Lady Jane Franklin | |
|---|---|
 1816 Portrait byAmélie Munier-Romilly | |
| Born | Jane Griffin (1791-12-04)4 December 1791 London, England |
| Died | 18 July 1875(1875-07-18) (aged 83) London, England |
| Spouse | |
Jane, Lady Franklin (néeGriffin; 4 December 1791 – 18 July 1875) was a British explorer, seasoned traveller and the second wife of the English explorer SirJohn Franklin.[1] During her husband's period asLieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, she became known for her philanthropic work and her travels throughout south-eastern Australia. AfterJohn Franklin's disappearance in search of theNorthwest Passage, she sponsored or otherwise supported several expeditions to determine his fate.[2]
Jane was the second daughter of John Griffin, aliveryman and later governor of theGoldsmith's Company, and his wife Jane Guillemard. There wasHuguenot ancestry on both sides of her family. She was born in London, where she was raised with her sisters Frances and Mary at the family house, 21 Bedford Place,[3] just offRussell Square. She was well educated, and her father being well-to-do had her education completed by muchtravel on the continent. Her portrait was chalked when she was 24 byAmélie Munier-Romilly inGeneva.[4]
As a young woman, Jane was attracted to a London physician and scientist,Peter Mark Roget,[5] best known for publishingRoget's Thesaurus. She once said he was the only man who made her swoon, but nothing ever came of the relationship.
Jane had been a friend of John Franklin's first wife, the poetEleanor Anne Porden, who died early in 1825. In 1828, Franklin and Jane Griffin became engaged. They married on 5 November 1828, and in 1829 he was knighted.[6] During the next three years, she spent lengthy periods apart from her husband while he served in the Mediterranean. In 1836, he was appointedlieutenant-governor ofVan Diemen's Land (Tasmania), disembarking from the immigrant shipFairlie on 6 January 1837.
Lady Franklin at once began to take an interest in the colony and did a good deal of exploring along the southern and western coast. In 1839, she became the first European woman to travel overland betweenPort Phillip and Sydney. In April that year, Lady Franklin visited the new settlement atMelbourne, where she received an address signed by 63 of the leading citizens which referred to her "character for kindness, benevolence and charity". With her husband, she encouraged the founding of secondary schools for both boys and girls, including Christ's College.[7] In 1841, she traveled to New Zealand, meeting both Ernst Dieffenbach and William Colenso, who named the filmy fernHymenophyllumfrankliniae in her honour.[8] In the same year, she visitedSouth Australia and persuaded the governor, ColonelGeorge Gawler, to set aside some ground overlookingSpencer Gulf for a monument toMatthew Flinders. This was set up later in the year. In 1842, she and her attendant, Christiana Stewart, were the first European women to travel overland fromHobart toMacquarie Harbour.[9][10]
She had much correspondence withElizabeth Fry about the female convicts, and did what she could to ameliorate their lot. In 1841, the convict shipRajah arrived loaded with convict women who had been supplied with sewing materials organised byLydia Irving of Fry's convict ship committee.[6] Theresulting quilt is now one of the most treasured textiles in Australia. She was accused of using undue influence with her husband in his official acts but there is no evidence of this. When Franklin was recalled at the end of 1843, they went first to Melbourne by the schoonerFlying Fish and then to England by way of New Zealand on board, coincidentally, the barqueRajah.
In 1842, she commissioned a classical temple, and named itAncanthe,Ancient Greek for "blooming valley". She intended the building to serve as a museum for Hobart, and left 400 acres (1.6 km2) in trust to ensure the continuance of what she hoped would become the focus of the colony's cultural aspirations.[11] A century of apathy followed, with the museum used as an apple shed among other functions; but in 1949 it was made the home ofThe Art Society of Tasmania, who rescued the building.[12] It is now known as theLady Franklin Gallery.
