Margaret Rutherford - Early Life

Early Life

Margaret Rutherford's father, William Rutherford Benn, suffered from mental illness. During his honeymoon he had a nervous breakdown and was confined to an asylum. He was eventually released on holiday and on 4 March 1883, he murdered his father, the Reverend Julius Benn, a Congregational church minister, by bludgeoning him to death with a chamberpot (Worcester Spode). Shortly afterwards, William tried to kill himself as well, by slashing his throat with a pocketknife. After the murder, William Benn was confined to the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Several years later he was released, reportedly cured of his mental affliction. He changed his surname to Rutherford, and returned to his wife, Ann (née Taylor).

Margaret Rutherford was born in 1892 in Balham, the only child of William Rutherford Benn and his second wife Florence, née Nicholson. Her father's brother Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet was a British politician, and her first cousin once removed is British politician Tony Benn. As an infant, Margaret Rutherford and her parents moved to India. She was returned to Britain when she was three to live with an aunt, a professional governess Bessie Nicholson, in Wimbledon, London, after her pregnant mother, Florence, committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree. Her father returned to England as well. His continued mental illness resulted in his being confined once more to Broadmoor in 1904.

Margaret Rutherford was educated at Wimbledon High School, and, from the age of about 13, at Raven's Croft School, a boarding school at Sutton Avenue, Seaford, where she is listed, aged 18, on the 1911 census.