Lady Webster drowned whilst bathing
Above headline from the Hastings and St. Leonards Observer, Saturday June 23 1917. Picture is of Sir Augustus and Lady Mabel Webster from the Sunday Pictorial, 17 June 1917.
This newspaper report does not seem to have an obvious reference to any of the personalities mentioned in the Saltaire Collection. But Lady Mabel Webster was the daughter of Henry Crossley, of the famous carpet manufacturing family from Halifax.
Mabel was a niece of Catherine Salt, who was the sister of Henry Crossley. Catherine was married to Titus Salt junior, the youngest son of Sir Titus Salt. A large number of Catherine’s papers: letters; housekeeping accounts; diaries; general accounts, and more are deposited in the Collection.
The newspaper account makes it clear that this was a really tragic incident. Lady Webster was trying to save her younger daughter, twelve year old Evelyn, from drowning in Farthing pond where they were swimming on the family’s estate at Battle Abbey. In the end the governess rescued Evelyn and Lady Webster sank, probably due to a heart attack. Her body was recovered the following day.
A researcher’s question
Catherine Salt has been much studied within the Collection, but we had no idea until last October (2024) that she was linked to this tragic event. A researcher, contacted us to say she was planning to write a book about Lucy Webster, the older daughter of Lady Mabel Webster, and she wanted to know more about Mabel’s early life as a background to her book on Lucy.
The researcher already knew that Mabel’s mother and her infant brother had died within days of each other in 1882, when Mabel was six, the same age as Catherine Salt’s daughter, Isabel. She wondered what Mabel’s upbringing had been.
The researcher had seen a reference in the 1891 census to Mabel being in Catherine’s household and wondered if Catherine had adopted her. The researcher knew very little else of Mabel at that period of her life until in 1895 she married a Grenadier guard, Sir Augustus Weber, at the age of nineteen or twenty. and became Lady Webster. Eventually Mabel, her husband, and their children, Godfrey, Lucy and Evelyn, lived on the Battle Abbey Estate, and this is where the tragedy happened.
The researcher approached the Collection to find what we knew about Mabel Crossley. The query was passed to me because I have written an article about Catherine Salt, including her links to the Crossley family.
Uncovering Mabel’s connection to Saltaire and the Salt family
This was such an interesting story that I started to discuss it at one of the weekly meetings of volunteers. Immediately another volunteer remembered a ‘Mabel’ being mentioned in a childhood holiday diary written by Catherine’s daughter, Isabel. I had read the diary (Travel notebook of Isabel Salt from 1890) several times, but I had never questioned who ‘Mabel’ was. We looked again at the diary and she was mentioned in the first line, and included in the activities of the party. It certainly seemed very likely that this was the same Mabel.
Another volunteer reminded me that we have several of Catherine’s diaries, describing many details of housekeeping, including guests invited to stay, or to have dinner, or to go to balls. (Mrs.Titus Salt’s visitors book and dinner guests 1887- 1904). Eventually I found mention of Mabel and Augustus as invitees to a ball which Catherine gave for her daughter, Isabel’s birthday.
A third volunteer was so interested in the story that she delved into various databases and produced a narrative of Mabel’s life and family which made it all very vivid. This process shows how useful it is to have a team of researchers working together, because one can remember something that others have overlooked. Also they all bring different skills to the research.
The third volunteer also found a reference in the Shipley Times and Express, 10 August 1889 to Mabel attending a cricket match in the summer holidays with Catherine and Isabel. We can’t reach a final conclusion yet as to whether Mabel was adopted by Catherine., although I think it is very unlikely. We can say that she did have visits to the family. The reference in the census proves only that Mabel was there on that night.
More questions to answer
The process of research is ongoing. The researcher has discovered letters from Henry to his sisters shortly after his wife’s death about how he would like his daughters to be brought up. These are in North Yorkshire Archives, and we hope to decipher them soon.
It is interesting that an enquirer from outside has revealed sources we had not thought to look in about the family life of the Salt/Crossley family, and they have also caused us to look more closely at sources that are already in our archives.
Pauline Ford, 2025