Mrs Charles Fox Webster
(1835-1874)
28 February 1861
Volume 2, page 244, sitting number 2265.
Born on 6 June 1835, Louisa Alice Frances Calder was the only daughter of Sir Henry Rodham Calder, 5th Bt. and his wife Frances Selina née Pery, daughter of the 1st Earl of Limerick.
On 11 November 1856 at St George’s, Hanover Square, she married firstly Charles Fox Webster, second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Henry Vassall Webster. Their marriage produced four daughters and a son.
The family appear on the 1861 census living at 52 Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge, on the south side of Hyde Park. Ten live-in servants were present on the night of the census, including a butler and two footmen.
Charles Fox Webster died, aged 37, on 7 September 1866 at Gayton Lodge, Wimbledon. He was buried with his father in Kensal Green Cemetery.
On 22 April 1867 at St Matthias’s Church, Richmond, Surrey, Louisa married secondly John Coupland of the Rookery, Nantwich, Cheshire. The marriage produced one child, Duncan Calder Coupland, born in April l868.
On 23 September 1871 Charles Henry Claude Webster, the only son of Louisa’s first marriage, died, aged 10.
In 1873 John Coupland began divorce proceedings against his wife, citing her adultery with his brother William McMurdo Duncan Coupland. Both Louisa and William denied the charge. The petition appears to have failed, presumably for lack of evidence.
‘A divorce case which will create the greatest excitement throughout the country has just commenced. Mr John Coupland, the Master of the Quorn hounds, having filed his petition for a dissolution of marriage on the ground of the adultery of his wife, Mrs Louisa Alice Frances Coupland, with his brother, Mr William McMurdo Duncan Coupland, and damages are claimed to the extent of £10,000’ (Leicester Daily Post, 19 May 1873).
Louisa Alice Frances Coupland died, aged 39, on 29 November 1874 at Goscote Hall near Leicester. She left an estate valued at £2000.
‘Our obituary records the death of Mrs Coupland, wife of John Coupland, Esq., Master of the Quorn Hounds, which event took place at Goscote Hall, Birstal, near Leicester, on Sunday last. On Sunday afternoon a messenger was sent to Melton Mowbray, to inform gentlemen of the hunt staying there that all the meets of the Quorn Hounds during the week were cancelled, in consequence. It is stated that in all probability the Earl of Wilton may act during the remainder of the season as Master, in the place of Mr Coupland’ (Leicester Guardian, 2 December 1874).
The cause of death, according to her death certificate, was 'Hepatic enlargement and ascetes.' [The latter is a condition in which fluid collects in the spaces within the abdomen.]
[From an album compiled by Lady Augusta Frances Hoare, wife of Sir Henry Ainslie Hoare, 5th Baronet.]