Four weddings and some Wolseley funerals: stories of marriage and divorce in a Staffordshire family

Wolseley Hall, destroyed in a serious fire in the early 1950s and demolished in 1966 … the ancestral home of the Wolseley family

Patrick Comerford

I have been writing in recent weeks about the divorce scandal in the Talbot and Chetwynd family that becoming a sensation far beyond polite social circles in Victorian Rugeley and Lichfield in the 1860s and filled column after column in newspapers across the world.

During my summer rambles through Stafford, Rugeley, Wolseley, Lichfield and Tamworth, I was reminded of some of these marriages and divorces, with stories that must have created gossip among people who saw themselves at the centre of social life in south Staffordshire 150 or 200 years ago.

William Henry Chetwynd (1811-1890) and his wife Blanche Mary Talbot (1836-1898), 25 years his junior and a niece Henry Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury, were involved in a sensational divorce case in 1864-1865. The gossip created by the case of Chetwynd v Chetwynd echoed, in many ways, the attention a century earlier to the bigamy and divorce trials involving the widowed Sir William Wolseley (1692-1779) and the widowed Ann Whitbey (1724-1782), a case that dragged on in civil and church courts over two years, from 1752 to 1754.

But I was reminded too during those summer walks of at least four other marriages in the Wolseley family down through the generations that were interesting and colourful. They may not have created scandal in the same ways but, at times, they saved the Wolseley family from what seemed like certain financial and social ruin.

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

1, The Jamaican planter: was he a Spanish duke?

Marianne Wolseley (1813-1881) of Wolseley and Count Francis Baruch Lousada (1813-1870), who was born into a rich family of sugar planters in Jamaica, were married in Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, London, on 25 November 1834. Marianne’s father, Sir Charles Wolseley (1769-1838), had succeeded as the seventh baronet in 1817 and was a radical politician who was at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and was surety for some of the victims of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. He was jailed in 1820 for sedition and conspiracy, and his political activism threatened the financial stability of his family.

However, his daughter Marianne managed to avoid her own possible financial and social ruin in 1834 when she married Count Francis Baruch Lousada. The Baruch Lousada family in Jamaica 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 titles of the Duque de Losada.

Isaac Lousada (1783-1857) assumed the title of Duque de Losada in 1848, and after he died his eldest son, Emanuel de Lousada, lost little time in making himself known as the Duke de Losada y Lousada, drafting and fabricating a family tree for an entry in Burke’s Peerage.

It is a pointless genealogical exercise to explain his claimed link to the Spanish duke, and there is no logical way to trace 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 the work of the Spanish herald and genealogist, the gullibility of the genealogical authorities in Spain and London, and the audacity of Emanuel.

The reward for the whole escapade and the social and political compensation for the expenses 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 when he married Marianne Wolseley, wangled another title in the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and became a British diplomat in the US. Indeed, three further members of his immediate family went unchallenged in their use of the title of duke.

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)

In polite Victorian society, most people seem never to have queried the standing of the soi-disant dukes, overlooking their peculiar change of name, their use of a hybrid coat of arms and the lack of official authentication. Members of the Lousada family married into leading Sephardic families in England, including the Montefiore and Mocatta families.

Twelve years Marianne and Francis were married, Francis was given the title of Marchese de San Miniato by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1846. It was said widely at the time that he paid for the title while 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, and died in Boston in 1870. Marianne died on 1 November 1884 in Tarvis in Carinthia, Austria, now Tarvisio in Italy. Their eldest son, Horace Francis Lousada (1837-1905), succeeded his father as the second marchese and his uncle as the third duke. The fifth and last duke, Edward Eugene Lousada (1853-1941), returned to live in Jamaica.

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

2, the daughter of an American Papal ‘marchese’:

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

Sir Charles Wolseley may have found a role model or inspiration in his aunt Marianne, for he married into a wealthy family with a title that had been bought and in 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), describing how Charles came to London to look for an heiress. My interest is added to by Stephen’s descent through his mother from the Langton and Comerford families of Danganmore Castle, Co Kilkenny. In her letters, laden with snobbery, elitism and disdain, Esther describes how 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, undeterred, Charles married the elder sister, Anna Theresa (Anita) Murphy in 1883. Her father, an Irish-American entrepreneur Daniel T Murphy, founded the pioneer house of Murphy, Grant & Co, and was living in San Francisco. Anita, her sisters and her mother had moved to London, and they moved in fashionable circles in England and Europe. Anita was confirmed by Pope Leo XIII and a painting of Anita and her sister at their confirmation by Pope Leo XIII was once in the Wolseley family collection, and was still at Wolseley in 1971 when I interviewed Sir Charles Wolseley for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

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

Anita’s father, Daniel T Murphy, was a self-made multi-millionaire who had more money than he could spend. In 1857, he married Anna Geoghagan, also from an Irish family. The couple were the parents of four daughters, Isabella (Issy), Helene (Nellie), Anna Theresa (Anita) and Frances (Fanny), and three sons, Eugene, Daniel and Samuel.

Daniel Murphy visited his wife and daughters in London at least once a year. He was a staunch Roman Catholic and donated $5 million to Pope Pius IX. In return, the Pope made Murphy first a Knight and then a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory. Pope Leo XIII, who confirmed two of his daughters in Rome, gave Murphy 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 continued to be known in London only as Mrs Murphy and not as marchesa.

Anita Murphy and Sir Charles Wolseley were married on 17 July 1883 in the Catholic Pro-Cathedral in Kensington. The four bridesmaids were her 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 newspapers of the day delighted in lengthy lists of the titled and public figures who attended, including the US ambassador and poet James Russell Lowell, the Duke of Norfolk, Prince Doria Pamphilji, a son-in-law of the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Marquis of Bute and Lady Londonderry.

Anita (Murphy) Wolseley tired of life at Wolseley Hall and travelled abroad, alone … it was divorce Catholic-style in the early 20th century

On the day Anita and Charles were married, Mrs Murphy gave her first-born a cheque for $5 million drawn on the Bank of England. Daniel T Murphy died within two years 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 had arrived from England earlier that week and was with him when he died, as were two of his sons and a daughter.

