Mrs Magenis
(1807-1887)
27 May 1861

Volume 3, page 314, sitting number 3940.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs Magenis’ in the Silvy daybooks. She visited the studio with Lady Louisa Magenis (née Lowry-Corry), who is the following entry in the daybook. The album that this carte come from also contained a portrait of Major Richard Henry Magenis, the husband of Lady Louisa Magenis. Presumably Mrs Magenis and Lady Louisa Magenis were mother and daughter-in-law.]

Born in or around 1807, according to one tree on Ancestry her full birth name was Joseph [sic] Ursula Eliza Damian de Kerostan, but I can find no other source to confirm this. The same source gives her place of birth as Brittany in France, again without any supporting evidence. 

On 11 June 1828 at Port Louis in Mauritius she married Major Henry Arthur Magenis of the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot. She was married as Eliza Damain, according to her marriage certificate. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Magenis died, aged 58, in York on 14 November 1852, ‘Inspecting Field Officer of that district, and formerly Commanding the 27th and 87th Regiments’ (Dublin Evening Mail, 19 November 1852). He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery on 23 November 1852. 

Mrs Elise Magenis died, aged 80, on 25 December 1887 in Dublin ‘at 16 Lower Leeson Street, Elise, wife of the late H.A. Magenis, Lieut-Colonel Commanding 87th and 27th Regiments’ (Dublin Daily Express, 28 December 1887).