Marion Charlotte Fox

Born on 18 August 1861, Marion Charlotte Fox was the eldest daughter of Joseph Hoyland Fox, a woollen manufacturer of Wellington in Somerset and a prominent Quaker. Her mother was Mariana Fox née Tuckett, a sister of the mountaineer Francis Fox Tuckett.

According to the 1861 census, her father was a ‘woollen manufacturer, landed proprietor and banker.’ At the time of the 1871 census, his wool factory was employing 850 hands. He died in 1915, leaving an estate worth £93,108.

Marion never married. She appears on the 1911 census living with her father at The Cleve, a large house at Wellington in Somerset. In 1931 she published the intriguingly titled The Supernatural History of Worms.

She died, aged 87, on 13 January 1949 at The Bower, Wellington, Somerset. She left effects valued at £11,758. According to her short obituary, which appeared in the Western Morning News (15 January 1949): ‘Miss Marion Charlotte Fox of The Bower, Fore-street, Wellington, has died in her 88th year. Miss Fox was the eldest daughter of the late Mr Joseph Fox, head of Messrs Fox Bros and Co., woollen textile manufacturers. She was a minister of the Society of Friends, and took a leading part throughout Somerset. In the 1914-18 War she was secretary of the Friends’ Emergency Relief Committee in London. She did much work for the Friends on the Continent, especially in Germany.’ According to another report of her death (Taunton Courier, 22 January 1949), she ‘was a Quaker who played an active part in religious, social and temperance work in the town for many years. She had travelled a good deal on the Continent, helping in relief work carried out by the Society of Friends among war victims.’

Photographed by John Webber of Taunton in Somerset.