In his will, dated 15 May 1883, Murphy left various bequests to the Catholic Church and family members, with his daughters receiving at least $50,000 each, even if that meant his sons received less. At first, Anita’s inheritance was estimated at $2 million, but Charles Wolseley never got his hands on it. By the time the marriage contract had been signed, Daniel T Murphy had died Anita’s sisters contested their father’s will. When Anita received her money, it was for her personally and not for her husband.

Jeannie Wolseley later said the marriage was relatively happy to begin with; the couple were the parents of two sons, Sir Edric Charles Joseph Wolseley (1886-1954) and Colonel William Wolseley (1887-1977). But Anita soon tired of life at Wolseley Hall and in rural Staffordshire, and she began travelling abroad, alone. She sent Charles a regular allowance, but this dropped steadily. It was divorce Catholic-style in the early 20th century.

By 1919, he had to sell almost all the contents of Wolseley Hall and several hundred acres of his estate. A broken man, he moved to Surrey and died on 30 January 1931, and was brought back to Rugeley to be buried in Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda churchyard, where he had donated the East Window by Hardman and Powell; Anita died on 11 October 1937.

The grave of Sir Charles Wolseley (1846-1931), the ninth baronet, in Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda churchyard, Rugeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

3, Colonel William Wolseley and the Catholic Church:

When Sir Charles Wolseley died in 1931, the Wolseley title and estate passed to his elder son, Sir Edric Wolseley, tenth baronet and grandfather of the late Sir Charles Wolseley. Their younger son, Colonel William Wolseley (1887-1977), also had an interesting life and his life story is also the story of yet another interesting Wolseley marriage.

William Ralph Joseph Wolseley was born in London on 1 July 1887, the younger son of Sir Charles Michael Wolseley and Anita Murphy. He was a captain in the Staffordshire Yeomanry during World War I, and was mentioned in dispatches and decorated. He was a Justice of the Peace for Shropshire from 1939, and during World War II he was a colonel in the Royal Pioneer Corps.

William Wolseley married a vicar’s granddaughter, Ruth Gertrude Hargreaves (1893-1962), in Gnosall on 10 November 1923. Ruth was one of three daughters of Colonel Robert Halstead Hargreaves (1861-1909) of Knightley Grange, near Eccleshall. Her maternal grandfather was the Revd Charles Holden Steward (1859-1915).

The Wolseley family were staunchly Catholic, but when William married Ruth, the vicar’s granddaughter she would not agree to bring up any future children as Roman Catholics. In order to go ahead with the marriage, William had to leave the Catholic Church and he was excommunicated.

Ruth (Hargreaves) Wolseley (left) as a child with her sisters Violet (centre) and Nancy

Family members tell me Ruth ‘smoked cigars like a chimney and swore like a trooper’. She was, by all accounts, a tiny woman with a very domineering character, who probably gave William little choice but to leave the Catholic Church in order to marry her. They lived at Knightley Grange, and during World War II Ruth was in the Women’s Land Army and the WVS. Although William was devoted to Ruth, family members believe his decision to leave the Catholic Church caused him great upset in later life.

Ruth and William were the parents of a son and daughter: Robert William Hargreaves Wolseley (1924-1998), and Veronica Ruth Theresa Rose Wolseley (1928-2019). Ruth died at Knightley Grange in 1962, William Wolseley died in 1977. Some of the more valuable contents of Knightley Grange were sold off at auction over two days in June 1966, and the property, which had been in the Hargreaves family for over 100 years, was sold in 1967.

The house at Knightley Grange was finally demolished in 2019.

The house at Knightley Grange where Ruth and William Wolseley lived after they married in 1923 was demolished in 2019

4, Another American in the family:

William Wolseley’s elder brother, Sir Edric Wolseley (1886-1954), was the grandfather of the late Sir Charles Wolseley (1944-2018), the 11th baronet. A painting of two of the Murphy girls at their confirmation by Pope Leo XIII was once among the paintings in the Wolseley family collection. It was still at Wolseley Park in 1971 when I interviewed Sir Charles for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

It was a well-edited feature, with a fine photograph of Charles and his first Anita (Fried) and their eldest daughter. They warmly welcomed me to Wolseley Park House, more features followed on the Dyott, Anson, Levett and other families, and I built up a portfolio that helped to set me up for a 30-year career as a journalist.

At the time, I was in my late teens training as a chartered surveyor, and Charles Wolseley was then a chartered surveyor with Smith Gore in Lichfield, driving a trademark red sports car around town, commuting daily between Lichfield and Wolseley.

Charles and Anita were divorced in 1984, and later that year he married the American writer Imogen (Jeannie) Brown (1943-2024), who was researching a book on American heiresses who married impoverished English aristocrats.

When Charles and Jeannie had to move out of Wolseley to Penkridge after he was declared bankrupt, she talked about the painting being so large that it would be better placed in a museum in San Francisco. Today it is in the Villa Magistrale on the Aventine in Rome, where it was identified some years ago by Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen when he was the Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican.

Sir Charles Wolseley and his second wife, Imogene (Jeannie) Brown, in 1992 … after their bankruptcy, they relied on the generosity of neighbours and friends

Family members recall how Charles and Jeannie Wolseley spoke openly of their situation and how people would come up to Charles in the supermarket in Rugeley and place a £10 note in his hand. Frequently they discovered gifts of food, money and even a car delivered to the house.

‘They were clearly a strong couple,’ a family member told me.

I wrote to him when I heard about his problems, enclosed a cutting of that full-page feature in the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury. I thanked him for an opportunity that secured a career in journalism that lasted most of my adult life, and thanked him too for that offer at Smiths Gore.

Despite his divorce and remarriage, Charles seems to have had a happier relationship with the Catholic Church than his uncle William. Charles died on 5 March 2018 and his funeral took place in Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Church on 24 March 2018. His widow Jeannie died in Rugeley two years ago, on 11 July 2024, and her funeral was held in the church on 26 July 2024.

The Wolseley Arms by the River Trent near Rugeley in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Elephant and Castle is nowa lively and vibrant part of South London, but how did it get its unusual name?

High Point and LCC Tower in Elephant and Castle … but how did this colourful part of South London get its name (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The Elephant and Castle is a very dominant part of the coat-of-arms of one branch of the Beaumont family, and so it became a major feature in the heraldic decoration of the ceiling of the long gallery illustrating the Comberford family tree in the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth.

