Mrs Annie Heywood
(1819-1872)
24 April 1862

Volume 6, page 240, sitting number 7830.

[A piece of paper pasted into the album below the portrait has been signed 'Annie Heywood.' The portrait opposite hers in the album is of her husband, James Heywood, and the sitter is identified as 'Mrs James Heywood' in the Silvy daybooks.]

Born Anne Kennedy in or about 1819, the fourth daughter of textile magnate John Kennedy of Ardwick Hall in Lancashire, she married firstly Gustav Albert Escher of Zürich. Her first husband having died, she married secondly on 11 June 1853 at Chorlton in Lancashire James Heywood (1810-1897), a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1847 to 1857 the Member of Parliament (Liberal) for North Lancashire. According to Wikipedia, he was a philathropist and social reformer who 'campaigned for free libraries, museums and art galleries, university entrance for dissenters and university degrees for women. He was President of the Sunday Society which campaigned for leisure activities to be available on Sundays.' The marriage produced one daughter, Anne Sophia, born in Pimlico in 1855.

Mr and Mrs Heywood appear on the 1861 census, living at 25 Palace Gardens in Kensington. James Heywood described himself as ‘Funderholder, JP and MP.’ Also present on the night of the census were their daughter, Anne Sophia, and Mrs Heywood's daughter by her first marriage, Mary Olga Escher, born in Switzerland in or about 1844.

According the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the university reformer and philanthropist James Heywood was resident in Kensington from 1859, where he was ‘active in the Notting Hill Unitarian congregation. He was an early promoter of the free public library movement, speaking in favour of the Public Libraries Act in 1850 and maintaining at his own expense a public library in Notting Hill High Street from 1874 until 1887 when he donated it to the parish of Kensington and Chelsea. He was a founder member in 1875 of the Sunday Society to promote the opening of museums, art galleries, and public libraries on Sundays.’

Mrs Annie Heywood died on 17 July 1872 at 25 Kensington Palace Gardens, London.

[From an album compiled by the sitter's cousin, Margaret Tootal, wife of Edward Tootal of The Weaste in Salford, formerly a cotton manufacturer, and second daughter of James Kennedy of Ancoats near Manchester, also a cotton manufacturer.]