Lady Mary Egerton
(1837-1892)

Presumably the Lady Mary Egerton who was married to Wilbraham Egerton (1832-1909), from 1883 the 1st Earl of Egerton.

Born Lady Mary Sarah Percy Amherst on 8 May 1837, she was the eldest daughter of William Pitt Amherst, 2nd Earl Amherst of Arracan. On 15 October 1857 she married Wilbraham Egerton, later 1st Earl of Egerton of Tatton. They had one child, Lady Gertrude Lucia Egerton, born on 9 January 1861, who later married the future 8th Earl of Albemarle.

Lady Mary Egerton died at Eastbourne on 17 December 1892, aged 55. A lengthy obituary appeared in the Manchester Times (23 December 1892): 'By her death this district loses an earnest and zealous worker in many social movements, having for their object the elevation and increased happiness of the people. Her high social position enabled her to bring much influence to bear on all movements having for their object the welfare of the masses, and, combining her own exertions in this direction with a keen business-like grasp of detail, Lady Egerton was enabled to carry on her enthusiastic labour of love with no small measure of success. In the old-fashioned village of Knutsford, so historically associated with the Egertons of Tatton, the villagers found in her ladyship a warm-hearted friend and neighbour, one who, during her residence at Tatton Park, found innumerable opportunities of testifying in a practical way her concern for those among whom she lived during a great part of the year. [...] During her residence in London Lady Egerton found a wider scope for her apparently untiring energies, for few ladies in London more deeply identified themselves with the various charitable and social institutions to be found there. Some two or three years ago the declining state of the silk industry in England was brought home to her by the condition of the trade at Macclesfield and other towns, and she at once took the practical steps of calling meetings of ladies at her home in St James's-square with the view of extending the wear of English manufactured silk in place of the foreign made article.'

Her widower married, secondly, on 8 August 1894, Alice Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, the widow of the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

[From an album probably compiled by either George Charles Pratt (1799-1866), 2nd Marquess Camden or by his son, John Charles Pratt (1840-1872), from 1866 3rd Marquess Camden.]