I was first shown this ceiling and its heraldic decorations when I was a teenager. It has fascinated me ever since, and I have been back to see it many times over the past 55 years or more.

There is no simple explanation of why or how the Wednesbury branch of the Beaumont family adopted the elephant and castle as one of their heraldic symbols. But I was reminded of it last week on the buses through Elephant and Castle in London last week, on my way between Waterloo Station and Brockley, visiting Comerford Road.

Strata Tower, part of the fast-changing redevelopment of Elephant and Castle in South London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Elephant and Castle is a neighbourhood just south of the River Thames, in the London Borough of Southwark. A transport hub, it is a familiar landmark and home to thousands of people, and it is also an area in transition. A major regeneration programme is underway, with over £4 billion of public and private money being invested in the area.

Elephant and Castle is the name of a short road, but the name is generally used to refer informally to much of Walworth and Newington. The area has a rich cultural history, has two local universities, a flourishing arts scene and a strong Latin American influence. The origins of the area are found in its location at the meeting point of several major routes into the heart of London.

To this day, it is one of the city’s most important transport hubs. It has two underground stations, a mainline rail station, 28 bus routes, and excellent road and cycling connections.

The area was once known as the ‘Piccadilly of the South’ – a central hub of entertainment that regularly drew in thousands of Londoners. With plans for new theatres, cinemas, shops, restaurants and places to socialise, Elephant and Castle is once again becoming a destination for visitors, as well as a great neighbourhood in which to live, work and learn.

Elephant and Castle has a a variety of cafés and places to eat (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today, Elephant and Castle is a fast-changing area with modern developments like the Strata tower, nicknamed the ‘Razor’, High Point London South Bank University, the LCC Tower and a variety of cafés and places to eat.

But how did Elephant and Castle get its unusual name?

There are many explanations, but none seems to satisfy my curiosity.

No-one questions that the name Elephant and Castle is taken from the name of a pub or coaching inn at this major crossroad. The earliest surviving record of this name in relation to this area appears in the Court Leet Book of the Manor of Walworth, which met at Elephant and Castle, Newington on 21 March 1765.

The inn was rebuilt in 1816 and again in 1898. The Victorian pub was demolished and the present Elephant & Castle pub, at the junction of New Kent Road and Newington Causeway, was part of the comprehensive redevelopments in the 1960s.

But how did the original pub get its name?

A gable end mural on the corner of New Street and High Street, Stony Stratford, recalls the story of Eleanor of Castile (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The popular and enduring myth is that the inn took its name from an English corruption of the Spanish phrase La Infanta de Castilla, a title held by Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I. Her funeral procession in 1290 was later marked by Eleanor Crosses the length of England, ending at Charing Cross – but not at Elephant and Castle.

She is commemorated in a mural in Stony Stratford, but is also remembered for her virulent antisemitism.

However, Eleanor of Castile never held the title of Infanta de Castilla. Indeed, according to Stephen Humphrey in his book Elephant and Castle, a History (2013), the pub sign at Elephant and Castle only begins to be used in the area about 500 years after Queen Eleanor lived.

The Infanta de Castilla house in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A second disputed origin is with another Infanta of Castille, Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. When she first arrived in London in 1502, she lived in a house on South Bank that later become the residence of the architect Christopher Wren. This building is about a mile and a half from where Elephant and Castle roundabout stands today.

The house on South Bank is close to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. In Twelfth Night, ‘The Elephant’ is a lodging house in the ‘south suburbs’ recommended by Antonio to Sebastian as the best place to stay.

It serves as the staging ground for their separation and Sebastian’s later mix-up with Viola (as Cesario). It is often been said that this reference in one of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies is to lodgings in Elephant and Castle. But Twelfth Night is set in Illyria, not in London, and the first documented performance of the play (1602) was not in Southwark but at Middle Temple Hall, on the other side of the river.

The plaque on the Infanta de Castilla house on South Bank (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A third popular explanation for the name of Elephant and Castle is found, supposedly, in the heraldic symbols of the Cutlers’ Company, one of the livery companies in London. The company adopted the image of an Elephant and Castle as the crest in its coat of arms granted in 1622. It may have been a reference to the use of ivory in cutlery handles rather than any imagined connections with Eleanor of Castile or Catherine of Aragon, or, for that matter, with Coventry or the Beaumont family.

An elephant and castle can be seen in the coat of arms granted to the Cutlers’ Companyin 1476 and depicted at Cutlers’ Hall, with elephants as supporters on each side of the shield. The elephant theme is repeated throughout the hall on Warwick Lane, including the pair of elegant golden elephant heads on the door knockers.

The Royal African Company, founded in 1672, used a similar sign because of the ivory trade.

But Elephant and Castle as the name of the public house that gives its name to the area in South London first appears in records in 1765, when the building is first described as a public house called the Elephant and Castle. Stephen Humphrey finds no evidence to connect the pub or its early proprietors with the Cutlers’ Company or the cutlery trade. He concludes that the sudden appearance of the ancient sign in the area cannot be explained and suggests that, as with the vast majority of pub names, the choice may have been a random one.

The elephant and castle are part of the heraldic symbols of the the Cutlers’ Company and Cutlers’ Hall in London (Photograph: Wikipedia)

The image of an elephant with a castle on its back has been popular for centuries and throughout Europe. The mediaeval bestiaries said Indian and Persian warriors fought from wooden towers on the backs of elephants, an elephant and castle is one of the symbols in the 14th-century choir stalls in Chester Cathedral, and the emblem is found in the coat of arms of Coventry, granted by Edward III in 1345.

The Garter stall plate of John Beaumont (1361-1396), 4th Lord Beaumont, shows his coat of arms used a lion passant as the crest. But his great-grandson, William Beaumont (1438-1507), 2nd Viscount Beaumont, used the heraldic device of an elephant with a tower on its back.

William supported the Lancastrian cause and Henry VI. He was on the losing side at the battles of Towton (1461) and Barnet (1471), was twice stripped of his land and titles by the Yorkists, and spent many years in exile or in prison. In the end, he fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth, and within a few months he was restored to his lands and titles.

