Margery Jackson (January 1722 – 10 February 1812) was a British landlady in Carlisle, Cumberland. She was the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant who was the mayor of Carlisle. In her latter years, following a fifteen-year legal dispute in the Court of Chancery over the execution of her father's and brother's wills, she returned from London to Carlisle in possession of the family fortune. She was then 69 years old and a spinster.
Thereafter, while living like a pauper in the family townhouse on Carlisle's market square, Jackson accrued a box of gold in rent from her properties. She became a local character, well-known for her miserly behaviour, her drinking, swearing and forthright speech, and her hidden riches, leading her to be nicknamed the Carlisle Miser. She was kind to her horses and dogs. In spite of her reclusive lifestyle, she had a friend in her financial advisor, Joseph Bowman of Botcherby, who took her into his home during her last illness.
Since her death in 1812, Jackson has been remembered in books, verse, a musical, and Tullie House Museum displays, for her eccentric behaviour, and for the size of her fortune, most of which she left to Bowman. Jackson was caricatured as a miser in the traditional manner until the publication in 1991 of a book by Helen R. Hallaway, which reassesses her position as an independent woman in the society of her era.
Life before Jackson's court cases Financial and family background In Jackson's time, family background mattered, and she had a background of social distinction. Her maternal grandfather was alderman William Nicholson JP, mayor of Carlisle and relative of William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle. Her maternal great grandmother, after whom she was named, was Margery Aglionby, wife of John Aglionby, a hero of the siege of Carlisle. Her maternal grandmother was an Aglionby of Anglo-Norman descent, with aristocratic relatives and family arms displayed in St Cuthbert's Church, Carlisle. Her Aglionby ancestors included members of Parliament, mayors of Carlisle and a chaplain to Queen Elizabeth I, John Aglionby. In Jackson's lifetime, the Aglionbys' seat was the Nunnery of Ainstable.
Jackson's paternal grandfather was Carlisle landowner Thomas "Trooper Tom" Jackson (died 1700), a freeman of the city of Carlisle, who was recruited as a Cromwellian soldier of the English Civil War in 1648. Her father, a rich draper and cloth merchant, was Joseph Jackson ( 1695–1732), mayor of Carlisle. As a moneylender and landlord, Jackson owned "considerable estates and personal property", and "kept himself well informed on the law" for fear of untrustworthy lawyers.
In 1710 Jackson's father Joseph married Isabella Nicolson (1683–1733). Isabella was a cousin of Bishop Nicolson, and a relative by marriage of Barry Yelverton who became Viscount Avonmore. Joseph and Isabella Jackson had four children: clergyman and mayor of Carlisle William Nicolson Jackson (1720–1776), Captain Joseph Jackson (1721 – 11 June 1746), student Jerome or Jerom Jackson (1728–1751) and Margery Jackson.
Jackson's early life, 1722–1776 Margery Jackson, who was born in Carlisle in January 1722 and baptised in the same town on 22 February 1722, grew up in the care of her cousin Thomas James (1706–1739) and his sister Elizabeth James (born 1708). She was educated on their instructions in the manner of the moneyed merchant class of that era, being taught to read and write, but not expected to assist in the drapery business. In the interests of catching a husband, she had a dancing master, and personal luxuries such as, "powder and pins", "hoop pettycoate", "dormees and double ruffles", "a pair of scarlet stockings", "a fan and ribbin", etc. According to Hallaway (1991), Elizabeth James' strictness "evoked in Margery only vehement hostility and ascerbity of temper", which denied her the chance of a husband, and affected her later character.
Some time after the death of Thomas James in 1739, Jackson was returned to her brother William, who by then had married, so that Jackson, now a difficult character, was not welcome. During this period of Jackson's early life, William became "a very rich man" and in 1743 paid Jackson her father's legacy of £1,250 (). During the Jacobite rising of 1745, William and his wife left the town, so Jackson made a profit from the soldiers as lodgers in the family house. It has been suggested that Jackson worked for a while as a servant or maid in London until her brother William died in 1776, and that she then lodged at Stanwix for a while before returning to London to file her suit.
Court cases Life in London and Stafford, 1776–1791 This was the period of legal dispute, when Jackson reportedly travelled to London "on foot" to open her Chancery case. At some period, possibly during her years of legal dispute, Jackson boarded at Stafford with Se Bright, a milliner from Windsor, Berkshire, and remembered Bright's kindness in her will of 1783. Jackson is recorded as having funded the rebuilding of Botcherby Mill in 1790, although she did not acquire the money to do so until 1791.
