A Blue Plaque for Mary Frances Heaton
Thanks to Mike Goddard for drawing attention to the story of Mary Frances Heaton who has been commemorated with the installation of a Blue Plaque in Wakefield in November 2020. Mary was born in Doncaster on 30 May 1801, the daughter of quite affluent parents Mary and William Stocks Heaton. Her father was listed as an attorney when he joined the Freemasons in 1808 aged 30. However, five years later when the London Gazette, 16 March 1813, recorded his bankruptcy, he was described as a money-scrivener.
Mary sought her living in London as a music teacher but returned to Doncaster to look after her ailing father, possibly seen as her obligation because she was the eldest daughter. On his death on 4 January 1834, she resumed working as a music teacher, one of her pupils during 1834 and 1835 being the daughter of Doncaster Vicar, the Rev. John Sharpe. Unfortunately, payment for the lessons was not forthcoming and so Mary appealed initially to the Mayor of Doncaster to intercede on her behalf. When this did not have the desired effect Mary took more direct action by going to St George’s in 1837 and interrupting a sermon preached by the Rev Sharpe to shout out that he was ‘a whited sepulchre, a thief, a villain, a liar and a hypocrite’. Mary was promptly arrested for breach of the peace and blasphemy and put in Doncaster gaol overnight before being taken in front of two magistrates, Edmund Denison and William Battie Wrightson whose response to Mary’s anger was not to put her on trial but to summon a doctor, Edward Schole- field. He judged that she was ‘a lunatic, insane and a dangerous idiot’ and recommended that she be taken at once to the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield. Here the staff did not find her insane but stressed.
Mary’s frustration and anger with her situation - her younger brothers and sisters made no attempt to intervene and help her - led to her being given a range of treatments which included electric shocks and having to swallow mercury. In her desperation she tried to escape in 1843 but the owner of a cottage where she took refuge told the asylum authorities and she was returned. She tried to accept her circumstances by taking up embroidery and using this as a means of getting her message across and preserving her memories. One sampler had the message: ‘I wish the vicar would submit to arbitration my claim against him for music lessons given to his daughter, regularly, twice a week, during the years 1834 and 1835.’ She addressed one sampler to Queen Victoria on behalf of another inmate shown at the end of this article. A few of Mary’s samplers have survived, many were given away by her.
She was transferred to the South Yorkshire Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Sheffield on 15 April 1873, a few months after it had opened, where she stayed until her death on 28 April 1878. She was buried in a pauper’s grave at Wortley where most of the patients were laid to rest.
Interest in Mary's story grew as a direct result of the Mental Health Museum, based at Fieldhead Mental Hospital, displayed her embroidery as part of an exhibition in 2017. After contacting The Forgotten Women of Wakefield project to ask for help to research Mary's life, the team worked to raise funds through various grant applications and ran a year long programme of workshops for mental well being in collaboration with the Stitched Up Theater to develop an Opera honouring her life. That Opera is coming to Wakefield for International Woman's Day, March 7th 2023 and can be seen at Wakefield's Theatre Royal. In support of this, Dream Time Creative continue to host and enable women to access 'Radical stitching workshops' in collaboration with Stitched Up Theatre. A blue plaque to Mary was unveiled in November 2020 by Dream Time Creative in association with Wakefield Civic Society as part of a wider campaign for Blue Plaque parity and can be found on the clock tower near to Pinderfields Hospital. To read more about Mary and explore the links The Forgotten Women of Wakefield's research, media and collaborations see Mary Frances Heaton – The Forgotten Women of Wakefield (forgottenwomenwake.com)
If we had Blue Plaques here in addition to the plaques already installed, whose lives would you like to see celebrated?
A video on YouTube explains the background to Mary Frances Heaton’s Blue Plaque and has extracts from the opera: youtube.com/watch?v=ZfiMWtoNQ6k For more insights into the use of embroidery to treat mental health issues and to cope with captivity see: Hunter, C., Threads of Life: The history of the world through the eye of a needle, Spectre, 2019 (paperback 2020).
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