Livery badges for John Beaumont with the elephant and castle rebus are on display in the British Museum, the London Museum and Salisbury Museum. John Beaumont’s uncle, Henry Beaumont (1411-ca 1447/1448), ancestor of the Beaumont family of Wednesbury. That branch of the Beaumont family appear to have adopted the elephant and castle as the crest in their coat-of-arms.

Henry Beaumont’s wife Joan was the daughter and heiress of William Heronville of Wednesbury and widow of William Leventhope of Wednesbury. When Joan died, Wednesbury Manor was inherited by her only son, Sir Henry Beaumont (1446-1471) of Wednesbury. This Henry’s granddaughter, Dorothy Beaumont, married Humphrey Comberford of Comberford Hall, who was the Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist in Lichfield in 1530.

The wealth of the Wednesbury estate greatly enriched the Comberford family, which explains in part why the line of descent from the Beaumont family was emphasised by the decorative heraldic family trees on the ceiling of the Moat House, the family’s Tudor house on Lichfield Street in Tamworth.

But I have strayed away from the questions I had last week about the origins of the name of Elephant and Castle in London. Perhaps there are no answers.

The Beaumont coat-of-arms, including an elephant and castle, in the Comberford heraldic family tree in the long gallery of the Moat House, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Remembering 11 July 1942, the tragedy of ‘Black Saturday’ and the destruction of Jewish life in Thessaloniki

The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Liberty Square, Thessaloniki … a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid of a menorah whose flames are wrapped around human bodies (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This year marks the 110th anniversary of the time my grandfather was in Thessaloniki and picked up a deadly strain of malaria. He was sent home from World War I in 1916, and that may have saved him from being sent to the trenches in France, and also provided a time gap in which my father was conceived and born.

None of my father’s sibling – brothers and sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters – had any children. So, without picking up malaria in Thessaloniki 100 years ago, my father would not have been born, and my grandfather would have no living descendants.

But malaria was a killer in those days. Within five years of contracting malaria in Greece, Stephen Edward Comerford had died a sad and lonely death in a hospital ward.

Thessaloniki has been a favourite city of mine in Greece for many years, and I was familiar with and fond of its street and buildings, its history and stories, its poetry and music, its synagogues, churches and monasteries, long before I realised the true and sad story of how my grandfather died. When I realised his story, I went back to Thessaloniki to retrace his steps.

The names of Holocaust victims on the pavement in Vassilisis Olgas Avenue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But, as I think of anniversaries in Thessaloniki, I also remember today that another anniversary, 11 July 1942, is remembered in Thessaloniki as ‘Black Saturday’ – the day when the Nazis forced 9,000 Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 45 to assemble in Liberty Square. For hours in the blazing summer heat, German soldiers beat and humiliated them before crowds of onlookers. About 2,000 were sent to forced labour; the rest were eventually ransomed by the community, which sold its ancient cemetery to raise the sum demanded.

Shortly before my grandfather arrived in Thessaloniki, Greece had taken Thessaloniki from the Ottoman Empire during the Balkan Wars and it was incorporated into the modern Greek state in 1912. The Jewish community in the city was 70,000 strong at the time, and was the city's largest ethnic group.

The port city closed every Saturday. Most workers – including the dockworkers – were Jewish and observed Shabbat. Street signs were in Ladino, the Judaeo-Spanish language of Sephardic Jews. Synagogues were found in almost every neighbourhood, newspapers published in four languages served the cosmopolitan population, but Ladino and Greek were the main languages and the dominant voice in the synagogues was Spanish-inflected Hebrew prayers.

In those days, Thessaloniki was known as the ‘Mother of Israel’ and the ‘Jerusalem of the Balkans.’ For over three centuries, it was the largest Sephardic Jewish city in the world and the only major European city where Jews formed the majority.

By 1613, Jews were 68 per cent of Thessaloniki's population – a percentage unmatched anywhere else in Europe, before or since. This was a living reality into the 20th century: Sabbath observance shut down commerce, rabbinical courts wielded authority, Ladino echoed through marketplaces and Jewish printing presses produced books shipped across the Mediterranean.

But, in the space of five months in 1943, the Nazis erased all that almost completely.

Jews started arriving in Thessaloniki in large numbers following the expulsions from Spain in 1492 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The story begins in 1492, with catastrophe transformed into refuge. When Spain’s Catholic monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand issued the Alhambra Decree expelling all Jews from Spain, between 15,000 and 20,000 Sephardic Jews fled across the Mediterranean. Many settled in Thessaloniki, a bustling port city in the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II welcomed them. He realised that Spain’s loss could be his empire’s gain. The Jewish refugees brought skills in medicine, printing, textiles, metalwork, and international trade, they spoke multiple languages and they had commercial networks spanning continents.

‘The Spanish king is a fool,’ Bayezid reportedly said, ‘impoverishing his own country to enrich mine.’

The Sephardic Jews transformed Thessaloniki. They established the city’s first printing press in the late 15th century, making Thessaloniki a centre of Jewish scholarship and book production. They built synagogues – eventually 42 of them – each named after the Spanish or Portuguese city their founders had fled: Catalán Yashan (Old Catalan), Aragon, Lisboa, Evora, Castile.

They created networks that made Thessaloniki one of the Ottoman Empire’s most important trading hubs. Jewish merchants shipped wool, silk and ceramics across the Mediterranean, Jewish craftsmen became the exclusive tailors for the Ottoman Janissaries, and Jewish bankers facilitated trade between east and west.

By 1519, just 27 years after the expulsion, Jews made up 56 per cent of Thessaloniki’s population. By 1613, that figure reached 68 per cent. Thessaloniki became the only major European city where Christians and Muslims were minorities.

The former Bank of Thessaloniki founded by the Allatini family … now the Malakopi Arcade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For over 300 years, from the 16th to the early 20th century, Jewish life defined the rhythm of life in Thessaloniki. The city essentially shut down from Friday evening until Saturday night, honouring the Jewish Sabbath alongside the Muslim Friday prayers and Christian Sunday observance.

The community thrived during the Ottoman era. The millet system granted religious minorities autonomy to order their own affairs. Jewish courts handled civil disputes, rabbinical authorities oversaw education, marriage and religious life, and the community paid collective taxes but otherwise it was self-governing.

