Jane Stanley (died 1803)

Stanley's father, the 11th Earl of Derby

Lady Jane Stanley was the daughter of Edward Stanley, 11th Earl of Derby and was born circa 1720.[1] Stanley never married and from 1780 until her death lived at Brook House in Knutsford, Cheshire.[2][1] She maintained a large household and one duty of her footmen was to bring her the latest news as soon as it arrived by mail coach.[3][4] The mail coach used the road in front of Brook House and Stanley paid the guard five shillings a time to fire his pistol when passing to alert her servants of important news. A footman would then run to the inn in town to retrieve the news.[4] She maintained a sedan chair, cheaper than a horse and carriage and better suited to Knutsford's narrow streets.[5][6]

Considered an important and influential figure in Knutsford, Stanley was also well liked by her servants and neighbours.[3][1] Ellis Chadwick, writing in 1910, noted "she had very strict notions of propriety and of the courtesies of life, and would not have them infringed".[1] She firmly believed in her right, as a gentlewoman, to walk closest to the wall on the town's footpaths (ie the side away from the kerb). On one occasion when a man walking in the other direction chose to keep to the wall she rapped him on the shoulder with her gold-topped cane and told him "whenever you meet a lady - always give her the wall".[4]

Stanley was disappointed when her brother, Edward Smith-Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, chose to marry the actress Elizabeth Farren in 1797.[3] Henry Green, a local history writer, noted that she "disliked to see men and women linked together" (i.e., walking arm in arm). Stanley donated money throughout her life to construct and maintain footpaths in the town but specified that they be no more than a single flagstone in width to prevent couples from walking together.[7] She also donated a woollen flag to the town that was flown from the church at times of military victories or other national rejoicings.[3] Two portraits of her are known, one as a young child, and one of her in old age that she sent to Edward, Lord Stanley, her brother's son.[1][8]

Stanley died in Knutsford and was buried in Great Budworth, Cheshire.[8] It is thought that she chose to be buried there rather than the family plot in Ormskirk, Lancashire, to avoid her remains being close to those of Farren.[3] Shortly before she died Stanley composed her own epitaph: "A maid I lived and a maid I died; I never was asked and never denied".[1]

Stanley's sedan chair in use for the Royal May Day festival circa 1900

Stanley left significant bequests as well as a £6,000 inheritance to her family. Two senior female servants each received £600 and all others with at least 3-years service received a full year's wages. A donation of £500 was made for the upkeep of the elderly and disabled in three local parishes and gifts of between £50 and £500 were made to 21 local women, which she specified was to be spent at their sole discretion "independent of, and free from the debts, power or control of her husband, or future husband". Stanley left sums of between £500 and £1,250 for infirmaries in Liverpool, Manchester, Chester and Bath, mental hospitals in Liverpool and Manchester, an asylum for the blind in Liverpool, a maternity hospital in Manchester and to the Philanthropic Society of St George for the promotion of industry and reform of criminals.[9]

A sum of £400 was left to be used to repair and improve the footpaths she had laid out around Knutsford and to maintain the woollen church flag. This was invested in Consolidated Bank annuities, that generated a return of around 3% per year (£12) by the 1820s.[10] The pavements were maintained, more or less unchanged, until 2014 when Cheshire East Council found them to be unsafe for the disabled. A project was begun to improve and widen the footpaths.[5][1]

Stanley's sedan chair has been used by the annual Knutsford Royal May Day procession since 1884.[11] Stanley was the inspiration for the Honourable Mrs Jamieson in Elizabeth Gaskell's 1849 novel Cranford and the title character in her 1858 My Lady Ludlow, both based on her time in Knutsford.[1]