9 December 1816: Harriet Westbrook Shelley dies

Over the years, there have been various suggestions of foul play in Harriet Shelley’s death, but no evidence has been found to prove anything other than a sad and tragic suicide. [1]

Sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelly to Scotland where they married on 28 August 1811. Within just 5 years she was dead.

Surviving on borrowed money, Shelley and Harriet stayed in Edinburgh for a month before moving to England in pursuit of Percy’s various literary and political projects. The couple’s daughter, Eliza Ianthe (known always by her middle name) was born on 23 June 1813 and the Shelleys had to keep moving frequently across London, Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Berkshire to escape creditors. By the end of that same year, Shelley was gone from home for long periods, and the marriage was in trouble.

In March 1814, Shelley remarried Harriet in London to settle any doubts about the legality of their Edinburgh wedding and secure the rights of their child, but the Shelleys continued to live apart. Shelley reflected bitterly, “my rash and heartless union with Harriet”.

Harriet returned to live with her father and by the time her son, Charles was born in November, Percy Shelley had eloped a second time with another teenage girl, Mary Godwin, and the two were far away on the Continent.

Harriet and her children remained at her father’s house for the next two years until September 1816 when she left, leaving her children behind, to take up lodgings nearby, in Knightsbridge under the false name Harriet Smith. She had again become pregnant, but the identity of the father has never been established.

Harriet Shelley was last seen alive on 9 November 1816. She wrote a despondent farewell letter addressed to her father, her sister, and her husband, and walked the short distance from her lodgings to Hyde Park and drowned herself in the Serpentine River. She was just twenty-one years old.

A death notice appeared in The London Times on 12 December 1816 which read: “On Tuesday a respectable female, far advanced in pregnancy, was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal catastrophe, her husband being abroad”.

Over the years, there have been various suggestions of foul play in Harriet’s death, but no evidence has been found to prove anything other than a sad and tragic suicide.

In 1817 Harriet’s family commenced legal proceedings to obtain custody of the children and Shelley was no longer allowed to see them.