Eldest child of Manhattan-born Frederick Alvah Miller, possessor of a comfortable trust fund left to him by his late father (a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm), and his wife, Clarissa Margaret (née Boehmer, daughter of a British army officer); elder sister of author Agatha Christie.
Madge was born at 15 Belgrave Terrace, Torquay, which her parents had rented not long after they returned from their European honeymoon; she was baptized at the old parish church of Tor-Mohun on 12 February 1879. She was named partly for her step-grandmother Margaret West Miller, who was also her great-aunt and one of her godmothers, and partly for her paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Frary Miller ("Frary" was the surname of his mother's stepfather). Her other godparents were family friends Charlotte Pirie and H.W.T. Mali junior. She was nicknamed Madge at an early age; her niece Rosalind Christie later christened her "Auntie Punkie".
In September 1879, at age eight months, she went with her mother on the RMS Scythia to New York City, where they rejoined her father, who had gone ahead some weeks previously; Madge's brother Louis Montant ("Monty") was born the following June in Morristown, New Jersey, a popular summer resort for well-to-do New Yorkers. They all returned to England together aboard the Bothnia in September 1880.
Soon after, her parents purchased the long-term leasehold of a villa called Ashfield, Barton Road, Torquay; it was here that Agatha was born in 1890. Madge and Monty were close--she would faithfully support him emotionally and financially until the day he died--and were both much older than Agatha, who loved being teased by her glamorous, clever sister. Madge was educated at a boarding school in Brighton, which became the famed Roedean School; she later attended a finishing school in Paris. In December 1895, she sailed aboard the Campania with her parents and 13 large pieces of baggage, for her social debut in New York City: On Madge's 17th birthday, her proud father escorted her to a ball co-hosted by Mrs John Jacob Astor at the Hotel Waldorf on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; 600 socially prominent people sat down for supper at 1:30 a.m. [New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1896, page 7]. The family returned to England in May 1896 aboard the Majestic--whose captain was Edward J. Smith, later to go down with the Titanic.
By the late 1890s, Frederick Miller's income had declined significantly. To save money, Ashfield was rented out for a year in early 1899. Madge and Agatha accompanied their parents abroad. (Monty remained behind, working at a job in a Devon shipyard.) They lived for six months in the Pyrenees, followed by a week in Paris that August, then went on to Dinard; they spent most of the winter on Guernsey, before returning to Ashfield around March 1900.* Family finances by now were distinctly strained. And then her father died in November 1901. Clara Miller was prostrated; it was Madge who accompanied her to France to recuperate.
On 11 September 1902 at St. Saviour's, the old parish church of Tor-Mohun, Torquay, Madge married James Watts (1878-1957), who was the eldest son of a successful manufacturer of the same name, and heir to Abney Hall, Cheadle, Cheshire; their engagement had been announced the previous February. The pair met through their mothers, who had been schoolmates in Cheshire. The groom was an Oxford graduate (B.A., November 1901), where he had been at New College, and subsequently joined his father in the family business; his paternal grandfather, Sir James Watts, had been twice-mayor of Manchester, as well as High Sheriff of Lancashire. A newspaper described the ceremony as "a very pretty, yet quiet, wedding". Among Madge's six bridesmaids were her sister Agatha, sister-in-law Nan Watts, and "Little Ada" Johnston (the adopted daughter of great-uncle-by-marriage Jack Byers Gunning-Moore, husband of great-aunt Ada Maria Caroline West), as well as Norah Hewitt (daughter of Agatha's godfather Archibald Hewitt, the future 6th Viscount Lifford). The two official witnesses were the bride's mother and the groom's brother Humphrey. The marriage would endure for 48 years, ending only with Madge's death.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Italy, then settled at Manor Lodge, in Cheadle, Cheshire, moving to nearby Cheadle Hall in early 1915. They moved to Abney Hall in the summer of 1926 after the death of James's father. Madge and James had only one child, James "Jack" Watts (1903-1961; MP for Manchester Moss Side 1959-1961), who never married, although he was once engaged to Lady Rosemary Wilma Bootle-Wilbraham, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lathom. In his will, Jack gave his mother's opals and other family treasures to his cousin Rosalind. Madge had cared for Rosalind when the child's parents went on a ten-month, around-the-world tour in 1922; and in 1943 Rosalind had chosen to give birth to what would be her only child in a Cheshire nursing home close to Abney Hall.
