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Hannah Courtoy (1784–1849), born Hannah Peters, was a London society woman who inherited a fortune from the merchant John Courtoy, whom she never married, but with whom she had three daughters.[1]
Little is known of Hannah’s life, but she was probably acquainted with the sculptor and Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi, who is also buried in Brompton Cemetery, only a few metres from Hannah’s mausoleum, which Bonomi may have designed. That idea is lent some credence by the mausoleum’s pyramidal peak and the hieroglyphics inscribed on its walls and on Bonomi’s own headstone.[2] Hannah died in 1849, but her tomb was not completed until 1853, when her remains were transferred into it.[3]
The Victorians were fascinated with the idea of time travel, and some believed that Egyptologists studying ancient Egyptian tombs had rediscovered its secrets.[1][2]
Rumours about the real purpose of the mausoleum began in about 1980, when the key to its door was lost, leading to the emergence of a theory popularised by the writer Howard Webster. According to Webster, Hannah had collaborated with Bonomi and the “controversial inventor” Samuel Alfred Warner to develop a device capable of time travel and teleportation; the mausoleum was simply a disguise to house the machine.[3][4]
