Lady Tierney
(1817-1908)

[This sitting does not appear in the Silvy daybooks in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. Presumably the sitter visited the studio between July 1863 and June 1864, the period covered by the missing daybook.]

Identified on the album page as 'Lady Tierney,' this is probably the widow of Sir Matthew Edward Tierney (1818-1860), 3rd Baronet Tierney of Brighthelmstone and of Dover Street, London. Born Mary Farrer, the daughter of Farrer Grove Spurgeon Farrer, she married Sir Matthew Edward Tierney in 1855.

She appears on the 1861 census, a ‘Baronet’s widow’ living at 73 Queen’s Terrace, Southampton. Born at Bath in Somerset, she was 40 at the time of the census so she was born in or about 1821.

Lady Mary Tierney died in London in February 1908. (Her age at the time of her death was recorded as 91, which doesn’t quite agree with the age she gave at the time of the 1861 census.) In her will, she left provisions for the care of her dog: ‘As I am anxious my loving and dearly-loved fox terrier “Maisie” should have every comfort and attention, I bequeath an annuity of £12 a year to her to be paid for her to Sarah Fone, in addition to what I have already left her in my will, that in case of my darling “Maisie’s” illness, Fone can take her to London to see Mr Cousens, the only doctor that must attend my sweet pet. I also desire that she is only washed with his shampoo’.