Judge Malins Rules

Sir Richard Malins, who adjudicated in the
1865 Robinson vs. Neale case. Sir Richard Malins
by Leonida Caldesi albumen carte-de-visite, 1860s
NPG Ax39729 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Sir Richard Malins was no small town lawyer.  Born in 1805, he specialized in property and wills. Hence, his interest in the case that arrived on his Lincoln's Inn desk sometime around 1864. 

Sir Richard was the Conservative member of Parliament for Wallingford from 1852 to 1865, and by all reports quite an active MP. In 1866 he was to be appointed a Vice-Chancellor of England. He died in 1882.

Judge Malins examined the case brought by Thomas Carter and his lawyers quite carefully, and, by the 
sound of it, he was not overly impressed. It was not the fault of Harriett Wombwell's husband (Charles Robinson) he opined gravely, that his first wife had disappeared without trace. Furthermore, it was clearly merely a legal or administrative slip in Sophia’s will to suggest that Harriett Wombwell at her age could conceivably have further children. All things considered and properly pondered, he ruled, the will of Sophia should, in its essentials, stand, and that the estate should be distributed amongst Harriett's children, as intended.

What seems most likely then is that in originally putting her Irish lands into trusteeship, Maria West was attempting to circumvent the laws of the time, which disbarred illegitimate children from inheriting. In doing so, she was presumably reflecting on her own pre-marital excursions, conducted in blissful ignorance of the fact that years later she was to receive a substantial inheritance. Of course, whether she was also aware that her daughter, Harriett Wombwell’s marriage had been established on similarly shaky grounds is another matter. But she was certainly by now aware that her own youthful indiscretions had created a problem that needed some kind of resolution. 

Nor is there any doubt that the original trustee to whom she proposed to pass the lands over to, George Wombwell, was none other than the founder of Wombwell’s Menagerie, a man of fame and fortune known across the length and breadth of the country.