Mary Ewart gave £4200 to the College during her lifetime, and £20,000 in stocks upon her death, and held shares in the Newnham Hall Company (the financial vehicle for building the College). John Gladstone was in business with Mary Ewart’s grandfather William Ewart (1763-1832). Together, they co-mortgaged the Belmont Estate in Demerara. Through his firm Ewart Rutson (later Ewart Myers), William Ewart enabled further investments into enslavement, cosigning for other slavers in places such as Barbados. Mary Ewart’s uncles, John Ewart and Joseph Christopher Ewart, later became partners in Ewart Myers, and claimed compensation for an Antiguan sugar plantation.
Unusually for an unmarried Englishwoman, Mary Ewart controlled a substantial fortune of her own. Further research would clarify the impact of her inheritance from her grandfather.
‘Money given with thought and consideration at the moment when it is needed and for the particular object which at that moment most needs it, and to an enterprise every step of which the giver has watched over, is of the nature of personal help from a friend, and has a peculiar quality which distinguishes it from the most splendid but impersonal public benefactions’ - Blanche Athena Clough, Mary Anne Ewart, Newnham College Letter, 1911