Eliza Emily Donnithorne Eliza Emily Donnithorne Eliza Emily Donnithorne (c.1826 – 1886) was an Australian woman best known as a possible inspiration for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' 1861 novel "Great Expectations". Eliza Donnithorne was born at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and spent her early childhood in Calcutta where her father, James Donnithorne, worked for the East India Company as master of the mint and later as a judge. Her mother was Sarah Elizabeth Donnithorne, nee Bampton. Sarah Donnithorne and the couple's two older daughters died during a cholera epidemic in the 1830s. In 1838, when Eliza
Dickens in America two things that Dickens particularly wanted to see on his trip. Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Niagara Falls. Dickens took his flowery pen to the falls and wrote about them eloquently. Miriam is “lost for words.” Dickens said that he heard many voices in the roar of the falls and that one of the voices was of his deceased sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. Miriam is not at a loss for words when she turns her back to the falls and looks at the town of Niagara. “It’s really ghastly,” she says. Dickens visited the Niagara Falls Museum, which was founded