Mrs Lusher

Identified on the album page as 'Mrs Lusher,' this is possibly Elizabeth Lusher of Soham in Cambridgeshire.

Born in or about 1781, she appears on the 1861 census, aged 80, living at Soham with her husband Richard, a farmer thirteen years her junior.

She died at Soham in the second quarter of 1864.

Photographed by S. Barley (location not given).

The photographer is Samuel Hewitt Barley who died, aged only 30, at Watton in Norfolk on 22 June 1865. When the census was taken in 1861, he was an 'Artist' staying at the Bell Inn in Fakenham in Norfolk. When his daughter Edith Louisa Barley was baptised at Watton on 25 March 1864, his profession was recorded as 'photographic artist.' Similarly, the announcement of his death the following year in the Norfolk Chronicle (1 July 1865) specifically refers to him as a 'photographic artist.'

Watton lies 36 miles from Soham. I would feel happier about my identification were the distance shorter. The 1861 census shows other elderly women with the surname Lusher living in Norfolk and Suffolk but Elizabeth Lusher of Soham is the nearest one I can find to Watton.