May Rutherford (1876-1954)

Mary Newton was the daughter of ... Mary Newton. To differentiate them, the youngest was more commonly designated by the diminutive "May". This is the first name that I give him throughout my novel, so as to avoid confusion.

Mary Newton (the mother, therefore) was a widow, May's father having been swept away at the age of 35 by his alcoholism. Little May was then only 12 years old.

To secure an income, the mother launched into renting: she lived in Christchurch , the main city of the South Island in New Zealand, and had a house large enough for herself, her two sisters, her children. three sons (William, George and Charles) and his daughter, May. The nearby University of Canterbury also provided a pool of tenants. Among these, a certain day in 1893 landed a man named Ernest Rutherford. It wasn't long before the young man fell in love with his landlady's daughter. When he left Christchurch for Cambridge in the late summer of 1895, the two lovebirds were secretly engaged.

They met again nearly two years later: in the spring of 1897, May Newton had made the trip to England. She had attended her fiance's graduation ceremony in Cambridge, Queen Victoria's jubilee and various dinners, including at Rose and JJ Thomson's .

May and Ernest parted with the idea that their marriage would be only a matter of months.

However, in 1898, Ernest obtained a promotion: he left Cambridge to take a chair of applied physics in Montreal . The work was much more interesting and the salary too. However, after careful calculations, he came to the conclusion that it would not be enough to assure his bride a life worthy of a teacher's wife. He therefore asked her to wait at least another 18 months before he could return to New Zealand to marry her.

It was finally in the spring of 1900 that he was able to fulfill his promise: they were married on June 28 of that year in St. Paul's Church in Papanui, a district north of Christchurch .