Miss Emily Whyte
(1835-1930)
16 February 1861

Volume 2, page 209, sitting number 2125.

[No image appears with the sitting in the Silvy daybooks, but the alignment of props indicates that the portrait was taken on 16 February 1861 and that the sitter was either 'Mrs Whyte' or 'Miss Whyte.' This supposition was later confirmed by another example of the same portrait which turned up on eBay in January 2022, accompanied by a newspaper clipping announcing the marriage of Miss Emily Macgregor Whyte to Mr Charles Stein, who is in fact the next sitter in the daybooks.]

Born in London on 2 May 1835, Emily Macgregor Whyte was the daughter of solicitor William John Whyte. She was baptised at St Pancras Old Church on 6 June 1835.

When the census was taken in 1861 she was living with her father and step-mother at 61 Russell Square, London.

On 17 July 1861 at St George’s in Bloomsbury she married Charles Stein, who around the time of their marriage became the manager of the Dover branch of the National Provincial Bank, a position her held 'for more than a quarter of a century,' according to his obituary. 

The couple appear on the 1871 census living at 1 Camden Crescent in Dover. The household included their three daughters : Alice (7), Annabel (4) and Emily (1). Also present that night were four servants and a visitor, William A. Whyte, an ‘East India and China merchant,’ aged 32, who was presumably Mrs Stein’s brother.

Charles Stein died, aged 66, in Canterbury on 25 October 1889. He left an estate valued at £421.

His widow survived him by many years. In 1911 she was living with two unmarried daughters and two servants at 37 Stanley Gardens, Belsize Park. According to the census, her marriage had produced five children and four of these were still alive. 

Mrs Emily Macgregor Stein died on 27 March 1930 at 15 Howitt Road in London's Belsize Park. Her estate was valued at £2287.