Mrs Robert Dimsdale
(1825-1910)
20 February 1861

Volume 2, page 224, sitting number 2188.

[Identified as ‘Mrs Robert Dinsdale’ in the Silvy daybooks, this is probably Cecilia Jane Dimsdale née Southwell.]

Born at Oxford in or about 1825, Cecilia Jane Southwell was the elder daughter of Reverend Marcus Richard Southwell, later the Vicar of St Stephen's in St Albans.

On 1 November 1853 she married Robert Dimsdale, who became 6th Baron Dimsdale of the Russian Empire on the death of his father in 1872. The barony had been conferred by Catherine the Great on an ancestor, Doctor Thomas Dimsdale (1712-1800), who had inoculated the Empress and her son against smallpox in 1769.

Robert Dimsdale stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Hertford in 1859. He was elected the Member of Parliament for Hertford in 1866 and held the seat until 1874. In 1885 was elected as the representative for Hitchin and held that seat until 1892.

When the census was taken in 1861 Mrs Dimsdale was visiting her parents at the Vicarage attached to St Stephen’s Church in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Also present on the night of the census were her three sons and two daughters.

Ten years later Robert and Cecilia were with their eight children and Robert’s parents at Essenden Place, the Dimsdale family seat in Hertfordshire. The household included a German governess and ten servants, including a butler and a footmen, with many more gardeners, laundresses, coachmen and nursemaids living in outlying buildings.

The Honourable Baron Robert Dimsdale died on 2 May 1898 leaving an estate valued at £30,973.

In 1901 Cecilia was a widow living at Bedford Lodge in Windsor with two unmarried daughter as well as a married daughter and that daughter’s husband. The household included five servants, all female.

The Honourable Dowager Baroness Cecilia Jane Dimsdale died on 17 March 1910. Her estate was valued at £4082.

‘The death occurred at the advanced age of 83 years on St Patrick’s Day, at her residence, ‘Bedford Lodge,’ Osborne-road, Windsor, of the Dowager Hon. Baroness Dimsdale, whose remains were conveyed on Monday to Essenden, in Hertfordshire, to be interred in the family vault of the Dimsdales. […] The late Dowager Baroness was well-known in Windsor for her benefactions to charitable objects and her goodness to the poor’ (Windsor and Eton Express, 26 March 1910).