Emma Laura Shoubridge
(1835-1905)
21 April 1862

Volume 6, page 222, sitting number 7756. 

[The sitter is identified in the Silvy daybooks as ‘A Lady by order of Capt. Willoughby-Osborne.’ The following entry in the daybooks is a portrait of the captain with his fiancée.]

Born at Great Russell Street in London’s Bloomsbury on 29 October 1835, Emma Laura Shoubridge was the daughter of ‘Attorney and Solicitor’ (1851 census) Charles John Shoubridge and his wife Laura née Bramley. She was baptised at St Pancras on 27 January 1836. 

On the night that the census was taken in 1861, Emma was at 2 Old Palace Place in Richmond, the residence of her father Charles J. Shoubridge, who gave ‘Solicitor’ as his profession.

On 28 May 1862  at St Matthias in Richmond Emma Laura Shoubridge, ‘eldest daughter of  Charles John Shoubridge, Esq. of Richmond, Surrey’ married ‘Captain Willoughby-Osborne, C.B., Political Agent to the Governor-General of India, Rewah’ (Cork Constitution, 2 June 1862). Rewa was a Rajput princely state in Central India].

Their marriage produced six children. 

In 1870 Emma published her translation of ‘An account of the pilgrimage to Mecca made in 1864 by the late Nawab Sikander, Begum of Bhopal’ (Lady’s Own Paper, 1 October 1864).

Captain Willoughby-Osborne died at Mussoorie in India on 4 October 1881. 

‘Colonel John William Willoughby-Osborne, C.B., of the Madras Army, died on the 8th inst., after a long illness, at Dehra Soon. He was the eldest son of the late Major-General [George] Willoughby-Osborne, of Hawford, Ombersley, Worcestershire, and was born in 1833. He served throughout the Indian Mutiny, and was wounded at the action of Kurereah. For his services in India he was nominated Companion of the Order of the Bath. In 1860 he was made honorary aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India, and in 1880 he was appointed Political Resident at Gwalior’ (Pall Mall Gazette, 13 October 1881). 

In 1891 Emma was a widow living at Weybridge in Surrey with one general servant.

Emma Laura Willoughby-Osborne died, aged 69, on 6 February 1905 at Ombersley Lodge, Elham, Kent. She left an estate valued at £1639.