mer of 1852, while crossing the Channel with some friends, she was introduced to William Charles Yelverton, afterwards fourth viscount Avonmore [q. v.], and a correspondence between them began. In 1855 she served as a nurse with the French sisters of charity during the Crimean war, and again met Yelverton at the Galata Hospital, when she accepted his proposal of marriage. The engagement was distasteful to Yelverton's relations, and was for a time suspended. But the friendship was ultimately renewed, and on 12 April 1857 Yelverton read aloud the church of England marriage service at Miss Longworth's lodgings in Edinburgh. They were afterwards married by a priest at the Roman catholic chapel at Rostrevor in Ireland, and then lived together both in that country and in Scotland. On 26 June 1858, while she was in Edinburgh, Yelverton formally married the widow of Professor Edward Forbes [q. v.]. On 31 Oct. 1859 Miss Longworth, claiming to be Yelverton's wife, sued him for restitution of conjugal rights in the London probate court, but her petition was dismissed. In 1861 an action was brought in Dublin by Mr. Thelwall, in whose house she had been living, to recover from Yelverton money supplied to her. This action lasted from 21 Feb. to 4 March 1861, and the validity of both Scottish and Irish marriage was established in the Irish court. In July 1862 on appeal the Scottish court of session annulled the marriage, and the judgment was affirmed by a majority of the House of Lords 28 July 1864, although Lord Brougham declared in the lady's favour. Her attempt to reopen the case at Edinburgh in March 1865 failed, and the House of Lords on 30 July 1867 supported the Scottish court. Finally her appeal to the court of session, 29 Oct. 1868, to set aside the judgment of the House of Lords was rejected. Much sympathy was shown to her in this long and unsuccessful struggle, and a subscription in her behalf was raised in Manchester. She spent her later years in travel, and died at Pietermaritzburg, Natal, in the autumn of 1881.
Her slender fortune was spent in the litigation, and she largely supported herself by writing. The following are her chief works:
- ‘Martyrs to Circumstance,’ 2 vols. London, 1861, 8vo.
- ‘The Yelverton Correspondence, with Introduction and Connecting Narrative,’ &c., Edinburgh, 1863, 8vo.
- ‘Zanita: a Tale of the Yo-semite,’ New York, 1872, 8vo.
- ‘Teresina Perigrina, or Fifty Thousand Miles of Travel round the World,’ &c., London, 1874, 8vo.
- ‘Teresina in America,’ 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo.
[Reports of the Yelverton Marriage Case; Annual Register; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
LONSDALE, first Viscount. [See Lowther, John, 1655–1700.]
LONSDALE, Earls of. [See Lowther, James, 1736–1802, first Earl; Lowther, William, 1757–1844, second Earl, noticed under the first earl; Lowther, William, 1787–1872, third Earl.]
LONSDALE, HENRY, M.D. (1816–1876), biographer, born at Carlisle in 1816, was son of Henry Lonsdale, a tradesman there. After attending a local school he was apprenticed in 1831 to Messrs. Anderson & Hodgson, at that time the leading medical practitioners in Carlisle. In 1834 he went to study medicine at Edinburgh, and after a very successful course was in his third year appointed assistant to Dr. Robert Knox (1791–1862) [q. v.], the anatomist, whose biographer he afterwards became, and also to Dr. John Reid, the physiologist. He studied during the summer of 1838 in Paris, and in passing through London became member of the Royal College of Surgeons and licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. On his return to Edinburgh he graduated M.D., writing a good thesis, ‘An experimental Inquiry into the nature of Hydrocyanic Acid,’ which was printed in the ‘Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal’ for 1839. In the autumn of 1838 Lonsdale, who was suffering from overwork, took temporary charge of a country practice at Raughton Head, Cumberland, where he helped to found the Inglewood Agricultural Society, a monthly club, the first of its kind in the county. He also gave a course of popular lectures on science, and acquired the friendship of Susanna Blamire [q. v.], whose poems he subsequently collected. In 1840 Lonsdale returned to Edinburgh and became a partner with his former principal, Dr. Knox, giving a daily demonstration in anatomy in the class-room and managing the dissecting rooms.
In 1841 Lonsdale was admitted fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. At one of their monthly séances he read a paper ‘On the Terminal Loops of the Nerves in the Brain and Spinal Cord of Man.’ These loops, which he had discovered when examining an infant monstrosity, he exhibited under a powerful microscope. The history of the case was recorded in the ‘Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal’ for 1843, and attracted attention. He was soon afterwards appointed a senior president of the Royal Medical Society, to which he made a notable contribution on ‘Diphtheria,’ chiefly based upon observations of the disease at Raughton Head. Lonsdale was also for two sessions
