The Honourable Mrs Smyth
(1812-1880)
17 April 1861
Volume 3, page 101, sitting number 3093.
Born on 12 April 1812, the Honourable Diana Bosville Macdonald was the fifth daughter of Godfrey Bosville Macdonald, third Baron Macdonald of Slate. Her mother was Louisa Maria la Coast, the illegitimate daughter of William, 1st Duke of Gloucester, a younger brother of King George III.
On 18 May 1837 in London she married John George Smyth, elder son of John Henry Smyth of Heath Hall near Wakefield in Yorkshire. Their marriage produced two sons and three daughters.
At the time of the 1851 census, she was living with her husband, three daughters and younger son William, aged 3, at 17 Lowndes Square in London. Also present on the night of the census were a governess and fourteen servants, including a butler and two footmen.
Her husband died in 1869, leaving an estate valued at £30,000.
The Honourable Mrs Smyth appears on the 1871 census, a widow living with two unmarried daughters and five servants at Moorhill, Harewood, Yorkshire.
She died at Moorhill, aged 68, on 8 December 1880. Her estate was valued at £1500.
A short obituary appeared in the Burnley Express (18 December 1880). ‘We have to record the death of the Hon. Mrs Smyth of Moor Hill, Harewood, the mother of Mrs John Thursby, which occurred last Wednesday week, at Moor Hill, at the age of 68. Mrs Smyth, a daughter of the third Lord Macdonald, of Armidale [sic] Castle, in the Isle of Skye, was the widow of the late Colonel Smyth, M.P. for York, and had for some time been in failing health. The funeral took place last Saturday, at Kirkthorpe, near Heath Hall, Wakefield, the family residence, and was attended by her two sons, Lt-Colonel Fitzroy Smyth, Coldstream Guards, and Mr Smyth, late Rifle Brigade, and her two sons-in-law, the Earl of Harewood and Colonel Thursby, tenants and many others being also present.’
[From an album possibly compiled by the sitter's sister, the Honourable Marianne Bosville Turnor (née Macdonald), wife of Captain Henry Martin Turnor.]