Mrs Wilberforce Bird
(1801-1863)
24 September 1860

Volume 2, page 11, sitting number 1342.

Identified in the Silvy daybooks as 'Mrs Wilberforce Bird,' this is probably the widow of the colonial administrator William Wilberforce Bird (1784-1857), who served as the Deputy-Governor of the Bengal Presidency and, in 1844, as the acting Governor General of India. He was also a member of the Supreme Council of India. 

Born Hannah Elizabeth Brown in Calcutta in or about 1801, she was the second daughter of East India Company chaplain David Brown (1763-1812), founder of the Calcutta Bible Society. She married William Wilberforce Bird on 11 August 1818 at Benares in India.

She appears on the 1861 census, a widow living with her son and daughter at 22 Sussex Square, Bayswater. Also present on the night of the census were six servants, including a footman. 

Mrs Hannah Elizabeth Wilberforce Bird died of 'pleuro pneumonia' on 12 May 1863 at 22 Sussex Square, Bayswater, two days after the death of her youngest daughter, Harriette. Her daughter's cause of death was 'brain fever,' according to her death certificate. 

Mrs Wilberforce Bird left an estate valued at £4000.