Miss Dampier
(1831-1922)
13 May 1865

Volume 12, page 296, sitting number 16,334.

[The sitter is identified only as 'Miss Dampier' in the Silvy daybooks and on the album page. The likliest candidate for a fuller identification is Matilda Elizabeth Dampier.]

Born in Willesdon in 1832, Matilda Elizabeth Dampier was the daughter of Rev. Robert Dampier and his wife Sophia Frances née Roberts.

She was baptised in Willesdon on 25 June 1831.

She appears on the 1851 census living with her parents at Crabwood House, Millbrook, Hampshire. The household also included her younger sister Sophia Frances, a governess and three servants. Robert Dampier gave 'Curate of St Paul's Church, Southampton' as his profession. 

Matilda Elizabeth Dampier never married. Until an unfortunate accident in November 1864 she was responsible for looking after her sickly mother. 

'DEATH OF A LADY BY POISON — We have to record the melancholy death of Mrs Sophia Frances Dampier, a lady of independent means [...] She was the wife of a clergyman who was staying on the Isle of Wight at the time of her decease. The deceased had been for a long time suffering from neuralgia and other chronic complaints, and the medical treatment included an opiate and an embrocation. Her eldest daughter, who had devoted her life to the nursing of her mother, had been summoned by telegraph to London to attend on her sister who had been confined, and was in anxiety for the baby which shortly after died. [Her younger sister had married Sir William Robinson in 1862. A boy named Lawrence Chevallier Robinson was born in the last quarter of 1864 and died in the same quarter.] In Miss Dampier's absence the nurse, at the express desire of the deceased, placed both mixtures on a table at the bed-side. [...] The maid went downstairs to complete the arrangements for the night, and, as she returned upstairs, she heard Mrs Dampier's handbell ring most violently. [...] Mrs Dampier was coughing violently, [...] she asked deceased what was the matter, but she could only use signs to indicate that she had taken [the embrocation] under the impression that it was her sleeping draught. The opiate had also been taken, and it would seem that Mrs Dampier, after taking the opiate fell asleep, and having awoke suddenly under the impression that she had not taken her sleeping draught, poured out the embrocation and drank it. [...] An inquest was held and a verdict of "Accidental Death" was returned' (Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 28 November 1864). 

When the census was taken in 1911, Miss Dampier was a 79-year-old 'spinster' living alone at 12 Magdalen Road, Bexhill, Sussex. 

She died, aged 89 [sic], in 1922 at 10 St John's Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. She was buried on 8 April 1922 in the parish of Hollington. 

[From an Anglo-Irish album probably compiled by Elizabeth Alexander-Shaw, daughter of William John Alexander-Shaw.]