In praise of Montague Richard Leverson (1830-1925): Part 1
Esther Rantzen on 'Who Do You Think You Are?' 2008
In its TV series Who Do You Think You Are? the BBC provides research and production facilities allowing “celebrities” to trace their family trees and to tell interesting stories about their ancestors.
In 2008 Esther Rantzen, herself being famous, had the opportunity to present an episode about her great-grandfather Montague Richard Leverson, and to publish a trailer in the Daily Mail: “The moment I discovered the shocking truth about my killer great-grandfather.”
“Never before in 40 years of TV programme-making have I shown my personal emotions on screen, but I did when I was confronted with the truth about this particular ancestor…. What I certainly wasn't prepared for was discovering that my great-grandfather, a lawyer, had killed a woman. Or that, years later, he had fled the country with a reward on his head, accused of stealing a huge sum of money from his clients…
“Up until that moment, I had always believed my family was stiflingly respectable…. Now I know that I was totally wrong. All the assumptions I'd made about my family were blandly, ignorantly, false, and my new knowledge has shifted the foundations of my life…. From the BBC's researchers, I learned that Montague Richard [Leverson] was the son of a wealthy diamond merchant and lived a life of luxury in upmarket Queen Square, London. The documentary team took me back to the very spot to reconstruct the terrible events of that day, 180 years ago, when Priscilla [Fitzpatrick], the family's loyal parlour maid, died.
“My great-grandfather was then 18, sitting in the parlour playing with a gun which had a fatal design fault. Priscilla, then aged 51, was cleaning the window…. In my mind, it wasn't hard to picture the scene. I imagined her turning to rebuke him: 'Now then, Master Montague, put that nasty thing down, it's dangerous' - and then the explosion as the gun went off in his hands and the bullet tore into her chest.
“Contemporary newspaper reports describe his horror, how he rushed to a nearby hospital to fetch help - but all to no avail. Poor Priscilla took ten painful days to die, and spent each day assuring anyone who would listen that the fatal shot had been an accident.
“There was a police investigation, but … the coroner ruled that Priscilla's death was accidental.”
[Comment: On 5th May 1848 ‘The Times’ reported Leverson’s court appearance. It was accepted that the shooting was an accident and Leverson was not charged.]
“The reports describe the young man as being stricken with remorse, and it might have been easier to think kindly of him if he'd devoted the rest of his life to good works to make up for his mistake.
“But alas, no. It wasn't long before my great-grandfather was making headlines again. Now in his 30s and working as a lawyer, Montague Richard left the country with the police at his heels after a large lump of his clients' money had disappeared.
“He fled to Paris, and then to the United States, abandoning his wife …. and her four children to fend for themselves….
“Having escaped the hands of justice, Montague Richard reinvented himself. First, he worked as a lawyer in the Wild West; some say that he represented Billy the Kid.
“Then, having tinkered with his CV a little, he took a medical degree and became a homeopathic doctor.
“Forgetting the small matter of embezzlement for which he was still a wanted man, he wrote many tedious articles, and even dared to publish a book with his picture on the cover….
“[But] that wasn't the end of the story. I discovered that when he was in his 80s, Montague returned to England and took back his nationality…. His wife Kate had died 20 years earlier, and at the age of 82 he married a 43-year- old teacher called Ethel Charlton… Was he a completely reformed character when he came back to England?
“I discovered … that my grandmother met Montague once, in Bournemouth. Before she died, she told my cousin … about it. She said he was a charming, humorous gentleman, and that it must all have been a mistake.”
OK, so the headline that the 18-year-old Montague Richard Leverson was a “killer” is disproven by Rantzen herself.