ABSTRACT
T Hough his support proved decisive, Samuel Morley was not in fact the first to come to Emma Cons's aid in the crisis of 1883–4. Another of her anonymous female friends (her lifelong friend Ethel Everest, daughter of George Everest, after whom the mountain was named) had already promised £1,000 towards the purchase of the lease. It was this which, reported to Morley by Emma Cons, encouraged him to add his own conditional offer. With £2,000 now promised towards the objective, a subscription list was opened, and within a short time the required total of £4,000 was raised. Among the contributors were no less than nine members of the Martineau family. The lease, with about fourteen years still to run, was then taken over from the Coffee Music Halls Company, so saving about £700 a year in rent.
