Grace Bernal-Osborne
(1848-1926)

 

Volume 1, page 242, sitting number 1149.

[An inked inscription verso in a period hand reads: ‘Grace Osborne, 2nd daughter of Ralph Bernal Osborne, Esq., MP,  & Mrs Osborne, 1860, Newtown Anner.’]

Born on 26 July 1848, Grace Osborne was the second daughter of the Liberal politician Ralph Bernal Osborne and his wife Catherine, descendant of a landed Anglo-Irish family. Grace’s parents were married in 1844, with Ralph Bernal taking the surname of his wife Catherine Osborne immediately afterwards.

On 3 January 1874 Grace became the second wife of William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans, who had succeeded to his father’s titles and estates at the age of nine. Their marriage produced six children.

The family appear on the 1881 census living at 33 Belgrave Square in London. Also present on the night of the census were a governess, two nurses and fifteen servants, including a butler, two footmen, a valet and a hall boy.

When the next census was taken ten years later the duke and two of his sons were at Bestwood Lodge in Nottinghamshire (today a Best Western Hotel).  Lady St Albans was with the couple’s four other children in London at 13 Grosvenor Crescent, Knightsbridge.

The duke died in 1898. Lady St Albans died on 18 November 1926, five days after suffering a stroke, at 49 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea. She left an estate valued at £16,166.

According to a short obituary in the Nottingham Evening Post (18 November 1926), ‘The duchess inherited Newton Anner, Clonmel, from her father, and was frequently in Ireland where her sister, Lady Blake, lived at Myrtle Grove, the place where Raleigh introduced the cultivation of the potato into the country.’

She was buried ‘in pitiless rain’ on 20 November 1926 beside her husband in Bestwood Churchyard, Nottinghamshire (Nottingham Evening Post, 20 November 1926).

[A portrait of the sitter's mother, taken on the same occasion, appears on page 47 of this section.]