Mrs Elizabeth Jane Leigh
(1836-1884)

[This sitting does not appear in the Silvy daybooks in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. Presumably it took place between July 1863 and June 1864, the period covered by the missing daybook.]

Elizabeth Jane Blackwell was born on the island of Tobago in the West Indies in or about 1836, the daughter of Thomas Eden Blackwell of the Royal Argyllshire Highlanders. Her father died in 1846 and her mother subsequently remarried. 

Elizabeth appears on the 1861 census living at Kexby in Yorkshire with her mother and her step-father, Reverend Arthur Maister, the incumbent of St Paul's, Kexby. 

On 29 May 1861 at Kexby in Yorkshire, Elizabeth Jane Blackwell married Roger Leigh.

The couple appear on the 1871 census living at St Helier on the island of Jersey with their four young daughters. The household also included a governess and eight servants. Roger Leigh gave 'Landowner' as his profession. 

Mrs Leigh died at Aix-les-Bains in France on 30 July 1884. The announcement of her death in the Hampshire Advertiser (16 August 1884) refers to her husband as 'Roger Leigh, MP, of Hindley Hall, Wigan, and Barham Court, Teston, Kent.'

On 12 August 1885 Roger Leigh married his second wife, Agatha Elizabeth, daughter of Alfred Shaw. 

[From an album compiled by Charles Balfour (1822-1876), a British wine merchant importing sherry and port from Portugal.]