Dowager Lady Feilden
(1779-1867)
22 July 1861

Volume 4, page 263, sitting number 5121.

[An inked inscription verso in a fine period hand reads ‘From The Dowager Lady Feilden to her esteemed friend Mrs Tootal, 1861.’]

Born in or about 1779, Mary Haughton Jackson was the eldest daughter of Edmund Jackson of Southfield in Lancashire and Woodlands, Jamaica.

On 30 March 1797 she married William Feilden of Wilton Hall in Blackburn. Her husband set up in the Blackburn cotton industry with his older brothers Henry and John. He became a merchant, cotton manufacturer and pioneer of the factory system. In 1848 his firm was employing 1400 hands. Locally prominent, he played a leading role in Blackburn’s public life and from 1832 to 1847 he sat in Parliament as the MP for Blackburn. In 1846 he was created 1st Baronet of Feniscowles in the County of Lancashire. He died in 1850.

Lady Feilden's husband and her mother, Catherine Jackson, both made claims for compensation from the British government when slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Her mother was awarded £1161. Her husband unsuccessfully claimed £3401 as compensation for 187 slaves.

Lady Feilden, 'formerly of Feniscowles in the County of Lancashire but late of Southfield House Streatham,' died at her residence on 9 January 1867. Her estate was valued at £8000.

[From an album compiled by Margaret Tootal, wife of Edward Tootal of Weaste near Manchester, formerly a cotton manufacturer, and second daughter of James Kennedy of Ancoats near Manchester, also a cotton manufacturer.]