Lady Jane Franklin

Jane, Lady Franklin (née Griffin; 4 December 1791 – 18 July 1875) was a British explorer, seasoned traveller and the second wife of the English explorer Sir John Franklin. During her husband's period as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, she became known for her philanthropic work and her travels throughout south-eastern Australia. After John Franklin's disappearance in search of the Northwest Passage, she sponsored or otherwise supported several expeditions to determine his fate.

Early life

Jane was the second daughter of John Griffin, a liveryman and later governor of the Goldsmith's Company, and his wife Jane Guillemard. There was Huguenot ancestry on both sides of her family. She was born in London, where she was raised with her sisters Frances and Mary at the family house, 21 Bedford Place, just off Russell Square. She was well educated, and her father being well-to-do had her education completed by much travel on the continent. Her portrait was chalked when she was 24 by Amélie Munier-Romilly in Geneva.

Marriage to John Franklin

As a young woman, Jane was attracted to a London physician and scientist, Peter Mark Roget, best known for publishing ''Roget's Thesaurus''. She once said he was the only man who made her swoon, but nothing ever came of the relationship.

Jane had been a friend of John Franklin's first wife, the poet Eleanor Anne Porden, who died early in 1825. In 1828, Franklin and Jane Griffin became engaged. They married on 5 November 1828, and in 1829 he was knighted. During the next three years, she spent lengthy periods apart from her husband while he served in the Mediterranean. In 1836, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), disembarking from the immigrant ship ''Fairlie'' on 6 January 1837.

Relationship with the colonies of Australia and New Zealand

Lady Franklin at once began to take an interest in the colony and did a good deal of exploring along the southern and western coast. In 1839, she became the first European woman to travel overland between Port Phillip and Sydney. In April that year, Lady Franklin visited the new settlement at Melbourne, where she received an address signed by 63 of the leading citizens which referred to her "character for kindness, benevolence and charity". With her husband, she encouraged the founding of secondary schools for both boys and girls, including Christ's College. In 1841, she traveled to New Zealand, meeting both Ernst Dieffenbach and William Colenso, who named the filmy fern ''Hymenophyllum'' ''frankliniae'' in her honour. In the same year, she visited South Australia and persuaded the governor, Colonel George Gawler, to set aside some ground overlooking Spencer Gulf for a monument to Matthew Flinders. This was set up later in the year. In 1842, she and her attendant, Christiana Stewart, were the first European women to travel overland from Hobart to Macquarie Harbour.

She had much correspondence with Elizabeth Fry about the female convicts, and did what she could to ameliorate their lot. In 1841, the convict ship ''Rajah'' arrived loaded with convict women who had been supplied with sewing materials organised by Lydia Irving of Fry's convict ship committee.Amanda Phillips, 'Irving, Lydia (1797–1893)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 20 June 2017
/ref> The resulting quilt is now one of the most treasured textiles in Australia. She was accused of using undue influence with her husband in his official acts but there is no evidence of this. When Franklin was recalled at the end of 1843, they went first to Melbourne by the schooner ''Flying Fish'' and then to England by way of New Zealand on board, coincidentally, the barque ''Rajah''.

In 1842, she commissioned a classical temple, and named it ''Ancanthe'', Ancient Greek for "blooming valley". She intended the building to serve as a museum for Hobart, and left in trust to ensure the continuance of what she hoped would become the focus of the colony's cultural aspirations. A century of apathy followed, with the museum used as an apple shed among other functions; but in 1949 it was made the home of The Art Society of Tasmania, who rescued the building. It is now known as the Lady Franklin Gallery.

Interactions with the indigenous people

Jane Franklin requested George Augustus Robinson the Protector of Aborigines to send her a "black boy" from the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment along with other curiosities such as snakes and the skull of an aboroginal. Robinson sent her a nine-year-old boy whom he had renamed Timmie, but whose original name was Timemendic. Lady Franklin renamed the boy Timeo and handed him over to her step-daughter Eleanor Franklin. Timeo was trained as a household servant but was deemed too "idle and disobedient" and the Franklins attempted to offload him to the Hobart Orphan School.

In 1841, Lady Jane decided to try and "civilise" a second child from Wybalenna. A six-year-old girl named Mary (original name Mathinna) was sent to live at Government House at Hobart with the Franklins although she was not an orphan. Again, it was Lady Franklin's step-daughter who was placed in charge of her care. Lady Jane compared Mathinna more favourably in comparison to Timemendic, with Mathinna being described as more intelligent and sweet, while Timemendic was "much blacker in complexion than Mathinna who appears to us to be daily growing more copper-coloured as she advances in civilization".

