26 June 2020

How Murphy bought a title
from the Pope and saw his
daughter marry a Wolseley

The confirmation by Pope Leo XIII of Anita Murphy, later Lady Wolseley … a painting in the Villa Magistrale on the Aventine in Rome identified by Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen

Patrick Comerford

I wrote last Saturday [20 June 2020] of my memories of Sir Charles Wolseley, and how his plans for the Wolseley estate in the late 1980s and the 1990s eventually led to financial disaster and, finally, the loss of the Wolseley estate, which had been in his family for 1,000 years.

But a century earlier, in the 1880s, another Sir Charles Wolseley – the ninth baronet and the great-grandfather of the late eleventh baronet – also thought he was going to save the Wolseley estate from threatened financial ruin when he married a rich and titled Irish-American heiress who had been confirmed by Pope Leo XIII and whose father had been given the papal title of marchese or marquess.

This Sir Charles was born in 1846. Already the income from the family estates had been diminished by the exploits of his father and grandfather – both also named Sir Charles Wolseley – and his aunt Marianne Wolseley, as I wrote last night (25 June 2020), had managed to avoid her own possible financial and social ruin in 1834 when she married Count Francis Baruch Lousada (1813-1870), a member of a rich family of sugar planters in Jamaica who had bought his own aristocratic titles from the Duke of Tuscany.

While the Irish branch of the Wolseley family were well-known members of the Church of Ireland with many senior clergy, including deans and archdeacons, the Staffordshire branch of the family had become Roman Catholics by the end of the 18th century, and married into some of the best-known Staffordshire Catholic families, including the Clifford, Talbot and Weld families.

Sir Charles Wolseley (1846-1931) of Wolseley Hall, the ninth baronet and a Roman Catholic, seems to have taken his aunt Marianne as a role model, deciding to marry into a wealthy family, with a title that had been bought, and with the hope of rescuing lost fortunes and social status.

Esther (née Chichester) Grehan wrote from London in 1882 to her husband in Dublin, Stephen Grehan (1859-1937), a solicitor, describing how Sir Charles came to London to look for an heiress. (I was interested to note that Stephen Grehan was descended through his mother from the Langton and Comerford families of Danganmore Castle, Co Kilkenny.)

In her letters, filled with snobbish elitism and scathing disdain, Esther Grehan describes how Sir Charles was introduced to two Irish-American Murphy sisters from San Francisco, who were ‘vulgar but pretty.’ He fell in love, but had a reputation as a fortune hunter, and was distraught when he was rejected. But in 1883, he married the elder sister, Anna Theresa (Anita) Murphy.

Anna Theresa or Anita Murphy was one of the four daughters of the Irish-American entrepreneur Daniel T Murphy, founder of the pioneer house of Murphy, Grant & Co, who was then living in San Francisco.

Anita, her sisters and her mother had moved to London, and moved in fashionable circles in England and Europe. Anita was confirmed by People Leo XIII and was presented at the Court of Saint James. She visited Osborne, the royal residence on the Isle of Wight, where she met Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice, ancestor of the Mountbatten family.

In her private diary, she tells how she turned down a proposal of marriage from Prince Luigi del Drago, a member of an Italian aristocratic family that included many cardinals and princes. Back in England, her first choice of husband was George Brundenell-Bruce, then known as Viscount Savernake and later 4th Marquess of Ailesbury. But Willie, as he was known, was an excessive gambler with an excessive lifestyle, and he brought his family to the brink of financial disaster. Eventually, Willie married a music hall actress known as Dolly Tester, and Anita had a fortuitous escape from certain calamity.

In contrast to Anita’s first choice of husband, her father, Daniel T Murphy, was a self-made multi-millionaire who seems to have made money than he could spend. Murphy and Grant started in 1851 and became the largest wholesale dry goods house on the Pacific coast.

Murphy was born in Albany, New York, in 1833, and when he was still a boy left home for Lexington, Kentucky. He then joined the gold rush in California in 1849, going to Santa Fe, San Diego and San Francisco, where he became a partner in a dry goods house that became Murphy and Grant. The firm established branches in Manchester, Paris and New York, and became the leading house on the Pacific coast. It is said Murphy made a personal fortune of about $30 million.

After Murphy had become a commercial success, he returned to Lexington, and in 1857 married Anna Geoghagan, also from an Irish background. The couple returned to San Francisco, where they lived for many years, taking several trips to Europe at intervals.

