Frances Mary Richardson Currer collections of Richard Heber which were larger than Currer's. Heber and Currer had a close relationship and Heber was bailed out by Currer when he had financial difficulties. It has been speculated that Currer was a benefactor of the Brontë sisters and this is the reason that Charlotte Brontë chose the nom de plume of "Currer Bell" for her novel "Jane Eyre". It is thought that she gave the Brontë sisters' father £50 to assist them when he became a widower. Currer did donate money to the Clergy Daughter's School that the Brontë sisters attended as well as funding the
Bronte, Sicily from the restrictive conditions imposed by noble landowners. This hope had been reinforced by Garibaldi's decree of 2 June 1860 that land would be re-distributed. The southerners revolted in several localities, and at Bronte on August 4, 1860, Garibaldi's friend and general Girolamo ("Nino") Bixio bloodily repressed one of these uprisings with two battalions of Redshirts, massacring more than a dozen, peasants and nobles alike, and putting the torch to the town theater and municipal archives. Bixio ordered a kangaroo court and had five Bronteans summarily shot, all of which earned him the sobriquet "the Butcher of Bronte". Bronte, Sicily