Lady Mary Crosse
(1839-1903)
12 August 1862

Volume 9, page 62, sitting number 11,247.

Born Lady Mary Stewart, the daughter of Sir Charles Andrew Knox Stewart, 4th Earl of Castle Stewart, on 5 January 1860 she married Captain (later Colonel) Thomas Richard Crosse, eldest son of Thomas Bright Crosse, once briefly the Member of Parliament for Wigan. 

Lady Mary Crosse appears on the 1871 census, living at Blackhall, in North Huish, Devon. With her on the night of the census were her two daughters – Kathleen Mary, aged 10, and Ella Beatrice, aged 9. Also present were eight servants. Lady Mary gave County Tyrone, Ireland, as her place of birth, and her age as 32, so she was born in or about 1839.

Her husband died at the Euston Hotel in London on 27 November 1897, leaving an estate valued at £31,303.

Lady Mary Crosse died, aged 65, on 14 June 1903 at 15 Buckingham Place Mansions, London. She left an estate valued at £1917, resworn three months later at £1207. Her executor was her unmarried daughter, Kathleen Mary Crosse. 

She was buried alongside her husband in the family vault in Lancashire. 'On Thursday the remains of Lady Mary Crosse were conveyed by train across London to Chorley, and were thence conveyed in a hearse to Whittle-le-Woods and subsequently interred in the family vault under the east end of the church. [...] The entrance to the vault had been lined with ferns and flowers by the gardeners at Shaw Hill. The coffin was placed in the vault by the side of the remains of the late Captain Crosse, who predeceased Lady Mary by five years. [...] Those who were assembled in the churchyard were afterwards permitted to descend into the vault, and they reverently paid a last tribute of respect to the memory of Lady Mary Crosse' (Burnley Express, 20 June 1903).