnes had now left the Food and Betterment Association and he did not know her whereabouts[75].
Regarding Emily's watch, we only have Eliza's account of events. My suspicion is that Agnes did not trust either Eliza or her father with it, perhaps given the latter's tendency to run up debts. She may also have been resentful of Eliza's increasing interference in the family's affairs. Eliza's statements on Emily's wishes are unqualified and potentially contradictory. She says she gave Agnes the watch "to use and take care of, with your mother's consent", but when Agnes was asked to return the watch Eliza asserts that "your mother says she did not give it to you" (emphasis Eliza's). In Eliza's words, the request to return the watch came from Agnes's parents, but in the circumstances it seems quite plausible that this request was from John alone, acting in what he believed were his wife's best interests. The fact that Eliza says she was mistaken in handing over the watch "without... asking your father"[68] (and no mention of asking Emily!) would seem to support this. Eliza also does not expressly state to whom the watch was to be returned, although since the entire situation appears to be founded on the premise of Emily not being able to look after the watch herself, it would presumably have been back to John or Eliza herself.
While this heated exchange of letters was going on, Emily continued to reside at The Grey House. Youngest child George would only have recently turned sixteen and so was probably in his final year at the boarding school. Fred would now have been eighteen, but it is not certain if he remained with his mother at this time or whether he too had taken the earliest opportunity to fly the nest.
News of Agnes resurfaces in July 1907, thanks to a postcard she sent to her friend (and future sister-in-law) Constance Foster. Agnes was holidaying in Lladudno, although who she was travelling with is not known[42]. It is not clear if, or how, the saga with Emily's watch had concluded.
In July 1908 Emily and John were invited to the wedding of John's cousin George Williams Kenworthy in Portsmouth. Their presence at what was a rather prestigious event (George W Kenworthy's bride was the daughter of a retired naval commander) almost seems incongruous given how dysfunctional their own marriage had become. A large group photo of the wedding guests provides our one surviving and sadly very indistinct image of Emily. She has a round face, and dark, possibly curly hair, features reminiscent of John's description of their eldest daughter Gertrude. She appears to be smiling slightly[76]. Rather tellingly, the dress she is wearing bears the puffed sleeves and shoulder ruffles of a style that was the fashion a decade earlier[77], and puts her in contrast with the squared shoulders and drooping sleeves of the other women in the picture. It seems that Emily had not been able to afford a new formal dress for some time, or else had had no reason to own one.
The wedding photo also shows that John's three surviving siblings and their spouses were also in attendance. During the correspondence regarding Agnes in 1905-6, John had accused his mother and his youngest brother Edward of "listening to [Agnes's] tales, and allowing themselves to be drawn into the attack that has been made on me". It makes one wonder how far tensions had been resolved in the intervening years, how much the extended Kenworthy family were aware of them, and if they flared up at all during the wedding festivities.
It was in November 1909 that things finally came to a head with John's mental condition. He would be admitted to Essex County Lunatic Asylum, in Brentwood. His admission papers show that his paranoia had now gone far beyond the comparatively grounded attacks on his family and former colonists, and that he now appeared to have taken a complete break with reality.
John had been largely retired from speaking and writing since 1906, apparently the year his "mania" (as it was described at the time) first manifested, and seems to have been living primarily with Emily at The Grey House. Emily, probably still suffering from her own health problems, was employing a local man named Frank Brand as a household servant. How she could afford to employ someone, or indeed any other daily living expenses is unclear, but since all three children were now of working age it is possible one or more of them was sending money home. Emily and John may also have had some financial support from other relatives. Fred and George are named among the next of kin on the admission papers, although Fred was stated to be in Canada at the time (for reasons I am not aware of), while George's address was unknown. Perhaps, like Agnes, George had suffered personal attacks from his father and had deliberately gone off his parents' radar. It appears to have been Brand who alerted authorities to John's condition.
According to testimonies by the psychiatrist and Frank Brand, John was now asserting that he was the grandson of King William IV, and that he had been informed by "his friend the Sultan" that all the food in the house had been poisoned by "the Jews". As a result he was refusing to eat, and preventing Emily from eating as well. Even more alarmingly, he now slept with a hatchet beside his bed[78]. Here then we have a likely far-from-complete but nonetheless compelling picture of the terror Emily must have been living under, and the degree of control John was able to exert over her, even at his most deluded.
