The High Court Gets Involved

Lordship Road, Stoke Newington (where Maria West and Richard Wombwell lived)

Sophia Wombwell, the first daughter of Maria West, married twice, first to  Richard Wallace, and second to James Feast. Neither of these marriages resulted in any children. Sophia did though have a favourite niece, namely Catherine West Carter, daughter of her younger sister, Harriett Wombwell, and quite clearly named after Maria West's sister, Catherine. 

When the time came for Sophia to make her own will, she designated Catherine to receive a specified sum of money from her estate, with the rest to be divided amongst the current children and ‘children to be’ of Harriett. 

It seems that at this point, Catherine’s husband, Thomas Carter, and his lawyers sensed an opportunity of kinds. They headed for the courts, with the result that in 1865 all kinds of skeletons were to come tumbling out of the family cupboard, specifically:

• Sophia Wombwell was illegitimate.
• Her sister, Harriett Wombwell’s own marriage was bigamous, and equally illegitimate, since although her husband, Charles Robinson, had presumed his first wife to be dead when he could not locate her after returning from imprisonment in a Napoleonic prisoner of war camp, she was in fact alive and well, when he remarried.
• Hence, all nine children of Harriett Wombwell were also illegitimate.

The conclusion of Thomas Carter’s legal team, given also that any future children of Harriett were also strangely named as possible beneficiaries was that the legacy should go solely to the one named and designated individual in the will, Catherine West Carter. 

One cannot help but sense here an act on the part of Thomas Carter of opportunistic cynicism of the very first order.