Georgina Weldon

Georgina Weldon (née Thomas; 24 May 1837 – 11 January 1914) was a British litigant and amateur soprano of the Victorian era.

Early years She was born at Tooting Lodge, Clapham Common in 1837, one of seven children and the oldest daughter born to Morgan Thomas MP, JP, DL (1803–1867), a member of the Welsh landed gentry, and his wife, Louisa Frances, daughter of John Apsley Dalrymple of Mayfield in Sussex. Morgan Thomas was a non-practising barrister, having inherited a large sum of money from his father and uncle, and concentrated on becoming Conservative Party MP for Coventry. Georgina spent most of her childhood in Florence, and her soprano singing voice was trained by her mother, except for a few lessons she had in 1855 with Jules de Glimes in Brussels. In 1856 the Thomas family changed its name to Treherne, the surname of Morgan Thomas's ancestors up to the mid-eighteenth century.

On 21 April 1860, against her father's wishes, Georgina married William Henry Weldon, a lieutenant in the 18th Royal Hussars at Aldershot in Hampshire, causing her father to promptly disinherit her. Georgina Weldon hoped to follow a career on the stage, but her husband, like her father before him, refused to allow her to appear as a professional, and she was restricted to performing in amateur theatricals and charity concerts. In 1863 William Weldon took a mistress, the nineteen-year-old Annie Stanley Dobson (born 1843), who secretly became his partner for life. She claimed to be a widow and went by the name Mrs Lowe, and gave him a son, Francis Stanley Lowe (1868–1955). On the death of his grandmother he inherited £10,000 a year and in 1870 he leased Tavistock House in Bloomsbury, which had a small theatre that had been added by Charles Dickens, a former resident. Weldon insisted he return to London to claim them in person. Only when he had virtually reconstructed the musical score, nearly a year later, did she return the draft to him with her name scrawled across each page in crayon. She then started a number of lawsuits against him for libel, attempting to sue him for £10,000. In 1880 and again in 1885 she herself was imprisoned for libels connected with her musical career.

During the sentence in 1885 she was brought from prison to court in a further case against Gounod who refused to come to London to defend himself. She was awarded £10,000 damages for libel in the undefended case and was returned to prison. Gounod refused to recognise the court’s verdict and she did not receive any damages.

Litigation

By 1875 Harry Weldon had tired of his wife's orphanage scheme and her growing interest in spiritualism. The couple separated, and he gave Georgina the lease to Tavistock House and £1000 a year as a financial settlement. In 1878 he sought to reduce or stop this payment, and tried to use Georgina's interest in spiritualism to prove that she was insane in an attempt to have her confined in a lunatic asylum kept by L. Forbes Winslow. Georgina was seen by the necessary two doctors, who obtained an interview with her under false pretences, pretending that they were interested in her musical orphanage. They then signed the lunacy order. Georgina realised that something was wrong and, when staff from the asylum arrived to take her away by force, she escaped and evaded capture for the seven days that the order remained valid. She then went to Bow Street Magistrates' Court to press charges for assault. The magistrate sympathised with her and was convinced that she was sane, but, under Victorian law a married woman could not instigate a civil suit against her husband. However, having proved her point, Mrs Weldon publicised her story by giving interviews to the daily newspapers and the spiritualist press, in an attempt to provoke her husband and the two doctors into suing her for libel. Her body was taken by train to Mayfield, where she was interred in the Dalrymple family vault in St Dunstan's Church. Her estranged husband, now Sir William, married his mistress Annie Stanley Lowe later that year and died in 1919.