Anna and Daniel Murphy were the parents of four daughters, Isabella (Issy), Helene (Nellie), Anna Theresa (Anita) and Frances (Fanny), and three sons, Eugene, Daniel and Samuel. Anna Murphy later moved to London with her daughters, while their sons remained in the US, and Daniel visited his wife and daughters in London at least once a year.

Daniel Murphy was a staunch Roman Catholic and donated an estimated $5 million to Pope Pius IX to be used for the Church. In return, the Pope first made Murphy a Knight, then a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory. Later, Pope Leo XIII confirmed two of their daughters in Rome, gave him the Grand Cross of Saint Gregory, and with a royal and papal patent of nobility, gave him the papal title of marchese or marquis, with the right of succession to his eldest son and his heirs.

Murphy enjoyed showing his American friends the papal patent, but he never used the title in public and his wife was known in London only as Mrs Murphy.

A painting of two of the Murphy girls at their confirmation by Pope Leo XIII was once among the most prominent paintings in the Wolseley family collection. It was still at Wolseley in the early 1970s when I interviewed Sir Charles Wolseley for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

When Charles and Imogen Wolseley were moving out of Wolseley to Penkridge, Imogen talked about the painting being so large that it would be better placed in a museum in San Francisco. Although I cannot ascertain its fate, a similar painting in the Villa Magistrale on the Aventine in Rome has been identified recently by Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, the Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican and the Order of Malta.

The people in this painting of Pope Leo with the Murphy family are, from left, Cardinal Macchi, Father Armilini SJ, Pope Leo XIII, Isabella (Issy), Helene (Nellie), Anna Theresa (Anita) and Frances (Fanny) Murphy, Monsignor Cataldi, Mrs Anna Murphy and, I guess, Daniel T Murphy.

The Wolseley Arms … near the former seat of the Wolseley family near Rugeley, Staffordshire (Photograph: fatbadgers)

Anita Murphy and Sir Charles Wolseley were married on 17 July 1883 in the Catholic Pro-Cathedral in Kensington – the site for Westminster Cathedral was not bought until the following year. The four bridesmaids were the bride’s three sisters, Nellie, Frances and Isabella, and a Miss Bedingfeld.

The wedding Mass was said by the Revd Cuthbert Wolseley, OP, a Dominican priest and a younger brother of the groom – he was born Robert Joseph Wolseley (1850-1920). The wedding was blessed by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, and there was a telegram from Pope Leo XIII.

The clergy in the sanctuary included Bishop (later Cardinal) Herbert Vaughan of Salford, later Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop James Lair Patterson, titular Bishop of Emmaus and auxiliary bishop of Westminster, Cardinal Edward Howard of the English College, Rome, and the English Provincials of the Dominicans and Passionists, as well as prominent Benedictines, Jesuits and Redemptorists.

The newspapers of the day delighted in lengthy lists of the titled and public figures who were present, including the US ambassador and poet James Russell Lowell, the Duke of Norfolk, Prince Doria Pamphilji, son-in-law of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Marquis of Bute, and Lady Londonderry.

The genealogists John Burke and Sir Bernard Burke once described Staffordshire as ‘a district proverbial for the antiquity of its families.’ So, of course, many of the titled, landed and Catholic families of Staffordshire were at the wedding, including Talbots from Alton Towers, Lord and Lady Stafford, and members of the Littleton, Fitzherbert, Jerningham, Weld and Clifford families.

Mrs Murphy hosted the wedding breakfast at her residence in Queen’s Gate. In toasting the bride and groom, Cardinal Vaughan spoke of the wedding as another link uniting the Old World and the New.

On the day Anita and Charles were married, Mrs Murphy gave her first-born a cheque for $5 million on the Bank of England. The newly-married couple left for Devonshire, for the first part of their honeymoon. They arrived in New York from Liverpool on the Cunard line’s SS Servia in September, and made their way to San Francisco, where her father had made his fortune.

Daniel T Murphy died in the Windsor Hotel, New York, on 3 June 1885. Many of his business interests passed to his brother Henry M Murphy and son, also Daniel T Murphy. His wife, who arrived from England earlier that week, was with him when he died, as were two of his sons, a daughter, and his former business partners, Eugene Kelly and Joseph Donohue. There was no funeral in New York. Instead, Murphy’s embalmed body was sent to San Francisco, where he was buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery.

Murphy’s will, dated 15 May 1883, named his executors as Edward C Donnelly, Joseph H Donohue and John T Doyle of San Francisco, Eugene Kelly of New York, and his widow, Anna L Murphy.