Final years
It is not known how long Emily remained at the Grey House following her husband's committal, but it was less than a year. Newspaper notices reveal that the house, along with four acres of grass land, was sold via a solicitor for £330 in June 1910[86][87]. In November 1910 John was transferred from the Brentwood asylum to Middlesbrough where he was a private (as opposed to state-funded "pauper" class) patient. A note on his transfer record states that "the friends propose to later on remove this patient to Bootham Park Asylum, York"[78]. These "friends" are not named, but we can guess that they included Eliza Pickard with perhaps one or two other supporters from the Leeds contingent.
Emily did not go north with him. By the time of the 1911 census (and probably ever sine The Grey House was sold), she was living in a small private nursing home in Kelvedon, ten miles from Purleigh. The home, made from two terrace properties on Kelvedon High Street knocked through into one, housed between three and five patients (designations on the census are not entirely clear) and four or five staff members. Emily was suffering from chorea, a syndrome characterised by uncontrollable dance-like movements of the hands and feet, which can be caused by a number of underlying health conditions. Her care was probably funded by family members, or perhaps John's associates in Yorkshire were extending their generosity to her as well, although if so there was clearly no desire to keep her and John close together. The nursing home's patients included a 77-year-old deaf woman, and a 51-year-old man with spinal weakness.
None of the Kenworthy children had remained in the area. Agnes was now in Coventry, a visitor in the household of that city's former mayor James Maycock. She has no occupation listed. Fred and George meanwhile appear to have become associated with the Whiteway Colony, that first breakaway group from Purleigh, and were working as farmers in the nearby village of Sheepscombe. It seems that, like Agnes, they had not entirely turned their back on the colony's ethos, but had found the very colonists who had fallen out with their father to be better company.
Emily would remain at the nursing home for what little remained of her life. She died there on 27 July 1912 at the age of 55. The cause of death was certified as mitral disease and heart failure. This, coupled with the earlier diagnosis of chorea, suggests Emily's underlying illness may have been rheumatic fever, which is characterised by involuntary movements and is a common cause of mitral stenosis. It is a recurring condition which can flare up repeatedly for years following an initial infection, so may have been the reason for reports of Emily's poor health in 1904 and 1905[79].
She was buried on 30 July at Kelvedon parish church[80]. Sadly it appears that any headstone she once had is no longer standing[81].
Legacy
If surviving mentions of Emily were scarce during her lifetime, they are non-existent after it. Her husband, who had cast such a long shadow over her destiny, would go on to outlive her by thirty-six years. His mental condition would improve enough that by 1917 he was no longer in an asylum, and was living with the ever-loyal Eliza in Duffield, Derbyshire[82]. They now apparently considered each other husband and wife, and she would go by the name Eliza Pickard-Kenworthy until her death in 1942, although the union was never formalised. It seems that at some point John would suffer a relapse, as he was back at Bootham Asylum in 1939[83]. He died there in 1948.
Fred and George would remain near Whiteway for some time, claiming conscientious objector status during the First World War, which they were allowed on the basis that they were doing essential work farming the land[84]. Agnes herself married prominent conscientious objector Clarence Henry Norman, and Fred would marry Agnes's friend Constance Foster. All three siblings appear to have remained on good terms throughout their lives, as shown by surviving postcards and photographs. Agnes may even have reconciled with her father, since they appear side by side in a group photo at Fred's wedding in 1917. Although all three siblings married, Fred was the only one to have children.
The greater prominence of Emily's husband in historical records and his longer lifespan make it comparatively difficult to gauge how fondly she was remembered by her family. She does not appear in any photo passed down within my line of the family, whereas John appears in one, the aforementioned wedding photo which was taken after Emily had died. Fred had one daughter and one son, with the latter receiving the middle name John, but the daughter was not given the name Emily. This was however well after the period when naming children after one's parents was commonplace, and the name John arguably had more significance both for its long history within the Kenworthy family and being one of Fred's own names. The only known example of any of Emily's children showing any concern or affection towards her was in Agnes's letter of 1905 when she expressed her worries about Emily's health. However, whether they were concerned or not, none of the children chose to stay close to Emily during her last years. When John was at his most deluded and dangerous, all three were far away, and it took someone from outside the family to raise the alarm. This could be a reflection on the priorities of three young adults, eager to see the world and experience new things, or it could indicate that Emily herself was not easy to live with and was one of the factors driving the children away from home. Then again, we are of course missing details such as how often the children visited home, how often they wrote and whether they sent money or arranged for others to see to Emily's welfare in their absence. As for John himself, misguided and counterproductive though his efforts typically were, he does seem to have acted in what he thought were Emily's best interests, albeit to the point of denying her food when his anti-semitic fantasies told him it was poisoned. Not letting your wife eat poison is hardly the highest bar for a husband to clear though, and there are plenty of examples from earlier in their marriage that suggest he probably did not give much consideration to her feelings.