Madge was considered the cleverest of the Miller children. Agatha stated, "Madge was a splendid storyteller." As a girl, she wrote short stories that were published in the British Vanity Fair magazine; in the 1920s, she wrote a play, The Claimant (inspired by the Tichborne case), which had a respectable run in London's West End. Occasionally rather eccentric, Madge liked to dress up in costume to startle friends and family; she was a vivid letter-writer. However, she also had a strong practical streak: During WWI, Madge served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) at Cheadle House Hospital, as well as tending a small herd of cows to which she sang Wagner to encourage them during milking. During WWII, with only one servant remaining and army officers billeted in the house, she cleaned all of Abney--a mansion of around 40 rooms--by herself every morning beginning at half-past five, then tended the kitchen and ornamental gardens. But she was always an original. When an unexploded incendiary was discovered one day in the billiard room, the bomb disposal crew ordered her to leave at once with just essential items; the only things Madge took were the officers' personal effects, her own toiletries, and a huge bouquet of wax flowers (an object which she didn't even like), leaving behind her jewels and furs. Jack described his mother as "so funny and so sweet."
She died from heart disease in a Manchester hospital in 1950. Following a memorial service in St. Mary's parish church, Cheadle, she was privately cremated; in November, her remains were interred here, in the grave of her godmother Margaret Miller. Her death notice in The Guardian (26 October 1950, page 8) read, "...peacefully...MARGARET FRARY much-beloved wife of James Watts, of Abney Hall".
The cremated remains of Madge's husband and son were subsequently interred with her in this grave.
_____________________________________
*When writing her autobiography decades later, Agatha Christie was unsure when this trip had taken place, but thought it might have begun when she was 6--that is, in early 1897. Her biographers misread this passage and concluded that the trip began in 1896. But this long sojourn cannot have occurred at any time 1895-1898, because contemporary newspapers and emigration/immigration records clearly indicate the presence of family members at various places in England and the U.S. throughout that period. For instance, on 16 July 1896, when the biographers state the Millers were in France, in actuality Fred, Clara and Madge attended Teignbridge Ladies Day, an annual cricket outing in Devon; similarly, on 25 August 1897--when Agatha suggested the four of them were in France--Fred, Clara, Madge, and Monty, along with Clara's brother Harry Miller Boehmer, were all attending Teignbridge Ladies Day. The trip to the U.S. December 1895-May 1896 is well-documented in contemporary records. Finally, it is known that Frederick Miller applied for a U.S. passport in London in January 1899, intending to visit Egypt with his family; he was refused, because he would not state that he intended to return to the U.S. within two years in order to "take up the duties of citizenship". France, which could be visited without a passport, must have seemed an acceptable substitute. Passports did not become mandatory for many European countries until WWI.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Madge was born at 15 Belgrave Terrace, Torquay, which her parents had rented not long after they returned from their European honeymoon; she was baptized at the old parish church of Tor-Mohun on 12 February 1879. She was named partly for her step-grandmother Margaret West Miller, who was also her great-aunt and one of her godmothers, and partly for her paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Frary Miller ("Frary" was the surname of his mother's stepfather). Her other godparents were family friends Charlotte Pirie and H.W.T. Mali junior. She was nicknamed Madge at an early age; her niece Rosalind Christie later christened her "Auntie Punkie".
In September 1879, at age eight months, she went with her mother on the RMS Scythia to New York City, where they rejoined her father, who had gone ahead some weeks previously; Madge's brother Louis Montant ("Monty") was born the following June in Morristown, New Jersey, a popular summer resort for well-to-do New Yorkers. They all returned to England together aboard the Bothnia in September 1880.
