Background
Ellen Turner was the daughter and only child of William Turner, a wealthy resident of Pott Shrigley, Cheshire, England, who owned calico printing and spinning mills. At the time of the abduction, Turner was a High Sheriff of Cheshire. He lived in Shrigley Hall, near Macclesfield. Fifteen years old heiress, Ellen Turner attracted the interest of Edward Gibbon Wakefield 1826. He conspired with his brother William Wakefield to marry her for her inheritance.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield was 30 years old; he had been a King's Messenger (diplomatic courier) as a teenager, and later became a diplomat. At the age of 20, he had eloped to Scotland with a 17-year-old heiress, Eliza Pattle. Her mother accepted the marriage and settled £70,000 on the young couple. Eliza died four years later in 1820 after giving birth to her third child. Wakefield had political ambitions and wanted more money. He tried to break his father-in-law's will and was suspected of perjury and forgery. He appeared to have based his plan to marry Ellen Turner on the expectation that her parents would respond as the Mrs Pattle had.
Read more about this topic: Shrigley Abduction
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)