THE public life of John May has often been featured in the pages of the Gazette.
He owned the biggest brewery for miles around, was six times the Mayor of Basingstoke, and led the Basingstoke Company of the Volunteer Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment.
He is probably best remembered as a prodigious benefactor whose gifts to the town included the Bounty Cricket Ground, the Recreation Ground Bandstand, the May Wing of the Cottage Hospital, the Drill Hall that stood at the top of Sarum Hill and the bells of All Saints Church.
Due to his generosity, many people have regarded him as a kind of secular saint.
However, his private life, which he kept secret from the people of Basingstoke, is far more intriguing.
In December 1864 Ann Sherwin, a farmer’s daughter from Petworth in Sussex, sued him for breach of promise in the Queen’s Bench.
John first met her at a ball in 1861 and their courtship began the following year. During the course of their courtship, he proposed marriage to her and obtained her father’s consent.
When the case of Sherwin v. May came to court it was expected to last at least a couple of days.
However, when it was proposed to read to the jury John’s love letters to Ann, he admitted breaking his promise to marry her.
All that was then left to decide was the amount of the damages he should pay her.
Taking into account his wealth and his position in society as a town councillor, an officer in the militia and one of Basingstoke’s largest employers, it was agreed that Ann had suffered a substantial loss of expectation.
Damages were set at £1,850 (£182,000 at 2022 prices).
About the only published references to John’s private life are that he lived at Hawkfield in Basingstoke and remained a bachelor.
However, he was never in Basingstoke on the nights of the five censuses from 1871 to 1911.
This was because he was staying outside the town on those nights with his secret mistress whom he described in the censuses as “Julia May, Wife”.
John’s mistress is a fascinating character with a colourful past as a jailbird and a prostitute.
She was born in Gosport, the daughter of Richard Nobes, a shoemaker, and his wife, Victoria.
In 1860, when she was nineteen, Julia was convicted at the Portsmouth Quarter Sessions of stealing a gold ring, a small seal with an anchor engraved on it, a gold pistol tooth pick, a gold pin with a stone, a silver horse shoe pin, a silver arrow, a gold turquoise ring, a gold brooch, a pair of scissors, a pair of shell combs, a velvet bag, a quantity of silver fringe, a black silk apron, a silk handkerchief, a pair of ladies wool gauntlets, a pair of cotton gloves, eight pieces of wool-work, several reels of cotton and a card of buttons from the family where she was employed as a housemaid.
She was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
In 1862, Julia and her sister Emily, “two respectably attired young girls”, appeared at Southampton Police Court charged with stealing £1 3s.
Policeman Davidge told the court that the two prisoners were living in Southampton “in a state of prostitution”. As the prosecutor did not appear, Julia and Emily were discharged.
It is not known how Julia and John met. But if she had been working as a prostitute in Southampton, it raises the question as to whether she met John in her professional capacity.
According to Frederick Ray, in his book, The Mays of Basingstoke, when John was in the militia in the 1860s he used to take his horses and traps down to the camp at Winchester where “he was in the habit of taking long drives, frequently going as far as Southampton”.
From the 1911 census it appears that he had installed Julia with two servants at 16 Nightingale Road, Southsea, a substantial town house with 13 rooms.
He stated in the census that he had been married to Julia for 45 years. This would have meant that they had been living as husband and wife since 1865 or 1866, shortly after he jilted Ann.
John did not leave anything to Julia in his will, but it appears that he had already made sufficient provision for her.
After he died in 1920 Julia continued to live at 16 Nightingale Road until her death in October 1922. Her estate was valued at £2,969.
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