Author:
Eliza [Lydia] Straubenzee [née Thomson; previously Hankey] (c.1757-1825), wife of Lt Col. [Marwood] Turner Van Straubenzee (c.1748-1823), following her divorce from London merchant banker John Hankey
Publication details:
Poonamalee [Poonamallee, India]. 29 January 1784.
The present item presents a double significance as a result of the circumstances in which it was composed. The author writes in a tone of forced levity to her two sons John Peter Hankey (1770-1807) and Thomson Hankey (1773-1855), grandsons of the banker Sir Thomas Hankey (1704-1770), from whom she is separated as a result of her divorce from their father, following a sensational adultery case, her marriage to Hankey having been dissolved by an act of parliament in the previous year, her hairdresser and maid having deposed that she was living in a state of intimacy with Lt-Col.