In the first three installments on this deep dive into Richard Adderley Kearney's many wives, we met Elizabeth Gilpin (The Six Wives of Captain Kearney), Jane Mclean (The Six Wives of Captain Kearney Part Two: The Kindly Gael's Daughter) and Mary Reeves Rainsford (The Six Wives of Captain Kearney Part Three: The Courtroom Bride). But if you thought Richard was done, you sadly underestimated both his stamina and his appetite for deception.
A Son, Not a Wedding
This next woman challenges the very idea of what a wife is when a man like Richard is involved. I discovered her in a way that was novel for this search so far, not through a marriage, but through a baptism. And this was the first time in the search I learned that I have additional Kearney relatives, through Richard. The child in question was baptised Arthur Ritchie Kearney on October 21st, 1883, in the parish of St Luke Marylebone, Middlesex. And in a pattern that has become too familiar, the certificate notes that his father is Richard Adderley, Captain in Merchant Service. It seems likely that the Ritchie was a nod to Richard. So now we have another (maybe) wife and for the first time, a child born outside of my direct line (via Richard and Mary Reeves Rainsford).
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Baptism of Arthur Richie Kearney October 21st, 1883 - St Luke's Parish, Marylebone
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Before we go merrily chasing Helen to try and get to know her, I thought a timeline might be helpful. I was starting to lose track of Richard's timeline and movements - so you probably are too. When we last left Richard, he had served his nine months for bigamy and had two children with Mary Reeves Rainsford - Kate in 1880 and Edward in 1882. Edward also died in 1882. Arthur was born in September in 1883, which strongly suggests that Richard had to be in London in December 1882. I have sketched out the major events in the timeline below (leaving a lot out, because a full accounting of Richard's various appointments and newspaper appearances would be a tome, not a timeline).
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| Abbreviated timeline of Richard Adderley Kearney's movements |
The Hunt for Helen
So we arrive in September 1883 in London. And now it is time to find out who Helen Elizabeth Williams was. The baptism told me next to nothing - her name and the fact that she was going by Kearney. The next step was to order the official birth certificate from GRO - and it added some interesting extra information. Arthur was born September 21, 1883, at 9 Little Church Street (which bizarrely had also been recorded as 9 Little Queen St on the same certificate) to Helen Elizabeth Kearney formerly Williams. This told me something. On the christening entry, Helen has simply listed herself under Richard and let the Kearney be implied. On the birth certificate however, she explicitly named herself, Helen Kearney - formerly Williams. However, I couldn't (and still cannot) find any evidence that they were married - at least not in the UK.
Tellingly it was Helen Kearney who registered the birth on November 1, 1883, not Richard. As we know from Mary Adderley Kearney's birth in Sydney in early 1884 - Richard could not have been present when Arthur was born. Perhaps he spun the same old yarn, he was off to sea and by God's mercy would be back again.
Unfortunately, the lack of a marriage certificate made searching for Helen harder. At the outset, I had no date or place of birth - and so I stalled. Instead, I decided to focus on Arthur (my half great grand uncle). He married in 1909 to Julia Gray and duly listed is his father Richard Adderley Kearney - Captain. This marriage gave me a solid clue. Helen was still alive in 1909 because she signed as a witness to the marriage.
Excellent. Her signature showed that she was still bearing Richard's name over 25 years after he vanished. That told me something crucial. Any census entries were likely to be in the name "Helen E Kearney". Seemingly, once she donned the mantle of Richard's wife, she didn't take off.
I noted this down and continued to trace Arthur. At the time of his marriage, he was a teacher, and he still was in the 1911 England census. But by the 1939 register, he was a civil and mechanical engineer (I promise this will be relevant). Arthur and Julia had three children - Eric Arthur (1911), Joyce Winifred (1912) and Dennis Ritchie (1918). Arthur seemingly continued the tradition of honouring Richard Adderley, using Ritchie as the middle name of his youngest son.
