Mrs B.F. Hallowell-Carew
(1833-1918)

Volume 7, page 284, sitting number 9382.  

[A cropped and enlarged version of this portrait appears in the Silvy daybooks. The entry is marked ‘Reproduction from carte de visite of Mrs Hallowell Carew.’ The original sitting does not appear in any of the surviving daybooks.]

Born in 1833, Mary Frances (Fanny) Cornewall was the daughter of Frederick Hamilton Cornewall and his wife Frances (Fanny) Harriet née Caulfeild. 

She was baptised at Diddlebury in Shropshire on 11 May 1833. 

On 7 July 1855 at St Paul’s in Knightsbridge she married Benjamin Francis Hallowell Carew, son of Captain Charles Hallowell Carew and his wife Mary Murray née Maxwell. 

‘On the 7th inst., at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, Francis Hallowell Carew, Esq., of Beddington, Surrey, to Mary Fanny, daughter of the late Frederick H. Cornewall, Esq., of Delbury-hall, Shropshire’ (Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1855). 

In 1861 the family were living at Llanboidy in Carmarthenshire. Benjamin gave ‘Retried from the Army / Landed Proprietor’ as his profession. 

Benjamin Francis Hallowell Carew ‘formerly of Baughurst in the County of Southampton but late of Sheldon near Teignmouth in the County of Devon’ died on 23 April 1879 at Sheldon, leaving an estate valued at £100. His will was proved by his widow, ‘Mary Fanny Carew of Almond’s Hotel, 6 Clifford Street, New-Bond-street,’ London. 

When the census was taken in 1881, the widowed Mary Fanny Carew was living at 73 Sloane Street, Chelsea, with seven unmarried daughters, aged 24 to 13, a governess, a butler and three other servants. 

In 1911, Mary Fanny Carew, aged 78, was the head of a household at 17 Wilton Place, Knightsbridge. Also present on the night of the census were an unmarried daughter, a married son, a lady’s maid, a maid and a cook. 

Mrs Mary Frances Hallowell-Carew died, aged 85, on 15 December 1918 at 15 Clivedon Place, Eaton Square, London. She left an estate valued at £176.