Colonel Francis Maceroni in his prime
(image courtesy of Andrew Malleson)
THE DISAPPEARING COLONEL
Francis Maceroni (1788-1846)
Francis Maceroni’s ledger
(6245/7/PS) being
cleaned by Glenn Benson
and Joe Hughes of the
Friends of Kensal Green
Cemetery. The overgrown
plot was rediscovered in
2004 by Sam Bull of the
Friends (FOKGC
Magazine, Nº 36). The
General Cemetery
Company’s registers
indicate that nine people
were buried in this
‘guinea grave’ between
1846 and 1848. (Photo:
Henry Vivian-Neal)
For many years, the grave of Colonel Francis
Maceroni was lost in the undergrowth of Kensal
Green Cemetery. Disappearance is seldom so appropriate, for Francis Maceroni was a disappearing man.
Born in 1788 on the outskirts of Manchester,
Maceroni came from an aristocratic Italian family
whose fortunes plummeted during a legal battle with
Pope Pius VI over property rights. Pietro Macirone
(the family used both spellings), having come to
England to bolster his fortunes, initiated the AngloItalian silk trade. He married Mary Ann, daughter of
Joseph Wildsmith, a wealthy inventor and manufacturer of the then-popular horsehair textile.
Francis was elder of their two sons. (His brother,
George, went on to become a wealthy London stockbroker, and has a handsome monument in the parish
church of St. John-at-Hampstead.) Educated at first in
dismal English boarding schools, young Francis completed his education contentedly in Naples, studying
medicine and diplomacy. He later claimed to have
introduced cricket into Italy.
Many of Maceroni’s political activities are known
because he himself, with no lack of modesty, recorded
them: his two-volume autobiography, running to 1000
erudite but disorganized pages, was
published in 1814. His life of
adventure began when Joachim
Murat, King of Naples and
Napoleon’s son-in-law, appointed
the 26-year-old Count Maceroni as
his aide-de-camp with the rank of
colonel of the cavalry.
Marshall Murat managed to irritate both Napoleon and the allied
forces with a declaration of war on
Austria. Austria defeated Murat at
Tolentino: he escaped with his life, but
into a hostile Europe, and Maceroni
strove hard to protect his patron.
Following Napoleon’s defeat at
Waterloo in 1815, Talleyrand and the
‘Commission of Government’ sent
Maceroni to Spain to back up the official delegation dispatched to obtain an
armistice agreement with Wellington.
Fluent in English, French, Italian and
Spanish, and on friendly terms with
many cavalry officers in the various
army lines, Maceroni beat the delegation and initiated the negotiations,
although he and the other negotiators
failed to dissuade Wellington from
giving his support to the restoration of
Louis XVIII to the throne of France.
Hardly more successfully, Maceroni
obtained the agreement of Metternich,
Wellington and Talleyrand that Murat
should be allowed asylum in England
or Austria; however, with the return of
the Bourbons, Murat was executed
and Maceroni jailed in Paris on the
charge of having unlawfully intervened on his behalf. Maceroni
eventually emerged intact from these
interesting times: Napoleon had
awarded him the Legion of Honour,
and his book Interesting Facts Relating
to the Fall and Death of Joachim
Murat, King of Naples is still in print.
As a supporter of republican causes,
Maceroni (along with General Gregor
MacGregor) then joined Simon Bolivar
in his struggles for Colombian independence. As a Brigadier General in
service of Republic of New Granada
(now Colombia), and chief of the general staff, Maceroni raised money and
shipped over 2000 troops, and supplies,
from Europe to Colombia. The enterprise was fraught with military and
political difficulties, and Maceroni fell
out with MacGregor, whom he held
responsible for the expedition’s disastrous losses at Portobello and Rio de la
Hache. In the end, Bolivar thanked
Maceroni for his help but left unpaid
the debts that he had acquired on behalf
of Colombia.
In addition to his political and diplomatic activities, Maceroni was an
inventor – which only added to his
financial woes. His ‘Squire Maceroni
horseless carriage’, powered by a steam
boiler, ran daily between Paddington
Station and Edgware and Harrow in
north-west London. While his coach
was the most economical of competing
steam carriages, it made little profit and
the whole concept was inevitably
doomed by the burgeoning success of
the railway.
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His other inventions included a propeller-driven steamship, and in 1829,
he devoted a year of his life to work on
a flying machine, presumably also
powered by his steam boiler. He developed a prehensile naval rocket for
igniting sails, and wooden paving
blocks for roads; this gave rise to the
ditty “When London roads are paved
with wood, long live Maceroni, We’ll
go in for something good, saved out of
our coal money.” (Some of these roads
still existed when this writer was a
child in London, and very slippery
they were for cyclists on rainy days.)
