Eleanor Jane Molesworth, died 1862

Eleanor Jane Molesworth was the first wife of Rennel Francis Wynn Molesworth (1827-1906). She died of typhus fever on 12 March 1862, aged 36, shortly after the birth of her last child. Her husband was the Curate of Betteshanger in Kent. The family appears on the 1861 census, a year before her death, living at Betteshanger Parsonage at Northbourne in Kent. The children who appear on the census are almost certainly the children who appear here, given that their genders and apparent ages match so exactly. These are: Mary (8), Francis (7), John (5), Ernest (2), Arthur (10 months). The woman in the photograph is possibly an aunt.

By 1871 Rennel Molesworth had become Vicar of Todmorden in Lancashire. He had remarried and had two more children, Rodney and Bertha. The 1871 census provides the name of the baby in this photograph, Eleanor Jane, named after her mother.

Photographed by W.H. Franklin of Deal in Kent.