Mr and Mrs Dudley Elwes
(1832-1914 and 1840-1914)
25 November 1862

Volume 9, page 319, sitting number 12,272.

[The sitters are identified as ‘Mr and Mrs Dudley Elwes’ in the Silvy daybooks but Silvy’s clerk was a little premature in marrying off the couple, who were in fact only engaged at this point. Their marriage took place two months later, on 3 February 1863. Judging by the number of such occurrences in the daybooks, visiting a photographic studio together appears to have been something of a ritual that some engaged couples undertook, in the same way that in the next century going to a movie together would become something that couples often did on dates.]

Born at Brigg in Lincolnshire on 13 November 1837, Dudley George Cary Elwes was the son of Captain Dudley Christopher Cary Elwes and Mary Anne Sophia née Rye. 

He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1855. He subsequently served in the 3rd (Buffs) Foot and was present at the taking of the Taku Forts and Peking. 

According to Hart’s Army List of 1861, he was at that time a Lieutenant in the 3rd (East Kent) Regiment of Foot.

Mary Georgina Mangles was baptised on 22 July 1840 at Compton in Surrey. She was the daughter of Frederick Mangles of Pendell Court, Bletchingley, Surrey. 

‘February 3, at Blechingly, Surrey, Dudley George Cary Elwes, Esq., late 3rd Buffs, only surviving son of the late Dudley C. Cary Elwes, Esq., King’s Dragoons, [married] Mary Georgina, second daughter of Frederick Mangles, of Wendell [sic] Court, Blechingly, Esq.’  (The Evening Freeman, 7 February 1863).

Their marriage produced eleven children.

Dudley George Cary Elwes died, aged 75, on 15 August 1914 at Conway House in Orlando, Florida, where he had resided in his later years. 

His wife died two weeks later on 29 August 1914, also in Orlando.