Murphy left $5,000 to Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco for charity. He left an annuity of $6,000 to his widow, with his silver plate and personal effects. His mother, Julia Murphy, was left an annuity of $1,500 and a house on Hudson Avenue, Albany, New York. His sister Mary was to receive an annuity of $1,500 after her mother died.

The rest of Murphy’s estate was to be divided among his children, with each daughter receiving at least $50,000 each, even if that meant his sons received less.

In September 1893, Anita Wolseley’s sister, Helene (Nelly) Murphy, married Don Vincente Dominguez, a son of the Argentinian Ambassador in London. How much Nelly received from her mother on wedding day is not known – presumably she fared as well as her sister with a cheque for $5 million.

Anita’s inheritance was put at $2 million, at first, but Charles never got his hands on it. By the time the marriage contract had been signed, Daniel T Murphy had died and her sisters contested his will. When Anita received her money, it was for her personally and not for her husband.

Imogene Wolseley, wife of the late Sir Charles Wolseley, wrote that marriage was relatively happy to begin with, and they had two sons, Edric born in 1886 and William born in 1887. But Anita soon tired of life at Wolseley Hall and began travelling abroad alone. She sent Charles a regular allowance, but this dropped steadily. By 1919, he had to sell almost all the contents of Wolseley Hall and several hundred acres of his estate. He moved to Surrey a broken man, and died on 30 January 1931; Anita died on 11 October 1937.

When Sir Charles died, the Wolseley title and estates passed to his elder son, Sir Edric Wolseley (1886-1954), father of the late Sir Charles Wolseley.

But I am still wondering what happened to the painting of Anita (Murphy) Wolseley’s confirmation, whether it ever made its way to San Francisco, or whether the painting in the Villa Magistrale on the Aventine in Rome is the original.

The original Wolseley Hall, near Rugeley, Staffordshire, before its demolition

A fashionable Wolseley wedding … but
were the Lousada family really dukes?

The coat-of-arms used by the Duques de Losada y Lousada … but were they really entitled to their titles? (Source)

Patrick Comerford

During this Covid-19 lockdown, one of my very individual choices for continuing education is taking part in a series of weekly Zoom seminars or webinars on Sephardic history, organised by the Bevis Marks Synagogue and the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community in London.

Earlier this week (23 June 2020), for example, Rabbi Shalom Morris was in conversation with Dr Aviva Ben-Ur of the University of Massachusetts on ‘Jewish autonomy in a slave society: Suriname in the Atlantic, 1651-1825.’ Last month (19 May 2020), Rabbi Morris was in conversation with Laura Arnold Leibman about ‘Giving Sephardic Women a Voice.’

In both those conversations, the Lousada and Baruch Lousada family was found in interesting roles in Sephardic communities in the Atlantic, from Portugal, Amsterdam and Livorno to Jamaica, Barbados and Surname.

The Baruch Lousadas were part of the Sephardic diaspora, dating from by the 1492 Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, and given impetus by the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions.

The family name brought me back to earlier research on the Wolseley family, and the marriage in London in 1834 of Marianne Wolseley of Wolseley and Count Francis Baruch Lousada, a member of a rich family of sugar planters in Jamaica.

Marianne’s father, Sir Charles Wolseley (1769-1838), who succeeded his father as the seventh baronet in 1817, was a radical politician who took part in the storming of the Bastille in 1789, became a strong advocate of parliamentary reform, and was surety for the families of some of the victims of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. He was arrested in 1819 and jailed 200 years ago, in 1820, for sedition and conspiracy.

His political activism threatened the financial stability of his family, but his daughter Marianne managed to avoid her own possible financial and social ruin in 1834 when she married Count Francis Baruch Lousada (1813-1870), a member of a rich family of sugar planters in Jamaica.

Marianne Wolseley’s father-in-law, brother-in-law and two of her three sons claimed the title of Duque de Losada y Lousada. But, with my interest in the sometimes preposterous claims made to titles in the 19th century, I wondered who was this count? Was he really descended from Spanish aristocracy, as he claimed? And where did this title come from?

Were his claims similar to the bogus or fictitious as the claims I had uncovered of Sir James Fitzgerald (1791-1839), who was living at Wolseley Hall in 1830s, at the time of Marianne’s marriage, when he convinced everyone that he was an Irish baronet, with a title dating back to Clenglish or Springfield Castle in Co Limerick in 1644?