Jane Franklin requestedGeorge Augustus Robinson theProtector of Aborigines to send her a "black boy" from theWybalenna Aboriginal Establishment along with other curiosities such as snakes and the skull of an aboroginal.[13] Robinson sent her a nine-year-old boy whom he had renamed Timmie[13],but whose original name was Timemendic. Lady Franklin renamed the boy Timeo and handed him over to her step-daughter Eleanor Franklin. Timeo was trained as a household servant but was deemed too "idle and disobedient" and the Franklins attempted to offload him to the Hobart Orphan School.
In 1841, Lady Jane decided to try and "civilise" a second child from Wybalenna. A six-year-old girl named Mary (original nameMathinna) was sent to live at Government House atHobart with the Franklins although she was not an orphan. Again, it was Lady Franklins step-daughter who was placed in charge of her care. Lady Jane compared Mathinna more favourably in comparision to Timemendic, with Mathinna being described as more intelligent and sweet, while Timemendic was "much blacker in complexion than Mathinna who appears to us to be daily growing more copper-coloured as she advances in civilization".
In 1842, Lady Jane commissioned the artistThomas Bock to paint Mathinna's portrait in which she is portrayed famously in a scarlet dress. Lady Jane sent the portrait to her sister in England with a letter describing Mathinna as "one of the remnant people about to disappear from the face of the earth", who has "the unconquerable nature of the savage".[14] '
In June 1843[14]a request came from Mithinna´s step-father Palle through Robert Clark, a teacher at Flinder´s island, that the Franklin´s return his step-daughter. Sir John refused and admonished Clark to not meddle in the affairs of others.[14]However a month later in August 1843, the couple left Mathinna at Queen's Orphan School in Hobart.
In August that same year the Franklin´s were taken aback whenSir John Yardley-Wilmot arrived in Tasmania announcing that he was the new appointed governor of Van Diemens Land.[14]John Montagu, who had served as colonial secretary for Sir John but had been dismissed for his antagonism towards the Franklins and for his insubordination towards Sir John had returned to Britain with stories publicised in the British newspapers about the bad leadership of Sir John. Montagu also accused him of being ruled by his wife, a claim that was believed by the Undersecretary of State for the ColoniesJames Stephen and Lord Stanley to recall sir John.
This meant that Lady Franklin and Sir John had to leave their home quite hastily and sell many of their possessions and return to England.[14] They would arrive in Britain the following year. Well back ,the Franklins set about to restore their tarnished reputation.
This was done by Lady Franklin authoring a book under the name of her husband defending his actions titled "Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen´s Land"[14]as well as financially supporting authors such as the explorerPaweł Strzelecki´sPhysical Description of New South Wales. Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains (1845) that were highly favourable of Sir John and Lady Franklin.[14]
Shortly after their arrival Sir John had applied to being in charge of leading a polar expedition in search of theNorthwest passage.
Her husband started on his last voyage in May 1845, and when it was realised that he must have come to disaster, Lady Franklin devoted herself for many years to trying to ascertain his fate. Until shortly before her own death, Lady Franklin travelled extensively, generally accompanied by her husband's niece Sophia Cracroft, who remained her secretary andcompanion until her death. Lady Franklin travelled toOut Stack in theShetland Islands of Scotland, the northernmost of the British isles, to get as close as she could to her missing husband.[15]
Lady Franklin sponsored seven expeditions to find her husband or his records (two of the expeditions failed to reach the Arctic):
By means of sponsorship, use of influence, and offers of sizeable rewards for information about him, she instigated or supported many other searches. Her efforts made the expedition's fate one of the most vexed questions of the decade. Ultimately, in 1859, Francis McClintock found evidence that Sir John had died twelve years previously, in 1847. Prior accounts had suggested that, in the end, the expedition had turned tocannibalism to survive, but Lady Franklin refused to believe these stories and poured scorn on explorerJohn Rae, who had in fact been the first person to return with definite news of her husband's fate.