Soon after, her parents purchased the long-term leasehold of a villa called Ashfield, Barton Road, Torquay; it was here that Agatha was born in 1890. Madge and Monty were close--she would faithfully support him emotionally and financially until the day he died--and were both much older than Agatha, who loved being teased by her glamorous, clever sister. Madge was educated at a boarding school in Brighton, which became the famed Roedean School; she later attended a finishing school in Paris. In December 1895, she sailed aboard the Campania with her parents and 13 large pieces of baggage, for her social debut in New York City: On Madge's 17th birthday, her proud father escorted her to a ball co-hosted by Mrs John Jacob Astor at the Hotel Waldorf on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; 600 socially prominent people sat down for supper at 1:30 a.m. [New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1896, page 7]. The family returned to England in May 1896 aboard the Majestic--whose captain was Edward J. Smith, later to go down with the Titanic.
By the late 1890s, Frederick Miller's income had declined significantly. To save money, Ashfield was rented out for a year in early 1899. Madge and Agatha accompanied their parents abroad. (Monty remained behind, working at a job in a Devon shipyard.) They lived for six months in the Pyrenees, followed by a week in Paris that August, then went on to Dinard; they spent most of the winter on Guernsey, before returning to Ashfield around March 1900.* Family finances by now were distinctly strained. And then her father died in November 1901. Clara Miller was prostrated; it was Madge who accompanied her to France to recuperate.
On 11 September 1902 at St. Saviour's, the old parish church of Tor-Mohun, Torquay, Madge married James Watts (1878-1957), who was the eldest son of a successful manufacturer of the same name, and heir to Abney Hall, Cheadle, Cheshire; their engagement had been announced the previous February. The pair met through their mothers, who had been schoolmates in Cheshire. The groom was an Oxford graduate (B.A., November 1901), where he had been at New College, and subsequently joined his father in the family business; his paternal grandfather, Sir James Watts, had been twice-mayor of Manchester, as well as High Sheriff of Lancashire. A newspaper described the ceremony as "a very pretty, yet quiet, wedding". Among Madge's six bridesmaids were her sister Agatha, sister-in-law Nan Watts, and "Little Ada" Johnston (the adopted daughter of great-uncle-by-marriage Jack Byers Gunning-Moore, husband of great-aunt Ada Maria Caroline West), as well as Norah Hewitt (daughter of Agatha's godfather Archibald Hewitt, the future 6th Viscount Lifford). The two official witnesses were the bride's mother and the groom's brother Humphrey. The marriage would endure for 48 years, ending only with Madge's death.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Italy, then settled at Manor Lodge, in Cheadle, Cheshire, moving to nearby Cheadle Hall in early 1915. They moved to Abney Hall in the summer of 1926 after the death of James's father. Madge and James had only one child, James "Jack" Watts (1903-1961; MP for Manchester Moss Side 1959-1961), who never married, although he was once engaged to Lady Rosemary Wilma Bootle-Wilbraham, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lathom. In his will, Jack gave his mother's opals and other family treasures to his cousin Rosalind. Madge had cared for Rosalind when the child's parents went on a ten-month, around-the-world tour in 1922; and in 1943 Rosalind had chosen to give birth to what would be her only child in a Cheshire nursing home close to Abney Hall.
Madge was considered the cleverest of the Miller children. Agatha stated, "Madge was a splendid storyteller." As a girl, she wrote short stories that were published in the British Vanity Fair magazine; in the 1920s, she wrote a play, The Claimant (inspired by the Tichborne case), which had a respectable run in London's West End. Occasionally rather eccentric, Madge liked to dress up in costume to startle friends and family; she was a vivid letter-writer. However, she also had a strong practical streak: During WWI, Madge served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) at Cheadle House Hospital, as well as tending a small herd of cows to which she sang Wagner to encourage them during milking. During WWII, with only one servant remaining and army officers billeted in the house, she cleaned all of Abney--a mansion of around 40 rooms--by herself every morning beginning at half-past five, then tended the kitchen and ornamental gardens. But she was always an original. When an unexploded incendiary was discovered one day in the billiard room, the bomb disposal crew ordered her to leave at once with just essential items; the only things Madge took were the officers' personal effects, her own toiletries, and a huge bouquet of wax flowers (an object which she didn't even like), leaving behind her jewels and furs. Jack described his mother as "so funny and so sweet."
