Frederick Dundas, MP
(1802-1872)
15 July 1861

Volume 4, page 216, sitting number 4934.

[The entry for this sitting in the Silvy daybooks includes the additional information that ’50 cartes’ were ordered by the sitter.]

Born on 14 June 1802 at Hampton in Middlesex, Frederick Dundas was the son of the Honourable Charles Lawrence Dundas, the Member of Parliament for Malton in the North Riding of Yorkshire and younger son of Thomas Dundas, 1st Baron Dundas. His mother was Lady Caroline Beauclerk, daughter of Aubrey Beauclerk, 5th Duke of St Albans. He was baptised at St George’s Hanover Square on 20 July 1802.

Frederick Dundas sat in Parliament as the representative for Orkney and Shetland from 1837 to 1847 and again from 1852 to 1872.

‘Mr Frederick Dundas, the present member, is one of those steady, temperate, and constitutional Reformers whom, especially in the present disjointed state of party connexions, sensible and discreet men look upon as suitable representatives. He is, and has long been, liberal in his political principles, and as an independent supporter of Lord John Russell his success is desired by friends of Government’ (Evening Mail, 4 June 1847).

On 2 June 1847 at Hove Church in Sussex he married Grace Gore, eldest daughter of Sir Ralph Gore, 7th Baronet.

The couple appear on the 1851 census living at 24 Hanover Square, London. Also present on the night of the census were five servants, including a butler, a footman and a groom. The household was at the same address when the census was taken in 1861.

Grace Dundas died on 15  January 1868 at her residence in Hanover Square. She left an estate valued at £12,000.

Frederick Dundas died suddenly of heart disease, aged 70, on 26 October 1872, also at 24 Hanover Square.

‘Mr Dundas, who was a cousin of the Earl of Zetland, was in his seventy-first year. He was Lord Lieutenant of Orkney and Shetland, and had represented Orkney in the House of Commons from July, 1837, up to the present time, with the slight interval of July, 1847, to 1852. The hon. Member was a Liberal in politics, and advocated vote by ballot’ (Pall Mall Gazette, 28 October 1872).

His estate was valued at £20,000 ‘in the United Kingdom,’ suggesting that he had other assets elsewhere in the world.

[His portrait is shown here opposite a portrait of his first cousin John William Ramsden, whose mother Isabella was a sister of the Honourable Charles Lawrence Dundas, Frederick Dundas's father.]