Orphaned, sold and fought over; teenager Catherine Mary Riboldi’s change in fortune is as fascinating as it is confusing... Gill Shaw explains
TWIGLETS
I’m peering, digitally speaking, over a towering pile of old newspapers. With luck, I might emerge by Christmas.
But what treasures! I never dreamt there’d be quite as many mentions of my 2x great-aunt in the press as this…
Last time, a search for ‘Catherine Mary Riboldi’ in Findmypast’s newspaper collections turned up the main plot of Catherine’s adoption by the Vicomte de Brimont – and of the probate case and legal challenges after his death, which eventually adjudicated in favour of our teenage heiress.
But I’ve been trawling through the 50 or so other accounts, and not only have they added more spice to the dish, but some go right back to the start of the story.
From the The Croydon Express of 2 June 1883, under the heading ‘Case of a French Heiress’…
Mr Justice Chitty gave judgement on Wednesday in the matter of Riboldi, the child who was adopted by the Vicomte de Brimont, the head of the champagne house of Ruinart Père et Fils.
‘The case came before the court on a motion to discharge an order made last December appointing a Mr Jonathan Brandon, a Jewish gentleman in London, guardian of the child who, since her adoption in 1869, has been resident in France.
‘Both the father and the mother of the child are dead – the father since 1869 and the mother since 1882 – but the mother, who was left with six children, had given up Catherine Mary Riboldi, the infant in question, to the sisters of the conventual school of St Vincent de Paul Westminster.
‘It was from this school that the Vicomte de Brimont adopted her, and she lived in the family with him till his death in June 1881. He left her two-and-a-half million francs, certain houses, and the contents (worth 240,000fr) of another.
Oh gosh, so for all my attempts to pin the blame on the Irish contingent – and especially the children’s great-uncle, the parish priest of Glin – it seems it was my 2x great-grandmother Emma Susannah who signed over her three little girls to the orphanage in Westminster. (Though it’s still possible Fr John Bunton had a hand in it!)
Twice bereaved
The lawyers have clearly done their homework on the family – Emma Susannah did die in early 1882. But now it feels so strange to realise she died in Glasgow l
