Mrs Valpy
(1822-1893)
22 May 1861

Volume 3, page 285, sitting number 3822.

[Identified only as 'Mrs Valpy' in the Silvy daybooks, the following sitting is 'Mr Valpy,' presumably this sitter's husband. The following year (2 March 1862) Master Arthur Sutton Valpy visited the studio, so the woman seen here is probably his mother, Mrs Emily Anne Valpy née Sutton. In 1867 a 'Miss Valpy' sat for her portrait by Silvy, almost certainly this woman's daughter, given the strong family resemblance.]

Born in Kensington in or about 1822, Emily Anne Sutton was the only daughter of Daniel and Margaret Sutton of Earls Terrace, Kensington. She was baptised on 26 June 1822 at St Mary Abbots, Kensington.

On 21 December 1835 she personally received £7036 as part of a compensation packet worth £21,109 paid to her family for the loss of 413 slaves in British Guyana awarded by the British government when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

In 1844 at Kensington she married Richard Valpy, eldest son of Richard Valpy of Egbaston, Birmingham (Oxford Journal, 4 May 1844) and grandson of Dr Richard Valpy, for fifty years headmaster of Reading Grammar School.

The couple appear on the 1851 census living at Putney Heath with their three children, Emily (4), Arthur (2) and Adelaide (6 months). According to Burke’s Family Records, another son had died in infancy in 1845. Also present on the night of the census were five female servants. Richard Valpy gave ‘Civil Service’ as his profession.

When the next census was taken in 1861 he was a 'Statistician' employed by the 'Board of Trade.' The family were now living in Wimbledon. By 1871 they had moved to 5 Rutland Gate, Kensington. They were still at the same address in 1881. Richard Valpy was now ‘Retired from [the] Bd. of Trade.’

Mrs Emily Anne Valpy of Champneys near Tring in Hertfordshire and of 43 Prince’s Gate, Kensington Road, London, died on 23 December 1893 at the age of 71. She left an estate valued at £57,621.