Mrs Thistlethwayte
(1823-1885)
11 July 1862

Volume 8, page 231, sitting number 10,543.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs Thistlewayte’ [sic] in the Silvy daybooks. This portrait was acquired at the same time as the adjacent portrait of Lady Hayes. The vendor told me that both cartes had come from an album in which the Pakenham family featured heavily. Pakenham was the maiden name of both Mrs Thistlethwayte and Lady Hayes, so the two women were sisters.]

Born in Westminster in 1823, Elizabeth Catherine Pakenham was the daughter of Lieutenant-General the Honourable Hercules Robert Pakenham, son of the 2nd Baron Longford, and the Honourable Emily Stapelton, daughter of the 12th Lord le Dispenser. 

She was baptised on 23 June 1823 at St George’s, Hanover Square. 

On 6 August 1850 she married Thomas Thistlethwayte of Southwick Park, Hampshire. Their marriage produced at least four sons and two daughters. 

The family appear on the 1861 census living at 13 Park Place in Westminster. Also present on the night of the census were ten live-in servants, including a butler and a footman. Thomas Thistlethwayte gave ‘Landed Proprietor’ as his profession. 

‘On the 6th instant, at St George’s, Hanover Square, […] Thomas Thistlethwayte, Esq., eldest son of Thomas Thistlethwayte, Esq., of Southwick Park, Hants, to Elizabeth Catherine, second daughter of the late Lieut.-General the Hon. Sir Hercules Pakenham, KCB, 43rd Light Infantry’ (Hampshire Telegraph, 10 August 1850). The ceremony, conducted by two uncles of the bride, was a double wedding; at the same time Mary Frances Hester Pakenham married Sir William Verner, Bart., MP, of Churchill, county Armagh.

Mrs Elizabeth Catherine Thistlethwayte died, aged 61, on 22 January 1885 at Fleming’s Hotel, Half Moon Street, Piccadilly. She left an estate valued at £664.