Life Story
Amanda Rebecca Minns — known through most of her adult life as Maude Amanda — was born in 1867, the daughter of George Minns, an agricultural labourer, and Jemima Miranda Dunnett, in the village of Morley St Peter, Norfolk. The transformation from agricultural poverty to accomplished governess teaching English, music and art was almost impossible for a woman of her class. Young ladies learned piano and watercolours; farm labourers' daughters went into service. How Amanda Rebecca bridged that chasm is yet another of the mysteries of her life.
Her life divides naturally into four parts: the mystery of her early years, her career as a teacher and governess, her marriage to William Smith, and finally her marriage to Rowland Hill. Her first marriage brought initial prosperity, then bankruptcy. With William's death in 1903, she was left with three young children and just £84 on a Shropshire farm.
The circumstances of her meeting and then marrying Dr Rowland Hill remain unclear, but their marriage in 1906 brought the stability that had eluded her before. She had two more children with Rowland and lived a settled life as a GP's wife in Blakeney in the Forest of Dean until her death in 1929.
The connection with her elder sister Miranda Sophia is the stuff of a dark novel of intrigue — but what it reveals to those living now is how important family was in an age before any Welfare State existed to catch those who fell.