Mrs Wilbraham Lennox and child
(1846-1863 and 1862-1937)
13 July 1862

Volume 8, page 252, sitting number 10,630.

Born Mary Harriett Harrison, the daughter of Robert Harrison of Plâs Clough, Henllan, Denbighshire [Wales], she married Wilbraham Oates Lennox V.C. (later General Sir Wilbraham Oates Lennox V.C.) on 16 July 1861 at Trefnant in Denbighshire. 

On 19 July 1863 Mrs Lennox gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Lilian Emily, at South Camp in Aldershot. Mrs Lennox died soon after on 22 July 1863 (of 'puerperal metritis [and] peritonitis') and the child died a few days later on 3 August 1863 at West Cliff House, Brighton. According to a brief announcement in the Brighton Gazette (20 August 1863): 'The Lennox and other families have been placed in mourning owing to the death of Mrs Wilbraham Lennox and her baby. The bereaved husband, Colonel Lennox, V.C., is staying with his mother, Lady George Lennox, at Lady Abinger's, at Brighton.' The same journal later announced (1 October 1863) that Colonel Lennox 'has left England for the East, trusting that time and change of scene in the Holy Land may in some degree restore his peace of mind, which has been much destroyed of late by the early demise of his wife and child.'

The baby seen here is Gerald Wilbraham Stuart Lennox, born on 29 April 1862. He served as a Lieutenant in the Black Watch. On 22 October 1907 he married Agnes Gordon Tidy, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Francis John Tidy. He died on 14 June 1937, without issue.

[From an album compiled by Margaret Randalina Barnewall, Lady Trimleston.]