Search Results for 'Robert Percy Ffrench'

Although rarely heard of today, ‘ breach of promise’ cases in the 19th century were quite common. A successful prosecution was a source of saving face, and social embarrassment; and could be of considerable monetary value if you were from the upper classes. All sorts of intimate details were revealed as the case dragged on, which provided delicious gossip for newspapers and their readers.*

The busy city of Harbin is the 10th largest city in China, and regularly features on our TV screens for its famous winter ice sculptures. In the 1920s, Harbin, practically on the borders of Russia, was a refuge for thousands of émigrés, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution and the blood bath that followed. The Russians, many of them wealthy, brought style and glamour to this once far flung post on the Trans-Siberian railway. Among those seeking refuge was a 74-years- old Galway/Russian woman Kathleen ffrench, who was not only the chatelaine of Monivea Castle and its 10,000 acre estate in Co Galway, but who also had inherited vast estates on the Volga from her Russian grandparents.