The unknown Manchester lady who funded a Hogwarts-style library

Often compared to Hogwarts school in the Harry Potter novels, the John Rylands Library frequently elicits a whisper of “wow” when visitors step in from the bustle of Manchester city centre.

The shrine to knowledge, which cost the equivalent of about £100 million in today’s money at its 1900 opening, holds archives including ancients fragments of scriptures and the notes of computing pioneer Alan Turing.

It is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year but little is known about its Cuban-born founder who, on her death, left an estate worth a staggering £376 million.

Born Enriqueta Augustina Tennant in 1843, she was the daughter of a French-American woman and a merchant from northern England.

Dr Elizabeth Gow, who is a manuscript curator at John Rylands Library, says: “In Cuba, she was part of the privileged class of white plantation owners – the family did own enslaved people.”

Following her father’s death in a rail accident, Enriqueta moved to New York where her mother Camila married the exiled Polish musician Julian Fontana, better known for his work with the composer Frederic Chopin.

The family later lived in Paris, until Camila’s death in 1855.

Enriqueta was then sent with her younger siblings to live with her father’s family in England.

Dr Gow says her Cuban-born identity was seen as “less prestigious” and “viewed as being tainted and not quite British, even though her father was British”.

“It’s unclear whether she inherited anything or much. Her uncle and, for a while, her stepfather both received money from the estate for caring for the children and giving them an education.”

Despite growing up among affluence, it seems that Enriqueta did not possess much wealth and she later became a companion and aide to Martha, the second wife of the Lancashire textile manufacturer John Rylands – dubbed “Manchester’s first multi-millionaire”.

Dr Gow, who is writing a biography of Enriqueta, describes him as a “Lancashire man through and through” whose father’s firm Rylands & Sons grew from a small setup into one of the most successful in Britain.

Known for working up to 19 hours a day, John Rylands was also rated for his business acumen.

“I think he’s actually Britain’s first self-made multimillionaire, because in Britain at the time most of the people with huge amounts of wealth were aristocrats,” Dr Gow says.

“In Victorian terms, he’d made himself rich off his own work. Obviously we know that a lot of people laboured to produce that wealth both in Britain but also in America and India, growing cotton.

“By the 1890s, when Enriqueta Rylands had inherited his share in the company, slavery had been abolished, but there were still exploitative working practices which underpinned the huge wealth that went into building the library.”

Yet John Rylands, who had a strong Christian faith, supported the abolition of slavery and sold cotton by people who were not enslaved in a movement similar to the current fair trade trend.

He was known to have built model mills in Wigan and donated to the needy across Manchester and in Rome, to the extent that he was granted an award by Italian royalty.

Following the death of his wife Martha, the 75-year-old married Enriqueta, then aged 32.

“She wasn’t considered a young wife, so if she’d intended to marry and have children, she was older than you’d expect.”

Rylands’ seven children from his first marriage died during his lifetime and along with Enriqueta, he adopted a son and daughter.

The couple supported educational projects locally and, a year after his death at their Longford Hall home in Stretford, Enriqueta commissioned the library in Deansgate.

She inherited most of her husband’s wealth – estimated at £291 million in current money – and invested a significant part in the collections and 10-year construction of the library, which opened on New Year’s Day 1900.

There are no records of Enriqueta’s diaries, making it “difficult to get a sense of her as a person”, says Dr Gow.

“What we know first-hand is what she was like when she was founding the library, when she was in her 40s and 50s.

“I think especially to do that as a woman in the 1890s, you get the impression a lot of people didn’t take her seriously and she got frustrated with that sometimes.

“She usually moderated what she said but, at the same time, found ways to generally get her own way, mostly by being the one with the money.”

About 27,000 people visited the library in its first year and Dr Gow says “some commentators in London couldn’t comprehend why rare books and manuscripts were going to Manchester” when Enriqueta bought collections.

“But I think the Manchester press was quite unified in explaining that it was a cultured city and this cultural philanthropy would benefit the city, and shouldn’t just be hived off to London.”

The archive now includes Babylonian tablets that date from 3,000 years ago, fragments of early Biblical scrolls and Chinese printing.

Among the library’s staff was the Iraqi-born historian Alphonse Mingana, who posthumously achieved fame after it was recently revealed he acquired one of the earliest surviving fragments of the Quran, which is kept in Birmingham.

Dr Gow believes the Rylands archive has a “never-ending supply of amazing things”, adding: “One of the things which we’re going to show regularly is a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, which is the first substantial book printed with movable type in Europe.”

She says she “can’t name just one” highlight of the collection but says one of her favourite items is a “beautifully illuminated Turkish manuscript with the love story of Layla and Majnoon from the 15th Century”.

More than a century after its launch, the library continues to wow 350,000 visitors every year.