Miss L. E. Chalk
(1833-1906)
3 June 1861

Volume 8, page 151, sitting number 10,226.

[Identified as 'Miss L. E. Chalk' in the Silvy daybooks, the previous entry is an older man identified as 'J. J. Chalk.']

James Jell Chalk (1803-1878) was Secretary to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. After 35 years of service, he retired in 1871, having a short time previously been knighted. He died on 23 September 1878 at 80 Warwick Square, Pimlico. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, '[h]e was never married, but his old age was cheered by the company of his niece.'

He appears on the 1871 census living at 80 Warwick Square in Pimlico but there is no sign of his niece. However, James Jell Chalk's elder brother was the Reverend William Shove Chalk (1793-1849), Rector of Wilden in Bedfordshire. One of his children was Lucy Elizabeth Chalk (1833-1906), who must therefore be the niece who was such a comfort to James Jell Chalk in his old age (and the young woman who accompanied him to Silvy's studio in 1861). 

Baptised on 9 June 1833 at Elstree in Hertfordshire, in 1861 Lucy was living with her widowed mother Eliza at Elstree. In 1867 she married Robert Hamilton Williams. The couple appear on the 1871 census living at the Manor House in Elstree with their infant son Blair and two servants. Robert gave as his profession 'Income from Cattle Estate [in] Texas U.S.' Ten years later he described himself as a 'Merchant and Broker.' In 1891 he was a 'Bill Broker and General Merchant.'

Mrs Lucy Elizabeth Williams died 'suddenly' at the age of 73 on 16 January 1906 at Buckland, East Tilbury, Essex. She left an estate valued at £2674.