'Beauty’ Blackwood
(1832-1893)
18 October 1861

Volume 5, page 147, sitting number 6081.

[Identified as 'Beauty' Blackwood by a pencilled inscription recto in the lower margin, this is probably the S. Blackwood, Esq. who visited Silvy's studio on 18 October 1861. However, since no image appears with the entry in the daybooks, it is not possible to be certain.]

Stevenson Arthur Blackwood was born at Rossyln Lodge in Hampstead on 22 May 1832, the son of Arthur Johnstone Blackwood and his wife Cecelia Georgiana née Wright.

Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he preferred athletic pursuits to academic study. In March 1852, his mother secured him a post as Clerk to the Treasury. In March 1854 he volunteered to serve with the Commissariat Staff in the Crimean War, where he was attached to the Brigade of Guards. The bloodshed he saw during the war appalled him, and this, coupled with the early death of a younger sister, brought about a religious conversion of an Evangelical nature and he held strong religious views for the rest of his life. He was a regular speaker at open-air services and frequently addressed the seaman’s mission and other organisations directed at improving the conditions of the working class. He was active in several societies formed to fight the evils of drink, and in 1878 he finally took the pledge himself.

In 1880 he was appointed Secretary-General of the Post Office, travelling widely to secure postal arrangements throughout Europe and the Empire. Among the innovations he introduced were the parcel post and the postal order. In 1887 he was made a KCB.

In his youth, he was considered one of the most handsome and eligible bachelors in London. On 16 December 1858, he married the young widow of George Montagu, 6th Duke of Manchester. Born Harriet Sydney Dobbs, her father was Conway Richard Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, Carrickfergus. Of Protestant Irish stock, she was also strongly religious and an ardent Christian. During her first marriage to the much older Duke – she was his second wife – she had been known in society, rather dismissively, as ‘Duchess Dobbs.'

Sir Stevenson Arthur Blackwood died on 2 October 1893, at the age of 61, at the Great Eastern Hotel, Parkeston, Harwich, Essex. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. His wife and several sons and daughters survived him.

[Some of the above information is taken from Mike Ashley’s Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life (2001), a biography of Stevenson Blackwood’s son, who was an author of supernatural fiction. Further information is taken from his obituary, which appeared in The Times on 4 October 1893.]