The Misses Crake
(1850-1873, 1814-1881 and 1855-1925)
4 October 1864

Volume 12, page 190, sitting number 15,908.

[The Silvy daybooks identify the sitters as ‘The Misses Crake / Miss C., Miss W.C.C. & Miss E. Crake.’ The woman at the centre of the group had previously sat for Silvy on 30 May 1861, and that sitter in the daybooks is identified as ‘Miss Crake.’]

Born in Paddington on 10 September 1850, Winifred Constance Crake was the daughter of Vandeleur Benjamin Crake, later of Highlands, St Leonards-on-Sea. She was baptised at St James’s in Paddington on 25 October 1850. On 4 May 1871 at St Mary Magdalene’s in Hastings she married Evelyn Henry Villebois Burnaby, son of Reverend Gustavus Burnaby. She died, aged 22, in childbirth on 27 May 1873 at Somerby Hall in Leicestershire.

Born at Madras in India on 7 July 1855, Edith Hamilton Crake was the daughter of East India merchant William Hamilton Crake of 34 Gloucester Square, Paddington. She married Alfred George Lucas on 31 December 1876. Their marriage produced seven children. Mrs Edith Hamilton Lucas died, aged 69, on 25 March 1925 at Hobland Hall near Great Yarmouth.

Since Vandeleur Benjamin Crake and William Hamilton Crake were brothers, the two girls were first cousins.

The woman at the centre of the group is problematic. Since she is identified in another volume of the daybooks as ‘Miss Crake,’ it is unlikely that this is a clerical error. Moreover, the mothers of both girls appear elsewhere in the daybooks, and neither woman is the one seen here. Despite her initials, the likeliest candidate is maiden aunt Mary Anne Crake who in 1861 was 46 years old, unmarried and living with her elderly parents at 10 Stanhope Street [now Stanhope Terrace] near Hyde Park Gardens, a short walk from Silvy's studio. Born on 5 July 1814 in Marylebone, she eventually entered the matrimonial state at Coonoor in India on 31 March 1868 when she became the second wife of Major-General Henry William Blake. Mrs Mary Anne Blake died on 1 July 1880 at 10 Stanhope Street.