Mary Burnett
We are grateful to Yota Dimitriadi of the University of Reading and the Friends of Reading Old Cemetary for sharing with us their research on the lives of Hugh Walford and Mary Gordon Burnett. You can read Yota Dimitriadi’s article on Mary Burnett on the Reading Old Cemetary website here Mary Gordon BURNETT (1858-1925) – Reading Old Cemetery
Mary Gordon Burnett
Mary Burnett was the only daughter of Henry Burnett and his second wife, Sarah. She had two half-brothers from her father’s first marriage to Elizabeth Frances ‘Fanny’ Dickens, pianist and sister of the novelist Charles Dickens, as well as a younger brother from her parents’ marriage.
Fanny and Henry’s oldest son, Henry Augustus Burnett, was disabled and died at the age of nine, one year after his mother. He is widely believed to have been Dicken’s inspiration for the characters of Tiny Tim and Paul Dombey. The Dickens and Burnett families remained close after Fanny’s death and Mary Burnett was sometimes referred to as ‘Charles Dickens’ niece’. Whilst this is not strictly true, it appears that the Dickens family did not make any great distinction between the Henry Burnett’s oldest surviving son, Charles Dickens Burnett, and the children of his second marriage.
When Fanny Dickens Burnett was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1846 Henry Burnett followed Dickens’ advice to move the family from Manchester to London so that Fanny could be near her family and have treatment from London doctors. After her death Burnett moved back north, marrying Sarah Hargreaves, from Colne in Lancaster. Sarah’s family owned mills, a waterworks, and property, much of which Mary would eventually inherit.
Mary was born in Manchester on the 21st January 1859. Her younger brother, Reginald Hargreaves Burnett was born on the 27th November 1861. The family returned south while the children were young: at the time of the 1871 census they were living with Burnett cousins in Titchfield in Hampshire, and in 1881 their address is given as Gothic Cottage, Crescent Road, Earley. Mary’s remaining older brother, Charles Dickens Burnett, died that year, at the age of 38. He was unmarried and had no children.
By 1893, both Mary’s parents and her younger brother had died. She was in her mid-thirties, unmarried, with no dependents and independently wealthy thanks to the income from the land and properties she inherited from her mother. She moved away from Reading, first to Titchfield, where she lodged with a widow, and then to Colne, where she established and was President of a branch of the Passive Resistance League.
In 1902 the Balfour Education Act handed over responsibility for schools to local councils and gave funding to church schools: Passive Resistance Leagues were set up to resist this. Individual members of the Passive Resistance League not only campaigned against the change by withholding the portion of their rates that would have gone to education. Many were summonsed to appear before magistrates for non-payment of rates. While in Colne, Mary also established Colne Band Aid, building skills and experience that she would soon deploy for the Reading Blind Aid Society.
Mary Gordon Burnett moved back to Reading in 1910, taking up residence in the Walford family home, ‘Pattingham’, on the London Road. She formally became honorary secretary and honorary supervisor of the home workers’ programme of the Reading Blind Aid society in 1912. The society had been established by Hugh Walford in 1893 and Mary Burnett appears to have been involved with the society’s work during her previous residence in Reading. In records of the charity from this time Mary is described as Hugh Walford’s ‘helper’ but in 1926, articles about the transfer of responsibility for supporting visually impaired people from the Blind Aid Society to the new Reading Association for the Welfare of the Blind note that Hugh Walford was not capable of continuing the work of the charity without of Mary Burnett so, in the latter years of the charity at least, her role seems to have been more integral than ‘helper’ would imply.
Mary was not paid for her work for the Reading Blind Aid Society but rather contributed financially to the charity. She also represented the charity at the Metropolitan Union and International Conference for the Blind in London. Mary often wrote to the local press, particularly on matters relating to visually impaired people. Her obituary said she was ‘possessed with a fine power in organising and inspiring and eloquent speaker.’ She was involved in the temperance movement and the Conservative party, was a life governor of the Royal Berkshire Hospital and from 1915-25 served as president of the Young Helpers’ league, Dr Barnardo’s Homes.
Mary Gordon Burnett died on the 4th October 1925, at Pattingham, after a short illness. Although Miss Walford, Hugh Walford’s daughter, was active in the running of the Reading Blind Aid Society it was soon apparent that it could not continue without Mary so, in April 1926, the Reading Blind Aid society was formally wound up and replaced with the Reading Association for the Welfare of the Blind, which was established to carry on the work of Hugh Walford and Mary Burnett.
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