The Jewish exiles forced to leave Spain in 1492 sought to avoid baptism, and half of them crossed into Portugal, where they soon outnumbered the local Jews. The origins of the Lousada name are shrouded in mystery. But the Portuguese surname Louzada or Lousada was one of many placenames adopted in the mass Portuguese baptisms of 1497, being the name of a Portuguese border town and its two nearby villages about 45 km east of Porto.

By 1500, about 90% of Portuguese Jews were from Spain, and Edgar Samuel suggests that the Lousada name derives from baptism of Spanish newcomers in one of the three Lousada villages in Portugal, although not all who adopted the Lousada name became Baruch Lousadas.

The Losada and Lousada placenames in Spain were probably used in baptisms in Spain in or before 1492, but these names seem to relate only to small settlements and farms.

Amador de Lousada, who was jailed by the Inquisition in Coimbra in 1590-1591, has been identified by genealogists as the probable ancestor of the widespread Baruch Lousada families.

Amador de Lousada was born in 1540 and he was a shoemaker in the Portuguese town of Vinhais when he was arrested. His parents were Pedro de Lousada and Briatis Alvares, probably the children of Spanish Jews displaced to Portugal in 1492. He was found guilty of Judaising and sentenced to perpetual penitence.

The research published on the site devoted to The Baruch Lousadas and the Barrows suggests that by 1606 his married first daughter was living in the nearby Portuguese town of Villaflor, and that by 1610 some of his Villaflor relatives had moved to Madrid presumably to avoid the flourishing Portuguese Inquisition.

But the Spanish Inquisition returned with intensity in 1643, and Amador’s wealthy grandson, Tomas Rodrigues Pereira, left Madrid, and then from 1645 lived an active Jewish life in Amsterdam as Abraham Israel Pereira.

Meanwhile, by 1640 Amador’s son, Isaac Baruch Lousada, was living in the port of Livorno, and there he voted in synagogue elections in 1641-1642. By 1649, Isaac’s son, Moses Baruh Lousada, was a regular visitor to Amsterdam, probably from France.

This was a tumultuous time. By 1654, Portugal recaptured Dutch Brazil and expelled the Jews living there. The push by the Dutch to establish new sugar-producing colonies was eagerly supported by the Jewish communities in Amsterdam and Livorno.

Despite Anglo-Dutch tensions, the Baruch Lousadas lived as merchants in the English sugar island of Barbados from 1659. From Barbados, they reached Curacao ca 1685 and Jamaica ca 1705.

From Curacao, the Baruch Lousadas re-established themselves in Surinam, and in 1743 from Jamaica they moved to England. Families with the Baruch Lousada name, or its many equivalents, were continuously present in Amsterdam until 1739, Jamaica until 1808, Curacao until 1816, Barbados until 1831, and Surinam until 1912.

Researchers on the website for the Baruch Lousada and Barrow families have mapped this mini-diaspora, with extensive family trees. The Lousada part of the family name is still borne by descendants in England, the US and Australia, although in the Netherlands it appears as Louzada.

It was common, perhaps fashionable, for Sephardic families to claim kinship with the nobility of the Iberian Peninsula. For example, the Curiel family claimed links with the last Visigothic Kings and to the Portuguese ruling family.

When the Spanish Inquisition ended in 1834, the pursuit of noble descent in Spain was no longer threatening for relatives with ‘New Christian’ ancestry. The vacant title of the Duque de Losada was a suitable choice for the Lousada family and its desire for nobility status. The name Losada in Spanish sounded like the Portuguese Lousada or Louzada, and it was indeed very grand.

The English name for the Dukedom is Losada y Lousada, but this mixes the Spanish and Portuguese-Galician forms. The title of Duque de Losada was created in Naples in 1741, so the ‘Losada y Lousada’ name was a post-1848 confection by the English dukes, oddly adapting Iberian naming practice to suit their own purposes.

Another family tree tries claims that the Baruch Lousada name arose in effect as Baruch y Lousada through a fictional marriage ca 1700 when, in fact, as the Lousada and Barrow genealogical site points out, the Baruch Lousada name arose in Livorno ca 1640.

Isaac Lousada (1783-1857), assumed the title of Duque de Losada in 1848 … a painting from old photographs by Jill Buckingham (Source: Lousada Baruch and Barrow genealogical site)

It is not known who made this suggestion to the Baruch Lousada family in Jamaica. But they commissioned a Spanish herald and genealogist to produce a set of lurid, expensive-looking but specious documents enabling them to claim they were the successors to the Duque de Losada.

