Lady Bethune
(1803-1877)

Volume 1, page 149, sitting number 800.

Born in or about 1803 in London, Coutts Trotter was the daughter of John Trotter of Dyrham Park, Hertfordshire. She was named after her uncle Sir Coutts Trotter, 1st Baronet.

On 9 July 1822 she married Sir Henry Lindsay Bethune, 1st Baronet of Kilconquhar, Fife. Their marriage produced three sons and five daughters.

Major-General Sir Henry Lindsay Bethune died, aged 63, on 19 February 1851 at Tabriz in Persia.

Lady Bethune appears on the 1861 census, aged 59, living at 134 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, with two unmarried daughters and six servants, including a butler and a footman. She gave 'Fundholder' as her rank/profession. 

She died, aged 75, on 31 December 1877 at 13 Princes Gardens, Knightsbridge. She left an estate valued at £25,000.

Her eldest son John Trotter Bethune, 2nd Baronet, claimed the title of Earl of Lindsay, which had fallen into abeyance after the death of the sixth earl. Having successfully proven his claim, John was recognised as the 10th Earl of Lindsay by the House of Lords on 5 April 1878, making his father the de jure 9th Earl of Lindsay. The title became extinct after the 10th Earl died without heirs.

[The possibility exists that this is Lady Bethune's daughter-in-law, who was also Lady Bethune. Jeanne Marie Eudoxie Duval, daughter of Jacques Victor Duval, married John Trotter Bethune, later 10th Earl of Lindsay, on 18 July 1858. She would have been 30 years old when this portrait was taken; the elder Lady Bethune would have been 57 years old.]