This morning, doing my ebay wander for the day, with eyes blurred by hay fever, I plucked a few aristos from the photo bin ...
Only, the first one wasn't.
For all his splendid poise, John McLeod RAINSFORD (Camden Town 27 June 1848; Bideford 11 October 1927) worked all his life for the gas and coal company. Father Octavius was a coal merchant. JMcL married Julia Metcalfe from India, and they had a son John Henry (1878-1924, hay and straw merchant) and a daughter Julia Millicent (1888-1948, Mrs Wm Edward Dyson, schoolmaster). The son looks even more aristocratic than his father ...!
Second strike was nearer. Mabel Elizabeth HENRY (b Malta 12 January 1843; died 2 Northwick Villas, Douro Rd, Cheltenham 12 May 1911) was indeed related to a peer.
Her father was Captain Charles James Henry, and her mother Lady Selena Constance Hastings, daughter of Baron Rawdon of Yorkshire. Details in Burke.
One of three sisters (Eva, Agnes) Mabel lived out her life in Cheltenham, single, with a family of servants ...
Next dip was ever so aristo. And rather sad.
These are three of the four children of the Earl of Winchilsea and his wife Constance Henrietta Paget. Blood of the bluest. The little girl is the same in both snaps.
Alas, blue blood often has less staying power than red. The bigger girl is Mabel Finch HATTON (b 1849), here aged twelve. Mabel married William George Eden 6 July 1872, and died a few months thereafter. The lad is George Finch-Hatton, who took on one of his father's spare titles as Viscount Maidstone, pending his accession to the Earldom. But he never succeeded. He died at the age of 26.
Little Hilda Jane Sophia (b 3 March 1856) married Henry Vincent Higgins 'of the first Life Guards' and later solicitor and Director of the Ritz Hotel Syndicate, Paris. She had two sons before her death 8 February 1893.
Only eldest sister, Constance, made it through to the 20th century ...
Hang on. I think they're related to this lot. Marquis of Ailsa ...
I finished up with another lady who looked very regal, but actually only made it into a lesser volume of Burke. But she had a good pedigree: daughter of a senior wrangler of Cambridge University (QC), wife of the stroke of the Oxford boat race crew (QC) ...
Edrica Jane COWLING (b Paddington 22 September 1852; d Hyères, France 23 December 1929) was the daughter of John Cowling, latterly deputy High Steward of Cambridge University, and a well-known barrister. Cowling died suddenly of bronchitis when Edrica was only three
She married Reginald Godfrey MARSDEN MA (Merton College), QC, a scion of the ancient Yorkshire family of Marsden and had three sons, plus the little girl pictured here
Dorothy Nina MARSDEN (b London 21 August 1875; d Kensington 27 April 1938) married architect Thomas Tyrwhitt, 'son of the Rector of Weston-in-Gordano' by whom she had a son, Robert (b 12 May 1909; d Stonecutter's Island 3 May 1932) a sub-lieutenant in the navy, who committed suicide on his ship the Orpheus, aged 23, and two daughters.
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