Arthur seemingly wasn't done with conmen, even after his father Richard disappeared off the scene. A newspaper report in the Western Mail recounts Arthur's brush with Jacob de Villiers - a labourer from London - who pretended to be the son of a wealthy South African farmer to scam money from a woman called Mrs. Bevan. Bordering on the absurd, the article states "Villiers told him (Arthur) that he was son of late General Villiers, the Boer General, and that his mother had an ostrich farm in South America." Not for the first time, I found myself wondering whether vulnerability to deception had a genetic component. The fact that there was an ostrich in the story - with all its head in the sand connotations -felt almost too perfect: more literary device rather than real life.
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| Western Mail, July 31, 1928 |
A Census Breakthrough
One of my luckiest breaks in the search for Helen came while I was researching Arthur. When the 1921 England Census was released, I was searching for Arthur Ritchie Kearney and by a very lucky twist of fate, he was visiting his mother on census night. On the bottom line of the census page is Arthur Kearney, age 37 and 9 months, born in Middlesex, and a mechanical engineer.
Ding ding ding. At the top, is Helen Kearney aged 77 and 1 month, born in Dawlish. She was recorded as being a widow. This was my window to finding her. Armed with this information, it was much easier to track Helen Elizabeth Williams back through time. We were looking for a woman born circa 1845 in Dawlish.
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| 1921 Census of England, Hertfordshire, Hitchin |
First, I found her in the 1911 census, living alone in Herefordshire. She was again recorded as being a widow and living off "private means". Particularly tantalising is the information that was struck through. For length of marriage she had reported 34 years, presumably giving an estimate of the year she was married - by this record 1877. She had also having had two children, with one (Arthur) living. I can't find any evidence that she had another child, although it could have been stillborn. And as you already know, I can't find any evidence of a marriage to Richard Adderley Kearney. That's why I have called her the maybe wife. It doesn't mean there isn't a marriage somewhere. But it could.
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1911 Census of England, Hertfordshire, Letchworth
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The Williams Family Puzzle
That more or less brought me to the end of the records I could find for Helen Elizabeth Kearney. So I decided to embark on my search for Helen Elizabeth Williams. I took a conservative approach to begin with. First, I searched Free BDM for all Helen Williams births within two years of 1845 in Newton Abbot (to correspond with Dawlish). But there was nothing.
Then I expanded out - any Helen Williams born 1843-1845 in all of Devon. This search returned only one - a Helen Jane 1844 born in Okehampton. To be thorough I chased it down anyway. Confusingly, in the GRO Helen's name has been transcribed as John Jane Williams, female...how incredibly unhelpful. From the birth record, I found the mother's maiden name: "Maunder". I followed this Helen Jane down through census documents - she also unhelpfully went by Jane Helen. But at the end of the trail, it became clear this was not Helen Elizabeth who married Richard. This Jane Helen/Helen Jane married a man called William Smale in 1870 and remained married to him until his death in 1915.
After this I got creative - searching for variations of Helen Elizabeth. Eventually, I got a hit for an Ellen Eliza born 1845 in St Sidwells, Exeter. Her parents were Samuel Williams, commercial traveller and Ellen Eliza Mitchell.
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Ellen Eliza Williams born May 17, 1845
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From here, I quickly found her in the 1851 census - which confirmed that she did in fact go by Helen E. Both she and her mother were listed as Helen E Williams. There was also a brother - Edwin J Williams. His birth certificate showed he was also born the Samuel Williams, commercial traveller, and Ellen Eliza Mitchell.
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Birth certificate Edwin John Williams, 30 September 1842
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But something dramatic had happened to the family between 1845 and the 1851 census. The family was no longer living in the middle-class St Sidwells, Exeter, but in the densely packed, working-class Hackney Road, Bethnal Green. The reason for this change of circumstances was fairly clear - Helen Williams senior was listed as a widow. She was 40, giving her an approximate birth year of 1811. In this entry, Helen was working to support herself and her family - engaged in"shop work". Her birthplace is totally incomprehensible to me and looks like "Selinhay, Dorsetshire." There is no Selinhay I can find anywhere in the UK.
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1851 Census of England, Bethnal Green, Hackney Road
Cross Street, where the family lived in 1851
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The reality of the Williams' circumstances was even sadder than I realised on my first inspection of the 1851 census - although this would only become clear after I followed the trail of Edwin. I decided to find his birth certificate. Per the census, Edwin J Williams was born in Chelsea, Middlesex, in approximately 1842. His birth certificate showed that when he was born on September 30th, 1842, his family were living in the very middle-class Jubilee Place, Chelsea.
