Constance Louisa Elliott
(1841-1881)
30 June 1862

[The sitter is identified as ‘Miss Elliott’ in the Silvy daybooks, a small signed slip of paper pasted across the lower margin of the carte gives her name as ‘Constance L. Hobson.’]

Born towards the end of 1841, Constance Louisa Elliott was the only child of Reverend James Elliott and his first wife Marianne Grant née Clarke. She was baptised at Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire on 23 December 1841.

Her mother died on 21 February 1844 at Pitminster Lodge near Taunton. On 25 April 1849 her father married again; his second wife was Charlotte Gould, daughter of John Gould.

When the census was taken in 1851, the family were living at Vicarage House in Crowcombe, Somerset, with a governess and three servants, all female.

Ten years later Constance was living with her widowed step-mother at Pitminster in Somerset.

On 6 January 1863 at Pitminster she married William Hobson, a Commander in the Royal Navy whose father, Captain William Hobson, had served as the Governor of New Zealand. At the time of the 1871 census, the couple were living at Funtington in Sussex with five servants, including a coachman.

Constance Louisa Hobson, ‘late of Pitminster Lodge,’ died of typhoid fever at Menton in the South of France on 15 April 1881. She left an estate valued at £36,148.