Mrs Grimston (of Hants)
19 July 1861

Volume 4, page 244, sitting number 5046.

I originally identified this sitter as Mrs Marmaduke Grimston, based on a calling card, which seemed to accompany the portrait in the album.

However, the Silvy daybooks identify the sitter as ‘Mrs Grimston (of Hants).’ In addition, several months later I bought a second portrait from the same sitting, this one with a pencilled inscription identifying the sitter as ‘Mrs Grimston / wife of Major Grimston RA.’ In 1861 there were four officers with the name Grimston in the army, but only one of them was in the Royal Artillery, Captain Walter John Grimston.

Walter John Grimston was born at Grimston Garth, Yorkshire, on 9 February 1828, and was christened two days later at Kilnwick, Yorkshire. On 10 December 1857 he married Olivia Steele but she died a year later, towards the end of 1858. In 1865, he was married again, this time to Josephine Green Wilkinson, but at the time this portrait was taken, in 1861, he was between wives.

It is possible that the inscription on the second carte is wrong, which forces us back to the Hampshire reference in the Silvy daybooks. The 1861 census does show another Grimston family living in Hampshire, at Sway House, Boldre, near Lymington. The head of the household is Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald James Augustus Grimston, but he served in the 19th Foot, not the Royal Artillery. Born 27 August 1831 at Grimston Garth, Yorkshire, he married on 15 April 1856 Frances Eliza Campbell, born about 1835, the daughter of Colonel Henry Dundas Campbell.