Author: Cursham, Mary Anne
Biography:
CURSHAM, Mary Anne, later TITTERTON, later HALPEN, later CURSHAM (1794-1881: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 20 June 1794 at Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottingham, the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Cursham (1750-1805) who ran an academy there and his wife Ann Leeson (1762-1843), who had married at Skegby on 8 July 1784. Her father was presented to the living of Annesley by the Chaworth family and Mary Anne became friendly with Mary Anne Chaworth (1785-1832), an early interest of Byron’s (q.v.). They both visited Byron’s grave in 1828 and Cursham’s novel Norman Abbey (1832) mentions Newstead and has various allusions to him and his half-sister, Augusta. After Chaworth’s death in 1832, Cursham dedicated Poems (1833) to her: “A Departed Spirit–A Sister Muse.” She married John Titterton (1810-1850), a Legal Agent originally from Madeley, Shropshire, on 1 Sept. 1849, at Trinity Church, Derby. He died the following year and she returned to Nottingham where she is recorded as a widow in the 1851 Census. By 1861 she had moved back to Derby and owned a house at North Parade, Derby. She then married a 24-year-old photographic artist, Charles Francis Halpen, on 13 Dec. 1864 at the Roman Catholic Chapel, Derby. The marriage quickly turned sour and eventually she petitioned for divorce. (The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 had taken over the powers of ecclesiastical courts and allowed legal dissolution and separation on the grounds of adultery, cruelty, or desertion.) She stated that her husband “had a most violent and ungovernable temper” and that she “had been in fear that her life would be sacrificed.” Only a month after the marriage, in Jan. 1865, she was attacked “with great violence” for “refusing to mortgage her own property.” Halpen had also been arrested for threatening her relative E. S. Gisborne to whose house she had fled. Over the next few years she would leave him several times only to return. Following the judgment of 17 June 1871 (which ruled for judicial separation on the grounds of his adultery but rejected divorce on the unproven claim of cruelty) she reverted to her maiden name of Cursham. She died on 15 Dec. 1881 and was buried at St. Andrew’s, Skegby, on 21 Dec. Halpen died in 1890 in Essex County Asylum. (ancestry.co.uk 30 Oct; findmypast.co.uk 30 Oct. 2020; Derby Mercury 5 Sept. 1849, 15 Feb. 1865; Derby Advertiser 23 June 1871; Nottinghamshire Guardian 30 Dec. 1881; Byroniana [1834] 120) AA
Other Names:
- M. A. C.
- Mary Ann Cursham