Hon R. Howard and Edward Fitzroy Talbot

Edward Fitzroy Talbot was the 6th son of the Very Rev. Charles Talbot, Dean of Salisbury, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the 5th Duke of Beaufort. Born on 6 March 1812, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford (MA, 1837), and was called to the bar on 3 May 1839. He lived at 15 Upper Berkeley Street, Mayfair, London. He died in 1890.

The Hon. R. Howard is possibly Richard Edward Howard (1812-1873), 3rd son of Thomas Howard, 16th Earl of Suffolk, born at Chorlton Park, in Wiltshire. According to the Times, the Hon. Richard Edward Howard graduated from Oxford in 1845, with a Doctorate in Civil Law, so perhaps the legal profession is what originally introduced the two sitters in this portrait. However, Howard seems to have left the bar and entered the civil service, for on 3 October 1857, The Times repeated a report from the Civil Service Gazette that included the information that the Hon. Richard Edward Howard had been appointed stamp distributor for Manchester.

He appears on the 1861 and 1871 censuses, a 'Stamp Distributor' living in Smedley Lane, Cheetham, near Manchester, with his house keeper, Catherine Palser. He was unmarried and she was 16 years younger than him, and there was only one other servant in the house, a maid-of-all-work, so it seems more than likely that Catherine was his common law wife. This would also explain his relatively lowly profession, and his relatively remote residence.

Photographed in London on 8 August 1861 by Camille Silvy.