Wealthy Jewish entrepreneurs led Thessaloniki’s industrialisation in the mid-19th century. The Allatini brothers established the first modern flour-milling plant in 1854, followed by textile factories, brickmaking facilities, and tobacco-processing plants. By the early 20th century, Jews owned 38 of the city’s 54 largest trading houses.

The community also had a vibrant working class. Jewish stevedores controlled the docks, Jewish weavers supplied textiles throughout the Balkans, and Jewish printers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and merchants filled every sector of urban life.

Intellectually, Thessaloniki became a Jewish powerhouse. Schools flourished; the Alliance Israélite Universelle opened modern educational institutions that taught French alongside traditional Jewish subjects; a whole generation became conversant with both Jewish tradition and European modernity; and newspapers in Ladino connected the community with Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman world.

Politically, Thessaloniki’s Jews were active in Ottoman reform movements. Many supported the Young Turks revolution of 1908, which sought to modernise the empire with constitutional government.

Zionist leaders who visited the city saw it as a model. David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky all visited Thessaloniki in the early 20th century, seeing in its Jewish majority a preview of how a Jewish state might work.

The Jewish Memorial at the Aristotelean University of Thessaloniki, on the site of the city’s ancient Jewish cemetery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But even as Thessaloniki’s Jewish community reached its peak, forces were gathering that would unravel its world. Four years before my grandfather’s arrival there, Greece captured Thessaloniki in 1912 during the Balkan Wars. The Jewish community – 70,000 strong at the time and the city’s largest ethnic group – faced an uncertain future.

At first, the Greek government recognised the community’s rights and traditions. But tensions simmered, Greek merchants resented Jewish commercial sway, and some people saw the Jewish presence as a remnant of Ottoman rule.

On 18 August 1917, a small kitchen fire in central Thessaloniki exploded into an inferno. For 32 hours, flames consumed over one-third of the city. The fire destroyed 9,500 buildings, and left 70,000 people homeless, 52,000 of them Jews, and 16 of the 33 synagogues were burned. Jewish schools, libraries, charitable institutions, and the grand rabbinate's archives, with the records of centuries of births, marriages and deaths, rabbinical decisions and community history, vanished in smoke.

The entire documented history of one of the world’s great Jewish communities went up in flames, and the fire devastated Jewish Thessaloniki. Over 20,000 Jews, unable to find shelter, left the city for Athens, France, the US and Palestine.

The community rebuilt itself on the outskirts of the city, but it never recovered its former glory. The balance in the population shifted dramatically in 1923 when Greece and Turkey negotiated a population exchange. About 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians were moved to Greece from Turkey, with roughly 100,000 settling in Thessaloniki. For the first time in four centuries, Jews had become a minority in the city they had once defined.

The tracks to Auschwitz … old railway tracks at the port where the convoys left for the death camps (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

By 1940, Thessaloniki had a Jewish population of about 56,000 in a city that had grown to about 250,000 residents. The community had survived fires, political upheaval, and demographic transformation, they kept open their synagogues, schools and cultural institutions, and they remained a vital part of the city’s fabric. But nothing prepared them for what came next.

On 9 April 1941, German forces occupied Thessaloniki. Within a week, Nazi authorities arrested Jewish community leaders, confiscated Jewish homes and hospitals, and began the systematic looting of Jewish cultural property. Tens of thousands of books, religious artifacts, and artworks were shipped to Germany.

On 11 July 1942 – a date remembered to this day as ‘Black Saturday’ – the Nazis forcibly rounded up 9,000 Jewish men aged between 18 and 45 in Plateia Eleftherias (Πλατεία Ελευθερίας, Liberty Square). For hours in the blazing summer heat, German soldiers beat and humiliated them before the crowds. About 2,000 were sent to forced labour. The rest were eventually ransomed by the community, which sold its ancient cemetery to raise the demanded sum.

The Jewish cemetery, with 20 generations and over 500 years of burials, was destroyed. The tombstones were purloined as building materials for footpaths, university stairs, and barrack latrines. Aristotle University now stands where the Jewish dead had been buried rested.

In February 1943, Adolf Eichmann sent Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner to Thessaloniki. They were specialists in Jewish deportation and they implemented the Nuremberg Laws immediately, imposing yellow stars, movement restrictions, property confiscation. Within days, Jews were forced into three ghettos. The largest, the Baron Hirsch transit camp, was beside the railway station.

The first train left Thessaloniki on 15 March 1943. Between March and August 1943, 19 trains took as many as 46,000 Jews from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each train held 1,000 to 4,000 people crammed into cattle cars. The seven-day journey across Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia was torture itself, with no food, no water and no sanitation, bodies crushed together in suffocating heat or freezing cold.

When the trains arrived at Auschwitz, SS doctors carried out ‘selections’ on the platform. Most were sent directly to gas chambers. Of the 46,000 deported, about 1,950 or 4 per cent survived. The Jewish population that had comprised 68 per cent of Thessaloniki in 1613; 96 per cent of the city’s Jewish population was exterminated in 1943. In five months, the Nazis accomplished what four centuries of disasters – plagues, fires, wars, and economic transformations – had failed to do: they destroyed the Jerusalem of the Balkans.

The survivors who returned after the camps were liberated found a ghost community. Fewer than 2,000 Jews remained in Thessaloniki. Their synagogues were destroyed or vandalised, their homes had become the homes of others, their cemetery was razed, their archives were burned, their commercial networks were shattered.

Many survivors could not bear to stay and emigrated to Palestine, the USA or other diaspora communities. Others rebuilt what they could, establishing small institutions to preserve memory.

The Monasterioton Synagogue is the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today, about 1,000 Jews live in Thessaloniki, less than 0.2 per cent of the city’s population of over 800,000. Three synagogues remain of the original 42. The Monastir Synagogue survived only because Nazis used it as a Red Cross warehouse. The Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki, which attracts about 30,000 visitors a year 2023, documents the community’s history.

Dr Leon Saltiel is a historian specialising in the Holocaust in Greece. His publications include The Holocaust in Thessaloniki: Reactions to the Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1942-1943, which won the 2021 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research, and ‘Do Not Forget Me’: Three Jewish Mothers Write to their Sons from the Thessaloniki Ghetto.

