Jane Stanley

Lady Jane Stanley ( 1720 – 1803) was a member of the Earl of Derby branch of the Stanley family. The daughter of Edward Stanley, 11th Earl of Derby she never married but, in her old age, maintained a large household at Brook House, Knutsford. A notable philanthropist, she installed and maintained footpaths in the town though, in line with her belief that couples should not walk with arms linked, she made them intentionally narrow. Stanley left significant donations in her will to friends, family, servants and to numerous charitable causes connected with the poor and sick. One bequest helped to maintain the footways in the town for many years, though they were widened from 2014 to allow for improved access. Stanley was the inspiration for the Honourable Mrs Jamieson in Elizabeth Gaskell's 1849 novel Cranford and the title character in her 1858 My Lady Ludlow. Life Lady Jane Stanley was the daughter of Edward Stanley, 11th Earl of Derby and was born circa 1720. Stanley never married and from 1780 until her death lived at Brook House in Knutsford, Cheshire. She maintained a large household and one duty of her footmen was to bring her the latest news as soon as it arrived by mail coach. The mail coach used the road in front of Brook House and Stanley paid the guard five shillings a time to fire his pistol when passing to alert her servants of important news. A footman would then run to the inn in town to retrieve the news. She maintained a sedan chair, cheaper than a horse and carriage and better suited to Knutsford's narrow streets. Considered an important and influential figure in Knutsford, Stanley was also well liked by her servants and neighbours. Ellis Chadwick, writing in 1910, noted "she had very strict notions of propriety and of the courtesies of life, and would not have them infringed". She firmly believed in her right, as a gentlewoman, to walk closest to the wall on the town's footpaths (ie the side away from the kerb). On one occasion when a man walking in the other direction chose to keep to the wall she rapped him on the shoulder with her gold-topped cane and told him "whenever you meet a lady - always give her the wall".