In her latter years, following a fifteen-year legal dispute in the Court of Chancery over the execution of her father's and brother's wills, she returned from London to Carlisle in possession of the family fortune.

Thereafter, while living like a pauper in the family townhouse on Carlisle's market square, Jackson accrued a box of gold in rent from her properties.

Since her death in 1812, Jackson has been remembered in books, verse, a musical, and Tullie House Museum displays, for her eccentric behaviour, and for the size of her fortune, most of which she left to Bowman.

Jackson was caricatured as a miser in the traditional manner until the publication in 1991 of a book by Helen R. Hallaway, which reassesses her position as an independent woman in the society of her era.

Her maternal grandmother was an Aglionby of Anglo-Norman descent, with aristocratic relatives and family arms displayed in St Cuthbert's Church, Carlisle.

[1]: 6, 7 [2][3] As a moneylender and landlord,[1] Jackson owned "considerable estates and personal property",[2] and "kept himself well informed on the law" for fear of untrustworthy lawyers.

[1] She was educated on their instructions in the manner of the moneyed merchant class of that era,[2]: 8, 11  being taught to read and write, but not expected to assist in the drapery business.

[1]: 13  In the interests of catching a husband, she had a dancing master, and personal luxuries such as, "powder and pins", "hoop pettycoate", "dormees and double ruffles", "a pair of scarlet stockings", "a fan and ribbin", etc.

[2]: 8, 11  According to Hallaway (1991), Elizabeth James' strictness "evoked in Margery only vehement hostility and ascerbity of temper", which denied her the chance of a husband, and affected her later character.

[4] During the Jacobite rising of 1745, William and his wife left the town, so Jackson made a profit from the soldiers as lodgers in the family house.

[nb 1][6] Joseph Jackson left his estates to his eldest son William, £1,000 (equivalent to £216,800 in 2023) each to his remaining three children, and his personal property to his wife Isabella.

[1]: 69 To forward the Chancery case, Jackson versus Richardson and Hodgson (1776), against her brother's executor Richardson and the legatee Hodgson, Jackson retained attorney Robert Mounsey of Holborn, London (to be paid only if the case was won),[1]: 64  and enlisted the support of Quaker Joseph Bowman of Botcherby,[nb 3] who became her investigator and friend.

Jackson was of medium height, but as observed in old age she was "thin, sallow, and shrivelled, with a most forbidding aspect", and she would pay no dressmaker:[2]: 18  In the very heat of summer [Miss Jackson] was sometimes seen dressed in an old washed-out yellow gown, which she always held up so as to exhibit a yellow white petticoat; she would then also wear a blackish silk cloak, something of the scarf shape, which might have been Margery's finest adornings for thirty or forty years, but her favourite and general dress was an old gray duffle coat, – none of your mandarins, full and short, with hanging sleeves, – but tight every way, and only so short as to save the bottom from wearing away against the stones, and expose to view her gold buckles, the same, we may suppose, as graced the under-members of her great-grandmother centuries ago!

This said grey doublet was confined at the old maiden's waist with a hemp-cord, and had a hood, which was drawn up under a brownish-black bonnet of indescribable shape; she generally used pattens, and carried in her hand a gold-headed cane.

[10] Following the successful conclusion of her Chancery case, Jackson returned to Carlisle in 1791, making an entrance in her own newly-built "splendid carriage" which incorporated plate glass from her brother's chaise, and carrying a new silver teapot by silversmith William Abdy II,[1]: 104  although the Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser wrongly states that she arrived in her brother's old carriage.

Blair (1848) suggests that Jackson's miserly habit began at this point, because she had to make up for the money spent on the suit and on paying off the fifteen Hodgson cousins.

Jackson would sew and read her Bible at home on Sundays, but did not attend Carlisle's St Cuthbert's Church, where she rented a box pew.

at those paying full price in the market, and throwing gamebirds back when sent to her by the Reverend Samuel Bateman of Newbiggin Hall, Carlisle, because "she would have none of his trash".

[4] On the other hand, during public celebrations following Nelson's victory of 1805, she escaped to her friend Bowman, allowing the mob to break all her windows and almost set fire to the house.

[8] "Her dog (when she had one) tended her daily ambulations, and when so fortunate as to find a bone, or any other eatable that would appease the longings of a hungry stomach, Margery would stand beside him, and keep off all intruders with her cane".

"Ultimately, finding her inmates greater plagues than necessary appendages to her domicile, they were one after another dispensed with, and for many years previous to her exit, neither man, maid, dog, nor cat relieved the dull monotony of her drear abode".

Daft Watty, a ballad by the Cumberland Bard, suggests that she had a frightening appearance and a beard like a billy goat, that she expected a small leg of mutton to feed the servant, the cat and her for a week, and that local children would mock her by repeatedly knocking at the door.

[2]: 19–20 In 1809 Jackson became infirm and unable to care for herself, and was taken "in a common cart, amongst straw" with her money box to her friend Bowman's house in Wood Street at Botcherby.

[2]: 26 [8] Jackson was buried on 14 February 1812 in St Mary's churchyard, Carlisle,[2]: 26 [14] and hundreds of people, "attracted by curiosity", attended the funeral.

In April 1812, her story was repeated (not always accurately) in newspapers across the south of England; for example: "Deaths ... at Botcherby, near Carlisle, aged 90, Miss Margery Jackson: she was a complete miser, having left 30,000L, hoarded by penury.

The Church Missionary Society, the Subscription Library and the Charity School for Daughters of Poor Freemen were not honoured by Miss Jackson's support.

This was happening in her lifetime; in 1804 the Carlisle Journal joked: "These [previously dirty windows] the passenger can now discover to be of glass, and she threatens every one with a law suit who dare to venture to affirm the contrary".

[12] The 19th-century biographer Frances Blair called her a "poor, provoked old woman", and said: "If the old lady had any affection for living creatures, it was expended upon her darling bays; and her frequent exclamations of fondness and her exclusive liberality towards them, proved that she had".

[2]: 15  However she also wrote: "The eccentricities which marked her after-life might be attributed to untoward circumstances acting upon a naturally crabbed and selfish mind",[2]: 18  and "In her countenance might be traced earth-born care, envy, malice and hatred".

[1]: 92  Hallaway describes this reassessment in her preface, as follows:[1] Margery Jackson was a woman of no importance, but she was outstanding in an age when women were considered of little consequence.