Mrs Frank Biddulph
(1834-1926)
8 October 1862
Volume 9, page 244, sitting number 11,972.
[The sitter is identified only as ‘Mrs Biddulph’ in the Silvy daybooks. On the album page she was next to a portrait of ‘Frank Biddulph’ and was identified simply as ‘Wife.’]
Born Annabella Kennedy in Dublin in or about 1841, Annabella Biddulph appears on the 1861 census, aged 20, living on the High Street in Portsmouth with her new husband Francis E. Biddulph.
On 17 January 1861 at Southsea in Hampshire, ‘Annabella, third daughter of the late John Kennedy, Esq., of Ballyrainny [sic] House, county Down’ married ‘Francis Edward Biddulph, Esq., Lieutenant 19th regiment, eldest son of Nicholas Biddulph, Esq. of Longor House, county Tipperary’ (The Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 26 January 1861).
During Frank Biddulph’s army career, the couple lived in Burma, in India and in Wales. Their marriage produced fourteen children. Only six of these children survived to adulthood.
Their eldest son was born aboard HMS Trafalgar on passage to Rangoon on 6 December 1863 and was named Nicholas Trafalgar Biddulph. Their eldest daughter Catherine Mary died, aged 7, at Bangalore in India in 1869. The couple were living at Pembroke Dock in 1874 when their twins Ormus Lewellyn Biddulph and Isabella Alice Biddulph were born on 12 February 1874. Ormus died on 2 September 1874. Isabella Alice died on 6 March 1875. They are buried with their siblings William and Ethel in Llanion Cemetery, Pembroke Dock, Wales.
In February 1878 several newspapers reported that ‘Captain and Brevet Major Francis Edward Biddulph, 9th Foot,’ was ‘to have the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel upon retiring on a pension’ (Morning Post, 16 February 1878). It was subsequently reported that ‘Honorary Lieut.-Col. Francis Edward Biddulph, late Capt. 9th Foot, had been permitted to commute his pension’ (Pall Mall Budget, 18 May 1878).
On Frank’s retirement from the army, the couple moved to Ireland with their sons Nicholas, Charles, Hugh and Arthur, and their daughter Amy, who was born at Aldershot in 1875. They settled at a house called John’s Mall, still standing today, at Birr (then called Parsonstown) in the centre of Ireland. Their two youngest daughters, May and Beatrix, were born there in 1879 and 1880 respectively.
Amy, the couple's eldest surviving daughter, left a description of their Sunday afternoons in the ‘glorious park [of Birr Castle], with miles of walks and and rivers and a huge lake where water lilies abounded in summer, which I’m ashamed to say often came home hidden under our coats as we were not supposed to pick them.’
In 1883 the family moved to a handsome house and 50-acre farm called St Kilda’s, also in Birr. The website Offalyhistoryblog gives many interesting details of the children’s upbringing and the life the family led at St Kilda’s. It also gives an account of Frank’s bankruptcy in 1895. He had commuted his pension and borrowed money at an exorbitant rate in order to buy St Kilda’s and the farm had subsequently been mismanaged. In 1901 and 1911 the couple were living at Dalkey in County Dublin.
Frank died on 16 May 1919 ‘at 21 Brading Avenue, Southsea, Lieut.-Col. Francis Edward Biddulph, late of the 9th and 19th Regiments, and of Marie Lodge, Dalkey, eldest son of the late Nicholas Biddulph, Esq., Congor, Co. Tipperary, in his 85th year’ (Leinster Reporter, 24 May 1919).
When the 1921 census was taken, Annabelle Biddulph was a widow living with her daughter Mary Theresa Pease, also a widow, and Mary’s two children at Southsea in Hampshire.
Annabelle Biddulph died on 16 August 1925. She was buried with her husband at Highland Road Cemetery in Southsea, Hampshire.
[From an album compiled by a member of the Drough family of County Offaly, Ireland.]