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Jane, Lady Franklin (née Griffin; 4 December 1791 – 18 July 1875) was a British explorer, seasoned traveller and the second wife of the English explorer Sir John Franklin. During her husband's period as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, she became known for her philanthropic work and her travels throughout south-eastern Australia. After John Franklin's disappearance in search of the Northwest Passage, she sponsored or otherwise supported several expeditions to determine his fate.
Jane had been a friend of John Franklin's first wife, the poet Eleanor Anne Porden, who died early in 1825. In 1828, Franklin and Jane Griffin became engaged. They married on 5 November 1828, and in 1829 he was knighted. During the next three years, she spent lengthy periods apart from her husband while he served in the Mediterranean. In 1836, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), disembarking from the immigrant ship Fairlie on 6 January 1837.
She had much correspondence with Elizabeth Fry about the female convicts, and did what she could to ameliorate their lot. In 1841, the convict ship Rajah arrived loaded with convict women who had been supplied with sewing materials organised by Lydia Irving of Fry's convict ship committee.Amanda Phillips, 'Irving, Lydia (1797–1893)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 20 June 2017 The Rajah Quilt is now one of the most treasured textiles in Australia. She was accused of using undue influence with her husband in his official acts but there is no evidence of this. When Franklin was recalled at the end of 1843, they went first to Melbourne by the schooner Flying Fish and then to England by way of New Zealand on board, coincidentally, the barque Rajah.
In 1842, she commissioned a classical temple, and named it Ancanthe, Ancient Greek for "blooming valley". She intended the building to serve as a museum for Hobart, and left in trust to ensure the continuance of what she hoped would become the focus of the colony's cultural aspirations. A century of apathy followed, with the museum used as an apple shed among other functions; but in 1949 it was made the home of The Art Society of Tasmania, who rescued the building. It is now known as the Lady Franklin Gallery.
In 1841, Lady Jane decided to try and "civilise" a second child from Wybalenna. A six-year-old girl named Mary (original name Mathinna) was sent to live at Government House at Hobart with the Franklins although she was not an orphan. Again, it was Lady Franklin's step-daughter who was placed in charge of her care. Lady Jane compared Mathinna more favourably in comparison to Timemendic, with Mathinna being described as more intelligent and sweet, while Timemendic was "much blacker in complexion than Mathinna who appears to us to be daily growing more copper-coloured as she advances in civilization".
In 1842, Lady Jane commissioned the artist Thomas Bock to paint Mathinna's portrait in which she is portrayed famously in a scarlet dress. Lady Jane sent the portrait to her sister in England with a letter describing Mathinna as "one of the remnant people about to disappear from the face of the earth", who has "the unconquerable nature of the savage". '
In June 1843a request came from Mithinna´s step-father Palle through Robert Clark, a teacher at Flinder´s island, that the Franklin´s return his step-daughter. Sir John refused and admonished Clark to not meddle in the affairs of others.However a month later in August 1843, the couple left Mathinna at Queen's Orphan School in Hobart.
This meant that Lady Franklin and Sir John had to leave their home quite hastily and sell many of their possessions and return to England. They would arrive in Britain the following year, and the Franklins set about to restore their tarnished reputation.
This was done by Lady Franklin authoring a book under the name of her husband defending his actions titled " Narrative of Some Passages in the History of Van Diemen´s Land"as well as financially supporting authors such as the explorer Paweł Strzelecki´s Physical Description of New South Wales. Accompanied by a Geological Map, Sections and Diagrams, and Figures of the Organic Remains (1845) that were highly favourable of Sir John and Lady Franklin.
Shortly after their arrival Sir John had applied to being in charge of leading a polar expedition in search of the Northwest passage.
Lady Franklin sponsored seven expeditions to find her husband or his records (two of the expeditions failed to reach the Arctic):
The popularity of the Franklins in the Australian colonies was such that when it was learned in 1852 that Lady Franklin was organising an expedition in search of her husband using the auxiliary steamship Isabel, subscriptions were taken up, and those in Van Diemen's Land alone totalled £1671/13/4.
Although McClintock had found conclusive evidence that Sir John Franklin and his fellow expeditioners were dead, Lady Franklin remained convinced that their written records might remain buried in a cache in the Arctic. She provided moral and some financial support for multiple later expeditions that planned to seek the records, including those of William Parker SnowTrevelyan, Raleigh, A Pre-Raphaelite Circle, Chatto and Windus, 1978, and Charles Francis HallChauncey C. Loomis, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1971. in the 1860s.
Finally, in 1874, she joined forces with Allen Young to purchase and fit out the former steam gunboat HMS Pandora to undertake another expedition to the region around Prince of Wales Island. The expedition left London in June 1875 and returned in December, unsuccessful, as ice prevented her from passing west of the Franklin Strait.
Lady Franklin died in the interim, on 18 July 1875. At her funeral on 29 July, the pall-bearers included Captains McClintock, Collinson and Erasmus Ommanney, R.N., while many other "Old Arctics" engaged in the Franklin searches were also in attendance. She was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery in the vault and commemorated on a marble cross dedicated to her niece Sophia Cracroft.
Natural features named after her include Lady Franklin Bay, on Ellesmere Island and Lady Franklin Point, on Victoria Island, both in Nunavut; Lady Franklin Rock, an island in the Fraser River near Yale, British Columbia, named at the end of her visit there during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush; Lady Franklin Rock, near Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park in California; and Mount Lady Jane Franklin, a hill near Barnawartha in Northern Victoria, which she climbed on her trip from Port Phillip to Sydney in 1839. Beside Victoria's Mount Franklin is a scoria mound known as Lady Franklin.
Jane Franklin Hall, a residential college in Hobart, Tasmania, is named in her honour, as is the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley, Tasmania. The ballad "Lady Franklin's Lament" commemorated her search for her lost husband. The sailing vessel; Jane Franklin, an Amel Super Maramu ketch, also bears her name. Lady Jane Franklin Drive in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, Sir John's birthplace, is named after her.
The barque Lady Franklin was named after her.
Most of Lady Franklin's surviving papers are held by the Scott Polar Research Institute.
She was depicted in the stage play Jane, My Love.
Jane Franklin appears as a character in the 2018 television series The Terror, where she is portrayed by Greta Scacchi.
The Frozen Passage DLC in the video game Anno 1800 is based on Lady Franklin's story. In the game, Lady Jane Faithful requests the player's help to save her husband, Sir John Faithful, from a lost arctic expedition.
Lady Jane Franklin is also a pivotal figure in three novels, Wanting by Richard Flanagan (2008), The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister (2020), and The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline (2020).
The biography The Ambitions of Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer by Tasmanian historian Alison Alexander won the 2014 National Biography Award. "Rivers run deep for lady of letters", The Australian, 5 August 2014, page 4
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