1. Theresa Yelverton was an English writer who became notorious because of her involvement in the Yelverton case, a 19th-century Irish law case, which eventually resulted in a change to the law on mixed religion marriages in Ireland.
17 Facts About Theresa Yelverton
1. 2.
Maria Theresa Longworth was born in Cheetwood, Manchester, Lancashire, England, the youngest of six children born to Thomas Longworth, a silk manufacturer and his wife Ann Fox, who soon died.
3.
Theresa Yelverton was educated at Boulogne-sur-Mer in a convent of Ursuline nuns.
4.
Theresa Yelverton first met Major William Charles Yelverton, who from 1870 was 4th Viscount Avonmore, while aboard a steamer on the English Channel in August 1852.
5.
In Naples, she heard Theresa Yelverton was in Malta, and wrote to him asking for a favour; they began a correspondence.
6.
Theresa Yelverton returned to England, and nursed her dying father, and was there in 1854.
7.
Theresa Yelverton Longworth was then a nurse for the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul during the Crimean War.
8.
Theresa Yelverton was staying there, with a friend who was another Catholic convert and a Sister of Charity, Arabella, daughter of Charles Macfarlane.
9.
Theresa Yelverton called on her, and their relationship, considered to be between engaged persons, became intimate.
10.
Yelverton later argued that Theresa did not believe that either of the ceremonies was a valid marriage.
11.
Theresa Yelverton was married on 26 June 1858, to Emily Marianne nee Ashworth, daughter of Charles Ashworth and widow of Edward Forbes.
12.
Theresa Yelverton heard of this marriage three days later, and on 30 June a Catholic cleric showed Ramsay a copy of the certificate of the August 1857 Irish ceremony.
13.
The immediate consequence was that Theresa applied to the Edinburgh procurator fiscal, and Yelverton was put in Calton Jail on a bigamy charge.
14.
Theresa Yelverton allegedly used his influence with the House of Lords.
15.
Theresa Yelverton lost his army position as an officer in the Royal Artillery, being placed on half pay.
16.
Theresa Yelverton escaped to the woods, but not before she had noted enough of his conversation and his ways of life to make him over into Kenmuir, the hero of her novel.
17.
Theresa Yelverton died in 1881 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa.