Francis Beilby Alston
(1820-1906)
15 November 1860
[An ink inscription verso in a fine period hand identifies the sitter as ‘Francis B. Alston’ and gives the date, 1861. This was the sitter’s second visit to Silvy’s studio; he had previously sat for the photographer on 10 March 1861.]
Volume 2, page 88, sitting number 1649.
Born on 29 November 1820. Francis Beilby Alston was the son of Rowland Alston, later the Member of Parliament (Whig) for Hertfordshire from 1835 to 1841. He was baptised at St Mary’s Marylebone on 6 December 1820.
On 24 April 1862 in Copenhagen he married Emily Louisa Caroline Taylor of Elsinore [Helsingør] in Denmark. Her father was Bridges Taylor of the Foreign Office.
The couple appear together on the 1871 census living at 69 Eccleston Square, London, with their two sons and two daughters. Also present on the night of the census was Mrs Taylor’s father Bridges Taylor, who gave his profession as ‘Late Consul Elsinore.’ (On the 1851 census he had described himself as the ‘Secretary of State, Office for Foreign Affairs.’) There were eight live-in servants in the household on the night of the census, including a butler and a footman.
‘Queen Alexandra always has shown much friendship to the family of Sir Beilby Alston, the Prince’s host in the Argentine. This, doubtless owing to the fact that his mother was partly a Dane. When the late Sir Francis Beilby Alston was in the Foreign Office he married the daughter of the British Consul of Elsinore, a lady with a Danish mother, and Queen Alexandra took kindly interest in the picturesque little woman who was more or less her compatriot. When the Alstons were in Eccleston Square their house was a hospitable centre, where many notable people met to exchange ideas, and nothing pleased the hostess better than when the treasures she had brought from her norther home attracted attention. A friend of Lady Alston remembers with what delight she used to show photographs of the Danish Royal Family given by the sitters, many of them taken during holiday seasons and never published’ (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 14 August 1925).
In 1886 Francis Beilby Alston was knighted.
A Freemason, at the time of his death he was the oldest Grand Master in England.
He died, aged 85, on 24 August 1906 at his London residence, 69 Eccleston Square, leaving an estate valued at £58,530.
‘Sir Francis Beilby Alston, KCMG, Chief Clerk at the Foreign Office, died at his London residence to-day. Sir Francis, who was born in 1820, served at the Foreign Office from 1839 to 1890. In 1862 he married Emily Louise Caroline, daughter of Mr Bridges Taylor. Sir Francis was at one time a Lieutenant in the Herts Militia. He received the honour of knighthood in 1886’ (The Globe, 24 August 1906).
He is buried in London’s Brompton Cemetery.