Maceroni was opposed to capital
punishment. He supported universal
suffrage and votes for women.
Believing that people would be forced
to fight for the right to vote, he
designed weapons for street combat. In
1831, the year before the Reform Bill,
he published his designs in Defensive
Instructions for the People, Containing
the New and Improved Combination of
Arms, Called Foot Lancers; Miscellaneous Instructions on the Subject of
Small Arms and Ammunition, Street
and House Fighting, and Field
Fortifications. This was not received
well by Tory England.
His financial problems
increased. In 1841 he was incarcerated for debt in Horsehanger
Lane Prison. His creditors must
have worked hard to find him:
Prints of Maceroni and his
steam carriage which
informed Hergé’s ‘chromos’
(inside front cover).
he is known to have had at least 25
London addresses and there were probably more. Sometimes he assumed the
name of Mr. Moore. One correspondent
to Notes and Queries even suggested
that he did not exist all – that
‘Maceroni’ was a fictitious name.
But the elusive colonel had another
reason for lying low. Recently, some of
his descendants were startled to discover that Maceroni had two families.
He was the father of two daughters by
Elizabeth Ann Williams-Wynne, whom
he married in 1821 on a ship off the
coast of Spain, and four more by
Bethena Charlotte Williams-Wynne,
Elizabeth Ann’s younger sister – while
Elizabeth Ann was very much alive
and certainly not divorced. The
Dictionary of National Biography
claims that “his wife’s identity is
unknown”. It is one thing for the identity of one’s wife to be unknown,
but quite another for two of them
to be recorded for posterity.
As a family man, Maceroni
may have been wanting in some
respects, but despite his frequently straitened
circumstances, his six
daughters were all well
educated, and all married
well. He has certainly succeeded in
uniting his descendants in their curiosity about him.
Like his gravestone, Maceroni’s
exploits recently reappeared on the
public stage. In November 2005, the
sale in a London auction of Napoleon’s
tooth (for nearly £13,000) received
wide publicity. Accompanying the
tooth was an inscription declaring that
it had been pulled by Dr. James
O’Meara, Napoleon’s physician on St.
Helena, and given by him to General
Maceroni. Dr. Patrick Ashe, who purchased the tooth, writes: “Particularly
intriguing is the plot by O’Meara,
Maceroni and others to arrange the
escape of Napoleon from St. Helena.”
Arranging Napoleon’s second flight
from exile would have been just
Maceroni’s cup of tea. For good or ill,
Napoleon (poisoned or otherwise) died
in 1821, before Maceroni and his
friends could spring him.
Maceroni himself died in at the age
of 58 in Shepherds Bush, west London,
not far from Kensal Green Cemetery,
where he was buried in a common
grave. In 1905, over half a century after
his death, some mysterious and as-yet
unidentified person paid to have his
grave marked by a ledger – the monument that, so appropriately, then went
undercover for nearly a century.
ANDREW MALLESON
Dr. Andrew Malleson is a psychiatrist in
Toronto, Canada, and Francis Maceroni’s
great-great-grandson through the cadet
line. He welcomes correspondence from
anyone interested in Maceroni and his
family ([email protected]).
One of Kensal Green’s edgier modern
celebrities, front man for the influential punk band The Clash, is the
subject of a documentary now on
general release. Joe Strummer: The
Future Is Unwritten is directed by
rock chronicler Julian Temple.
Guardian film critic Steve Rose says
that: “Depending on who you listen
to, Joe Strummer was either punk's
most articulate ambassador or an
ambitious chancer riding on the coattails of a movement he had little to
do with. And it's a tribute to this
documentary that you come away
agreeing with both sides.” Strummer
(born John Mellors, 1952) died of a
heart attack in December 2002, while
working on a compilation album,
just before The Clash were inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Enthusiastic Friends keep a watching
brief on eBay for items connected
with Kensal Green, but serious
money will be changing hands at
Sotheby’s ‘English Literature &
History’ sale at Bond Street on July
12th. Lots include first editions and
illustrated books by Kensal Green
notables including The Rev. R.H.
Barham (Ingoldsby Legends), Wilkie
Collins (No Name) and Sir John
Tenniel – and a letter in which the
future William IV thought of marrying heiress Catherine Tylney-Long
(who, to her cost, did wed KG ne’erdo-well William Pole Wellesley, 4th
Earl of Mornington).
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