27. Kidnapping a Bride
Standing in the way of Edward Wakefield’s plans to marry Ellen Turner was the fact that she was fifteen, and there was zero chance of her father consenting to the marriage. Undaunted, Wakefield hatched a plot with his brother to elope with Ellen. He figured her parents would eventually relent and respond as his first wife’s parents had. Departing from the modus operandi preceding his first marriage, Wakefield did not try to seduce Ellen and get her to fall in love with him. Instead, he sent a carriage to the girl’s boarding school in Liverpool, with a message to the headmistress stating that Ellen’s mother was dying, and wished to see her daughter immediately.
Ellen was taken to a hotel in Manchester, where Wakefield told her that her father’s business empire had collapsed, and that Mr. Turner was now a fugitive, on the run from his creditors. He then convinced Ellen that his banker uncle had agreed to release some funds that would save her father, but only on condition that she wed Wakefield, and that her fugitive father had consented to the marriage.