Dr Saltiel is a member of the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece and of the Greek delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. He currently serves as Director of Diplomacy, Representative at the UN Geneva and UNESCO, and Coordinator on Countering Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress.

A lecture organised by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum included an excerpt from ‘Do Not Forget Me’, directed by Grigoris Apostolopoulos, and written by Dr Leon Saltiel.

On 15 March each year, the anniversary of the first deportation, thousands gather for a silent march from the city centre to the old railway station, holding white balloons reading ‘Never Again’ and place flowers on the train tracks.

In 2008, Thessaloniki erected a Holocaust memorial by Nandor Glid near Liberty Square, where Jewish men were beaten on Black Saturday, 11 July 1942. One of Thessaloniki’s last Holocaust survivors, Heinz Kounio, died earlier this year (April 2026) at the age of 98. The Holocaust Museum of Greece (Μουσείο Ολοκαυτώματος Ελλάδος) in Thessaloniki is due to open later this year (2026). It will be the first museum dedicated specifically to telling the story of Sephardic Jews in the Holocaust.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎


The Jews of Thessaloniki: From antiquity and the Inquisition, to the Holocaust and today (Melbourne Holocaust Museum)

Comerford Road is typical of the Victorian and Edwardian terraces and streets throughout Brockley

Comerford Road in Brockley is a Victorian and Edwardian developmnt of terrached housing in the London Borough of Lewisham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

There was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when I seemed to know the area around Lewisham in south London quite well, staying occasionally with family connections in Catford at a time when I was very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and speaking at some of the large anti-war demonstrations in London.

Catford was only half an hour’s walk, at most, from Comerford Road in Brockley, and both are in the London Borough of Lewisham. Yet, in all those years, I never visited Comerford Road until yesterday afternoon.

I caught a bus from Waterloo to the junction of Brockley Road and Comerford Road at lunch time on Tuesday afternoon, and in the summer sunshine enjoyed the opportunity to explore a part of London I had never known before.

Brockley Jack is one the earliest and best-known buildings in Brockley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Comerford Road is in the SE4 postal code area and is immediately off Brockley Road, facing the main entrance to a large local cemetery. The area developed rapidly from market gardens, pear orchards and brickfields into a built-up residential shopping hub during the Victorian suburban boom.

Brockley may mean ‘Broca’s clearing in the woods’ or perhaps ‘the clearing by the brook’. Brockley was once in Kent, but it has been part of London from 1900 on. It first developed as a small settlement on the Lewisham side of the boundary between Lewisham and Deptford. Today, it stretches from Lewisham Way to Forest Hill.

Before the rapid Victorian expansion, the land sat within the ancient Manor of Brockley, created in 1189. It lay near the path of the Croydon Canal, which opened in 1809, and historic agricultural routes.

The area was built up in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Until that time the principal buildings were Brockley Farm, Manor Farm, Brockley Hall, the home of the Noakes family of brewers, and the Brockley Jack public house, then a picturesque timber-framed building owned by the Noakes family and said to have been a favourite haunt of highwaymen. The old Brockley Jack was once one of the most photographed pubs in south-east London.

The area around Brockley Road was built up and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The London and Croydon Railway, which runs through Brockley, opened in 1839, but Brockley Station was not built until 1871. Brockley Lane station, now closed, followed in 1872, and Crofton Park station in 1892.

The area of the original Brockley is now called Crofton Park, after the railway station which in turn was named after a building estate. The central focus of Brockley has since become the junction of Drakefell, Shardeloes, Brockley and Upper Brockley Roads, which is known as Brockley Cross.

The north part of Brockley was owned by the Tyrwhitt-Drake family who developed the estate – previously used for market gardening – from the late 1840s. They built substantial three- or four-storeyed houses for the professional classes, though many were later divided into flats.

The building on the corner of Comerford Road and Brockley Road dates from 1840 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Comerford Road was developed and named during the late Victorian expansion of the area in the 1870s to 1880s. However, I have been unable to find sources that confirm suggestions that Comerford Road in Brockley was named after Maurice Comerford (1853-1920), who was involved in establishing The Stage newspaper. Maurice Comerford was the business manager and co-founded the entertainment trade paper The Stage in 1880 with the founding editor Charles Lionel Carson.

There are certainly other possibilities for the origins of the name of Comerford Road, and there were Comerford families in nearby Deptford from the early 19th century.

For example, Michael Comerford (1814-1867). He was born ca 1814 in Deptford, then in Kent but now part of the East End of London. He was the immediate ancestor the Comerford family of music hall artists and actors. They were also descended from some of the most interesting Sephardic families of Seville, Venice, Amsterdam and the East End of London.

Comerford Road was developed and named during the late Victorian expansion of Brockley in the 1870s to 1880s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The building on the corner of Comerford Road and Brockley Road dates from 1840, and by 1900 the junction of Comerford Road and Brockley Road had been firmly established as a local parade. Old postcards from the time show the junction as a central shopping parade, overlooked in the distance by Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, built in 1882.

Saint Mary Magdalen Church was built at the corner of Comerford Road and Howson Road in 1898-1899, and was designed by the architect Young Bolton.

Many parts of Brockley and Crofton Park were damaged during World War II, particularly by V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets, and the area north of Crofton Park Station on Brockley Road suffering many strikes.

Comerford Road suffered bomb damage on the first day of the Blitz, 7 September 1940, when houses at 46-48 and 41-53 Comerford Road were damaged. An incendiary bomb fell on enclosed ground at rear of 75 Comerford Road, and a time bomb damaged Saint Mary Magdalene Church on 16 September 1940.

Saint Mary Magdalen Church was built on Comerford Road in 1898-1899 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

At its west end, beside Saint Mary Magdalen Church, Comerford Road is crossed by Howson Road, where the poet and painter David Jones (1895-1974) lived for much of his life. Other famous residents of Brockley have included the Irish socialist Jim Connell (1852-1929), author of the anthem ‘The Red Flag’, the actress Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), the radio and music hall comedian Will Hay (1888-1949) and the comedian Spike Milligan (1918-2002).

Brockley was named in 2021 as the best area of London to live in. In many ways, By and large, Comerford Road is typical of a part of south-east London that remains rich in Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture, historic trees and original lanes and mews.