In 1842, Lady Jane commissioned the artist Thomas Bock to paint Mathinna's portrait in which she is portrayed famously in a scarlet dress. Lady Jane sent the portrait to her sister in England with a letter describing Mathinna as "one of the remnant people about to disappear from the face of the earth", who has "the unconquerable nature of the savage". '

In June 1843 a request came from Mithinna´s step-father Palle through Robert Clark, a teacher at Flinder´s island, that the Franklin´s return his step-daughter. Sir John refused and admonished Clark to not meddle in the affairs of others.However a month later in August 1843, the couple left Mathinna at Queen's Orphan School in Hobart.

End of husband's tenure as governor

In August that same year the Franklins were taken aback when Sir John Yardley-Wilmot arrived in Tasmania announcing that he was the new appointed governor of Van Diemen's Land. John Montagu, who had served as colonial secretary for Sir John but had been dismissed for his antagonism towards the Franklins and for his insubordination towards Sir John had returned to Britain with stories publicised in the British newspapers about the bad leadership of Sir John. Montagu also accused him of being ruled by his wife, a claim that was believed by the Undersecretary of State for the Colonies James Stephen and Lord Stanley to recall Sir John.

This meant that Lady Franklin and Sir John had to leave their home quite hastily and sell many of their possessions and return to England. They would arrive in Britain the following year, and the Franklins set about to restore their tarnished reputation.

This was done by Lady Franklin authoring a book under the name of her husband defending his actions titled "''Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen´s Land''" as well as financially supporting authors such as the explorer Paweł Strzelecki´s ''Physical Description of New South Wales. Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains'' (1845) that were highly favourable of Sir John and Lady Franklin.

Shortly after their arrival Sir John had applied to being in charge of leading a polar expedition in search of the Northwest passage.

Following the disappearance of her husband

Her husband started on his last voyage in May 1845, and when it was realised that he must have come to disaster, Lady Franklin devoted herself for many years to trying to ascertain his fate. Until shortly before her own death, Lady Franklin travelled extensively, generally accompanied by her husband's niece Sophia Cracroft, who remained her secretary and companion until her death. Lady Franklin travelled to Out Stack in the Shetland Islands of Scotland, the northernmost of the British isles, to get as close as she could to her missing husband.

Lady Franklin sponsored seven expeditions to find her husband or his records (two of the expeditions failed to reach the Arctic):
* 1850 ''Prince Albert'' under Charles Codrington Forsyth and William Parker Snow
* 1851 ''Prince Albert'' under William Kennedy and Joseph René Bellot,
* 1852 ''Isabel'' (one under Donald Beatson aborted, the other under Edward Inglefield explored Greenland)
* 1853 ''Isabel'' (William Kennedy and Robert Grate, aborted)
* 1857 ''Fox'' under Francis Leopold McClintock, and
* 1875 ''Pandora'' under Allen Young
By means of sponsorship, use of influence, and offers of sizeable rewards for information about him, she instigated or supported many other searches. Her efforts made the expedition's fate one of the most vexed questions of the decade. Ultimately, in 1859, Francis McClintock found evidence that Sir John had died twelve years previously, in 1847. Prior accounts had suggested that, in the end, the expedition had turned to cannibalism to survive, but Lady Franklin refused to believe these stories and poured scorn on explorer John Rae, who had in fact been the first person to return with definite news of her husband's fate.

The popularity of the Franklins in the Australian colonies was such that when it was learned in 1852 that Lady Franklin was organising an expedition in search of her husband using the auxiliary steamship ''Isabel'', subscriptions were taken up, and those in Van Diemen's Land alone totalled £1671/13/4.

Although McClintock had found conclusive evidence that Sir John Franklin and his fellow expeditioners were dead, Lady Franklin remained convinced that their written records might remain buried in a cache in the Arctic. She provided moral and some financial support for multiple later expeditions that planned to seek the records, including those of William Parker Snow and Charles Francis Hall in the 1860s.

Finally, in 1874, she joined forces with Allen Young to purchase and fit out the former steam gunboat HMS ''Pandora'' to undertake another expedition to the region around Prince of Wales Island. The expedition left London in June 1875 and returned in December, unsuccessful, as ice prevented her from passing west of the Franklin Strait.

Lady Franklin died in the interim, on 18 July 1875. At her funeral on 29 July, the pall-bearers included Captains McClintock, Collinson and Ommanney, R.N., while many other "Old Arctics" engaged in the Franklin searches were also in attendance. She was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery in the vault and commemorated on a marble cross dedicated to her niece Sophia Cracroft.

