Mrs A.M. Purcell
(1838-1915)
3 August 1864

Volume 12, page 156, sitting number 15,774. 

[Identified as ‘Mrs Purcell’ in the Silvy daybooks, the sitter visited the studio again the following year, on which occasion her name was recorded as ‘A.M. Purcell.’]

On 29 September 1855 at Weymouth ‘Peter Valentine Purcell, Esq. (Captain in her Majesty’s 13th Light Dragoons) of Halverstown, county Kildare [married] Agnes Maria, daughter of Sir John Hesketh Lethbridge, Bart., and grand-daughter of Sir Henry Hugh Hoare, Bart.’ (Dublin Evening Post, 2 October 1855). 

Captain Purcell died, aged only 33, on 2 July 1864 at St Leonards (Sussex Advertiser, 12 July 1864). 

Agnes Maria married secondly on 20 November 1866 ‘at the parish church, Pitminster, St John Le Marchant, of the Royal Horse Artillery, eldest son of Le Marchant Thomas Le Marchant, Esq., of La Hays-du-Puits, Guernsey, and Sea View, Isle of Wight’ (Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 5 December 1866). 

Agnes Maria Le Marchant died on 24 February 1915, leaving an estate valued at £6894. 

‘The death occurred at Northfield, Ryde, of Mrs St John Le Marchant. She was Agnes Maria, daughter of the late Sir John H. Lethbridge, Bart., of Sandhill Park, Somerset, by his marriage with Julia, daughter of Sir Hugh Hoare, of Stourhead, and sister to Sir Henry Hoare, M.P. for Mid-Som. Born in September, 1838, she married in September, 1855, Peter Valentine Purcell, Captain 13th Light Dragoons, of Halverstown, Kildare, by whom she leaves a son and two daughters. Captain Purcell died July, 1864, and his widow married, November, 1866, St John H. Le M. T. Le Marchant, Colonel, R.H.A., who predeceased her’ (Shepton Mallet Journal, 5 March 1915).