She died from heart disease in a Manchester hospital in 1950. Following a memorial service in St. Mary's parish church, Cheadle, she was privately cremated; in November, her remains were interred here, in the grave of her godmother Margaret Miller. Her death notice in The Guardian (26 October 1950, page 8) read, "...peacefully...MARGARET FRARY much-beloved wife of James Watts, of Abney Hall".
The cremated remains of Madge's husband and son were subsequently interred with her in this grave.
_____________________________________
*When writing her autobiography decades later, Agatha Christie was unsure when this trip had taken place, but thought it might have begun when she was 6--that is, in early 1897. Her biographers misread this passage and concluded that the trip began in 1896. But this long sojourn cannot have occurred at any time 1895-1898, because contemporary newspapers and emigration/immigration records clearly indicate the presence of family members at various places in England and the U.S. throughout that period. For instance, on 16 July 1896, when the biographers state the Millers were in France, in actuality Fred, Clara and Madge attended Teignbridge Ladies Day, an annual cricket outing in Devon; similarly, on 25 August 1897--when Agatha suggested the four of them were in France--Fred, Clara, Madge, and Monty, along with Clara's brother Harry Miller Boehmer, were all attending Teignbridge Ladies Day. The trip to the U.S. December 1895-May 1896 is well-documented in contemporary records. Finally, it is known that Frederick Miller applied for a U.S. passport in London in January 1899, intending to visit Egypt with his family; he was refused, because he would not state that he intended to return to the U.S. within two years in order to "take up the duties of citizenship". France, which could be visited without a passport, must have seemed an acceptable substitute. Passports did not become mandatory for many European countries until WWI.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Eldest child of Manhattan-born Frederick Alvah Miller, possessor of a comfortable trust fund left to him by his late father (a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm), and his wife, Clarissa Margaret (née Boehmer, daughter of a British army officer); elder sister of author Agatha Christie.
Madge was born at 15 Belgrave Terrace, Torquay, which her parents had rented not long after they returned from their European honeymoon; she was baptized at the old parish church of Tor-Mohun on 12 February 1879. She was named partly for her step-grandmother Margaret West Miller, who was also her great-aunt and one of her godmothers, and partly for her paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Frary Miller ("Frary" was the surname of his mother's stepfather). Her other godparents were family friends Charlotte Pirie and H.W.T. Mali junior. She was nicknamed Madge at an early age; her niece Rosalind Christie later christened her "Auntie Punkie".
In September 1879, at age eight months, she went with her mother on the RMS Scythia to New York City, where they rejoined her father, who had gone ahead some weeks previously; Madge's brother Louis Montant ("Monty") was born the following June in Morristown, New Jersey, a popular summer resort for well-to-do New Yorkers. They all returned to England together aboard the Bothnia in September 1880.
Soon after, her parents purchased the long-term leasehold of a villa called Ashfield, Barton Road, Torquay; it was here that Agatha was born in 1890. Madge and Monty were close--she would faithfully support him emotionally and financially until the day he died--and were both much older than Agatha, who loved being teased by her glamorous, clever sister. Madge was educated at a boarding school in Brighton, which became the famed Roedean School; she later attended a finishing school in Paris. In December 1895, she sailed aboard the Campania with her parents and 13 large pieces of baggage, for her social debut in New York City: On Madge's 17th birthday, her proud father escorted her to a ball co-hosted by Mrs John Jacob Astor at the Hotel Waldorf on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; 600 socially prominent people sat down for supper at 1:30 a.m. [New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1896, page 7]. The family returned to England in May 1896 aboard the Majestic--whose captain was Edward J. Smith, later to go down with the Titanic.
