Master Adrian and Miss Laura Hope

Adrian and Laura Hope were two of the children of Colonel William Hope (1834-1909), who had served in the 7th Royal Fusileers and been awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery when a lieutenant at the siege of Sebastapol (18 June 1855) during the Crimean War. Following the war, William Hope served in the diplomatic corps. Adrian was born in or about 1858 at the British Legation in Washington and Laura in or about 1860 at the British Legation in the Hague.

The family appear on the 1871 census, living near Dagenham in Essex. William Hope gave an unusually long reply to the question of his profession: 'Victoria Cross, late 7th Royal Fusileers, and late of the Diplomatic Service, now a Farmer of 240 acres & employing about 35 hands. The number fluctuates.'

Adrian Hope appears on the 1901 census, living at 34, Tite Street, Chelsea, with his wife, artist and portrait painter Laura E. R. Hope, their 2 daughters, a sister, 2 nephews, and 4 servants. He gives “Sec. Hosp. Sick Children Gt. Ormond St.’ as his profession.

Adrian Hope died aged 46 in 1904. His obituary appeared in the Times on Friday 13 May 1904: ‘The hospital world of London, and especially that part of it which is associated with the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, will hear with sincere regret of the death of Mr Adrian C. F. Hope, which occurred in St. Thomas’s Home on Tuesday last after an operation for appendicitis. Mr Hope was the son of Colonel William Hope, who was one of the first to earn the distinction of the V.C. during the Crimean war. After serving in the Bank of England Adrian Hope became in 1876 private secretary to Sir James Longden, Governor of Ceylon. In 1885 he was appointed secretary of the Hospital for Sick Children, a post which he held till the time of his death and with which his name will always be closely associated. Courteous, energetic, and tactful, he was in many respects an ideal man for such a post, and the Children’s Hospital owes him a debt of gratitude for the work which he did in extending that institution, and the circle of those who took a personal interest in its welfare. The Coronation bazaar, which took place in the Botanic gardens in 1902 and proved a remarkable success, was mainly his work. His energies were not confined to Great Ormond Street, but extended to hospital work generally, and he was the president of the Hospital Officers’ Association. Mr Hope was married to Laura, daughter of the late Sir Thomas Troubridge, by whom he leaves two daughters.’

Of the other sitter in this portrait, Adrian’s sister Laura, nothing more is known. She is not living with her parents at the time of the 1881 census, by which date William, her father, is a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 1st Surrey Artillery Volunteers in Battersea. She must either have married or died by 1881, but neither event appears to have been registered in England or Wales.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 2 September 1862.