Mrs Eleanor Michell
(1811-1890)
2 July 1863

Volume 10, page 332, sitting number 13,697.

Born at Badingham in Suffolk on 19 June 1811, Eleanor Smyth was the daughter of Simon Smyth, who in 1851 was a ‘Farmer [with] 96 acres, employing 4 labourers.’

In 1839 she married London shopkeeper Richard Michell. Their marriage produced one son and four daughters.

By 1851 her husband had become a very successful ‘Artificial Florist,’ with premises at 93 and 94 Oxford Street in London. The family were living ‘above the shop,’ with two nieces, a visitor, a governess, a housekeeper, four female servants, a porter, four shopwomen and a milliner.

When the census was taken in 1871, Richard described himself as  a ‘Landowner receiving income from houses & dividends & rents.’

Mrs Eleanor Michell died, aged 79, on 22 December 1890 at 3 Kensington Park Gardens, London. She left an estate valued at £1458. When her husband died in 1899, his estate was valued at £242,033, a vast sum by the standard of the day.