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| Birth certificate Edwin John Williams, September 30th 1842 |
This new location for the family rapidly opened additional records. I found a birth of an early child Frederick Williams in 1839 in Chelsea. Then I found the marriage of Ellen Eliza Mitchell and Samuel Williams in St George, Hanover Square in April 1837.
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Samuel Williams and Ellen Eliza Mitchell marriage - St George, Hanover Square 1837
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Playing around with the GRO and the surname also turned up one more child, Charles Blowers Williams born in 1848 (and no, I have no idea why his middle name is Blowers - but it turns out to be a godsend for tracing him later). This last birth certificate also filled in a missing piece of the puzzle. Samuel Williams was recorded as deceased, opening up a nine-month window during which he must have died.
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Charles Blower Williams birth, January 8, 1848, Exeter
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From there it was relatively easy to find Samuel's death on November 3, 1847. It didn't add much, but it did confirm his occupation as a commercial traveller and gave me a birth year - circa 1798. He died of Phthisis (TB) - something his future son-in-law died of about 50 years later.
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Samuel Williams death, November 3, 1847, Exeter
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All of this gave me insight into Helen Elizabeth's early life. Her father was a commercial traveller - not a gentleman, but respectable and probably well-presented and persuasive. The family moved at least once during their early years, from Chelsea, where Frederick and Edwin were born, to Exeter where Helen and Charles were born. But their father tragically died whilst their mother was six months pregnant, and their subsequent move highlights the financial precarity that the family must have lived in. With Samuel alive, the family probably enjoyed a reasonable standard of live, as long as he stayed employed. But once he was dead, Helen had a young family to take care of and no income source. So she was forced to move to a working-class area and take work in a shop.
Worse than that, the family got split up. By the 1851 census, there is no sign off Frederick or Charles with the rest of their family. Frederick could have died early on, as I didn't find anyone in later records who was definitely him. But Charles Blowers Wiliams, I know to have survived. Tracing his journey through later life was a wild ride that ended up right on my doorstep in Australia, so that will be the subject of another post.
Nonetheless, I knew that Charles had to be somewhere in 1851, but he wasn't with his family. I found an 1851 census entry I thought could be Charles - at an orphan asylum in Stoke Newington. His age and place of birth - three years, Dawlish, Devonshire - more or less lined up. But of course, this didn't prove that it was him.
But then I found another surprise that clinched it. One page back on the census, also in the orphan asylum, was a Rosa Williams, four years old, born in Dawlish Devonshire. And lo and behold, when I found her birth record (1846), I was able to confirm she was also born to Samuel Williams and Ellen Elizabeth Mitchell. This suggests that Helen had to make a heartbreaking choice - relinquish her two youngest children so that she could care for her two eldest.
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| Birth certificate Rose Emma Williams, November 7th 1846, Exeter, Devonshire |
Split up, the family became much harder to trace. But I tried anyway.
The Fate of the Williams Family
Tracing the Williams family was extremely frustrating, with their common surname and their early separation, they are a case study in the perils of genealogy. But a few threads emerged.
Edwin, the eldest surviving son, is the only sibling I can follow across every census. He became a draper’s assistant in Kentish Town, then a waiter, married Harriet English, and had three daughters - two of whom died young. In the 1891 census, he was oddly listed as a “Professor of Music,” though his death certificate a year later lists him again as a head waiter. Whether it was a mistake, a joke, or wishful thinking, it’s a poignant moment in a life that seems full of near misses and small reinventions.
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| Edwin John Williams death certificate August 4th, 1892, West Derby |
Charles, the younger brother, vanishes after his appearance in the 1851 census in the Orphan Asylum. But he resurfaces in 1871, working as a draper’s assistant in Aldershot. Like Edwin, he pursued trade work and would later emigrate to Australia. He’s easier to trace thanks to his unusual middle name, “Blowers,” which by genealogical grace carried through into his death certificate in Victoria in 1902. He named one of his daughters Ellen Rosa, perhaps in memory of the sisters he lost contact with.