By the late 1890s, Frederick Miller's income had declined significantly. To save money, Ashfield was rented out for a year in early 1899. Madge and Agatha accompanied their parents abroad. (Monty remained behind, working at a job in a Devon shipyard.) They lived for six months in the Pyrenees, followed by a week in Paris that August, then went on to Dinard; they spent most of the winter on Guernsey, before returning to Ashfield around March 1900.* Family finances by now were distinctly strained. And then her father died in November 1901. Clara Miller was prostrated; it was Madge who accompanied her to France to recuperate.
On 11 September 1902 at St. Saviour's, the old parish church of Tor-Mohun, Torquay, Madge married James Watts (1878-1957), who was the eldest son of a successful manufacturer of the same name, and heir to Abney Hall, Cheadle, Cheshire; their engagement had been announced the previous February. The pair met through their mothers, who had been schoolmates in Cheshire. The groom was an Oxford graduate (B.A., November 1901), where he had been at New College, and subsequently joined his father in the family business; his paternal grandfather, Sir James Watts, had been twice-mayor of Manchester, as well as High Sheriff of Lancashire. A newspaper described the ceremony as "a very pretty, yet quiet, wedding". Among Madge's six bridesmaids were her sister Agatha, sister-in-law Nan Watts, and "Little Ada" Johnston (the adopted daughter of great-uncle-by-marriage Jack Byers Gunning-Moore, husband of great-aunt Ada Maria Caroline West), as well as Norah Hewitt (daughter of Agatha's godfather Archibald Hewitt, the future 6th Viscount Lifford). The two official witnesses were the bride's mother and the groom's brother Humphrey. The marriage would endure for 48 years, ending only with Madge's death.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Italy, then settled at Manor Lodge, in Cheadle, Cheshire, moving to nearby Cheadle Hall in early 1915. They moved to Abney Hall in the summer of 1926 after the death of James's father. Madge and James had only one child, James "Jack" Watts (1903-1961; MP for Manchester Moss Side 1959-1961), who never married, although he was once engaged to Lady Rosemary Wilma Bootle-Wilbraham, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lathom. In his will, Jack gave his mother's opals and other family treasures to his cousin Rosalind. Madge had cared for Rosalind when the child's parents went on a ten-month, around-the-world tour in 1922; and in 1943 Rosalind had chosen to give birth to what would be her only child in a Cheshire nursing home close to Abney Hall.
Madge was considered the cleverest of the Miller children. Agatha stated, "Madge was a splendid storyteller." As a girl, she wrote short stories that were published in the British Vanity Fair magazine; in the 1920s, she wrote a play, The Claimant (inspired by the Tichborne case), which had a respectable run in London's West End. Occasionally rather eccentric, Madge liked to dress up in costume to startle friends and family; she was a vivid letter-writer. However, she also had a strong practical streak: During WWI, Madge served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) at Cheadle House Hospital, as well as tending a small herd of cows to which she sang Wagner to encourage them during milking. During WWII, with only one servant remaining and army officers billeted in the house, she cleaned all of Abney--a mansion of around 40 rooms--by herself every morning beginning at half-past five, then tended the kitchen and ornamental gardens. But she was always an original. When an unexploded incendiary was discovered one day in the billiard room, the bomb disposal crew ordered her to leave at once with just essential items; the only things Madge took were the officers' personal effects, her own toiletries, and a huge bouquet of wax flowers (an object which she didn't even like), leaving behind her jewels and furs. Jack described his mother as "so funny and so sweet."
She died from heart disease in a Manchester hospital in 1950. Following a memorial service in St. Mary's parish church, Cheadle, she was privately cremated; in November, her remains were interred here, in the grave of her godmother Margaret Miller. Her death notice in The Guardian (26 October 1950, page 8) read, "...peacefully...MARGARET FRARY much-beloved wife of James Watts, of Abney Hall".
The cremated remains of Madge's husband and son were subsequently interred with her in this grave.
