Miss Alice Taylor
(1843-1930)
18 September 1861
Volume 5, page 71, sitting number 5786.
[The sitter is identified in the Silvy daybooks as 'Miss Alice Taylor.' The preceding entry is her older sister, Emily Louise Caroline Taylor. The carte-de-visite was acquired with a Silvy portrait of Alice and Emily's younger brother Brook Pakenham Taylor, and another of their brother-in-law Francis Beilby Alston.]
Born in London on 4 October 1843 Alice Maud Taylor was the second daughter of Bridges Taylor of the Foreign Office and his wife Emily Alice Taylor née Halkett. She was baptised at St George’s Hanover Square on 29 November 1843.
In 1863 at Westminster Abbey she married George William Kitchin, DD, son of the Reverend Isaac Kitchin. At the time of her marriage, her father was the British consul in Denmark.
George and Alice appear on the 1871 census living at 4 St Giles’ Road East in Oxford. Also present on the night of the census were their daughter Alexandra and their three sons. The household included five servants, all female. (Another daughter was born in 1874.)
Their daughter Alexandra (‘Xie’) Kitchin was much photographed by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).
In 1883 Alice's husband was appointed Dean of Winchester and in 1894 he became the Dean of Durham. He was the last Dean of Durham to govern the university as he became the first Chancellor of Durham University in 1908, a post he held until his death in 1912.
When the census was taken in 1921 Alice Maud Kitchin was a widow living at 1 Denmark Avenue in Wimbledon with a housekeeper and two live-in nurses.
She died there on 25 March 1930, aged 86, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s, Wimbledon. She left an estate valued at £4858. Her executors were her sons Hugh Bridges Kitchin, a tutor, and Brook Taylor Kitchin, a retired civil servant. Her other son was George Herbert Kitchin, a prolific architect, especially in Hampshire.
[It's unusual for Silvy to have changed so much of the set between poses in the one sitting. The backdrop remains the same in both portraits but, bar the sideboard, the props are very different.]