DEARMAN & MOLLETT

The portrait is a self-portrait by Berthe Morisot, so not at all a comparable person.  However, she has the look of someone who has had a hard life, as I am sure that Ann did. She died in the Workhouse after all.

When she was young somehow or other she found herself in Norwich, a long way from her childhood home on the Isle of Sheppey, in the Thames Estuary.  But it was a fateful trip, for here she met and married the just widowed Roger James Magee - a Catholic moreover.  In fact the more I think about this the more extraordinary it is, for she came from a nonconformist family - the polar opposite of Roman Catholics.  I can understand why Roger might have wanted to marry - he was recently widowed with a small child to care for, so all the help he could get would have been most welcome.  But why did Ann attach herself to him?  She was a milliner from a family of shipwrights which is a respectable profession - not the bottom of the heap where Roger was situated.  He must have had charm, charisma, sex appeal, the gift of the gab?  Alas for Ann it led to a life of hardship back in London.

I do not know a lot about her early life, and her later life is, of course, tied up with Roger’s so I do not think I shall have a lot to say abut her.  We shall see.