Emily remains practically a missing person within the family tree. Within the shadow of her husband's career, she was always present but seldom seen, and our lack of knowledge on her seems all the more stark for how much we know about him. Perhaps one day something will surface - a letter, a photograph, even a passing reference in a newspaper article - that will give us some clue as to the thoughts and personality of the woman who was John Coleman Kenworthy's wife, and who surely deserves to be remembered as more than that.
Notes
1. The only first hand source I have for this is the birth of Emily's sixth child, on which the mother's maiden name is given as "Robinson, Emily". An additional piece of circumstantial evidence to support her being "Emily" and not "Eleanor" is the fact that her daughter had the given names Emily Agnes, and was known as Agnes, which indicates a preference for Emily when passing names down in the family and the use of a middle name which in this case could have been used to distinguish her from her mother. Similarly Emily's eldest son was named John Frederick but known throughout his life as Fred, with John being his father's name. Unlike Emily, there is copious and unambiguous first-hand evidence of Agnes and Fred being known by their middle names. Regarding the abbreviation to "Em", my only evidence is Mollie Jenkins' A Very English Family, which does not cite its own sources and is known to contain several errors. It states that Emily's husband John referred to her with a single letter "M"[2], which I assume was a joking reference to the fact that it is pronounced identically to "Em". This would appear to be backed up elsewhere in Mollie's book, where she refers to Emily as "Em" in her caption identifying people in the group photo of George W Kenworthy's wedding. How Mollie came by this information I am not certain, as she seems to have known very little else about John's personal life or Emily's background.
2. From original research derived from baptism records on www.findmypast.co.uk. Emily was a given name for 0.02% of children baptised in 1800; 0.09% of children in 1820; 0.69% of children in 1840; and 1.57% of children in 1860, indicating it had gone from obscurity in Emily's grandparents' generation to one of the most popular girl's names of her own generation.
3. Tolstoy himself apparently did not recall sending the letter giving over the rights to English translations[39], and the only source for it is a transcript in John's one of John's own works.
References
1. St Mary Birkenhead baptism registers, Record Office Chester
2. Jenkins, Mollie (2001): A Very English Family, privately published; p324
3. Gillard, D (2011): Education in England: A Brief History,
4. St Mary Birkenhead marriage registers, Record Office Chester
5. St Catherine Tranmere marriage registers, Record Office Chester
6. Gray, Victor (2019): A New World in Essex, Campanula; p9
7. Kenworthy, John C (1896): The World's Last Passage, Brotherhood Press; p35-6
8. Hasfjord, Amy M (2016): New Influences on Naming Patterns in Victorian Britain, Illinois State University; p102, 111
9. nameberry; accessed 25 Jul 2023
10. Kenworthy, John C (1889): The Judgement of the City and Other Poems and Verses, London
11. Letter from William Morris to John Coleman Kenworthy, 6 November 1889; from Kelvin, Norman (editor) (1984): The Collected Letters of William Morris, Princeton University Press.
