funny marriages

Circumstance: Losing it all but getting a Church. November 1853. Polly Martin was sitting at home in her mother’s elegant drawing room in Woolwich when a letter came from her brother in Jamaica: “Tell Polly and Sophy they had better pack their bags and come out straight away. I could soon turn mademoiselle into madame, he said. Oh No. Polly was doing quite well at home. The next year she married John Derby Allcroft, millionaire glover. She had a fine house off Hyde Park and her husband was building up a nice estate in the country too. But she was a Methodist, and while administering to the poor, she had TB and lost it all. BUT ten years later Allcroft built a church in his wife’s memory in Gospel Oak.
Source of this tale: Letter from Henry Lowry (1853); biography of John Derby Allcroft.