Author: Betham, Matilda
Biography:
BETHAM, Matilda (1775-1852: ancestry.co.uk)
Her name is sometimes given as Mary Matilda and her year of birth is usually given as 1776 based on Betham’s written claim that she was born on 16 Nov. 1776. However, her baptismal record from Haceby, Lincolnshire, shows that she was baptised on 1 Jan. 1776. ODNB silently changes this to 1777 but it is more likely that she was born in 1775 and baptised in 1776, as the record states. Her parents were the Rev. William Betham and his wife Mary Damont, widow of Whitlock Planck (not Whittocke Planque as given elsewhere). Planck had died in London in 1774 and his widow married William Betham on 25 July 1775 by license in Haceby. Maatilda Betham’s father became curate at Stonham Aspall, Suffolk, in 1784 and was appointed master of the school there in 1807. Matilda Betham, the eldest of fifteen children, attended school but most of her education was from her father’s extensive library—he had antiquarian interests. She spent time in London at her uncle’s house in Chancery Lane where she met the portraitist John Opie (husband of Amelia Opie, q.v.) who inspired her to learn miniature painting. In 1804 she published A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country. Betham settled in London and knew Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, Southey, and Anna Letitia Barbauld (qq.v.). Her Lay of Marie in particular attracted praise but a note in her RLF file indicates that she made the first of several applications for assistance in 1817. By then she was confined to St Luke’s asylum for lunatics in London; the RLF awarded her £20 to be managed for her by John Britton. After her release she applied again and stated in a letter of 1 Dec. 1821 that her family sought to keep her out of the way because of her political views and the shame of her poverty. In the same year she had printed two 8-page booklets, The Case of Matilda Betham, Written by Herself and Challenge to Women, in support of Queen Caroline. The RLF awarded her funds which were distributed to her in small amounts. An award of £5 in 1822 was returned by her brother, Sir William Betham, who wrote to inform the RLF that her conduct had again made confinement necessary. Betham continued corresponding with the RLF through the 1830s and into the 1840s but her mental health seems to have improved towards the end of her life and she returned to writing, publishing Sonnets and Verses (1836). An autobiographical work, Crow-quill Flights, was privately printed in about 1844. She was living at 52 Burton Street, London, when she died on 30 Sept. 1852. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery on 6 Oct. 1852. Matilda Betham-Edwards, novelist, was a niece. (ODNB 6 Feb. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 6 Feb. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 6 Feb. 2023; RLF file 361; Elaine Bailey, “Matilda Betham: a New Biography,” Wordsworth Circle 38 [2007] 143-46)