Caroline’s elder sister, Mary Jane, had been born in 1792, and her younger sister, Isabella, in 1799.
Caroline’s grandfather had been the sometime governor of South Carolina, Charles Craven of Hamstead Park, and his wife Elizabeth. Lord Craven of Hamstead Marshall was a cousin of her father’s. As the daughter of the vicarage, however, it is likely that Caroline did not enjoy such a lavish or opulent lifestyle despite her family’s lineage.
Caroline was baptised in Kintbury on January 19th 1798 by the Rev James Austen, brother to Jane and Cassandra Austen. James and Fulwar had been friends since their boyhood when Fulwar had been a pupil at the school run by James’s father, Rev George Austen, at Steventon in Hampshire.
Growing up in Kintbury, Caroline would have met other members of the Austen family when they came to stay at the vicarage, as well as Jane Austen’s lifelong friend, Martha Lloyd, who was also Caroline’s aunt, being her mother’s sister. Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, had become engaged to Caroline’s uncle Tom but sadly he had died in 1797 before they could marry.
We know very little about Caroline’s life growing up. In 1801, Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra that Caroline “is improved in her person; I think her now a really pretty child. She is still very shy & does not talk much.”
In April 1827, Mary Jane Fowle married Lieutenant Christopher Dexter, travelling with him to India. Unfortunately he died in Madras in 1834 so Mary Jane returned to Kintbury alone.
Isabella married John Lidderdale, the local general practitioner in 1845 and continued to live in Kintbury.
Caroline never married. On the 1841 census she is recorded as living alone and described as a gentlewoman. When Cassandra Austen died in 1845, she left £1000 to Caroline in her will. As it happens, this was the very same amount left to Cassandra in the will of Thomas Fowle, Caroline’s uncle. Cassandra also left to Caroline a large Indian shawl which had once belonged to Mrs Jane Fowle, Caroline’s grandmother. Quite why Caroline was the only sister to benefit from Cassandra’s will, we do not know.
At the time of the 1851 census, Caroline was living at the house known as Barrymores, off the Inkpen Road. The census shows that she had two live-in servants and was described as being of “independent means” both of which suggest that Caroline was relatively well -off.
A copy of Caroline’s will, now in the Berkshire Records Office shows that she wished Kintbury villagers as well as family members to benefit from her legacies. She wanted her money to pay for a school room, with a garden or playground, to be built or purchased for village children. There was to be a new organ for the church and various family members including her nieces and nephews were also to benefit.
Sadly, most of Caroline’s good intentions came to nothing. A problem arose for her executors and the Solicitor General had to be consulted because, “she had been of unsound mind about six months before her death and had been placed in a (indistinct) expensive private Lunatic Establishment.” As a result, “ the expenses of her maintenance exceeded the amount of her income so that her friends were obliged to make considerable ( indistinct ) out of their own monies to meet the demands of the establishment in the removal of her body for internment”.
The establishment at which Caroline died was Otto House in Kensington – a long way from the village in which she had spent all her life. We have no way of knowing exactly what had been the cause of her being “of unsound mind”; this might have been a form of dementia or any other mental health condition which, it is very likely, would have been poorly understood when Caroline died in 1860.
Furthermore, we have no idea why Caroline had been sent to Otto House. Perhaps, John Lidderdale, Kintbury’s GP and Caroline’s brother-in-law, believed it to be the best place for her oven though there must have been establishments nearer.
Mary Jane Dexter continued to live in Kintbury until her death in 1883. At the time of her death she was living with her widowed sister, Isabella Lidderdale. Isabella died in 1885. All three sisters are buried in Kintbury.
It is an interesting thought that Mary Jane, Caroline and Isabella would have been three of the last people in Kintbury to have known Jane Austen in person, to have been able to say, “Yes, we knew her, she was a good friend of our parents”.
Sources and references:
Jane Austen’s Letters. Collected and Edited by Deirdre Le Faye. 1995
Copy of the Will of Elizabeth Caroline Fowle, Berkshire Records Office
Ancestry
Kintbury and Beyond 