Mrs Beadon
(1818-1895)

[The portrait does not appear in the Silvy daybooks but the sitter is identified by a pencilled inscription verso in a period hand. This is probably the widow of William Frederick Beadon, who visited Silvy’s studio on 12 October 1861, five months before his death.]

Born at Woolwich in Kent on 3 October 1818 and baptised a month later (1 November 1818) at St Mary Magdalene in Woolwich, Maria Jessie Ward Cockburn was the daughter of Major James Pattison Cockburn of the Royal Artillery, then stationed at the Royal Arsenal, and his wife Elizabeth Johanna Cockburn. Major (later Major-General) Cockburn was a career officer and an accomplished artist who published numerous travel books relating to his various postings and his periods of leave, all of which he illustrated himself. 

On 6 May 1841 at Charlton ‘William Frederick Beadon, Esq., of the Inner Temple, barrister at law of the Oxford Circuit, [married] Jessie, youngest daughter of Colonel Cockburn, of the Royal Artillery’ (Worcester Journal, 20 May 1841).

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at Latton in Wiltshire with their four children (the oldest was 12 years old and the youngest was 6 months old) and their eleven servants. Mr Beadon gave his profession as ‘Police Magistrate, Marlborough Street, London.’

William Frederick Beadon died, aged 54, on 30 March 1862 at 9 Stratford Place, Marylebone, London. He left an estate valued at £9000.

In 1871 Mrs Beadon was living with three of her children at 36 Upper Grosvenor Street, London. Also present on the night of the census was her brother, Charles Vansittart Cockburn, a Major-General in the British Army.

By the time the census was taken in 1881 she had moved to 16 Southwick Crescent in Paddington.

Maria Jessie Ward Beadon died, aged 77, on 2 November 1895 at 16 Southwick Crescent, Paddington. She left an estate valued at £4123.