Adrian and Laura Hope
(1858-1904 and 1859-1936)
2 September 1862

Volume 9, page 136, sitting number 11,540.

Adrian and Laura Hope were the two eldest of the six children of Colonel William Hope (1834-1909), who had served in the 7th Royal Fusileers and been awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery when a lieutenant at the siege of Sebastapol (18 June 1855) during the Crimean War. Following the war, William Hope served in the diplomatic corps. Adrian was born in 1858 at the British Legation in Washington and Laura in 1859 at the British Legation in the Hague.

The family appear on the 1871 census, living near Dagenham in Essex. William Hope gave an unusually long reply to the question of his profession: 'Victoria Cross, late 7th Royal Fusileers, and late of the Diplomatic Service, now a Farmer of 240 acres & employing about 35 hands. The number fluctuates.'

In 1881 he was a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 1st Surrey Artillery Volunteers in Battersea.

Adrian Charles Francis Hope was born on 8 March 1858. He appears on the 1901 census, living at 34 Tite Street, Chelsea, with his wife, artist and portrait painter Laura E. R. Hope, their two daughters, a sister, two nephews, and four servants. He gave 'Sec. Hosp. Sick Children Gt. Ormond St.’ as his profession.

Adrian Hope died aged 46 in 1904. An obituary appeared in the Times on Friday 13 May 1904: ‘The hospital world of London, and especially that part of it which is associated with the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, will hear with sincere regret of the death of Mr Adrian C. F. Hope, which occurred in St Thomas’s Home on Tuesday last after an operation for appendicitis. Mr Hope was the son of Colonel William Hope, who was one of the first to earn the distinction of the V.C. during the Crimean war. After serving in the Bank of England Adrian Hope became in 1876 private secretary to Sir James Longden, Governor of Ceylon. In 1885 he was appointed secretary of the Hospital for Sick Children, a post which he held till the time of his death and with which his name will always be closely associated. Courteous, energetic, and tactful, he was in many respects an ideal man for such a post, and the Children’s Hospital owes him a debt of gratitude for the work which he did in extending that institution, and the circle of those who took a personal interest in its welfare. The Coronation bazaar, which took place in the Botanic gardens in 1902 and proved a remarkable success, was mainly his work. His energies were not confined to Great Ormond Street, but extended to hospital work generally, and he was the president of the Hospital Officers’ Association. Mr Hope was married to Laura, daughter of the late Sir Thomas Troubridge, by whom he leaves two daughters.’

Adrian’s sister Laura Charlotte Hope was born on 12 December 1859. She married Thomas William Allen on 22 August 1894. She died on 25 March 1936, aged 76.