The popularity of the Franklins in the Australian colonies was such that when it was learned in 1852 that Lady Franklin was organising an expedition in search of her husband using the auxiliary steamshipIsabel, subscriptions were taken up, and those in Van Diemens Land alone totalled £1671/13/4.[16]
Although McClintock had found conclusive evidence that Sir John Franklin and his fellow expeditioners were dead, Lady Franklin remained convinced that their written records might remain buried in a cache in the Arctic. She provided moral and some financial support for multiple later expeditions that planned to seek the records, including those ofWilliam Parker Snow[17] andCharles Francis Hall[18] in the 1860s.
Finally, in 1874, she joined forces withAllen Young to purchase and fit out the former steam gunboat HMSPandora to undertake another expedition to the region aroundPrince of Wales Island. The expedition left London in June 1875 and returned in December, unsuccessful, as ice prevented her from passing west of theFranklin Strait.
Lady Franklin died in the interim, on 18 July 1875. At her funeral on 29 July, the pall-bearers included Captains McClintock,Collinson andOmmanney, R.N., while many other "Old Arctics" engaged in the Franklin searches were also in attendance. She was interred atKensal Green Cemetery in the vault, and commemorated on a marble cross dedicated to her niece Sophia Cracroft.
Lady Franklin was a woman of unusual character and personality. Her determined efforts, in connection with which she spent a great deal of her own money to discover the fate of her husband, added much to the world's knowledge of the Arctic regions. It was said: 'What the nation would not do, a woman did'.[11] In addition, as one of the earliest women in Tasmania who had had the full benefit of education and cultural surroundings, she was both an example and a force, and set a new standard in ways of living to the more prosperous settlers who had passed the stage of merely struggling for a living.
Natural features named after her includeLady Franklin Bay, onEllesmere Island andLady Franklin Point, onVictoria Island, both inNunavut;Lady Franklin Rock, an island in the Fraser River nearYale, British Columbia, named at the end of her visit there during theFraser Canyon Gold Rush;Lady Franklin Rock, nearVernal Fall inYosemite National Park in California; and Mount Lady Jane Franklin, a hill near Barnawartha in Northern Victoria, which she climbed on her trip from Port Phillip to Sydney in 1839. BesideVictoria'sMount Franklin is a scoria mound known as Lady Franklin.[19]
Jane Franklin Hall, a residential college inHobart, Tasmania, is named in her honour, as is theLady Franklin Gallery inLenah Valley, Tasmania. The ballad "Lady Franklin's Lament" commemorated her search for her lost husband. The sailing vessel; Jane Franklin, an Amel Super Maramu ketch, also bears her name. Lady Jane Franklin Drive inSpilsby, Lincolnshire, Sir John's birthplace, is named after her.
The barqueLady Franklin was named after her.
Most of Lady Franklin's surviving papers are held by theScott Polar Research Institute.
Jules Verne's novelMistress Branican, published in 1891, was strongly inspired by Jane Franklin's life. When John Branican, on board theFranklin, disappears at sea in Oceania, his wife Dolly Branican cannot believe that he is dead. Three expeditions are organised, and she is herself part of the third, which leads her to the depths of the Australian Great Sandy Desert. Dolly Branican is overtly compared with Jane Franklin in the novel.
She was depicted in the stage playJane, My Love.
Jane Franklin appears as a character in the 2018 television seriesThe Terror, where she is portrayed byGreta Scacchi.
The Frozen Passage DLC in the video gameAnno 1800 is based on Lady Franklin's story. In the game, Lady Jane Faithful requests the player's help to save her husband, Sir John Faithful, from a lost arctic expedition.
Lady Jane Franklin is also a pivotal figure in three novels,Wanting by Richard Flanagan (2008),The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister (2020), andThe Exiles by Christina Baker Kline (2020).
The biographyThe Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer by Tasmanian historianAlison Alexander won the 2014National Biography Award.[21]
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