Mrs W. F. Watson
(1825-1893)
11 September 1862

Volume 9, page 162, sitting number 11,644.

Born at Chillenden in Kent on 1 January 1829, Eliza Margaret Power was the daughter of stockbroker John Power. She was baptised as Walworth St Peter on 10 July 1829. In later life, she changed her middle name slightly to Marguerite. 

She appears on the 1851 census, aged 22, living in Old Palace Place, Richmond, with her parents and two siblings.

On 26 August 1851 at St Mary Magdalene in Richmond she married William Farnell Watson. When the census had been taken earlier that year, her husband had been a ‘Brewer’s Clerk’ living in Brewer’s Lane, Isleworth, at the home of his uncle, William Farnell, who had purchased what became Isleworth Brewery in 1800. He was succeeded by his nephews, who continued expanding the business. The family were generous benefactors who endowed the area with a school and almhouses.

When the census was taken in 1861, William Farnell Watson described himself as a ‘Brewer employing 89 Labourers, 6 Clerks and 1 Apprentice.’

In 1871 the Watsons were living at Redlees Mansion, Isleworth, with their 17-year-old son, also named William Farnell Watson, and five servants.

William Farnell Watson père ‘of Isleworth in the County of Middlesex and Henfold Capel in the County of Surrey’ died at Isleworth on 30 November 1879, leaving an estate valued at £100,000.

Eliza Marguerite [sic] Watson of Redlees Park, Isleworth, died, aged 59, on 18 February 1893 at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. She left an estate valued at £14,845.

[The portrait comes from an album given to one Eliza Lavinia West for her nineteenth birthday in 1875, which was some thirteen years after the photograph was taken. Her father was Job West of Isleworth, who was a brewery servant in 1871 and a drayman in 1881.]