Isaac Lousada (1783-1857), the first so-called successor, may have been passive about asserting these claims when they were first made in the 1840s, although others say that that was with evident panache that he assumed the title of Duque de Losada in 1848.

After Isaac died in 1857, his eldest son, Emanuel de Lousada, lost little time making himself known as the Duke de Losada y Lousada, which amounts to a very curious change of name.

In his papers, Emanuel de Lousada left a handwritten draft for an entry in Burke’s Peerage, and there is evidence of the fee Emanuel paid to Burke, who may have been the prime mover in the whole exercise.

But it is a difficult genealogical exercise to plaining his claimed link to the Spanish Duque, and there is no logical way to explain how the Dukes inherited – in Spain – a moribund Italian title that had been held by someone they were not related to.

The creative, but nonetheless fictitious, explanations are found in work of the Spanish herald and genealogist, the gullibility of the genealogical authorities in Spain and London, and the audacity of Emanuel.

Emanuel Lousada (1809-1885), the second English Lousada Duke and brother-in-law of Marianne Wolseley (Source: Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867)

The reward for the whole escapade and the social and political compensation for the expenses and difficulties encountered in pursuing this genealogical deception were many: Emanuel received a British passport in 1862; his brother Francis married into the minor ranks of the British nobility, wangled another title in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and became a British diplomat in the US; and three more further members of the Lousada family were unchallenged in their use of the title of Duke.

In polite Victorian society, most people never queried the standing of the soi-disant dukes, overlooking the peculiar change of name, the hybrid coat of arms and the lack of official authentication.

In England, members of the Lousada family married into leading Sephardic families, including the Montefiore and Mocatta families.

Marianne Wolseley had managed to avoid her own possible financial and social ruin in 1834 when she married Count Francis Baruch Lousada (1813-1870), a member of a rich family of sugar planters in Jamaica.

Francis was born on 11 November 1813, and was baptised on 11 June 1831 in Saint Marylebone Church. Francis and Marianne were married on 25 November 1834 in Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, London.

Marianne’s father-in-law, Isaac de Lousada, claimed the title of Duke of Lousada in 1848, and this was recognised by King Carlos of Spain. Marianne’s husband, Francis Baruch Lousada (1813-1870), was given the title of Marchese de San Miniato by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1846. It was said at the time that Lousada paid for the title while his wife Marianne was a lady-in-waiting in London to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

Francis Lousada was the British Consul in Rhode Island and Massachusetts when he died in Boston in 1870. Marianne (Wolseley) died on 1 November 1884 in Tarvis in Carinthia, Austria, now Tarvisio in Italy.

Francis and Marianne were the parents of three children, whose names continued those of some of the leading Staffordshire Catholic families, including Wolseley and Clifford:

1, Count Horace Francis de Lousada, Marchese de San Miniato (1837-1905). He was born on 29 September 1837, was a colonel in the Indian army, and died on 26 December 1905.

2, Count Ernest Wolseley de Lousada (1841-1872). He was born on 24 June 1841 in Mitford, Norfolk, and died on 24 September 1872.

3, Count Francis Clifford de Lousada (1853-1916), was born in Belgium on 16 February, was brought back to live in England, and became a captain in the Royal Navy and later managing director of Glasgow Tramway & Omnibus Company Ltd. He married Emily Florence Magee in Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, in 1879. He became the fourth duke in 1905. Francis died in Paddington in 1916, Emily died in Wiesbaden in 1924, and they are buried in Paddington.

The eldest son, Horace Francis Lousada (1837-1905), succeeded his father as the second marchese and his uncle as the third duke, and the title then passed to his younger brother, Francis.

The fifth and last duke was Edward Eugene Lousada (1853-1941), who returned to Jamaica. But by then, as Albert M Hyamson notes in his The Sephardim of England, this branch of the family had ‘a number of years previously withdrawn from the Jewish community.’

Marianne Wolseley’s marriage to this soi-disant marchese, and the titles used by her children is a story that has many parallels with the story of the marriage almost 30 years later in 1883 of her nephew, Sir Charles Wolseley (1846-1931), to Anita Murphy, the daughter of an Irish-American magnate, Daniel T Murphy, who bought the title of marchese from the Pope.

But that’s another story for tomorrow.

Another version of the coat-of-arms used by the Duque de Losada y Lousada … Marianne Wolseley was daughter-in-law of the first duke, sister-in-law of the second duke, and mother of the third and fourth dukes (Source)