Captain Hugh Pollexfen Deane

A carte-de-visite portrait of Captain Hugh Pollexfen Deane of the 31st (The Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot.

Born in London on 11 December 1836, Hugh Pollexfen Deane was the son of Reverend John Bathust Deane, Assistant Master at Merchant Taylors’ School, by his wife Louisa Elizabeth née Fourdrinier.

Educated at Charterhouse, he entered the Army on 24 April 1855 as an Ensign (without purchase) in the 31st Foot, rising to the rank of Lieutenant later that same year. In September 1867 he gained the rank of Captain (by purchase).

On 24 January 1867 at Bath he married Juliette Daniell, the ‘only daughter of the late Edward Daniell, Esq., Captain 75th Reg., and granddaughter of R. A. Daniell, Esq., of Trelissick, Cornwall’ (Naval & Military Gazette and Weekly Chronicle of the United Service, 2 February 1867).

In 1891 Major Deane, now retired from the Army, and his three daughters were living at 27 St James’s Square, Bath. Mrs Deane was elsewhere the night the census was taken. The two older girls, Violet and Dorothy, were born in Malta. The youngest girl, Ella, aged 17, was born in Bath.

Major Deane died, aged 66, on 7 April 1904 at his residence, 12 Thurloe Square, South Kensington. According to his obituary in the Morning Post (9 May 1904), he ‘entered the Army in 1854 [sic], and served in the Crimea during the period following the fall of Sevastopol. He fought under Gordon in the Chinese War of 1860, and took part in the capture of the Taku Forts and the march of the Allied Armies on Pekin, receiving the China Medal, 1860. He was twice mentioned in despatches. On retiring from the Army he joined the 3rd (Militia) Battalion Devonshire Regiment, in which he served some years. He married Juliette, only daughter of the late Edward Daniell, of Trelissick, captain 75th (Old Stirlingshire) Regiment.’

His widow appears on the 1911 census living at 12 Thurloe Square with her two older daughters Violet Deane and Dorothy Pigott; one granddaughter, Juliette Pigott; and three servants. She died, aged 89, on 1 March 1931 at Mays Hill, Worplesdon, Surrey. She left an estate valued at £10,671.

Photographed by Henry Lambert of Bath.