Catherine Marsh

A carte-de-visite portrait of the author and philanthropist Catherine Marsh (1818-1912), sometimes known professionally as 'Miss Marsh'.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: she ‘was the youngest of William Marsh's five children and his fourth daughter. Born on 15 September 1818 at St Peter's vicarage, Colchester, she lived with her father and later wrote his biography. During the 1850s in Beckenham, she became concerned for the spiritual welfare of the labourers working on the re-erection of the Crystal Palace nearby and for the many soldiers setting out for the Crimean War. Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars (1855), her emotive biography of an earnest Christian killed in the war, caught the heroic mood of the day, selling 78,000 copies in its first year of publication. Likewise, the account of her work among the navvies given in English Hearts and English Hands (1857) was reassuring in its positive approach to the labouring masses. She also established a convalescence hospital in Brighton during the cholera epidemic in 1866. She died on 12 December 1912 at Feltwell rectory, Norfolk, and was buried at Upshire, Essex, on 17 December.’

Her biography, The Life and Friendships of Catherine Marsh, was published in 1917.

Photographed by R. Boning of London and St Leonards-on-Sea.