Agnes Ann Spottiswoode (Mackay) Inverarity (1828 - 1884)

Born 21 Dec 1828 in Cawnpore, Hindustan, India

Ancestors

Wife of Jonathan Duncan Inverarity — married 1872 in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Died 18 Dec 1884 at age 55 in Southampton, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom

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A Gossipy Biography

Agnes was born in India, the second child and daughter of Donald Aeneas Mackay and Agnes Spottiswoode.^[1]

She followed the example of her mother, aunts and cousins and stayed in India to find a husband (her uncles had gone out to Singapore and India as shipping agents and ships captains). She landed a charming debt-ridden cad, Malcolm Melville Macdonald (see Research Notes).^[2] Captain Macdonald was at the centre of 'intrigue at Baroda and Bombay'.^[3] There is [an unsourced] quote to say about him "That officer is by repute so irrevocable involved in debt as to be compelled to absent himself from the Presidency to escape arrest."

In 1852, Malcolm left India for Australia, where he took up with Priscilla Terry Hughes - described in 1860 as the daughter of an old convict who'd made a fortune - an heiress".

The Launceston Examiner of 25 Feb 1860 reports the divorce case from London thus:^[4]

A petition, filed by Mrs. Agnes Ann Spottiswood Macdonald, for a dissolution of her marriage with Lieutenant Malcolm Melville Macdonald, formerly of the 27th East India Company's Regiment, on the ground of adultery and desertion, was heard in the Divorce Court on the 21st of November. The marriage had taken place on the 2nd of October, 1847, at Baroda, in the Bombay Presidency. For a while the union seemed to be a happy one, but the respondent involved himself in such pecuniary difficulties that he was imprisoned six months in the Bombay gaol for debt. His wife shared his confinement, but in 1852 he sent her to England, to endeavor to raise funds amongst her friends. For a time he regularly corresponded with her, but at last he wrote to her from Australia, and then his letters ceased. After waiting for several months the petitioner determined to go in search of him. When she arrived in Sydney he neglected her.

At last Mrs. Macdonald went to his lodgings, and there she found a letter which he had written to a young person named Hughes. This Hughes was stated to be the granddaughter of "Old Sam Terry, the convict," and to be the possessor of property to the extent not less than £200,000.

While the respondent was professing such dire poverty to his wife he was taking this girl to theatres, and going with her to races in a four-in-hand. Finally, Mrs. Macdonald, at the request of her uncle, returned home, and had ever since been living with him. The court dissolved the marriage with costs.

That uncle was William Spottiswoode who had retired from Singapore to be the London agent of the shipping firm Spottiswoode & Connelly, and at the time of his death in November 1858 was residing at 40 Fitzroy Square with his niece Agnes Ann, and his youngest widowed sister Mary Trevor nee Spottiswoode. Unmarried himself, he appears to have been particularly concerned for the welfare of his various nieces - he left a trust fund for the education of 2 nieces who were the daughters of his deceased youngest brother who lived in Texas, and appears to have supported Agnes Ann through her abandonment and divorce.

The obituary of Malcolm Melville Macdonald in the Truth (Sydney 17 Dec 1899) says that 'After being divorced from his first wife, who is said Immediately succeeded to a fortune of £12,000 a year, Colonel MacDonald married a daughter of John Terry Hughes, an old and wealthy colonist, well known to the citizens in the forties as a member of the firm of Hughes and Hosking.'

It would be worth an investigation in to the will of William Spottiswoode to see if he indeed provide his niece with this sort of fortune - that I guess might have gone quite a way in overcoming the social stigma of divorce.

When he died Agnes has moved to Scotland and resided with a paternal uncle, her deceased father's brother Aeneas John Mackay (in 1861 Scottish census) who had recently been widowed and seems to have had a hand in raising her cousins. I haven't found her at all in the 1871 census - but the next year is when she married Jonathan Duncan Inverarity.^[5] It is probably significant that he'd lived a significant portion of his life in India and had only recently become a widower (1871).

I don't know if her mother supported her at all (the widowed Agnes Anne Spottiswooode had married the Independent Scottish Minister James Cameron in 1843 and resided with him and her two sons by him in Yorkshire in this period).

Her sister Helen Mylne Mackay had married in Singapore in 1846 the captain of an opium clipper Donald MacDonald and was widowed with 2 small children in 1849 when the clipper was taken by pirates in the China Sea. She moved to Stornoway, and then married her husband's cousin Daniel Lewis Mackenzie, and had 3 more children before being widowed again in 1857.

Her brother Aeneas James Mackay died in China in 1854.

Malcolm Melville Macdonald seems to have escaped any stigma of divorce. If you type his name into the Trove newspaper search of the National Library of Australia - the first ten stories are about his burial with military honours as founder of the Light Horse Brigade in Australia. Scroll a bit further and you find he did face some repercussions following his divorce. The firebrand Sydney minister the Reverend Dr John Dunmore Lang decried a man in his congregation with three Scottish names who had abandoned his virtuous wife and taken up with his whore. (And also wrote to the newspapers.^[6] in response Malcolm approached the Reverend in the street, presented him with his card, and horsewhipped him. He was subsequently charged with assault - but it appears the sympathy of the public were with him rather than the Reverend and it does not appear to have impacted his career or life at all.

Research Notes

Malcolm Melville Macdonald: if you do a google search on books rather than the web you find him in the centre of corruption allegations into bribery of officials.

Sources

1. ↑ FamilySearch: India Births and Baptisms
2. ↑ FamilySearch: "British Newspaper Archive
3. ↑ 'Papers relating to the alleged corruption of officers of the Bombay Government'
4. ↑ 'Divorce Court', Launceston Examiner 25 Feb 1860
5. ↑ FamilySearch: Scotland Marriages
6. ↑ Bendigo Advertiser, 7 Apr 1860

• FamilySearch: "India Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947" (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FGXR-G9M : accessed 10 June 2024)
• FamilySearch: "British Newspaper Archive, Family Notices" (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPCL-MKP5 : accessed 10 June 2024)
• 'Papers relating to the alleged corruption of officers of the Bombay Government', Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons, Vol 73, p.1739 et seq (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VKhbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1739#v=onepage&q&f=false : accessed 10 June 2024)
• 'Divorce Court', Launceston Examiner (Tasmania), Sat 25 Feb 1860, p.2 (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/3613696 : accessed 10 June 2024)
• FamilySearch: "Scotland Marriages, 1561-1910" (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XYMN-MNP : accessed 9 June 2024)
• 'Dr. Lang and Captain Macdonald', Bendigo Advertiser (Victoria, Australia), Sat 7 Apr 1860, p.3 (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/87942908?searchTerm=malcolm%20melville%20macdonald&searchLimits=l-category=Article : accessed 10 June 2024)