Rosa Emma, born in 1846, was in the orphanage with Charles in 1851. Then, she disappears save for one final sighting in 1891, recorded as an unmarried domestic servant in Fulham. After that, like so many working-class women, she slips from the record.
And Helen Elizabeth Mitchell, the mother who held the remnants of this family together for a time, fades even earlier. There are no definitive sightings of her after 1851. She may have remarried or died soon after. All I end up knowing about her is that she endured incredible loss and showed great tenacity in keeping her family together to the best of her ability.
The Enigmatic Widow
And then, of course, we return to Helen Elizabeth Williams, mother of Arthur, and the woman who chose to live as Helen Kearney, though no marriage record can confirm she had the legal right. Like her siblings, she moves in and out of the historical record, half-seen.
After 1851, the next likely sighting of Helen is in the 1871 census, working as a domestic nurse in the household of Algernon William Fulke Greville, 2nd Baron Greville, and his wife, Lady Violet Greville (née Graham, daughter of the 4th Duke of Montrose). It’s a brief glimpse, but it tells us something: Helen had entered the world of domestic service, caring for the children of aristocracy, a significant step up from the impoverished household of her youth.
And then, nothing. I cannot find her in the 1881, 1891, or 1901 censuses. It's a 40-year stretch of silence, interrupted only by the birth and christening of her son, Arthur. Where she went, how she lived, and whether she ever saw Richard again - these are questions I still can’t answer. Even basic facts like how she met Richard are sourced of speculation.
But in 1911, she resurfaces. Helen Kearney, widow, living alone at 21 Common View Square in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. She lists no occupation, only that she lives “by private means” — which suggests some small income, perhaps from Arthur, perhaps from savings. She remained at that address through the 1921 census, where she was visited by Arthur — the same census that finally allowed me to pin her place of birth to Dawlish.
At the end of her life, Helen moved to 136 Henley Road, Merton, where she died in 1930. Her death certificate identifies her, still, as the widow of Richard Adderley Kearney, Captain in the Merchant Service.
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| Helen Elizabeth Kearney death certificate, August 3, 1930 |
Like all of Richard's widows, Helen's death certificate shows a dogged determination to cling to her identity as Richard's widow, right down to the details of his occupation, that familiar line
"Captain Merchant Service". Like Elizabeth Gilpin and Jane Mclean before, my mind boggles at this continued identification with Richard. To the best of my knowledge, Helen never saw Richard after 1883. I don't have his movements mapped out to a certainty, month by month, but I have him on ships and featured in newspapers with alarming regularity from the mid 1800's all the way through to his death. Even at the biggest stretch, I can just barely imagine he may have served on some foreign bound ships and briefly called in to his London family a few times. And yet Helen chose to be defined by her relationship decades after his death.
But there are some significant gaps in my knowledge about Helen and Arthur Kearney. I have a whopping 50-year gap between Helen's appearance in the 1871 census and her reappearance in the 1910 census, bridged only by Arthur's birth record. I should at least be able to find Helen and Arthur in 1891 and 1901. But I can't. Those missing census entries could tell me a lot. Did Helen call herself a widow yet (as she did in 1901)? Did she assume that he was dead when he never came back? And why did she never remarry, as she surely could have once, he had been missing for more than seven years.
There is also a gap in my knowledge of Helen's personality. She didn't appear in dramatic courtroom reporting like Mary Reeves Rainsford, or write beautifully about her father like Jane Mclean. Her family weren't industrial magnates like Elizabeth Gilpin's. Helen remains quiet and elusive, a woman just visible behind birth certificates and occasional census appearances. She also marks the first woman who wasn't definitively married to Richard but chose to be a Kearney for most of her life. In some ways the search for Helen has been less satisfying to me, because I have so many questions.
