THE POTT SHRIGLEY ABDUCTION Why was Ellen Turner, 15, of Shrigley Hall, abducted in 1826? Was she taken in a carriage to Gretna Green for love or money? In the first week of March 1826 Edward Wakefield hired a barouche and a ‘servant’, who travelled to a boarding school in rural Toxteth, Liverpool. The servant handed over a forged letter to the school. Ellen Turner was called down to read that her ailing mother was suddenly taken ill. Communications were difficult in those days and the school believed the scam. Ellen entered the barouche willingly and was taken on a roundabout journey to Pott Shrigley, as she thought, by coach and coaching inn. En route they met a ‘Captain Wilson’ alias Wakefield, who spun a story about driving on to Carlisle and meeting her father who was secretly bankrupt and wanted to secure Ellen’s great inheritance by her marriage. Ellen must have believed Wakefield’s story. Instead they drove on to Gretna Green and married on Wednesday 8 March. Then Wakefield wrote to Ellen’s father and gave an address in Paris. He also put an announcement in The Times newspaper in the Marriages column.
Jenny visits Pott Shrigley nearly 200 years after the abduction
guessed immediately that Wakefield was after Ellen’s inheritance, for Turner and his family owned calico and fulling mills in Blackburn. Immediately he decided that despite the scandal he’d rescue Ellen and not play into Wakefield’s hands by hushing things up. Eventually they discovered that Wakefield was a widower who had abducted a different young heiress ten years previously. He now had two young children to support plus his ambition to become an MP. He also had connections in Macclesfield from whom he’d heard about Ellen. Ellen’s uncle traced her to Calais and rescued her. Wakefield admitted that the marriage had not been consummated, was arrested, tried and imprisoned in Newgate Gaol. The legalities to free Ellen from Wakefield took over a year, while the Press gloated over the details.
It wasn’t until 11 March that Ellen’s father, William Turner of Shrigley Hall, read that his only child Ellen, under the age of legal consent, had married Edward Gibbon Wakefield the previous Wednesday! The shock to William Turner and his wife must have been immense. However could someone they’d never met have heard about Ellen? William Turner
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by Jenny Cooke
Edward Wakefield, a spendthrift, came from the wider family of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer. Whilst in prison he wrote a pamphlet proposing the colonisation of Australasia and later emigrated to New Zealand. In 1852 he was elected to their General Assembly. Our own Eileen Shore of Poynton Local History Society has seen his portrait in Christchurch Museum. Ellen Turner was reinstated into Society and later she married Thomas Legh of Lyme Park, had three children in three years and died, aged nearly 20 in childbirth.