Margery Jackson had all the traits of a miser, she hoarded her money and was reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing basic comfort or even necessity. We might imagine that this behaviour was accompanied by a delight in what she saved, to it for certain, was added a dislike and avoidance of humankind.
It was the misanthrope wearing a bonnet and old overcoat tied around with string, on her daily ambulation with her dog, that first prompted my desire to find out more. When the poor canine was so fortunate as to find a bone or other eatable to appease its hungriness, Margery fought off intruders with her stick. Pity the dog who lived on scraps, but what was the human impact of her ways? Her temper and habits were such that she could seldom keep servants longer than a week, until at last she couldn’t get one at all.
Find Ms Jackson at Tullie House, Carlisle
At Tullie House, Carlisle, you will find a painting of Ms Jackson hiring Croglin Watty at Carlisle Cross in the Market Place. “Daft Watty,” was first introduced by Cumberland’s own Bard, in a ballad about the country lad who was supposedly her last male servant. Watty says:
She had a lang beard, for aw’t warl leyke a billy goat, wi’ a
kil-dried frosty feace: and then the smawest leg o’ mutton
in aw Carel market sarrad the cat, me, and hur for a week.
Unlike the many letters written by the hand of Margery, which are now kept in the collections held by Cumbria Archive Service, the ballad is not a reliable historical source but it is instructive and it inspired me to do some research on agricultural labour in Georgian England. At that time, there were a great many seasonal labourers with earnings that were so meagre they couldn’t support themselves for most of the time. This is what brought young men with just a clean shirt and their worldly wealth in a bag on their shoulder, from the squirrel-red sandstone villages of the Fellside to such as the Martinmas Hiring fair in Carlisle.
Out of the frying pan – into the fire
For Watty, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire when Margery Jackson pressed the promise of customary standard boarding and repast in return for his labours. Though she had inherited a fortune she would give nothing away and her townhouse was decrepit. When he eyed her frosty face and saw that she showed no kindness in her eyes he must have wondered what promise he had made.
Margery died in 1812 leaving behind a sum that is equivalent to £2.5 million (using the Bank of England inflation calculator) and there were far too many twists and turns in her story for me to write about them in this blog. What I appreciate about characters such as these is that they lead me into all kinds of local history that I would never otherwise have discovered.
