Eliza Emily Donnithorne on the floor, and the window panes were thick with grime. And in the dining room, the wedding feast was uneaten, and the food had mouldered into dust. Donnithorne died in 1886 and was buried at St Stephen's church in Newtown (now Camperdown Cemetery) alongside her father. Her grave remains one of the cemetery's most visited by tourists. When it was vandalised in 2004, the Australian National Trust and the UK Dickens Society contributed to the cost of its restoration. The claim that Eliza Donnithorne inspired the character of Miss Havisham in "Great Expectations" has been part of Australian literary
Miss Havisham Pip rushes back in and saves her. However, she has suffered severe burns to the front of her torso (she is laid on her back), up to the throat. The last words she speaks in the novel are (in a delirium) to Pip, referencing both Estella and a note she, Miss Havisham, has given him with her signature: "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her!'" A surgeon dresses her burns, and says that they are "far from hopeless". However, despite rallying for a time, she dies a few weeks later, leaving Estella as her chief beneficiary,