Abduction

 

   On this day in 1826, Edward Wakefield, age 30 abducted the heiress Ellen Turner, age 15, from her school in England and forced her to marry him in Scotland. He then whisked her off to France to wait for her parents to get used to him being a member of the family.

  Wakefield had pulled this stunt earlier when, at age 20, he had abducted a 17 year old heiress. Both bride and mother accepted the fait accompli and the mother settled 77,000 (over eleven million dollars today) on the couple. The bride died four years later giving birth to her second child.

  Wakefield wanted to get into politics and needed more money so he tried what worked before. Neither Ellen Turner nor her father were willing to settle. Ellen’s father was a sheriff as well as a wealthy mill owner. Wakefield and his brother William were arrested, tried and sentenced to three years in prison. Parliament annulled the marriage. Wakefield swore the marriage was unconsummated. Ellen married at age 17 but died two years later in childbirth.

   There was no keeping Wakefield down after prison. For the next 15 years, he was involved in getting settlers to move to the new colony of New Zealand. Many in the British government did not trust Wakefield, but he was always able to conceal himself behind some powerful patron. He was full of ideas, some good, some unworkable.

   After working on New Zealand, Wakefield got involved with settling the rebellions going on in Canada in the late 1830s. Several members of Parliament tried to keep Wakefield out of Canada but he managed to sneak in as a secretary to Lord Durham, the governor-general of Canada and ended up writing Dunham's report on the rebellion to Parliament. Anonymously of course.

   Back in Britain Wakefield turned his attention again to New Zealand. He managed to get a ship of colonists sent to New Zealand though he did not sail with them himself. He would not get to the country himself for many years. He was not a pioneer but a schemer, a salesman, and a politician. He worked on many colonial committees in Parliament but always in the background.

   He sent several more ships to New Zealand. He was in constant struggle with his political enemies and at age 48 he had his first stroke. He recovered from the stroke but he was slowly losing control of affairs in New Zealand. He started a new colonization project through the Church of England. Finally Wakefield decided to move permanently to the colony he had helped create. He expected to be welcomed there as a hero, but his policies had made life difficult for the colonists and he was not welcomed. Ever the politician, Wakefield managed to get himself elected to the New Zealand legislature where he promptly made numerous enemies. He fell ill again and was unable to continue his public life. He lingered another seven years as an invalid before his death at age 66.

   For all his faults, Wakefield took care of his family . When his daughter developed tuberculosis he sent her to Portugal and hired a local woman as her caregiver. When his daughter died he sent the caregiver to New Zealand where she married a colonist and had 13 children.

Abduction never ends well