Miss Victoria A. Cotes
(1840-1918)
Volume 1, page 152, sitting number 810.
[Identifed in the Silvy daybooks only as 'Miss Cotes,' the sitter was identified more fully on the album page as 'Miss Victoria A. Cotes.']
Victoria Alexandrina Cotes was born in 1840 at Sherriffhales in Shropshire. She was the eldest daughter of John Cotes and his wife Lady Louisa Harriet née Jenkinson, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Liverpool.
She appears on the 1851 census, aged 10, living at Woodcote Hall on the outskirts of Newport in Shropshire with her parents and five younger siblings. Her father described himself as a 'Landed Proprietor, employing 20 Labourers / Magistrate of the County.' Also present on the night of the census were 21 servants, with more in nearby buildings.
She married, firstly, Thomas Owen of Condover Hall on 1 March 1864 at Woodcote. According to a report on her wedding that appeared in the Brighton Gazette (10 March 1864), Miss Cotes was 'a goddaughter of the Queen, after whom she is named Victoria Alexandrina, and granddaughter of the late Earl of Liverpool.' The article refers to the groom as Thomas Owen, Esq., 'better known as Major Cholmondeley.' This is because Thomas Cholmondeley had taken the name and arms of Owen when he inherited Condover Hall in 1863 from his cousin, Edward William Smythe Owen. He died on his honeymoon in Florence on 19 April 1864. According to the Shrewsbury Chronicle (22 April 1864), the cause of death was 'a severe attack of fever of a low typhoid class, such as is generally prevalent in the low marshy and malarious districts of Italy at this period of the year.' On his death Condover Hall passed to his brother, Reginald Cholmondeley.
Thomas Owen's widow married, secondly, Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Grant, son of the Right Honourable Sir Robert Grant, on 24 November 1875 at Westminster. This marriage produced two sons, and a daughter who died in childhood.
Lady Grant died on 26 October 1918 at Pitchford Hall in Shropshire. On her death, the Liverpool Daily Post (2 November 1918) referred to her as 'almost the first dame of position who habitually did not wear gloves in the streets of London.' She left an estate valued at £25,282.