Miss Shiffner
(1843-1922)
17 May 1861

Volume 3, page 255, sitting number 3703.

Identified in the Silvy daybooks only as 'Miss Shiffner,' this is probably Miss Emily Charlotte Shiffner, elder daughter of Thomas Shiffner and his wife Mary née Shiffner. Through her father, she was a cousin of Miss Emily Ruck Keene whose portrait by Silvy also appears elsewhere in this section. (Thomas Shiffner's sister, Rebecca Francis Shiffner, had married the Reverend Charles Edmund Ruck Keene.)

Born in Brighton in or about 1843, Emily Shiffner appears on the 1861 census, aged 18, living with her parents and younger sister Annie Mary Shiffner, aged 15, at Rocks Mansion near Uckfield in Sussex. Her father gave 'Justice of [the] Peace and Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex' as his profession. Also present on the night of the census were a governess and ten servants, including a butler, a footman, a housekeeper, two lady's maids and a carpenter.

On 6 November 1889 she married Commander Francis Charles Bridgeman-Simpson of the Royal Navy, son of the Reverend William Bridgeman-Simpson. The marriage took place at the Church of St Leonard's at Burton Leonard in North Yorkshire. A lengthy description of the wedding, including a list of all the guests and their various presents, appeared in York Herald the following day (7 November 1889). Their marriage produced no children.

Her husband was later Sir Francis Charles Bridgeman Bridgeman, G.C.B., G.C.V.O., of Copgrove Hall, Yorkshire.

Lady Emily Bridgeman died, aged 80, on 25 November 1922. She left an estate valued at £136,668.