Jacky Fogerty has uncovered a newspaper report of Rev William John Rowland’s divorce from Annie Ellen Domville in 1881. We believed that he had spent some of his fortune obtaining the divorce. It now appears that he received damages of £400 from the co-respondent Dr Cornelius John McKenna. The report gives the evidence from the hearing-he was their doctor in India. In 1878 she admitted her misconduct to her husband, and he forgave her whilst staying at the Charing Cross Hotel. But she then eloped with Dr McKenna in 1881. Evidence was given by the manager of the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross that the couple “remained all night, occupying the same room, and left for Paris the next day”.

Clearly Charing Cross was a hotbed of passion.

Sir James Hannen directed the jury to award Rev WJ Rowland £400 damages and pronounced a decree nisi.

 

My great grandmother Annie Ellen Rowland (nee Domville) eloped with Dr McKenna in 1882 when he was Medical Officer for the Bengal 26th Native Infantry. After her divorce from Rev William John Rowland, they married in Marylebone in 1883. He became a Surgeon Lt Col in the Bengal Army and was retired and living at Beyres, Bayonne, France at his death in 1902.

His Will makes no provision for his wife; possibly they were estranged.It also seems likely that there were no children of the marriage, although Annie Ellen was only 30 at the time of her second marriage. The 1911 Census shows her living with her mother who died in 1914.

Annie Ellen died in 1932, being supported in old age by her daughter Lady Agnes Gibbs. I do not know whether she was ever reconciled with her other children.

As ever I am indebted to Jacky Fogerty for some of the details here.

I was recently re-reading Sagittarius Rising by Cecil Lewis describing his adventures in the Royal Flying Corps in WW1. I remember my grandmother always wore her brother’s RFC “wings’ badge with pride. I googled him and found out that he was also a WW1 fighter ace. This was the time when new recruits to the RFC had an average life of three weeks. He started with  Se5 squadron 84 in Northern France on 17 July 1918. By 8 August, three weeks later he had 12 successful hits, amazingly shooting down 3 Fokkers (sic) on one day; he was then severely injured and invalided out. In November 1918 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Uncle Billie was always kind to me giving me a 21st present of a sturdy leather suitcase with my initials on the side-we now keep dressing up clothes in it-later he gave me a leather writing case, also with my initials. At Cambridge I used a portable British Empire typewriter from his factory in Birmingham. I am sorry I never had the opportunity to hear his war stories. He came to my wedding on 25 September 1971 but died three months later.

On 10th June Philip and Melanie Gibbs and Richard Rowland replicated the visit in the 1920’s of Philip’s Great Grandfather Sir Philip Gibbs, and his wife Lady Agnes, Richard’s Great Aunt, to locate the so called “family schloss” of the Ditges family. Sir Philip was unable to find the “schloss”; perhaps if he had known in was the Bishop’s Palace he would have succeeded.

Of course our Australian cousin, Jacky Fogerty had already located it online, so our task was easy. Friederich Ditges, who was the agent for Germany and Switzerland for Rowland’s Macassar Oil, acquired the Bischofshof in 1825 when it was secularised. Alexander William Rowland visited it in the 1830’s and met his daughter Henriette; they were married in 1839. It remained in the Ditges family until 1917 when it became a school; in 1942 the Gestapo moved in, and in 2000 it became the IUBH-a privately owned international business school specialising in tourism management. It has 1800 students of which about 80% are German. All students live on the extensive campus in modern accommodation. Of the Bischofshof, only the gateway and the main tower remain. One of the rooms on the ground floor retains the original panelling.

Bad Honnef is said to house more millionaires than anywhere else in Germany. It is certainly a delightful old town, with winding pedestrianised streets and pleasant gardens fronting the Rhine. We cruised down past Rolandsect, site of Charlemagne’s palace where his general Roland was based. The past the site of the Bridge at Remagen to Linz where Philip and Melanie toured the town whilst I sampled the delights of a beer garden.

Later we visited the gothic fantasy castle Drackensfeld built by a banker who had financed the Suez canal. Apparently he never lived there.The cog railway goes up to the Drackensfeld mountain to a good newly constructed restaurant with panoramic views north to Bonn and south to Bad Honnef

Press Release

 

Visit by English descendants of the owners of the Bischofshof, Bad Honnef.

 

 

Richard Rowland and Philip and Melanie Gibbs are visiting the IUBH Business School, whose campus contains the Bischofshof, the family home of the Ditges family. In 1839, their relation, Alexander William Rowland married Henriette Ditges (see portrait) whose father Friedrich Ditges, a merchant from Cologne, had acquired the Bischofshof, after it was secularized in 1826.

 

The last attempt by the English family to locate the Ditges family home was by Philip’s relations Sir Philip Gibbs, the war correspondent, journalist and novelist and his wife Lady Agnes in the 1920’s. They had a drawing of the Bischofshof, but failed to find it. It is possible that by then the building had been altered. (see photo) Thanks to the internet it is now easy to locate.

 

Alexander William Rowland was the proprietor of Rowland’s Macassar Oil, a business founded by his grandfather in about 1800. It made and sold one of the first hair oils and was credited as being one of the first nationally advertised products. (see advertisement) Like the Hoover, its name became associated with the product. By the 1840’s the hair oil was being used by the Royal Family and nobility of England, as well as by several sovereigns and courts in Europe. The business was sold to Beechams, now part of Glaxo Smith Kline, in the 1940’s.

 

Alexander and Henriette lived in London and had eight children. Henriette died in 1851 giving birth to a daughter, Henrietta who became a celebrated social reformer and founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb and the Dame Henrietta Barnett School for Girls in North London. So Henriette’s name lives on.

 

Richard has recently published his family history, Fifteen Generations of the Rowland Family. It is available online at www.rowlandgenerations.org.