Potter, Miss, Mary Magill Tynte Potter, professional name, Romola Tynte

Potter, Miss, Mary Magill Tynte Potter, professional name, Romola Tynte, 4 Brunswick Terrace, Exmouth

Mary Magill Tynte Potter (1852 -1913) was born in Stratford-on-Slaney, Co Wicklow, Ireland where her father Rev Samuel George Potter DD (1822-1904) was the rector.[1] Both of her parents were born in Ireland and she spent her formative years there. After moving to England her parents eventually retired to Exmouth in 1892 where they lived at 3 Bicton Terrace.[2]

Mary (known as Romola) moved to England from Ireland as a teenager and in London was taken under the wing of her second cousin, Lady Jane Wilde (mother of Oscar). Oscar Wilde helped her to launch a successful career as an actress; she became very popular giving dramatic recitations throughout the UK, sometimes in partnership with another actor Hermann Vezin. She was a sensation in America where she was known as ‘the aesthetic cousin of the aesthetic Oscar Wilde’.[3]

As soon as the Women’s Franchise League was formed she became the assistant to Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, one of the founders.[4] She gave recitations to raise funds for the organisation, attended meetings and gave speeches throughout the UK in support of the League.[5] Poor health eventually curtailed her contribution to the cause of women’s suffrage at a national level.[6] In 1904 she moved to Exmouth to live with her widowed mother at 3 Bicton Terrace in Rolle Road, a substantial, 13-roomed house with one live-in servant.

Romola was a notable figure in the town; she gave public performances, sometimes purely as entertainment for residents and sometimes in order to raise funds for charities – for example in March 1905 for the Exmouth branch of the RSPCA; in May 1908 for St Andrew’s Choir Fund. She also gave recitations in aid of her own rescue efforts for suffering cats – an activity which increasingly became the focus of her life, apart from caring for her frail mother.[7] Naturally she joined the Exmouth branch of the NUWSS and attended meetings, but there are no reports of any speeches she may have made.[8] No doubt the ill-health and subsequent death of her mother (26 August 1911) had an impact on the practical commitment she could make to the suffrage movement. In fact it was not long before her own health worsened, she ‘succumbed to a painful malady, her condition being hopeless from the time the first symptoms were manifest’ and she died on 30 July 1913 at Lanherne, 4 Brunswick Terrace Exmouth.[9] She is buried in Littleham churchyard, Exmouth.

 

 

Entry created by April Marjoram, September 2018


[1]    1911 census ref RG14/270/4 and Irish Jurist 1861 Vol 13 p198

[2]    DEG, 8 December 1892 and 1901 census ref RG13/2028/18/3

[3]    O’Sullivan, E. 2016.The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and his Family (Bloomsbury, London and Fitzsimons, E. 2015. Wilde’s Women: How Oscar Wilde was Shaped by the Women he Knew (Duckworth Overlook, London)

[4]    Wright, M. 2011. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (Manchester University Press, Manchester)

[5]    Daily Telegraph &Courier 3 March 1890 and Sheffield Daily Telegraph 25 June 1890

[6]    The Social Review 20 July 1895

[7]    WT, 23 March 1905; Exmouth Journal 13 January 1906; DEG, 28 May 1908

[8]    DEG, 28 June 1912

[9]    DEG, 31 July 1913

 

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