Eliza Dinah Fairchild Sheffield

Rise to wealth

Using the pseudonym ‘Evelyn Diana Tourner Sheffield’ Eliza accompanied her husband on his game-hunting adventures to Canada and America. However, she frequently returned to England alone and struck up friendships with other members of the minor nobility. These included: Sir John Gage Saunders Sebright, 9th Baronet of Besford, Worcestershire, who she asserted was her godfather and had acted as her guardian after the death of her (fictional) parents; and Mr John Lewis Garden (aka Jardon) of Redenhall, Norfolk, “a great friend of her father’s who took a great interest in her… and on whose enormous Irish estates she learnt to ride to hounds”¹.

Henry Sheffield died in 1889 in Jacksonville, Florida. Sir John Sebright died in 1890, leaving Eliza £500 and all his pictures, photographs and albums. In 1891 Eliza was living with Mr Garden near Cavendish Square but just a year later he was also dead. A court case followed in which she sought to inherit his estate by the terms of a will dated March 1884. The Judge concluded that a later will drawn in favour of Mr Garden’s estranged wife, Princess Caroline Murat of Naples, and their two children, should stand, but the parties agreed to settle £7,500 cash on Eliza.

Inventor and clairvoyant

Now a wealthy widow, Eliza invested in and jointly patented a new medical device with a London businessman, Lewis Tallerman, and an engineer, Thomas Henry Rees.  The “Tallerman-Sheffield Oven” used dry heated air to ‘bake’ the patients’ torsos and limbs to alleviate rheumatism, gout and stiff joints. It received favourable reviews in The Lancet, was trialled at a couple of London hospitals and was exported across the world. But in 1900 the partnership broke down when there was a public spat between Eliza and Tallerman. Eliza sought to elicit more money from the business by insisting she was the inventor of the device but Tallerman countered with evidence that their former partner, Rees, was the true inventor.

Eliza was eventually exposed as an imposter in 1905. In 1903 she had become friendly with the Marquis of Townshend, who quickly made her an offer of marriage. However, the day before the papers were to be signed, the Marquis, who had numerous debts, broke off the engagement after discovering that Eliza was not as wealthy as he had been led to believe. Eliza subsequently sued for a breach of promise but the case was stopped abruptly when papers exposing her true origins were presented to the Marquis’s legal team. They also accused her of being a ‘clairvoyant’; a reference to her ordination into a secret society called The Golden Dawn, which was dedicated to the study of occultism.

The sensational court case was covered by newspapers throughout the country but, despite this exposure, Eliza continued to use her pseudonym until her death in Lewisham in 1942, describing herself on the 1939 census as ‘Inventor of medical dry air and bath electric pads”. 

Family in Fulham

Eliza is remembered on a memorial in Fulham Cemetery commemorating her brother and his family. Compared to his sister, Samuel Caleb George Fairchild led a humdrum life. He came to London as a plumber and was later appointed as a sanitary inspector.  The family lived on Pretoria Road, Fulham. It seems rather touching that the Fairchild family did not disown Eliza despite the lengths to which she had gone to hide their identity from others.