Mrs Robert Jarvie
(1835-1923)

[The sitter was identified on the album page as ‘Mrs Robert Jarvie’ and was opposite a portrait of her husband. Another portrait of him can be found on the website Historical Photographs of China and it is clearly the same man. As yet, I haven’t found Mrs Jarvie’s sitting in the Silvy daybooks.]

Born in Glasgow on 1 March 1835, Agnes D’Arcy Bannatyne was the daughter of lawmaker Andrew Bannatyne, DLL, and Margaret née Millar. 

On 30 April 1863 at 4 Park Circus, Glasgow, Robert Jarvie of Shanghai married Agnes D’Arcy Bannatyne, younger daughter of Andrew Bannatyne, DLL, of Millheaugh, Blantyre, in Scotland. (Morning Post, 5 May 1863). The marriage produced no children. 

Agnes's sister Elizabeth married Robert’s brother John. 

Robert Jarvie, Esq., of the firm Jarvie, Thornburn and Co., died in Shanghai on 23 August 1866 (London and China Telegraph, 30 October 1866). His body was brought home to Scotland and buried in Glasgow Necropolis on 5 July 1867, according to his headstone. 

When the 1911 census was taken Agnes Jarvie was boarding at the Queen’s Hotel in Penzance, Cornwall. 

The 1921 census has her living with Lieutenant-Colonel William Bannatyne, presumably her brother, and his two unmarried daughters at 39 Hyde Park Gardens, London. The household included a lady’s maid called Frances Mary Collins; a housemaid and a sick nurse. 

Agnes Jarvie died there, age 87, on 6 February 1923 and was buried in Glasgow Necropolis, alongside her husband and her lady’s maid Frances Mary Collins. 

She left an estate valued at £54,950