Lady Edith Somerset
(1838-1915)
1860

Volume 1, page 216, sitting number 1059.

[The following entry in the Silvy daybooks is this sitter's mother, the Duchess of Beaufort.]

Born on 1 June 1838, Lady Edith Frances Wilhelmina Somerset was the youngest daughter of Henry Somerset,  7th Duke of Beaufort. Her mother was Emily Frances née Smith. She was baptised on 12 July 1838 at St James’s, Westminster. 

On 10 September 1863 she married William Henry Forester Denison, 2nd Baron Londesborough, later created the 1st Earl of Londesborough on 1 July 1887. Their marriages produced four daughters and one son. 

When the census was taken in 1861 she was the head of the household at Grimston Hall in Yorkshire. The household included twenty-five servants. 

Lady Londesborough died, aged 76, on 15 May 1915 at 17 Norfolk Street [renamed Dunraven Street in 1939], Mayfair, London. 

‘News was received at Scarborough to-day that the Dowager Lady Londesborough, widow of the first Earl of Londesborough, died in London early this morning. Her ladyship, who was over seventy years of age, was the youngest daughter of the late Duke of Beaufort. Her husband died 15 years ago. The present Earl is her only son, and there are two daughters [sic], Lady Mildred Cooke and Lady Ida Sitwell’ (Yorkshire Evening Post, 15 May 1915).