_____________________________________
*When writing her autobiography decades later, Agatha Christie was unsure when this trip had taken place, but thought it might have begun when she was 6--that is, in early 1897. Her biographers misread this passage and concluded that the trip began in 1896. But this long sojourn cannot have occurred at any time 1895-1898, because contemporary newspapers and emigration/immigration records clearly indicate the presence of family members at various places in England and the U.S. throughout that period. For instance, on 16 July 1896, when the biographers state the Millers were in France, in actuality Fred, Clara and Madge attended Teignbridge Ladies Day, an annual cricket outing in Devon; similarly, on 25 August 1897--when Agatha suggested the four of them were in France--Fred, Clara, Madge, and Monty, along with Clara's brother Harry Miller Boehmer, were all attending Teignbridge Ladies Day. The trip to the U.S. December 1895-May 1896 is well-documented in contemporary records. Finally, it is known that Frederick Miller applied for a U.S. passport in London in January 1899, intending to visit Egypt with his family; he was refused, because he would not state that he intended to return to the U.S. within two years in order to "take up the duties of citizenship". France, which could be visited without a passport, must have seemed an acceptable substitute. Passports did not become mandatory for many European countries until WWI.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Madge was born at 15 Belgrave Terrace, Torquay, which her parents had rented not long after they returned from their European honeymoon; she was baptized at the old parish church of Tor-Mohun on 12 February 1879. She was named partly for her step-grandmother Margaret West Miller, who was also her great-aunt and one of her godmothers, and partly for her paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Frary Miller ("Frary" was the surname of his mother's stepfather). Her other godparents were family friends Charlotte Pirie and H.W.T. Mali junior. She was nicknamed Madge at an early age; her niece Rosalind Christie later christened her "Auntie Punkie".
In September 1879, at age eight months, she went with her mother on the RMS Scythia to New York City, where they rejoined her father, who had gone ahead some weeks previously; Madge's brother Louis Montant ("Monty") was born the following June in Morristown, New Jersey, a popular summer resort for well-to-do New Yorkers. They all returned to England together aboard the Bothnia in September 1880.
Soon after, her parents purchased the long-term leasehold of a villa called Ashfield, Barton Road, Torquay; it was here that Agatha was born in 1890. Madge and Monty were close--she would faithfully support him emotionally and financially until the day he died--and were both much older than Agatha, who loved being teased by her glamorous, clever sister. Madge was educated at a boarding school in Brighton, which became the famed Roedean School; she later attended a finishing school in Paris. In December 1895, she sailed aboard the Campania with her parents and 13 large pieces of baggage, for her social debut in New York City: On Madge's 17th birthday, her proud father escorted her to a ball co-hosted by Mrs John Jacob Astor at the Hotel Waldorf on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; 600 socially prominent people sat down for supper at 1:30 a.m. [New-York Daily Tribune, 10 January 1896, page 7]. The family returned to England in May 1896 aboard the Majestic--whose captain was Edward J. Smith, later to go down with the Titanic.
By the late 1890s, Frederick Miller's income had declined significantly. To save money, Ashfield was rented out for a year in early 1899. Madge and Agatha accompanied their parents abroad. (Monty remained behind, working at a job in a Devon shipyard.) They lived for six months in the Pyrenees, followed by a week in Paris that August, then went on to Dinard; they spent most of the winter on Guernsey, before returning to Ashfield around March 1900.* Family finances by now were distinctly strained. And then her father died in November 1901. Clara Miller was prostrated; it was Madge who accompanied her to France to recuperate.
