Mrs George Byng Paget
(1810-1896)
7 April 1862

Volume 6, page 175, sitting number 7570.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs George Byng Paget’ in the Silvy daybooks.]

Born at Little Comberton near Worcester in 1810, Sophia Mary Tebbutt was the daughter of William and Sarah Tebbutt. She was baptised on 28 December 1810 at All Saints’ Church, Loughborough. According to her baptism entry in the church register, her father was a ‘Farmer.’

On 26 February 1833 in the parish of Kingston on Soar in the County of Nottinghamshire she married George Byng Paget of Sutton Bonington. 

When the census was taken in 1841 George and Sophia were living at Loughborough in Leicestershire with their daughters Eliza (7) and Maria (6). George gave ‘Farmer’ as his profession. 

The couple appear on the 1851 census living at Sutton Bonington in Leicestershire. George described himself as ‘Esq. Farming, 310 acres, 12 labs. & 9 boys all outdoor.’ The household on the night of the census included four visitors and three live-in servants, one of them a ‘footman.’  Eliza and Maria were at a girls’ school in Putney with their cousin Frances Rosa Paget. [It is possible Maria was Frances’s sister, not Eliza’s. According to one record, she was the daughter of William and Frances Anne Paget.]

George Byng Paget died in Brighton on 25 January 1858. Shortly before his death he had become the Chairman of the Midland Railway Company. 

DEATH OF THE CHAIRMAN OF THE MIDLAND RAILWAY COMPANY
‘George Byng Paget, Esq., of Sutton Bonington, who only a few weeks since succeeded Mr John Ellis, as chairman of the Midland Railway Company, died suddenly on Tuesday’ (York Herald, 30 January 1858).

He left an estate valued at £90,000.

Sophia Mary Paget died on 24 January 1896 at Sutherland House Great Malvern, Worcester. She left an estate valued at £420.