In other words she cannot assist with her husband's debts by him or allowing anyone else to take a charge on her future income. Sadly, all this care was to come to naught. Harriet's husband, Henry Powell Bartley, was one of the trustees of the estate and he seems to have made off with the half of the estate passed to Caroline and then Harriet. Certainly when Harriet died there was nothing of that half left to pass to Martha Rudd. It is possible that Henry Bartley, who had debts and left Harriet for another woman shortly before his death in 1897, took full advantage of the clause which said he 'shall be entitled to charge and shall be paid for all business done by him as a solicitor'.
Fees do mount up.
But it is more likely that he found a way to steal it directly. Wilkie's son died suddenly in 1913, before his mother and so before he could inherit his share directly. His two daughters never married, perhaps too ashamed of or tainted by their illegitimacy to do so. They lived with their mother and then, after her death in 1919, together, retaining the name of Dawson to their death. They died in their eighties, within months of each other, in 1955.