User:Charles Matthews/Skrine case study

This is a training page.

It is designed to recreate the actual investigation that led to verification of the fact that Molly Keane's father was never Governor of Mauritius, despite this position being asserted in reference works.

It all began in an earlier century, with a secondhand book about Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough (died 1756), namely Lady Luxborough goes to Bath (1946) by Marjorie Williams. The somewhat notorious Lady Luxborough had a clerical friend Richard Graves, who lived just outside Bath, Somerset. He was a novelist, and schoolteacher, and one of his pupils was Henry Skrine, a travel writer.

This brings in the Skrine family, based in Bathford for generations. Molly Keane's name was originally Nesta Skrine. Her father was Walter Clarmont Skrine. He was the eighth son of Henry Duncan Skrine (s:Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886/Skrine, Walker Clarmont), the son of Henry Skrine II (s:Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886/Skrine, Henry Duncan). The father of Henry Skrine II, Henry Skrine I, was the travel writer. It happens that the Alumni Oxonienses references, which are available on Wikisource, are enough to track this wealthy family with distinctive surname. It comes out that Walter Clarmont Skrine was the great-grandson of Henry Skrine I.

Now, the Governor of British Mauritius list on Wikipedia makes no mention of any Skrine. Before concluding that Wikipedia is right, and other works are wrong, there is work to do. But at this stage, there is an anomaly, about Walter Clarmont Skrine who should not be so hard to track. His career, in fact, can be reconstructed.

Skrine left Oxford (not clear he took a degree) and went to Ceylon, where he had brothers who were tea planters. He then bought a ranch in Alberta, with family money. He married Nesta Higginson in 1895: she was known as a poet (ODNB). Mary Nesta Skrine, the future Molly Keane, was their child, born 1904. By this time the family had moved to Ireland.

It turns out that saying Walter Clarmont Skrine was Governor of Mauritius is baseless. He is not known to have held any official or military post.

As aftermath: how was this mistake made? Factually, Nesta Higginson can be made out to be grand-daughter of James Macaulay Higginson, who was Governor of Mauritius. Clarmont Percival Skrine, another of the clan, wrote a book Assignment to Mauritius. It is possible that the latter was at some point confused with Walter Clarmont Skrine. Or that there was garbled family history involved.