John Charles Llewellyn Ephgrave, 1875
William Francis Westfield, Calcutta, India
carte-de-visite

 

A carte-de-visite portrait of two parents with their sickly baby. An inked inscription verso in a period hand reads: 'This portrait was taken 7th Dec. 1875. Baby died 13th Dec. 1875 at Calcutta on board SS Sir John Lawrence.' Another inscription along the lower edge of the reverse of the mount reads: 'For Sarah with Love.'

An announcement in the Englishman's Overland Mail on 17 December 1875 reads: 'EPHGRAVE - On 13th December 1875, at Calcutta, on board the SS Sir John Lawrence, John Charles Llewellyn, the dearly beloved infant of George and Eliza Ephgrave - aged 6 months and 10 days.'

George and Eliza were married at St Andrew's Church in Silchar Cachar in Eastern Bengal on 13 October 1872. 'George Ephgrave of Chincoorie [was the] second son of Mr John Ephgrave, of Sandridge, Herts.' Eliza was the 'only daughter of the late Charles Flear, of London, and late schoolmistress at Harlaxton' (Grantham Journal, 7 December 1872).

At the time of the 1861 census George was a 'Gardener' at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. He died, aged 36, at Chittagong on 16 June 1877 and was buried there the following day. 

Eliza appears on the British censuses of 1881 and 1891, a widow living with son George Frederick Ephgrave, who was born in 'Lower Bengal' in 1876. In 1891 she was a 'Smallware and general dealer' in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She was still alive when the 1939 registered was compiled, living at Belvedere House in Burton-on-Trnet. She gave her profession as 'Almshouse matron.'  The register gives her birthdate as 12 December 1852. She died, aged 88, in Staffordshire on 28 May 1941.

George emigrated to the United States in 1899, where he settled first in Philadelphia and then in Washington, DC. He died in 1949 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

Photographed by William Francis Westfield of Calcutta.