On 11 September 1902 at St. Saviour's, the old parish church of Tor-Mohun, Torquay, Madge married James Watts (1878-1957), who was the eldest son of a successful manufacturer of the same name, and heir to Abney Hall, Cheadle, Cheshire; their engagement had been announced the previous February. The pair met through their mothers, who had been schoolmates in Cheshire. The groom was an Oxford graduate (B.A., November 1901), where he had been at New College, and subsequently joined his father in the family business; his paternal grandfather, Sir James Watts, had been twice-mayor of Manchester, as well as High Sheriff of Lancashire. A newspaper described the ceremony as "a very pretty, yet quiet, wedding". Among Madge's six bridesmaids were her sister Agatha, sister-in-law Nan Watts, and "Little Ada" Johnston (the adopted daughter of great-uncle-by-marriage Jack Byers Gunning-Moore, husband of great-aunt Ada Maria Caroline West), as well as Norah Hewitt (daughter of Agatha's godfather Archibald Hewitt, the future 6th Viscount Lifford). The two official witnesses were the bride's mother and the groom's brother Humphrey. The marriage would endure for 48 years, ending only with Madge's death.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Italy, then settled at Manor Lodge, in Cheadle, Cheshire, moving to nearby Cheadle Hall in early 1915. They moved to Abney Hall in the summer of 1926 after the death of James's father. Madge and James had only one child, James "Jack" Watts (1903-1961; MP for Manchester Moss Side 1959-1961), who never married, although he was once engaged to Lady Rosemary Wilma Bootle-Wilbraham, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lathom. In his will, Jack gave his mother's opals and other family treasures to his cousin Rosalind. Madge had cared for Rosalind when the child's parents went on a ten-month, around-the-world tour in 1922; and in 1943 Rosalind had chosen to give birth to what would be her only child in a Cheshire nursing home close to Abney Hall.
Madge was considered the cleverest of the Miller children. Agatha stated, "Madge was a splendid storyteller." As a girl, she wrote short stories that were published in the British Vanity Fair magazine; in the 1920s, she wrote a play, The Claimant (inspired by the Tichborne case), which had a respectable run in London's West End. Occasionally rather eccentric, Madge liked to dress up in costume to startle friends and family; she was a vivid letter-writer. However, she also had a strong practical streak: During WWI, Madge served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) at Cheadle House Hospital, as well as tending a small herd of cows to which she sang Wagner to encourage them during milking. During WWII, with only one servant remaining and army officers billeted in the house, she cleaned all of Abney--a mansion of around 40 rooms--by herself every morning beginning at half-past five, then tended the kitchen and ornamental gardens. But she was always an original. When an unexploded incendiary was discovered one day in the billiard room, the bomb disposal crew ordered her to leave at once with just essential items; the only things Madge took were the officers' personal effects, her own toiletries, and a huge bouquet of wax flowers (an object which she didn't even like), leaving behind her jewels and furs. Jack described his mother as "so funny and so sweet."
She died from heart disease in a Manchester hospital in 1950. Following a memorial service in St. Mary's parish church, Cheadle, she was privately cremated; in November, her remains were interred here, in the grave of her godmother Margaret Miller. Her death notice in The Guardian (26 October 1950, page 8) read, "...peacefully...MARGARET FRARY much-beloved wife of James Watts, of Abney Hall".
The cremated remains of Madge's husband and son were subsequently interred with her in this grave.
_____________________________________
*When writing her autobiography decades later, Agatha Christie was unsure when this trip had taken place, but thought it might have begun when she was 6--that is, in early 1897. Her biographers misread this passage and concluded that the trip began in 1896. But this long sojourn cannot have occurred at any time 1895-1898, because contemporary newspapers and emigration/immigration records clearly indicate the presence of family members at various places in England and the U.S. throughout that period. For instance, on 16 July 1896, when the biographers state the Millers were in France, in actuality Fred, Clara and Madge attended Teignbridge Ladies Day, an annual cricket outing in Devon; similarly, on 25 August 1897--when Agatha suggested the four of them were in France--Fred, Clara, Madge, and Monty, along with Clara's brother Harry Miller Boehmer, were all attending Teignbridge Ladies Day. The trip to the U.S. December 1895-May 1896 is well-documented in contemporary records. Finally, it is known that Frederick Miller applied for a U.S. passport in London in January 1899, intending to visit Egypt with his family; he was refused, because he would not state that he intended to return to the U.S. within two years in order to "take up the duties of citizenship". France, which could be visited without a passport, must have seemed an acceptable substitute. Passports did not become mandatory for many European countries until WWI.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
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