"...a regular extortioner..."  "...Mrs Fynn (who had beat her)..."   "...he is labouring under a Liver Compt..."

The following are extracts from the "Cambridge Diary" by Joseph Romilly, Registrary of the University of Cambridge... but to whom do they refer?

1st June 1838
"Lucy and I went to see a Mrs Fynn to arrange about her taking a young protegée of hers... the girl is only 12 and the object is to take her from a public house where she now is and separate her from her father and some abandoned sisters..."

7th July 1838
" Lucy has been... making frocks for her little protegee Frances Wilderspin whom she has now got away from the public house and settled at Mrs Fynn's (in Green Street) where she pays 2/6 a week for her."

15th July 1838
"Lucy ... had been ... to Mr Fynn's to try to persuade him (alas! in vain) to give up Ale wch disagrees with him (as he is labouring under a Liver Compt) and to take small beer ..."

21st July 1838
"After dinner ... went to Mrs Fynn's to pay the 1st month's board of Frances Wilderspin: - Lucy thought the said Mrs Fynn a regular extortioner ..."

20th December 1838
"Went to Mrs Fynn's to say Lucy would not allow Frances Wilderspin to go home to her reprobate Father at Xmas: - left 2/6 to buy a present on her birthday (tomorrow)"

7th May 1839
"the women ... had been in a great excitement last Sunday from Fr Wilderspin having run away from Mrs Fynn (who had beat her): she had taken refuge with her father:- by help of Policeman she got Wildersp the Father to come with his dr:- after much persuasion he consented to leave her: - Lucy has broken with the Fynns ..."

Go to William Fynn and Extracts of 1841 Census  to see if he and his wife, Susan, fit the bill...

We cannot find a Frances (or Fanny) amongst the many Wilderspins in the 1841 census.  She could of course have married as she would have legally have been able at that time.

Due acknowledgement is given to the source of these extracts: "Cambridge Diary" by Joseph Romilly, edited by J.P.T. Bury and published by the CUP in 1967. We are also grateful to Mike Petty, writer, lecturer and researcher on Cambridgeshire for pointing us in the direction of the diary.

Page last updated 29th May 2010