Reviewing the year in which the fortunes of the Pease family had collapsed, Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease wrote in his diary: ‘We wound up the law suit with Lord and Lady Portsmouth in which we all felt we were most iniquitously robbed …’
He had taken in Lady Beatrice Portsmouth, his niece, as a 14-year-old orphan. Aged 18, she had fallen for Lord Porstmouth – then known as Lord Lymington, real name Newton Wallop – who was ten years her elder, and whom Sir Joseph described as a ‘fortune hunter’. For fifteen years, Lord Portsmouth pursued Sir Joseph for Beatrice’s inheritance. After protracted High Court cases – in which the judge devastatingly described Sir Joseph as an ‘unsatisfactory witness’ – the Peases had been ordered to pay £302,000 (about £30 million today).
Unfortunately, Sir Joseph could not afford this, so he had to rapidly sell his mansion and all his assets. He was only saved from bankruptcy by his Quaker banking friends.
He blamed the Portsmouths for his downfall. He concluded his 1901 diary: ‘After having found her a home till marriage … after having done all I could through all the bad times of the coal trade … they charged us with fraud … and (my brother) Arthur’s estate and mine were defrauded … Such is gratitude and love.’
He died a broken man two years later.
(‘Memories’, The Northern Echo, 2010)