Countess of Derby
(1805-1876)
12 March 1861

Volume 2, page 229, sitting number 2487.

Born in 1805, the Honourable Emma Caroline Bootle-Wilbraham was the daughter of Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, 1st Baron Skelmersdale. On 21 March 1825, she married Sir Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, who succeeded his father on 30 June 1851, becoming the 14th Earl of Derby. The couple had two sons and one daughter.

Her husband served three times as Prime Minister and is to date the longest serving leader of the Conservative party.

The Countess of Derby died on 26 April 1876.

'We regret to state that the Dowager Countess of Derby died yesterday morning, between three and four o'clock, at her residence, 15, Cromwell-road, South Kensington. Sir William Jenner attended her ladyship till she expired. The Dowager Countess the Hon. Emma Caroline Wilbraham was the second daughter of the first Baron Skelmersdate, and married the fourteenth earl, father of the present peer, in 1825, the late earl having died in 1869. The deceased countess had been very ill for some days past, and Lord Derby, with other members of the family, were last week in consequence summoned to town' (Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 27 April 1876).