Legacy

Lady Franklin was a woman of unusual character and personality. Her determined efforts, in connection with which she spent a great deal of her own money to discover the fate of her husband, added much to the world's knowledge of the Arctic regions. It was said: 'What the nation would not do, a woman did'. In addition, as one of the earliest women in Tasmania who had had the full benefit of education and cultural surroundings, she was both an example and a force and set a new standard in ways of living to the more prosperous settlers who had passed the stage of merely struggling for a living.

Natural features named after her include Lady Franklin Bay, on Ellesmere Island and Lady Franklin Point, on Victoria Island, both in Nunavut; Lady Franklin Rock, an island in the Fraser River near Yale, British Columbia, named at the end of her visit there during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush; Lady Franklin Rock, near Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park in California; and Mount Lady Jane Franklin, a hill near Barnawartha in Northern Victoria, which she climbed on her trip from Port Phillip to Sydney in 1839. Beside Victoria's Mount Franklin is a scoria mound known as Lady Franklin.

Jane Franklin Hall, a residential college in Hobart, Tasmania, is named in her honour, as is the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley, Tasmania. The ballad " Lady Franklin's Lament" commemorated her search for her lost husband. The sailing vessel; Jane Franklin, an Amel Super Maramu ketch, also bears her name. Lady Jane Franklin Drive in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, Sir John's birthplace, is named after her.

The barque '' Lady Franklin'' was named after her.

Most of Lady Franklin's surviving papers are held by the Scott Polar Research Institute.

In popular culture

Jules Verne's novel '' Mistress Branican'', published in 1891, was strongly inspired by Jane Franklin's life. When John Branican, on board the ''Franklin'', disappears at sea in Oceania, his wife Dolly Branican cannot believe that he is dead. Three expeditions are organised, and she is herself part of the third, which leads her to the depths of the Australian Great Sandy Desert. Dolly Branican is overtly compared with Jane Franklin in the novel.

She was depicted in the stage play '' Jane, My Love''.

Jane Franklin appears as a character in the 2018 television series ''The Terror'', where she is portrayed by Greta Scacchi.

The Frozen Passage DLC in the video game Anno 1800 is based on Lady Franklin's story. In the game, Lady Jane Faithful requests the player's help to save her husband, Sir John Faithful, from a lost arctic expedition.

Lady Jane Franklin is also a pivotal figure in three novels, ''Wanting'' by Richard Flanagan (2008), ''The Arctic Fury'' by Greer Macallister (2020), and ''The Exiles'' by Christina Baker Kline (2020).

Awards and honors

* Founder's gold medal, the Royal Geographical Society

The biography ''The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer'' by Tasmanian historian Alison Alexander won the 2014 National Biography Award."Rivers run deep for lady of letters"
The Australian, 5 August 2014, page 4

See also

*''Lady Franklin's Revenge'' by Ken McGoogan, a history of explorations of the Arctic funded by Lady Franklin

References

Further reading

Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''
* Frances J. Woodward

''Australian Dictionary of Biography'', Volume 1, Melbourne University Press, 1966, pp 411–412.
* Roderic Owen, ''The Fate of Franklin: The Life and Mysterious Death of the Most Heroic of Arctic Explorers'', Hutchinson Group (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Richmond South, Victoria, 1978.
* Ken McGoogan. ''Lady Franklin's Revenge: A True Story of Ambition, Obsession and the Remaking of Arctic History''. Toronto, HarperCollins. 2005

Journals, correspondence and papers of Jane, Lady Franklin
at the Scott Polar Research Institute.

Portrait of Lady Franklin
1816 by Amelie Romilly.

Lady Jane Franklin
from a sketch by T. Bock, Hobart Town, about 1840.
* The text of

'.
*

was founded by, and named after, her.
''Lady Franklin's Revenge''
by Ken McGoogan

''as affecting the fate of my absent husband''
edited by Erika Behrisch Elce
*

External links

*
*
''Bits of Travel at Home''
Helen Hunt Jackson, 1878
'' Lady Jane Franklin''
National Library of Australia, Newspaper Digitisation Project.

Lady Jane Franklin Correspondence
at Dartmouth College Library

{{DEFAULTSORT:Franklin, Jane
1791 births
1875 deaths
Settlers of Tasmania
Women of the Victorian era
Female explorers
Franklin's lost expedition
People from Bloomsbury
English explorers
Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery
19th-century Australian people
19th-century Australian women
American Geographical Society
Wives of knights
Van Diemen's Land people