Legacies and disputes Joseph Jackson left his estates to his eldest son William, £1,000 () each to his remaining three children, and his personal property to his wife Isabella. Subsequently, Isabella left £550 () each to her sons William, then aged 21, Joseph aged 12 and Jerome aged 5, £200 () to Margery aged 11, and the estates and remaining property to William, who was made executor of the will. William did not initially pay out the legacies to his siblings. William and Margery exchanged letters in June 1773, in which Margery showed affection, calling him "a brother I hold near to me as even that of a parent", while William referred to her "pride" and "barbarous treatment". William was sued in Chancery by Margery for the moneys. Hallaway (1991) paraphrases the Jackson versus Jackson (1774) bill of complaint thus:
Under her father's will, [Jackson] and her two brothers Joseph and Jerom were to receive one thousand pounds each on reaching their majority. Margery was paid her legacy but Joseph and Jerom, at twenty-one, got nothing at all. According to her mother's will, Margery was left two hundred pounds, and her brothers, William included, inherited five hundred and fifty pounds each. This legacy was never paid. As both brothers died intestate ... Margery and William were entitled to divide these estates equally among themselves. She was claiming from William half of these unpaid legacies – in fact the principal and interest on one thousand, five hundred and fifty pounds.
The case was still not resolved when, in 1776, William died. Blair (1848) says that William left a small annuity to his sister Margery, but Hallaway (1991) says that William's will, written in 1768, left her "nothing at all". Margery's brothers Joseph and Jerome having died, William left the bulk of his property to their third cousin Thomas Hodgson (died 1788), and so began Margery's 1776 Chancery case of Jackson versus Hodgson in dispute of William's will. "Nursing her grievance, [Jackson] walked all the way back [to London]".
To forward the Chancery case, Jackson versus Richardson and Hodgson (1776), against her brother's executor Richardson and the legatee Hodgson, Jackson retained attorney Robert Mounsey of Holborn, London (to be paid only if the case was won), and enlisted the support of Quaker Joseph Bowman of Botcherby, who became her investigator and friend. Thereafter, she stayed in London for fifteen years, watching over her case and over the efforts of her attorney. Jackson was claiming her legacies from both parents, plus interest, on the grounds that they remained unpaid. She also claimed half of the yet-unpaid legacies of her deceased brothers. "Throughout the case [Jackson] took a position of immovable righteousness while her opponents concocted devious schemes". Hodgson died, leaving the property to fifteen other Hodgsons, and Jackson came to an agreement with them. The fifteen Hodgsons accepted £100 () each plus costs, and in 1791 Jackson received all of the remainder of her family's legacy. "It was manly due to [Bowman's] diligence [as an investigator] that this case came to an end".
Life in Carlisle, 1791–1809 Appearance
Jackson was of medium height, but as observed in old age she was "thin, sallow, and shrivelled, with a most forbidding aspect", and she would pay no dressmaker: In the very heat of summer [Miss Jackson] was sometimes seen dressed in an old washed-out yellow gown, which she always held up so as to exhibit a yellow white petticoat; she would then also wear a blackish silk cloak, something of the scarf shape, which might have been Margery's finest adornings for thirty or forty years, but her favourite and general dress was an old gray duffle coat, – none of your mandarins, full and short, with hanging sleeves, – but tight every way, and only so short as to save the bottom from wearing away against the stones, and expose to view her gold buckles, the same, we may suppose, as graced the under-members of her great-grandmother centuries ago! This said grey doublet was confined at the old maiden's waist with a hemp-cord, and had a hood, which was drawn up under a brownish-black bonnet of indescribable shape; she generally used pattens, and carried in her hand a gold-headed cane.
Character
Much of what is known about Jackson's character refers to her miserliness and misanthropy during her Carlisle years, and is taken from her newspaper obituaries of 1812, and repeated in Blair (1848) and in "The life of Margery Jackson" in the Carlisle Journal (1896). Following the successful conclusion of her Chancery case, Jackson returned to Carlisle in 1791, making an entrance in her own newly built "splendid carriage" which incorporated plate glass from her brother's chaise, and carrying a new silver teapot by silversmith William Abdy II, although the Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser wrongly states that she arrived in her brother's old carriage. She then took possession of William's townhouse in the Square. Blair (1848) suggests that Jackson's miserly habit began at this point, because she had to make up for the money spent on the suit and on paying off the fifteen Hodgson cousins. Jackson was thereafter a "litigious woman". Robert Mounsey, Joseph Bowman, and one other financial consultant were her only friends. Jackson was isolated but independent. According to Blair:
Early prepossessed with unfavourable notions of mankind, she kept herself isolated from the world; and although possessed of a masculine understanding, it has received no polish from education; nor did her after habits afford any opportunity of correcting the bia[s] which she had unfortunately received. It was on money, and not on men, that she depended in case of necessity;— this she esteemed the palladium of her security,— the very penates, or protectors of her existence.