12. Liverpool Mercury, 7 Aug 1891
13. Reynold's Newspaper, 5 Sep 1897
14. Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Outwards Passenger Lists, National Archives (UK)
15. Titanic and Other White Star Line Ships, accessed via Internet Archive Wayback Machine 25 Jul 2023 from a snapshot created 12 Nov 2012
16. Newry Telegraph, 15 Oct 1889
17. Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists, National Archives (UK)
18. Index Register of Births, New Jersey State Archives
19. Index Register of Deaths, New Jersey State Archives
20. North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 7 Nov 1890
21. Kenworthy, John C (1902): Tolstoy: His Life and Works, London and Newcastle; p47
22. Gray, Victor (2019); p12
23. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p13
24. Tolstoy, Leo (1889; English translation 1890): The Kreuzer Sonata, Bibliographic Office, Berlin
25. The New Order/i>, Vol IV, No.6; July 1898
26. Kenworthy, John C. (1891): Amgiad and the Fair Lady, Englewood Press; p15
27. Kenworthy, John C (1896); p70
28. Hoffer, Lauren Nicole (2009): That Inevitable Woman: The Paid Female Companion and Sympathy in the Victorian Novel, Vanderbilt University
29. Holman, J. de K. in Jones, Malcolm (editor) (1978): New Essays on Tolstoy, Cambridge University Press; p196
30. Proceedings of the Central Criminal Court, 23 Jul 1894, Old Bailey Online Project
31. Kenworthy, John C (1896); p6
32. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p13
33. Kenworthy, John C (1896); p13
34. Will of James Robinson, Principal Probate Registry, 11 Dec 1894
35. Liverpool Mercury, 7 Nov 1891
36. Birmingham Daily Post, 2 Feb 1894
37. Kenworthy, John C (1896); p11
38. Holman, J. de K. in Jones, Malcolm (editor) (1978); p196
39. Christian, R.F. (ed) (1978): Tolstoy's Letters Volume II: 1880-1910, University of London Press; p534
40. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p240
41. The New Order, Vol II, No.11 (Nov 1896); Brotherhood Press
42. Postcard from Agnes Kenworthy to Constance Foster dated 20 Jul 1907; currently in my possession
43. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p47
44. Holman, J. de K. in Jones, Malcolm (editor) (1978); p202
45. Gray, Victor (2019); p89
46. The New Order, Vol III, No.10 (Oct 1897); Brotherhood Press
47. Gray, Victor (2019); p51
48. Shaw, Nellie (1935): A Colony on the Cotswolds, London; p36
49. Manchester Courier, 27 May 1898
51. Gray, Victor (2019); p89-90
52. Ibid; p148-150
53. Saint George: A National Review Dealing with Literature, Art, and Social Questions in a Broad and Progressive Spirit, Vol 1 Iss 4 (1898); p202
54. Hocking, Salome (1905): Belinda the Backaward: a Romance of Modern Idealism, London; p107
55. Gray, Victor (2019); p100-104
56. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p16-17
57. Jones, Malcolm (1978); p215
58. Kenworthy, John C: My Psychic Experiences, published in Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult and Mystical Research, Vol 21, 27 April 1901
59. Kenworthy, John C (1902); p216
60. Will of William Stratford, Principal Probate Registry, 15 Jul 1901
61. Daily News (London), 6 Nov 1903; p7
62. Gray, Victor (2019); p115
63. Daily News (London), 20 Mar 1903; p9
64. Letter from Aylmer Maude to Jane Addams, 22 Jun 1904, Jane Addams Digital Edition
65. Letter from Aylmer Maude to Mary Rozet Smith, 2 Aug 1904, Jane Addams Digital Edition
66. Manifest of Alien Passengers for the U.S. Immigration Officer at the Port of Arrival, 27 Apr 1904; National Archives (US)
67. Will of Sarah Robinson, Principal Probate Registry, 23 Oct 1905
68. Letter from Eliza Pickard to Agnes Kenworthy (copy to H. Lee Jones), 13 Jan 1906; Liverpool Record Office
69. Letter from John Coleman Kenworthy to H. Lee Jones, 21 October 1905; Liverpool Record Office
70. Letter from Agnes Kenwrothy to H. Lee Jones, 30 October 1905; Liverpool Record Office
71. Letter from H. Lee Jones to John Coleman Kenworthy, 4 Nov 1905; Liverpool Record Office
72. Gray, Victor (2019); p112
73. Letter from Tom Ferris to Eliza Pickard (copy to H. Lee Jones), 16 Jan 1906; Liverpool Record Office
74. Letter from Eliza Pickard to Agnes Kenworthy (copy to H. Lee Jones), 16 Jan 1906; Liverpool Record Office
75. Letter from H. Lee Jones to John Coleman Kenworthy, 11 Feb 1906; Liverpool Record Office
76. Jenkins, Mollie (2001)
77. 1890s in Western fashion, en.wikipedia.org; accessed 7 Aug 2023
78. Essex Lunatic Asylum Notices of Admission, Essex Record Office
79. Rheumatic Fever, en.wikipedia.org; accessed 7 Aug 2023
80. Burial Register, St Mary the Virgin Church, Kelvedon, Essex Record Office
81. findagrave.com; accessed 8 Aug 2023
82. Postcard from John Coleman Kenworthy to Fred Kenworthy dated 25 December 1917; currently in my possession
83. 1939 National Register, National Archives (UK)
84. Exemption (from military service) by Tribunals, National Archives
85. Elementary Education Act 1870, United Kingdom Government
86. Chelmsford Chronicle, 27 May 1910; p4
87. Ibid, 17 Jun 1910; p5
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