Lady Landlords of Prince Edward Island: Imperial Dreams and the Defence of Property (review)

In the 1760s, most of Prince Edward Island's 1.4 million acres was granted in 20,000-acre lots to about 100 proprietors. None of those proprietors was female. Yet, of the remaining 57 estates, comprising roughly 300,000 acres, expropriated under the 1875 Land Purchase Act, women owned at least 24. In this volume, Rusty Bittermann and Margaret McCallum examine four "lady landlords," representing two generations of women who inherited estates on Prince Edward Island between 1785 and 1866. Sisters Anne and Jane Saunders inherited their estates from their father and great-uncle, who were among the original proprietors. Anne predeceased her husband, Robert Dundas, Lord Melville, and her estate eventually reverted to her eldest male heir. Jane, having survived her husband, John Fane, Lord Westmorland, regained control of one of her Prince Edward Island lots and bequeathed it to her daughter, Georgiana Fane. Fane gained control of the second lot upon the death of her younger brother. Charlotte Sulivan inherited her four lots from her father, a third-generation Island landlord. All four women were absentee landlords, although three of the four visited Prince Edward Island for extended periods.

Precisely how did these four women fit into the broader context? The Saunders sisters, representing the first generation of "lady landlords," were minors when their father died. They came into their inheritance upon marriage, at the turn of the nineteenth century, a time when calls for escheat were becoming common in response to Island proprietors' failure both to pay arrears in quit rents and to meet the settlement terms of their grants. As married women, their roles in estate management depended very much on the nature of the marital relationship. Lord and Lady Melville managed their properties in common, while Lord Westmorland took control of the management of the marital property. Like other absentee landlords, the Melvilles and Westmorlands hired often unreliable land agents to manage their Island properties. In 1839–1840, Lady Westmorland, long separated from her husband, spent a year's sojourn on the Island, coinciding with the period when Escheators held a majority in the House of Assembly. Based on her observations, she formulated an independent analysis of the issues underlying the ongoing problems in landlord-tenant relations and submitted a report to the Colonial Office.

The second generation of "lady landlords," Georgiana Fane and Charlotte Sulivan, were single women who acquired their estates during a period when "land policy would come to be determined by the men who controlled the Island legislature rather than the men of the Colonial Office in London" (p. 140). The imperial government granted the Island responsible government in 1851, and, in 1854, the Island government began to buy land from proprietors. None of those selling were women. Why was it that women landlords did not sell? The authors suggest that women landlords, excluded from the halls of political power, may not have fully understood the changing climate of opinion. Yet both Georgiana Fane, who inherited her mother's property in 1857, and Charlotte Sulivan, who came into her inheritance in 1866, travelled to Prince Edward Island and met their tenants. Moreover, they fully understood that, as landlords, their best hope was to appeal to the imperial government (p. 13). This is precisely what both women did. Both were prominent among the landlords who defended themselves against tenant challenges during the period prior to the 1875 Land Purchase Act. Both repeatedly rejected offers of purchase and continued to fight even after the passage of the legislation compelling landlords to sell. After Georgiana Fane's death in 1875, Sulivan became the major British player in the landlord opposition to the Act. When the Island government appealed a ruling of the Island courts invalidating the sale orders made under the legislation to the Supreme Court of Canada, "Charlotte Sulivan alone defended landlord interests there — and lost.… The Supreme Court decision … marked the...