Brine, Mrs Caroline, The Ness, Shaldon
Caroline Brine[1] (c.1835 – 1921) was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India in about 1835. Her father was David Ross of Rosstrevor, County Down. She married Colonel John Jones Brine in India. They had two children, Arthur (b. 1857 in Tonbridge) and Alicia (b. 1859 in India). John Brine had served in the East India Company from 1840 and then in HM Indian Army (4th Madras Native Infantry).[2] He had a reputation as a good shot, and their English home was filled with curios he had collected in India.[3]
John Brine retired in 1869 and by 1871 the family were living in Shaldon, first on Fore Street and then later in Lord Clifford’s property, The Ness. John Brine became involved in public affairs and sailing. One of his early commitments was to chair a meeting in the Athenaeum Rooms, Torquay, for the Bristol Association for Promoting Female Suffrage at which their Secretary, Miss Ramsay, gave a lecture on the topic of Women’s Suffrage. Mrs Brine also gave a short address, and a petition to the House of Commons praying for the removal of women’s disabilities was signed on behalf of the meeting by Colonel Brine.[4] This suggests that Caroline Brine had already joined the National Society by that early date and was assisting the Bristol branch in spreading the word in South Devon.
Further lectures on women’s suffrage were held, probably arranged by Brine, in the Torquay Athenaeum in 1873 and in the Teignmouth Assembly Rooms in 1880.[5] In Torquay Brine again followed the lead speaker (Miss Downing of London) with her own address on the advantages which woman would derive from education; at Teignmouth she chaired the meeting, which was addressed by Miss Sturge of the Bristol School Board and Miss Blackburn, Secretary of the West of England National Society for Women’s Suffrage. At this meeting a resolution calling upon county members to support the movement in the House of Commons was lost. Brine also supported Blackburn and other suffrage activists by speaking at a Women’s Suffrage meeting in the Guildhall at Plymouth.[6] When a Debating Club was formed in Shaldon in 1884 she became treasurer and read a paper at the inaugural session on the Franchise Question.[7]
During the early 1880s the Brines became staunch members of the Teignmouth Liberal Association, of which John Brine became a Vice-President. Caroline presided at a meeting of the Association in 1884, at which Miss Sturge spoke about Women’s Suffrage. On that occasion Caroline was openly critical of a number of local dignitaries, including Lord Clifford and the prospective parliamentary candidate, Mr Seale-Hayne, for their opposition to women’s suffrage.[8] She became a popular speaker at Liberal gatherings, often on Irish Home Rule, speaking in the late 1880s at meetings of the Torquay and Cockington Club, the Exeter Radical Association, the St Marychurch Women’s Liberal Association and at Liberal meetings in Exeter, Paignton, and Brixham.[9] Unusually for a woman she was elected as a delegate from the Shaldon branch to the Mid Devon Divisional Liberal Association.[10] She was asked by the Division to set up a Women’s Liberal Association (WLA), which she inaugurated in 1889.[11] She was invited to advise Exeter Liberals on the formation of their own WLA, chaired the first meeting and became their first President.[12]
In the mid 1890s John Brine decided to lead a less active life, and Caroline was often accompanied to meetings by their son Captain Arthur Brine, now retired from the army. (Their daughter Alice had married Thomas Armstrong, future Director of Arts at the South Kensington Museum, later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum, in 1881.) John Brine bought a plot of land on Lower Erith Road, Torquay, and built a house there called Ahnamulli. (It is possible that this name was John Brine’s little joke, as ‘mulli’ is the Hindu word for a learned woman.) They joined the Torquay Liberal Association and Caroline became President of the Torquay WLA; she was also elected as a Vice-President of the Devon County Women’s Liberal Federation.[13]
Brine seems at this point, however, to have become less pro-active in the campaign for women’s suffrage, choosing instead to speak on broader topics such as ‘Modern Citizenship’ and ‘English Society and Drama’.[14] She devoted more of her time and attention to the Temperance Movement, in which she had been interested since the mid 1880s when the Brines hosted a Temperance Fete at The Ness, and supported the Shaldon Tempereance Society’s proposal to form a Rechabite Tent (a lodge of the Order of Rechabites, a temperance organisation) in the village. In 1897 she became a founder member of the United Temperance Council for Devonshire and in 1898 was president of the Torquay Branch of the Women’s Total Abstinence Union.[15] Brine also supported local good causes such as the Torquay Nursing Institution, St Mary’s Orphanage, St Vincent’s Orphanage[16]
From 1906 references to Brine in public life almost disappear. John Jones Brine died at Ahnamulli on 31 May 1910 and Caroline at the Nightingale Home in Torquay on 24 February 1921. They are both buried in Torquay Cemetery. Caroline left effects valued at over £1200.
Entry created by Marilyn Smee and Julia Neville, November 2018
[1] Family and census information from www.ancestry.co.uk
[2] Torquay Times and South Devon Advertiser (TT), 10 Jun 1910.
[3] TT, 12 Mar 1897.
[4] TT 5 Aug 1871.
[5] Western Times (WT) 23 Sep 1873; 27 Sep 1880.
[6] Western Morning News (WMN), 5 Dec 1882.
[7] WT, 28 Oct 1884.
[8] WMN, 12 Mar 1884.
[9] TT, 1 Apr 1887; WMN 1 Mar 1888; TT, 13 Apr 1888; WMN, 1 Mar 1888; TT, 1 Jun 1888; TT, 26 Oct & 14 Dec1888;
[10] She is first noted in that capacity at the Divisional meeting in 1888 (WMN, 25 May 1888).
[11] WMN, 2 Nov 1888, 28 Feb 1889.
[12] WT, 10 Mar and 27 Apr 1892.
[13] TT, 30 Jul &19 Nov 1897.
[14] TT, 1 Apr 1898; 29 Feb 1900
[15] TT, 12 Mar 1897; 1 Apr 1898.
[16] TT, 30 Jul, 29 Oct, 24 Dec 1897.
Return to Index