Captain Lewin
(1837-1895)
14 March 1861

Volume 2, page 310, sitting number 2530.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Captain Lewin’ in the Silvy daybooks. Hart’s Army List of 1861 lists two officers with the surname Lewin: Henry Frederick Chapman Lewin and Martin Budd Lewin, both Lieutenants. A third man, Frederick Chaloner Lewin, was a gentleman cadet in March 1861. When Hart’s was published in 1862, Henry Frederick Chapman Lewin was still a Lieutenant but Martin Budd Lewin had become a Captain, by purchase, on 23 April 1861. Although he anticipated his promotion by a few weeks when he gave his name and rank to Silvy’s clerk, Martin Budd Lewin of the 51st Light Infantry must therefore be the man in this portrait.]

Born in or about 1837, Martin Budd Lewin was the son of Robert and Harriet Lewin of Bartley Lodge, Eling in Hampshire. 

When the 1851 census was taken, he was a pupil at Harrow. He became an Ensign in the Army, by purchase, in November 1854, serving in the 51st Foot. 

He retired from the Army in May 1862. He must have subsequently joined the Militia at some point as it was reported in May 1872 that he had resigned his commission from the 2nd Herefordshire Rifles (Morning Post, 25 May 1872). 

On 29 November 1864 at Sutton Forest he married Edith Caroline Wake, third daughter of the Reverend James Hare Wake, Vicar of Sutton Forest. The marriage produced eight children. 

The couple appear on the 1871 census living at Old Hill in Walford, Herefordshire, with their three young children and five servants. Mrs Lewin’s sister Bertha Charlotte Wake was also a member of the household. Martin Lewin described himself as a ‘Retired Officer of Army.’ 

In 1881, now living at March in Cambridgeshire, Martin gave ‘Income from Land &c’ as his profession. There were seven children in the household — the family’s first born son Robert had died at the age of 12 — a governess, and six servants with a gardener and a groom living nearby. 

In 1882 Martin was a petitioner in Peterborough’s Bankruptcy Court (Stamford Mercury, 17 February 1882. 

When the census was taken in 1891 he and Edith were ‘living on own means’ at Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire with two children, both of them teenagers, and one general servant. 

Captain Martin Budd Lewin died, aged 57, in the first quarter of 1895, in the district of Chesterton, Cambridge. This district includes the village of Fulbourn.