'Trois enfants de Lady Leigh'
(1849-1945, 1851-1884
and 1853-1942)

Volume 1, page 154, sitting number 819. 

[Identified in the Silvy daybooks as ‘Trois enfants de Lady Leigh,’ these are the three eldest children of Lady Caroline Amelia Leigh, who is the next entry in the daybooks with her then youngest child, the Honourable Rowland Leigh.]

The Honourable Margaret Elizabeth Leigh was born on 29 October 1849, the eldest child of William Henry Leigh, who became 2nd Baron Leigh of Stoneleigh the following year. On 19 September 1872 she married Victor Albert George Child-Villiers, who had succeeded his father when he was six years old, becoming the 7th Earl of Jersey. Their marriage produced six children. Lady Jersey died on 22 May 1945 at the age of 95. 

Her sister, the Honourable Agnes Eleanor Leigh, was born on 24 May 1853. She never married and died on 29 March 1942 at the age of 88. 

The boy in this portrait is the Honourable Gilbert Henry Chandos Leigh. Born on 1 September 1851, he was the eldest son of Lord Leigh. Educated at Harrow and at Magdalene College, Cambridge (BA, 1875; MA, 1878) he entered politics and was elected the Member of Parliament (Liberal) for South Warwickshire. He died — on 15 September 1884 — on a hunting expedition in the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. His body had to be retrieved from the bottom of a canyon. He was 33 years old and had never married. His younger brother Francis succeeded to the baronetcy in 1905. 

‘The hon. Gilbert Henry Chandos Leigh, M.P. for South Warwickshire, who has been on a visit to the States on a hunting expedition, has been killed in Wyoming. He had gone out to the Big Horn Mountains in search of game, and had been missing for ten days. Search parties were organised to scour the locality, and on Monday last the remains of the unfortunate gentleman were found at the foot of a precipice, death having undoubtedly resulted from injuries inflicted by the fall. It is conjectured that he missed his footing while following game. […] He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for Warwickshire and was a captain in the Warwickshire Yeomanry. He was elected in 1880 in the place of the Earl of Yarmouth, Conservative, whom he beat by 43 votes. [...] The deceased left England last month to visit his brother, who has taken a farm in America. He had intimated his intention not to seek re-election for South Warwickshire, his views not being sufficiently advanced for the bulk of the local Liberals' (Cardiff Times, 27 September 1884).