Mrs Helen Haggard
(1834-1875)
30 January 1863

Volume 10, page 51, sitting number 12,573.

[This is a very different pose from the one that appears in the Silvy daybooks, where both Mrs Haggard and her husband are seen standing, with a plant-filled jardinière on the table in place of the statue seen here.]

Born Mary Helen Townsend, she was the only daughter of Reverend Richard Lateward Townsend, Vicar of Wandsworth.

On 14 June 1859 at Street near Glastonbury, she married the Reverend Christopher Haggard.

In 1862 her husband was appointed the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Barnstable. In 1872 he left Barnstable on his appointment to the Rectory of Filleigh in North Devon.

Mrs Haggard died at Clifton on 11 January 1875, aged 41. She was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity in Barnstable, where her husband had previously been the vicar.

[The photograph was taken during one of Silvy's many absences from the studio, probably by his partner Auguste Renoult. ]