PYNE m. MATHEW
Is anyone interested in the MATHEW connection? I'm investigating part of this family since, apparently another PYNE niece, Harriet Mary MATHEW b. July 1840 (father George Felton MATHEW, mother Selina: Harriet was one of the younger sisters of Selina MATHEW living with the PYNEs) was one of those killed in the Surrey Gardens Music Hall accident (panic) on 19 October 1856. (No direct link to MATHEW myself, but I have contact with a descendant. My direct interest in this is the Surrey Gardens accident.)
After the death of Nathaniel PYNE (2Q 1866 reg. Penzance), the widowed mother of his niece Selina MATHEW - also a Selina - came to join Selina jnr. in St Ives, + niece Selina's spinster sister Sarah - and widow Harriet PYNE seems to have become a Post Mistress in Bedfordshire for her few remaining years (d. 3Q 1873 reg. Leighton Buzzard?). Don't have confirmation yet, but seems Selina snr. and Harriot would have been sisters?
George Felton MATHEW m. Selina was the son of George Felton MATHEW sometime poet, critic, and friend of the poet KEATS. Found on the web: "an early associate of John KEATS. He was the son of a London merchant, raised in the house of a West India Merchant, and from 1830 worked in the Civil Service, where he was a member of the Poor Law Commission" - so an India connection also.
The MATHEW descendant Peggy has a website here:
http://mathewfamilytree.com/whats_new_1.htmlFYO:
The person who identified Harriet Mary MATHEWS and was witness at the Inquest, was her brother, also a George Felton MATHEW, grandson of KEATS' friend.
"George MATTHEWS examined.-
I am a clerk to the Poor Law Board, and live at 32, Bridge-house-place, Newington-causeway. I have seen the persons who are dead in the next room, and recognise one of them as my sister. Her name was Harriet Mary. She was unmarried, and was 16 years of age last July. She was stopping with me at my residence, and on Sunday night she was in good health. She went to the Surrey Gardens, accompanied by her sister and a friend. The name of the person who accompanied my sister is Ann ROSENBERG, living in the Wyndham-road, Camberwell."
A false alarm of "fire", ensuing panic, and people crushed, suffocated, on a staircase.
The Surrey Gardens Music Hall, said to be the biggest and best in Europe at the time, was built, very quickly, in 1856 and opened in July. On 19 October the Baptist preacher STURGEON was preaching there for the first time, and the false alarm was believed to be aimed at discrediting him. In 1861 the Music Hall burned, and was subsequently modified to provide temporary accommodation for St Thomas' Hospital whose premises in Southwark had been commandeered for a new railway station, and until a new building was available on the Embankment (c.1871/2). The Music Hall and Gardens reopened 1872-3, but tastes had changed and the enterprise went bankrupt. Most of the Gardens site was sold for building land.
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