Mrs Emma Henderson
(1834-1891)
10 September 1862
Volume 9, page 157, sitting number 11,627.
[The sitter is identified only as ‘Mrs Henderson’ in the Silvy daybooks. On the album page, however, she was identified as ‘Emma Henderson’ and she was beside a John Mayall portrait of her husband, identified as ‘Henry Henderson,’ who was obviously a clergyman. Moreover, evidence elsewhere in the album made it clear that Henry was the son of Mary née Ross.]
Born in Paddington in or about 1834, Emma Gertrude Coates was the second daughter of wine merchant Edmund Coates and his wife Susannah Maria née Middleton. She was baptised on 30 January 1834 at St James's, Paddington.
On 12 August 1858 at St Mary’s in Paddington she married Henry Glass Henderson, born in Calcutta in 1829, the son of banker Henry Henderson and Mary Jane née Ross. The groom gave ‘Clerk in [Holy] Orders’ as his profession.
The couple appear on the 1861 census living at 17 Clarendon Gardens, Marylebone, with their one-year-old daughter Gertrude and four servants, including a nurse and nursemaid. Henry Henderson gave ‘Clergyman without cure of souls’ as his profession.
The 1871 census shows the family living at Mission House, Sclater Street, Shoreditch. The household now included one son and two daughters, a governess and three servants. Henry gave his profession as ‘Vicar of Holy Trinity, Shoreditch,’ a living he was to hold for eighteen years.
On 15 February 1886 Emma began divorce proceedings against her husband, who had apparently since ‘shortly after the said marriage’ … treated his wife ‘with great unkindness and cruelty.’ The petition alleges that ‘between the months of August 1858 and the month of March 1859 the said Henry Glass Henderson insisted upon having as a Housekeeper to reside in his house a woman named Arnott who your Petitioner believes had previously been his mistress and had had a Child or Children by him and he ordered your Petitioner to hand her Keys over to the said woman Arnott as housekeeper.’ Furthermore, he ‘frequently in violent, threatening and offensive language abused your Petitioner in the presence of his Children, Friends and Servants,' and from ‘some woman or women to your Petitioner unknown’ he had ‘contracted venereal disease.’
The following month the necessity for a divorce was removed by the death of the Reverend Henry Henderson; he died, aged 57, on 18 April 1886 (John Bull, 1 May 1886). The timing seems a little suspicious and I thought perhaps he might have killed himself rather than face the scandal his divorce would have caused, but according to his death certificate, the cause of his death was ‘Morbis cordis, 3 months’ [disease of the heart].
Mrs Henderson appears on the 1891 census, a widow living at 58 Lillie Road, Fulham. This was the home of her son, Sydney Herbert Campbell Henderson, who gave his profession as ‘Actor.’ Also living there were her daughters Gertrude Mary Henderson and Constance Maud Leith; the latter gave her profession as ‘Actress.’
Mrs Emma Henderson died on 19 June 1891. ‘The death is recorded of Mrs Emma Gertrude Henderson, of 45, Gunterston Road, West Kensington, widow of the late Rev. Henry Glass Henderson, MA, Vicar of Holy Trinity, Bethnal Green, and a well-known Guardian of the poor for that parish. She was in her 56th year' (Eastern Argus and Borough of Hackney Times, 27 June 1891).