James Staples Hawkins
(1837-1909)
18 June 1862

Volume 7, page 148, sitting number 8838.

Born in Dublin on 10 February 1837, James Staples Hawkins was the only son of James Hawkins of Middle Gardiner Street in Dublin and St Fenton’s, Howth. His mother was Isabella née Law, daughter of Robert William Law.

At the time of the 1851 census, James was a pupil at Rugby School.

On 27 July 1865 at ‘Colebrooke Park, Fermanagh, the fine ancestral seat of Sir Victor A. Brooke, Bart.’ he married Letitia Georgina Brooke, eldest daughter of George Augustus Frederick Brooke and Lady Arabella Georgina Hastings, daughter of the 12th Earl of Huntingdon.  ‘The ceremony was performed by the Lord Bishop of Cork, uncle of the bridegroom […] In the afternoon the happy pair started for Dublin, en route for the Continent’ (Dublin Daily Express 31 July 1865).

Their marriage produced three children, as well as a stillborn daughter in May 1870. 

When the census was taken in 1891 the family were at 87 Onslow Gardens in South Kensington. The household included a German governess from Berlin, a butler, a footman and four female servants. James gave ‘Magistrate’ as his profession.

James Staples Hawkins of St Fenton’s, Baldoyle, County Dublin, died on 9 June 1909 at 11 Nottingham Place, Marylebone. He was 72 years old. According to one newspaper report, he left an estate of £53,251 (The Globe, 15 September 1909). According to the Index of Wills and Administrations, the figure was £12,672 in England so presumably the bulk of his assets were in Ireland. 

The following year the Archbishop of Dublin dedicated several memorial gifts at Howth Parish Church, including a ‘reredos in stone, in memory of the late James Staples Hawkins and his wife, Letitia Georgina Hawkins, given by their children’ (Irish Times, 29 June 1910). 

[From an album compiled by Bertha Amelia Yorke, daughter of the Very Rev. and Hon. Grantham Munton Yorke.]