Author: Dudley, Mary Elizabeth
Biography:
DUDLEY, Mary Elizabeth, later LEATHLEY (1818-99: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 18 June 1818 at Croft Street, Islington, London, the third daughter of George Dudley, an Irish-born Quaker merchant, and his wife Sarah Cove, who had married in London 1813. She assisted her younger brother Dudley Howard (q.v.), in his first publication, Juvenile Researches, and contributed many of the poems under the signature MED. She was probably living at her brother’s residence in Millbank, Westminster, when she was rebaptised into the established church (as Mary Elizabeth Southwell Dudley, indicative perhaps of Catholic sympathies) on 9 Feb. 1837 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. Under this name and her later married name she published a number of books for children for Darton (and Clark). She married the Charterhouse- and Trinity College Cambridge-educated barrister William Henry Leathley on 28 Jan. 1847 at St. Pancras Old Church, Camden. They had one son, Dudley (named after her brother), who became a solicitor. After her husband’s death in 1858, she moved back to family property in Midhurst, Sussex, and probably lived in reduced circumstances--although she could still afford one or sometimes two servants. When she died on 22 Dec. 1899 at Fern Lodge, Clive Vale, Hastings, Sussex, she left only a modest estate of £326 to her son. Towards the end of her life she was more open about her Catholic sympathies, publishing Requiescant (1888) with Burnes and Oates, a volume of daily memorials, and Verses (1896) for private circulation. (ancestry.co.uk 5 Dec. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 5 Dec. 2022; Darton) AA
Other Names:
- M. E. Dudley