The outstanding feature on Comerford Road is Saint Mary Magdalen Church at 73 Comerford Road with a War Memorial in the church grounds that has a Grade II listing of its own.

But more about the church on Comerford Road and its war memorial in the days to come, hopefully.

Comerford Road is typical of a part of south-east London that remains rich in Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Shrewsbury peerage case and how branches of the Talbot family fought over old titles and lands

The Talbot Arms in Rugeley became the Shrewsbury Arms after Lord Talbot became the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1860 … it is now called ‘The Shrew’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I was saying in a posting yesterday how the intricacies in the family trees of the Talbot and Chetwynd families are difficult to untangle, and produce many obstacles and problems for genealogists and family historians.

The Shrewsbury Peerage Case (1858-1860) was a landmark case before the House of Lords in a dispute over the succession to prestigious titles in both England and Ireland and to vast estates in Staffordshire and other parts of England. The decision by the House of Lords in the case established legal precedents in peerage law and estate inheritance.

The Earls of Shrewsbury were the premier earls in both England and Ireland, and their string of titles include Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl of Waterford and Earl of Wexford. The titles dated back to mid-15th century, when the celebrated warrior John Talbot was made the first Earl of Shrewsbury in 1442 and first Earl of Waterford and Wexford in 1445. The earls also held the hereditary title of Lord High Steward of Ireland, an office that traditionally allowed them to carry bear a white staff at the coronation of the monarch.

John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1445 … a detail from the Talbot Shrewsbury Book … note the white talbot at his feet to the left

George Talbot (1719-1787), 14th Earl of Shrewsbury, had succeeded his uncle in 1743. George had no children, and when he died, he was succeeded by his nephew, Charles Talbot, as the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury. In 1812, Charles Talbot to lay out the extensive gardens at Alveton Lodge, Staffordshire, which had been in the Talbot family since the 15th century and would become Alton Towers.

When the 15th earl died, the titles were inherited by his nephew John Talbot as the 16th earl. When the principal home of the Talbot family at Heythrop, near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, was destroyed by fire in 1831, he moved to Alton Towers.

John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, who lived at Alton Towers, commissioned AWN Pugin to build many churches in Staffordshire, including Saint Giles’s Church, Cheadle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The 16th earl was a noted patron of the architect AWN Pugin. This John Talbot married Maria Theresa Talbot (1795-1856), daughter of William Talbot of Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, Mary (O’Toole) in Bath on 27 June 1814, and both branches of the Talbot family were patrons of Pugin and his church building programmes in Staffordshire and Co Wexford.

Maria died on 6 June 1856, in Paris, France, at the age of 61, and was buried at Alton Towers. Maria and John were the parents of three children, a son who died in infancy, and two daughters:

1, Lady Mary Althea Beatrix Talbot (1815-1858), born on 29 May 1815, married Prince Filippo Andrea Doria-Pamphili-Landi, and died in Rome on 18 December 1858, aged 43.

2, John Talbot (1816-1817), their only son, born 27 November 1816, died 20 March 1817 in Paris.

3, Lady Gwendoline Catherine Talbot (1817-1840), born on 5 December 1817 in Cheltenham, married Prince Marcantonio Borghese, and died in Rome on 27 October 1840.

John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, died from malaria in Naples on 9 November 1852. Because he had no surviving sons, he was succeeded as the 17th Earl of Shrewsbury by his second cousin once removed and his adopted heir, Bertram Arthur Talbot, according to the rules of male-preference primogeniture. Bertram was the great-grandson of George Talbot, a younger son of Gilbert Talbot (died 1711), second son of the 10th Earl of Shrewsbury.

The Tame of the Talbot family and the Earls of Shrewsbury has gives name to pubs and inns throughout England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bertram, who has been described as having a mild disposition, was an invalid with delicate health. He had been informally adopted by the 16th earl and he was a Knight Commander of Malta, and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Pope Pius IX. He was also about to be nominated a knight of the Order of Saint Patrick.

When Bertram succeeded to the title in 1852, he was still under age, and when he. Having reached the age of 21, he took his seat in the House of Lords in February 1854, and he began proceedings to claim the office of Hereditary Lord High Steward of Ireland, a claim that was referred to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords.

Bertram arrived at Lisbon hoping to travel on to Cintra, and accompanied on the trip by Anne Talbot from Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, a sister the late Mary Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, Father Charles Brierley Garside (1818-1876), his domestic chaplain, and Dr Mervyn Crawford, his personal doctor. But their plans were delayed by an outbreak of cholera in Lisbon. Bertram moved into the Hotel Braganza, where his symptoms deteriorated rapidly. Bertram died on 10 August 1856 in Lisbon at the age of 23; he was unmarried and childless, and left no direct Catholic successor.

The arms of the Talbot family, Earls of Shrewsbury, represented on the doors of Saint Giles’s Church in Cheadle, Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Talbot family tree is widespread, with many branches, and when Bertram died it became difficult to disentangle the tree and to identify clearly the heir to the family estates and titles. His will reflected his staunch Catholicism by making the inheritance of the Talbot family estates conditional on the heir being a Roman Catholic.

The 17th earl believed he was the last descendant in the male line of the first Earl of Shrewsbury and so he tried to leave much of his extensive property to a younger son of the Duke of Norfolk. Without a Catholic heir, the terms of Bertram’s will devolved the properties were to devolve to two prominent Catholics, Ambrose Lisle March Phillipps de Lisle (1809-1878) and Lord Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard (1855-1947), a son of the Duke of Norfolk. To conform to the terms of Bertram’s will, Edmund later changed his name by royal licence and was known from 1876 to 1922 as Lord Edmund Talbot.

But Bertram’s will was contested by relatives, and there were four separate contenders for the title of Earl of Shrewsbury, the associated titles and the Talbot family estates:

1, Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 3rd Earl Talbot, the primary contender for the titles and estates, who also held the titles of Viscount of Ingestre and Baron Talbot. Bertram Talbot and Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot were so distantly related that their shared ancestor was nine generations back: John Talbot, who died in 1549. He was a descendant in the male line of Sir Gilbert Talbot (died 1518), third son of the 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury.

2, The Duke of Norfolk, as guardian of the interests of his infant son, to whom Bertram Talbot had tried to bequeath Alton Towers.

