Sophia Wombwell: Daughter of Maria West

Sophia Wombwell was born out of wedlock in around 1801 in St. Marylebone the daughter of Richard Wombwell and Maria West. In 1837, she married a mariner, Richard Wallace in Rotherhithe:

Richard died young, in 1840, and Sophia remarried in 1858 to James Feast, a butcher, in Lambeth. James Feast also makes a cameo appearance in the Robinson vs. Neal courtcase in 1865 when the contents of Sophia’s will were being disputed. 

It seems that James had allied himself with Thomas Carter, the husband of Sophia’s favourite niece, Catherine West Robinson to prevent Sophia’s legacy being divided amongst all her sister Harriett’s children. Sophia herself had no children, and had died in 1863. 

The 1861 census provides a slight insight into the drama though. Living with, or at least staying with James and Sophia was the very Catherine West Robinson who was shortly to marry Thomas Carter. It does indeed seem to have been a special relationship that Sophia had with this particular niece. 

Both Bigamy and Perjury?

Page from the Law Times Report about the Robinson vs. Neale 1865 court case.

Back in Belfast, in the Linen Hall Library, the indefatigable Reginald Blackwood was curious enough about the descendants of the Hadzors and Wests to follow up the lines not just of the Dills but also Maria West and Richard Wombwell. Oddly enough, he turned up a slightly different story about the first marriage of Charles Robinson. The story presented in the court of Judge Malins suggested that Charles Robinson could find no trace of his first wife, Mary Weston, after his return from imprisonment in France and thereafter acted on the presumption of her death. However in Blackwood's notes, he records that when Charles Robinson returned from France, he discovered that Mary Weston, his first wife, had become the mother of ‘three dark children’, at which point he left her and ‘never heard from her again.’ 

This really is not quite the way the story was presented in Judge Malin's courtroom. If Blackwood is correct however, it would appear that not only was there a legitimate case for bigamy, but a further charge that might have been levelled for perjury. 

Harriett Wombwell and her husband had taken no chances though, and undergone a 'second' marriage ceremony in 1864, some forty years after their first. 

Since all of these events must have been conducted in the public eye, so to speak, it does make one wonder what kind of impact and trauma was visited on the wider families of all concerned, given the values of the society of the day.

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.