Mrs Mansfield Parkyns
(1835-1877)
8 April 1861

Volume 3, page 55, sitting 2919.

Born Emma Louisa Bethell on 11 November 1835, she was the third daughter of the lawyer Sir Richard Bethell, Q.C., who served as Lord Chancellor between 1861 and 1865 and was elevated to the peerage as 1st Baron Westbury in 1861. Emma was baptised on 3 March 1836 at St George’s, Bloomsbury.

On 14 September 1854 at Winslade Church near Basinstoke in Hampshire she married the English traveller Mansfield Parkyns, who the following year published his travel book Life in Abyssinia: being notes collected during three years' residence and travels in that country, in which he described his experiences and observations during three years (1843–1846) travels in Abyssinia.

The couple appear on the 1861 census living with or visiting Emma’s mother at 1 Upper Hyde Park Gardens in London. Also present on the night of the census were twelve servants, including a butler and two footmen.

In 1871 they were living with their four daughters at 59 Prince’s Square, Paddington.

The Honourable Emma Louisa Parkyns ‘of Woodborough Hall Nottingham […] and of 59 Prince’s-square Bayswater’ died, aged 41 at Woodborough Hall on 2 September 1877, leaving an estate valued at £11,000.