Mrs Thomas Hornby Birley
(1820-1866)
25 July 1862

Volume 8, page 311, sitting number 10,864. 

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs  Th. Hornby Birley in the Silvy daybooks, the preceding sitting is her daughter, identified as ‘Miss Anna C. Birley.’]

Born in Ireland on 18 July 1820, Anne Leatham was the only daughter of Captain Leatham of Edinburgh. 

On 3 August 1843 at St Peter’s Chapel in Edinburgh, she married Thomas Hornby Birley, second son of Joseph Birley of Ford Bank, Manchester.

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at Highland Hall, Heaton Norris, Lancashire. Also present on the night of the census were their three children, a governess and eight servants, including a butler and a footman, with a coachman and his family living in a nearby lodge. Thomas Birley gave as his profession ‘Cotton and India Rubber Manufacturer.’ 

Their son James died at Trinity College, Oxford, on 20 February 1866 at the age of 18. 

Mrs Anne Birley died, aged 46, on 11 September 1866 at Hart Hill, Pendleton. She was buried in St James’s Churchyard, Didsbury.

‘Died, on the 11th instant, ANNE, aged forty-six, wife of THOMAS HORNBY BIRLEY, of Hart Hill, Manchester, and only daughter of the late Lieutenant-Colonel Leatham, formerly of the 1st Dragoon Guards’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 14 September 1866, page 2).