1901

Residence of Abdullah Quilliam's Second Family

Posted in:

Building

Author:

YBirt

This entry includes information about the personal life of Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932) and in particular about the two families in maintained in separate households in Liverpool. The focus here is upon his second household.

The family residence of Mary Ann Lyon Quilliam (1864-1952), who had five children by Abdullah Quilliam: Ethel Mary "Miriam" (1885-1970), Lilian Ayesha (1887-1935), Mohamed Henry (b.1888), Florence Zuleikha (b.1890) and May Habeebah (1897-1908) - this is the third house that they lived in. Mary had met Quilliam while working as a singer at the Liverpool Theatre. She is listed in the 1901 Census as living here with her five children, with Quilliam styling himself as "Henry M. Quilliam, journalist and author". This residence was a five-minute walk to Quilliam's other family household in Fairfield Crescent, where his lawful wife, Hannah, lived with his four children by her. According to one contemporary account, written by the Ottoman journalist Yusuf Samih Asmay, Hannah and Mary could not stand the sight of each other, but nevertheless they would on occasion come together to support Quilliam's work, for instance at the reception for the Crown Prince of Afghanistan, Nasrullah Khan, who visited the mosque in June 1895. A backdated Islamic marriage between Quilliam and Mary was declared to the Ottoman authorities in May 1900, but Mary may never have formally converted to Islam, and it seems that none of her children remained professing Muslims in later life. Officially married to Quilliam in Preston in 1909 after Hannah's death, Mary never lived with Quilliam as a legally married spouse, as he had left her for Edith Miriam Spray, a convert, living under the false identities of Henri Marcel Leon and Edith de Leon. Both Mary and Edith attended Quilliam's funeral in 1932. Mary moved into Quilliam's ancestral family home in 1909 after Hannah's death, where she lived until her death in 1952.

Collections this record belongs to

Abdullah Quilliam's Liverpool

Sources and Attribution

Yusuf Samih Asmay, Islam in Victorian Liverpool: An Ottoman Account of Britain's First Mosque Community, eds. Yahya Birt, Riordan Macnamara and Munire Zeynab Maksudoglu (Swansea: Claritas Books, 2021), pp.158-9.

Newspapers.com (subscription only)

Ancestry.co.uk (subscription only)

Licensing

CC Attribution 4.0 International

Spotted an issue Report this record