The Modern-Day Connection
But I do have some answers. I am in contact with one of Richard's 3x great grandsons - a descendant of his son Arthur's son Eric Arthur - a first (but not last) for Richard's wives. It is clear that this branch of the family did not know about Richard's bigamy. Eric's daughter Shelagh discovered it as an adult when researching her own family tree. The family story of Richard was of a master mariner lost at sea. If this sounds familiar, it is because it echoes the garbled family legend passed down by own grandfather Richard. Somehow, no matter the oceans and generations that separate us, Richard's descendants share this mythos.
Postscript: Richard's time with Helen
When I started this story, I had no doubt about the key facts. Richard was named as the father of Arthur in 1883. Helen was named as the widow of Richard in 1930. And it's not like Richard was Fred Smith, salesman. Richard Adderley Kearney had a very distinctive name, including his middle name, that he used in his very distinctive career as a Captain in the Merchant Service. The phrasing is identical across multiple marriages and birth certificates. But here's the problem. When I started doing the detailed timeline, I found I couldn't make the facts fit. I would have liked to square away this story cleanly. But some of the evidence doesn't sit cleanly together.
There's a very limited window for Richard to have been in London with Helen Elizabeth Williams. But the Australian records have him here, instead of in London when Arthur should have been conceived.
In May 1882, Richard was working on the Glenelg between Adelaide and Sydney. The manifest clearly shows him as mate with his wife and "Annie Kearney" on board. (Is this Mary and her daughter Kate using the nickname Annie? God, I hope so. But if it is an entirely different wife, I promise I'll come back to it. Knowing Richard, it's entirely possible).
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| Glenelg, Adelaide-Sydney May 1882 |
By July 1882, all hell had broken loose. Richard and five other shipmates were imprisoned in Maitland gaol. Richard was the worst offender, having assaulted his Captain on the Osceola and another man. Richard was fined in lieu of prison, but seemingly chose to serve the sentence, since he wasn't released until September.
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| Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, July 20, 1882 |
His first son, Edward Adderley Kearney also died on November 20, 1882, 15 hours after birth. The informant was Mary's brother Boles Reeves Rainsford. Just days prior, on November 14, 1882, Richard appeared before the court for having disturbed the peace on the Briar Holme.
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Port Adelaide News, November 14, 1882
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There is also an advertisement in December 1882 offering Captain Kearney work, referring to his pilotage of the Swedish Barque Peru from Adelaide to Sydney. The Swedish barque Peru travelled between Adelaide and Sydney in early December 1882.
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| Ad for Richard's services, 9 December 1882 |
You see where I’m going with this? It’s almost impossible that Richard could have been in London to father Arthur. He was in Australia as late as December 1882, and the trip to London would have taken at least 45 days - often closer to 90. If we accept that Richard piloted the
Peru shortly before the ad appeared in December, he simply could not have been in London at the right time.
And yet. The alternative is equally impossible. Why would Helen choose that name - so specific, so public, so traceable - if he wasn’t involved? She could have left the father blank, invented a merchant sailor, or picked any number of less conspicuous ghosts. Instead, she names Richard Adderley Kearney, a man who left controversy scattered across two continents and six women’s lives. She kept calling herself his widow until the day she died. There are no other Richard Adderley Kearneys sailing the seas at this time. Every other Richard A. Kearney in the records is a descendant — his son Richard Thomas, his grandson, his great-grandson.
What does that leave me with? Absurd possibilities. Maybe Helen knew Richard and named him as the father, even if he wasn’t. But can you imagine holding that fiction for an entire lifetime and being buried under the name of a man you never married and who may not have fathered your child? Or maybe she was in Australia, and returned home pregnant. I can’t find evidence either way. It’s deeply unsatisfying. Are Arthur’s descendants truly related to me? Only DNA will tell.
What I will say is this: if Richard was the father of Arthur, his pattern of cohabitating but not marrying women on the margins begins here and only becomes more apparent. There are two more women still to come in this series: one with social standing and family support, whom he definitely married, and one who was deeply vulnerable, whom he impregnated and who presented herself as his wife, but wasn't. This pattern is a hard one to witness, as a 2x great granddaughter of the man, and part of the line that history largely views as his "primary" family. I carried Richard's name for 29 years and my brother carries it still. But we are all part of the mirage he built up and the legend that he conveyed to his children. And the women who claimed him, or were claimed by him, still have more to say. Two more wives await.
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