The Gilbert sisters and friend

A carte-de-visite portrait of sisters Mary Mariamne [sic] and Cecilia Isabella Gilbert, seen here with their friend Laura Edmunds. An inscription on the album page identified the sitters as ‘Self, Cecil and Laura Edmunds.’

The Gilbert sisters were two of the three daughters of Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert of The Priory, Bodmin, Cornwall. Their mother was Marianne Charlotte Isabelle née Peters, daughter of the banker and amateur photographer William Peters.

Mary Mariamne Gilbert was born on 22 August 1851 and baptised in the parish church at Bodmin on 21 February 1852. At the age of 32, somewhat late in life by the conventions of her day, she married army officer Wolstan Francis of the 46th Regiment, son of the late Clement Francis of Quy, Cambridgeshire (Homeward Mail from India, China and the East, 20 May 1884). Their marriage produced two children but was far from happy. On 20 October 1914 Mrs Francis began proceedings to obtain a judicial separation from her husband on the grounds of his unkindness, cruelty and physical abuse, which had begun as early as their honeymoon in Paris. The documents relating to her suit also detail his more recent adultery with a servant in the household named Sarah Wolff. The petition was ‘dismissed on terms’ on 3 February 1916, presumably for lack of evidence.

Mrs Mary Mariamne Francis died, aged 96, at Weston-super-Mare in Somerset on 7 April 1948

Cecilia Isabella Gilbert was born on 10 September 1853 and baptised on 11 October 1853 at Slaugham in Sussex. She never married. At the time of both the 1891 and 1901 censuses she was at Barrow House in Ilfracombe, the home of Margaret Maria Dawes. On both occasions Cecilia is listed as a visitor but was presumably living there. She died, aged 82, on 14 July 1935 at 31 Broad Park Avenue, Ilfracombe, Devon.

Photographed by Henry Liddell of Bodmin, Cornwall.

[From an album compiled by Mrs Marianne Charlotte Isabelle Gilbert, wife of Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert.]