3, Lady Mary Althea Beatrix Talbot (1815-1858), known as Princess Doria-Pamphili-Landi, the only surviving child of John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury.

4, Major William Talbot (JP (1789-1861) of Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, who traced his ancestry back to William Talbot, fourth son of George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury. His sister, Maria Theresa Talbot (1795-1856), had married John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1814, and he was an uncle of Princess Doria-Pamphili-Landi.

The ‘Great Shrewsbury Case’ was heard by the House of Lords, and hearings began in 1857.

The Shrewsbury Chapel in Sheffield Cathedral was built in the 16th century to house the Tudor monuments of the Earls of Shrewsbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When Earl Talbot’s printed document formally asserting his claims to the earldoms of Shrewsbury, Waterford and Wexford was laid on the table of the House of Lords it ran to 41 pages of genealogical and other matters. The House of Lords referred it to the committee of privileges on 9 May 1857.

After a long and expensive legal case, the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords ruled in 1860 in favour of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 3rd Earl Talbot, who then became the 18th Earl of Shrewsbury, Waterford and Wexford. He was also awarded much of the family estates. The Committee of Privileges rejected the rival petitions from Major Talbot, the Duke of Norfolk on behalf of his infant son, and Princess Doria Pamphili, who was dead by then, having died in Rome on 18 December 1858.

A further suit was heard in the Court of Chancery for possession of the Talbot estates at Alton Towers and other places in Staffordshire, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Berkshire. Legal costs depleted the intended legacies, reducing Phillipps de Lisle’s share to £11,000, and so thwarting the 16th Earl's efforts to preserve Catholic control over his family patrimony.

Saint Michael’s Church, Brereton, was Saint Michael’s Church was built on a site donated by Charles Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot, father of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 3rd Earl Talbot and 18th Earl of Shrewsbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The protracted litigation, lasting many months, resulted in exorbitant costs that eroded intended bequests. Phillipps de Lisle eventually received only £11,000 of his £40,000 legacy after legal expenses.

The other beneficiary, Edmund Bernard FitzAlan-Howard, was the second son of the 14th Duke of Norfolk. He was known as the Hon Edmund Fitzalan-Howard and later as Lord Edmund Fitzalan-Howard until 1876, and then as Lord Edmund Talbot from 1876 and 1921. He was the principal beneficiary in Bertram Talbot’s will, provided he took the surname and arms of Talbot, which he did in 1876. However, the legal litigation and contests over the titles and the terms of the wills, eventually left Edmund with only scattered minor lands.

He was the Conservative MP for Chichester from 1894 to 1921. On 27 April 1921, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the first Roman Catholic to hold the office since 1685 during the reign of James II. His appointment was made possible through the Government of Ireland Act 1920.

He returned to the use of his paternal name in 1921, shortly after being made a peer in his own right with the title of Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent, a day after his appointment as Lord Lieutenant. However, he was in office for only a year and a half. The post was abolished when the Irish Free State came into existence in 1922, and he was replaced by the Governor-General of the Irish Free State and the Governor of Northern Ireland. He died on 18 May 1947 at 91, and was succeeded in his titles by his only son, Henry.

Dublin Castle … Lord Edmund Talbot, later Lord Derwent, was the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Shrewsbury peerage case drew attention to the tensions the creation of religious stipulations in wills and statutory inheritance rules that seemed to continue to favour Protestant lines of descent in the decades immediately after Catholic Emancipation. The verdict also served to emphasise underscored the legal primacy of bloodline inheritance over testamentary conditions favouring religious affiliation in 19th-century peerage law.

The 18th Earl of Shrewsbury had an eventful naval career. He had been a senior naval office, commanding the Philomel at the battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827, and eventually became an Admiral in 1865 and naval ADC to Queen Victoria. He was also MP for South Staffordshire (1837-1849). With his new titles he also became Hereditary High Steward of Ireland, and took part in the installation of the Prince of Wales as a Knight of Saint Patrick in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1868. As Earl of Shrewsbury, he was also Earl of Waterford, while, interestingly, his wife Lady Sarah Elizabeth Beresford (1807-1884), was a daughter of the Marquess of Waterford.

When the 18th earl died, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Charles John Chetwynd-Talbot (1830-1877), as the 19th earl. This was the first time in over 200 years, since the death of the 11th earl in 1667, that the title of Earl of Shrewsbury had passed from father to son.

The 20th earl created a scandal in Victorian England by eloping with a married woman, Ellen Miller-Mundy. They were later married, but after he died in 1921, another bitter court battle over the estate was fought by his widow Ellen and his grandson, John Talbot, 21st Earl of Shrewsbury, who claimed his grandfather was not of sound mind when writing his will and won a court settlement.

Today, the titles are held by Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 22nd Earl of Shrewsbury, who succeeded his father in 1980. He was suspended from the House of Lords for his part in a lobbying scandal in 2022, and was barred from carrying out his family’s role at the coronation of King Charles in May 2023. Since then, he was suspended again for making false travel expenses claims and using a House of Lords rail season ticket for non-parliamentary business.

Ironically, the present Earl of Shrewsbury is also known for selling off alluring but meaningless titles such as ‘deputy lord high stewardship of Ireland’. Some years ago, Manorial Auctioneers were offering the title of the ‘Barony of Dungarvan,’ Co Waterford. Later, this supposed feudal barony was back on the market again with an online business known as nobility.co.uk. Although the Barony of Dungarvan was granted to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1446, it is doubtful that the title still survives as any kind of legal entity.

There is no territorial Barony of Dungarvan in Co Waterford, yet the site was offering the ‘Barony of Dungarvan, Ireland,’ along with the titles of ‘Baron and Baroness,’ and said it was ‘once held by Earl of Shrewsbury, Premier Earl of England and High Steward of Ireland.’ Potential buyers were told that ‘the list price’ for this title was once £45,000, but the selling price had been reduced to £20,000.

Lord Shrewsbury also called in recent years for a change of law so daughters can inherit hereditary titles from their parents. If such a change had been made before the ruling in the Shrewsbury case in 1860, Lord Shrewsbury would not hold his present titles, and they might be held by some Italian prince or princess, or by a member of the Talbot family in Co Wexford.

The Talbot Hotel, Wexford … remembering the link between two branches of the Talbot family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)