William Nightingale, father of Florence & Parthenope, had a lot in common with Mr Bennet of Pride & Prejudice.
He had inherited a comfortable fortune from his great uncle, on condition that he change his name to Nightingale; unfortunately this great uncle also specified that the fortune could not be passed on to any female, but must go to some other male relative if William were unfortunate enough to have no son.
It seems not to have occurred to William, who came from a long line of Sheffield traders & bankers & who had studied at Cambridge despite being a Unitarian, that he should do anything to acquire some other form of capital that he could use to secure the future of the two daughters who were his only children; he lived the leisured life of a gentleman, the business of running his estates seems not to have been very onerous. At least he took charge of the education of his daughters.
It was left to his wife to do her best to ensure that suitable husbands were found for the girls.
Mr Bennet was also a loving father with an estate entailed to the male line; he had a tendency to hide in his study ignoring as best he could his wife’s continuing vulgar and insensitive behaviour in pursuit of husbands for her daughters.
It wasn’t that it was not worth bothering to provide a fortune for a daughter – the idea that it would just become the property of her husband could be circumvented by the use of private contracts. So why did they just shrug their shoulders of the responsibility.
The fortune inherited by William Nightingale was said to be £100,000. this sum seems to have served the same role as did ‘millionaire’ in the middle years of the C20th , shorthand for well-to-do.
It also became a journalistic cliché in reports of C19th elopements – the woman involved was always said to be worth £100,000 in her own right, even when, as in the case of Robinson Fowler, Manchester’s stipendiary magistrate, she was the mature wife of a fellow magistrate.
