In August 1906, Miss Meade purchased a blue sapphire for the princely sum of £516 from Fabergé's London outpost. However, she wasn't the one paying the bill. An American by the name of Walter Winans was the person paying for the items she was picking out.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Miss Meade was a very regular customer of the Russian jeweller's London store. Fabergé's records show that Walter Winans paid for items selected by Miss Meade, including one sold in our May Fine Jewellery auction.

Who was Miss Meade?

When we were researching a necklace in our May Fine Jewellery auction, we wanted to establish the provenance of the piece. Although we could exactly link the necklace to Fabergé's records, all we had to go on for the purchaser's information. It was two words: Miss Meade.

After some speculation and many discussions within the team at Fellows and our industry contacts, our search began where most things do nowadays, with Google.

The search begins

Without a first name or address to go on, how do you track down a person by just their surname? While Meade as a name is not as prevalent in 20th-century England as Smith, it is not uncommon. This also does not take into account spelling deviations and derivations such as Mead, Meed etc.

Trying to find information on women in history is notoriously difficult. As women did not gain the right to vote in the United Kingdom until 1918, you cannot use the Electoral Role. Even then, this right was only afforded to about two-thirds of the population. While the census is a good place to start, those searches require you to know the basics of where they lived to find them or a date of birth to narrow down thousands of records. Unless a woman was married, the only records you might reasonably be able to access with their full name are those for births and deaths.

(an AI-generated image has been used for illustration purposes only)

Once we had established some basic parameters of age and location it was time to delve into official government records digitised online and contemporaneous diaries and social histories.

Edward Linley Sambourne, a noted cartoonist and illustrator, moved in the same social circles as Walter Winans. We know this because he was an avid diarist or journaler. His diaries have been made public by the museum at his former residence Sambourne House. In his diary from February 1906, he mentions making the acquaintance of "Winans who shoots". Given what we know of Walter Winans' pastimes and where he was living at this time, it is fair to assume this is the same Winans.

The Reverend Canon Meade and his daughters

An earlier diary entry from Linley Sambourne mentions a Canon Meade and his daughter visiting. Could this be the mysterious Miss Meade we are looking for?

Sidney Meade was born to a wealthy, aristocratic family in 1839. His father was Richard Charles Francis Christian Meade, 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam and his mother was Lady Elizabeth Herbert. His ecclesiastical career saw him progress from Rector at Wylye, Wiltshire to Canon of Salisbury. He and his wife, Lucy had three children - a son, Francis and two daughters, Elizabeth and Constance.

Miss Elizabeth Cecilia Meade

We are unsure when Elizabeth was born but we have found records of her baptism on 21 Apr 1872 and her wedding in 1904. She married Captain John Somerled Thorpe on 9 August 1904. They had one daughter, Constance Cecily Thorpe. Elizabeth passed away on 13th November 1950.

Miss Constance Selina Meade

We couldn't find baptism or birth records for Constance. However, from her marriage and death records, we can deduce that she was born in about 1876. She married William Henry Sitwell on 19th August 1902. Sadly, she passed away on 21st July 1903 aged just 32.

Given the dates of the Meade sisters' marriages and Constance's death, it is unlikely that either of them is the Miss Meade written up as the purchaser of the Fabergé necklace with Walter Winans in January 1908.

A further entry in Linley Sambourne's diary from 1909 mentions Miss Meade calling to see him "with fiancé". Given our research into Canon Meade's daughters, we know they were both married by this point, and Constance was already sadly deceased. Could this be another Miss Meade, and the one we are looking for?

Miss Constance Isabel Meade, 15 Eaton Terrace

Another route we tried to find the Miss Meade in question was deductive reasoning (guesswork). We scoured census records for unmarried women with the surname Meade, over 18 years old, living in London in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Our searches revealed Miss Constance Isabel Meade who lived at 15 Eaton Terrace for most of her life. By taking a deep dive into her family tree and charitable works, we can see that she was involved in the arts and philanthropy throughout her life. We found records of her in the provenance of a painting sold at auction in Edinburgh a couple of years ago. She was also the benefactor of what would become the John Johnson Collection of Ephemera at Oxford's Bodleian Library. It was originally known as the Constance Meade Collection of Ephemeral Printing, after Constance who donated a large number of her great-grandfather's documents in the1930s. Thomas Percy, the Bishop of Dromore had amassed a collection of over 120 volumes, some dating back to the 17th Century, which his daughters inherited upon his death in 1811 and were subsequently passed down the generations.

Despite tracing Constance's descendants to the present day, we couldn't find any evidence, written or anecdotal, to link her to the Fabergé necklace that Walter Winans bought in January 1908. Nor can we link her to being the same Miss Meade who visited Linley Sambourne in 1909.

Do you have any information?

Despite finding some great candidates for the role, the mystery of Miss Meade continues. We would welcome any suggestions as to who Miss Meade might have been. Please get in touch if you have any thoughts on the matter. You can email hello@fellows.co.uk or call us on 0121 212 2131.

Our thanks go to the teams at Sambourne House Museum; Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre; The Bodleian Library; and PPEF, as well as the family of Constance Isabel Meade for their time answering our questions and their enthusiasm for our mystery.