Louisa Nottidge

The Agapemone

Following Josias Nottidge's death in 1844, his five unmarried daughters each inherited £6,000. The revivalist clergyman Henry James Prince, who had preached at Stoke near Wixoe in 1843, persuaded them to help fund a new religious community in Somerset called the Agapemone, or Abode of Love. In 1845, the sisters traveled to Somerset; on the way, Prince convinced three of them—Harriet, Agnes, and Clara—to marry three clergymen from the community in a single ceremony in Swansea that same year. Because the Married Women's Property Act 1882 had not yet passed, all of a wife's assets automatically became her husband's upon marriage.

Abduction

Prince urged Louisa to join her sisters at the Agapemone, and she traveled to Somerset. Her mother Emily, worried about Prince's spiritual and financial hold over her daughters, sent her son Edmund, nephew Edward Nottidge, and son-in-law Frederick Ripley to bring Louisa back. In November 1846, the three men forcibly removed Louisa and held her at Ripley's villa at 12 Woburn Place, Regent's Park. When she kept insisting Prince was divine, her mother had her certified insane and placed in Moorcroft House Asylum, Hillingdon, where Dr. Stilwell recorded her condition and treatment in The Lancet.

Nottidge v Ripley and Another (1849)

Louisa sued her brother, cousin, and brother-in-law Ripley for abduction and false imprisonment in the case Nottidge v. Ripley and Another (1849), which The Times reported daily. Bryan Procter, a Commissioner in Lunacy, testified as a professional medical witness.

The Lord Chief Baron delivered a famous ruling: 'You ought to liberate every person who is not dangerous to himself or to others.' Louisa won the case and received damages, proving she had been illegally detained. She then returned to the Agapemone, gave her wealth to Prince, and lived there until her death in 1858. Charles Dickens reported on the case in 1850.

Legacy

Harriet Martineau wrote in her biography of Bryan Procter that his role as Commissioner of Lunacy was irksome and, in the case of Miss Nottidge, alarming to a man who hated conflict. Wilkie Collins dedicated The Woman in White to Procter, who was both a poet and Commissioner for Lunacy. Nottidge's case brought the situation of women imprisoned in lunatic asylums squarely into the public eye.

Did You Know?

• Louisa escaped from Moorcroft House Asylum in January 1848 and traveled across London to meet Reverend William Cobbe at a hotel in Cavendish Square, but was recaptured two days later at Paddington Station.
• The Lord Chief Baron in Nottidge v Ripley and Another (1849) declared: 'You ought to liberate every person who is not dangerous to himself or to others.'
• Three of Louisa's sisters—Harriet, Agnes, and Clara—married three clergymen from the Agapemone in Swansea on the same day in 1845.
• Wilkie Collins dedicated his best-selling novel The Woman in White (1860) to Bryan Procter, the Commissioner in Lunacy who helped secure Louisa's release.