Catharine Cappe


Catherine Cappe or Catherine Harrison was a British writer, diarist and philanthropist.

Life

She was born Catharine Harrison in Long Preston in 1744, daughter of the clergyman Jeremiah Harrison, an associate of Francis Blackburne, who was incumbent there, and later at Catterick, and his wife Sarah Winn, daughter of Edmund Winn.
She was educated in York, with time at a boarding school where her studies included French.
Harrison moved away from the Church of England under the influence of the free thinker Theophilus Lindsey, who had taken over her father Jeremiah's ministry at the Church of St Anne, Catterick after he died in 1763. She then went to live in Bedale, some miles from Catterick, with her mother and brother, visiting Lindsey often. She became a rational dissenter. Lindsey in 1773 founded his own Unitarian chapel in London. Catharine found his departure distressing.
With others, Catharine Harrison established in 1784 a School for Spinning Worsted in York, offering an education for girls. She was enthusiastic in reforming education at the Grey Coat School in York, where from 1786 the Ladies's Committee she headed took over management, and wrote about assisting other charity schools. She and Faith Gray founded the York Female Friendly Society and she married in 1788, becoming Catharine Cappe. She was widowed in 1800. She also tried to establish visitors to her local hospital. She had no ambition to vote but she felt that middle class women had a duty to inspect female sections of charities.
Catharine Cappe was the benefactor of Charlotte Richardson, whom she knew from her time at school, and through her brother as the family's doctor. Impressed by Richardson's poetry, she arranged for Poems on Different Occasions to be published in 1806, also promoting the work through The Gentleman's Magazine. Over 600 books were sold by subscription, and a second printing enabled Richardson to open a small school.
Catharine Cappe died in York in 1821.

Works

As an editor, Cappe collected volumes of her husband's discourses after his death, placing forewords in the 1802 and 1805 publications consisting of her memoirs of her husband. Amongst her own works are:
Catharine Harrison married Newcome Cappe, a Unitarian minister, as his second wife, in 1788; he died in 1800. They had no children of their own, but there were six children, including daughters Mary and Agnes, from his first marriage to Sarah Turner.
Sarah Winn, Catharine's mother, was daughter of Edmund Winn of Ackton. According to Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, he was the second son of Sir Edmund Winn, 2nd Baronet. Sir Rowland Winn, 4th Baronet gave Catherine support after her father's death; and she nursed his daughter Anne Winn, who had married George Allanson-Winn, 1st Baron Headley, in her last illness. It took her to London, where she stayed for a time after Anne's death, caring for her small daughter, and finding time to attend Essex Street Chapel.
Through relations on her mother's side, Catharine was also acquainted with another Yorkshire gentry family, that of Sir George Strickland, 5th Baronet.
Her father Jeremiah Harrison was son of Christopher Harrison of Ripon, and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1722, aged 15.