Charles Cunningham
(1846-1897)
1 February 1861

Volume 2, page 181, sitting number 2015. 

Identified as 'Charles Cunningham' in the Silvy daybooks, this is probably the Charles Cunningham who appears on the 1861 census, aged 15, living with his parents and two younger brothers at 34 Thurloe Square, South Kensington. His father, Percy Cunningham-Fairlie, gave 'Baronet' as his profession and his mother, Maria Antonia Cunningham-Fairlie described herself as a 'Lady.'

The following report appeared in the Nottingham Evening Post (27 September 1881). 'Sir Charles Arthur Cunningham-Fairlie of Robertland, Ayrshire, who has succeeded to a baronetcy by the death of his father, Sir Percy A. Cunningham-Fairlie, is the eldest son of the deceased baronet, and was born at Dieppe, in France, on January 2nd, 1846; his mother, Lady Cunningham-Fairlie, being Maria Antonia, daughter of the Hon. William Bowman Felton, of Sherbrook, Lower Canada. The new baronet, who is a magistrate for Ayrshire, married, on November 7th, 1867, Caroline Madelina, youngest daughter of Mr William Fordyce Blair, of Blair, in Ayrshire. The Cunningham-Fairlie family is descended from the Hon. William Cunningham, son of the first Earl of Glencairn. Sir David Cunningham, the first baronet, was Master of the Works to James VI of Scotland.'

Newspaper reports and official records give several different spellings and even different versions of his surname. Following his death, aged 51, on 27 December 1897, the following obituary appeaed in the Morning Post (29 December 1897): 'We regret to announce that Sir Charles Arthur Fairlie-Cuninghame, Bart., died suddenly at the Hotel Victoria, in his fifty-second year. [He] succeeded his father in the Baronetcy in 1881, when he adopted the surnames of Fairlie-Cuninghame in lieu of Cuningham-Fairlie. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and served as lieutenant in the Ayrshire Yeomanry from 1865 to 1875. The late Sir Charles is succeeded by his brother Alfred Edward, born in 1852, and married in 1885 to Arabella Annie, only daughter of the late Mr Frederick Church.'