Mary Jane Furneaux (1840 - ?) fraudster

Arthur Pelham-Clinton (1840-1870) served in the Royal Navy during the Anglo-French attack on the Russian naval base of Kronstad in 1854 (part of the 1853-6 Crimean War), and then during the Indian Mutiny and was present at the Seige of Lucknow, 1857. He was the Liberal MP for Newark 1865-8 being returned unopposed. In November 1868 he was declared bankrupt with debts and liabilities of some £70,000 (over £6 million in today’s money). He stood down at the subsequent election a few weeks later.

In 1870 he was living with Stella Boulton, the trans actress, when she and Fanny Park were arrested on suspicion of homosexuality. That June, a day after receiving a summons to appear at the trial, Clinton died age 29; the official cause of death was scarlet fever but suicide was suspected, as was escape to the Continent or even New York.

Arthur was the youngest brother of Henry Pelham-Clinton, the 6^th Duke of Newcastle-Under-Lyme, and as such was entitled to the honorific of ‘Lord’.

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Mary Jane Furneaux first came to the attention of the press and public in November 1871, only months after the sensational trial of Fanny and Stella, and a year and a few months after the announced death of Arthur Pelham-Clinton. Furneaux, a resident of Birmingham, and taken to be a dress-maker, employed a Mrs Morecroft to do some sewing. She became friendly with both Mr and Mrs Morecroft, and after being accepted into their favour, she confessed that she was not actually of ‘plebeian birth’ or even a member of the ‘fair sex’. She was actually Lord Arthur Clinton who had been chloroformed before being placed in his coffin and subsequently burst the lid off and escaped, and was now under an obligation to remain incognito for a period of time. Letters were shown, purportedly from the Countess of Lanesborough, according to which Clinton was to receive several important legacies. The Morecrofts transferred various sums of money to Furneaux on the understanding of future return. However the fact that the tale was a fraud was discovered shortly afterwards, and she was given into custody. Detective Cooper, handling the case, discovered that Furneaux had likewise deceived others not only in Birmingham but also in Dudley and Wolverhampton. At the Birmingham Borough Session in January 1872, Furneaux was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment.

By 1874, having served her time, Furneaux returned to the same enterprise. She took lodging at the home of a Mrs Ward in Birmingham, and came to know Mrs Drew, her sister, a grocer, and their brother James Gething. Again Furneaux told how she was Lord Arthur Clinton and would be coming into estates and legacies. Gething introduced Furneaux to Edward Beynon, an engineer. Gething acted as a an agent, and monies were received from Beynon, usually £74 or £75 each time. Cumulative promissory notes were given each time, each succeeding note being larger to cover previous notes with interest, and the old note being destroyed. 

Doubts were dispelled by letters from Lord Chief Justice Coleridge personally guaranteeing the security of the loan; from the Prince of Wales avowing his support; from the Queen herself, requesting that “Lord Clinton” visit her at Balmoral or Buckingham Palace, assuring him that his case was being carefully considered, and sometimes warning him, sternly, against any further bad behaviour. 

In 1878 Beynon also was invited with Furneaux to Balmoral, Aberdeenshire. They set out together and got as far as Ballator - just seven miles from Balmoral - when Beynon was taken sick. Furneaux continued alone, and after her return to Ballator, a letter arrived for him purportedly from the Queen. Beynon blamed his indisposition on the cold weather, and only later after prodding by the prosecution did he concede that he might have been drugged. 

A Liverpool gasfitter, Benjamin Fowell, aggravated by the non-repayment of his loans, began sending hostile letters. Miss Furneaux took him to court for ‘threatening to murder a lady'. The judge ruled that debt was no excuse for the threats and sentenced Fowell to a year in prison.

Beynon was never actually told that Furneaux was Clinton; hints and suggestions were dropped and he decided that Clinton must be the person. Once the relationship was established, and loans made, Furneaux-as-Clinton frequently visited Beynon’s home, sometimes as a man, sometimes as a woman.

One time Furneaux took a position as a governess, but was dismissed on suggestion that she was actually a man. As Clinton did, so did Furneaux. She was profligate with money, dressed with a dandy’s care, always at the height of men’s fashion: spats, kid gloves, a walking stick. She always wore a man’s shirt, collar and necktie, but sometimes otherwise wore a mixture of male and female clothing. Once a railway guard suspected that she was a man in women’s clothes. She kept fancy dogs and cats, collected musical instruments and model ships and she put on concerts and suppers. A groom said to Fowell that Furneaux was a man given the way that she handled the reins of a carriage.

In 1882 the case came to court, both Furneaux and Gething charged with personation fraud. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge was called as a witness. He affirmed that he knew neither party, and on presentation of letters supposedly written by him, he replied that in no case was it his handwriting or his signature. The major witness was Edward Beynon. After his evidence Furneaux consulted with her solicitor and changed her plea to guilty. She was sentenced to seven years, and Gething acquitted. Her properties were sold at public auction.

• “Extraordinary Alleged Swindling”. Reynold’s Newspaper, November 26, 1871.
• “A Woman Personating Lord Arthur Clinton”. Lloyd’s Weekly,November 26, 1871.
• “From the archive, 9 May 1882: Adventuress sentenced in cross-dressing fraud case”. The Guardian, 9 May 1882, reprinted 9 May 2014. Online.
• “The Champion Adventuress: Miss Fearneaux, alias Lord Arthur Clinton”. The Penny Illustrated Paper, Feb 25, 1882: 1,11; Mar 4, 1882: 6-7.
• The History of the Year: A narrative of the Chief events and topics of Interest From October 1, 1881, to September 30, 1882. Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co, 1882: 83-5. Online.
• Abigail Joseph. “Jane Furneaux and the Social Lives of Fraud”. In Exquisite Materials: Episodes in the Queer History of Victorian Style. University of Delaware Press, 2019: 78-112.

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Joseph comments: “Jane Furneaux, I want to suggest, embodies a certain queer version of melancholy gender. A lesbian, she assumes a false identity as a gay man, which (though by itself it was by all accounts convincing) she then complicates further by claiming that that gay man is compelled to disguise himself as a woman. Thus she oscillates between fragmented versions of masculinity and femininity, occupying both gender positions and neither one, an in-between state justified by her sensational story of un-death. Unable to let Lord Arthur Clinton die, she incorporates him: she becomes him and, in his name, pursues wealth and friendship; romance with girls and homosocial relations with men; possessions that, in their own eccentricity or in the eccentricity of her ownership, become queer. One explanation would be that what she was mourning—thus attaching to, refusing to cede, and incompletely performing—was the impossibility, as a woman, of phallic authority and elite power, that in her frauds she was trying, through the hyperbolic logic of her facade, to claim them. “