Lady Fanny Howard

Lady Fanny Cavendish was born in 1809, the daughter of Hon. William Cavendish and his wife, Hon. Louisa O’Callaghan, daughter of Cornelius O’Callaghan, 1st Baron Lismore.

On 1 July 1837 she married Frederick John Howard, son of Major Hon. Frederick Howard who was killed at the Battle of Waterloo. The marriage produced eight children. Her husband was the MP for Youghal from 1837 to 1841. He was later Private Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (his cousin, the 7th Earl of Carlisle.

For many years she was a Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria’s mother, and was closely associated with the life of the court.

She died on 30 December 1885. Her obituary appeared in The Times on 1 January 1886: ‘Lady Fanny Howard, sister of the Duke of Devonshire, died yesterday at Compton-place, near Eastbourne, Sussex. The deceased lady was the only daughter of the late Mr William Cavendish, and granddaughter of George Augustus, first Earl of Burlington. Her mother was the Hon. Louisa O’Callaghan, eldest daughter of the first Lord Lismore. She was born in April 1809, and in 1858, on her brother succeeding his cousin in the Dukedom of Devonshire, she was raised by Royal Letters Patent to the rank and precedence of a duke’s daughter. She married, in July 1837, Mr Frederick John Howard, formerly MP for Youghal, a cousin of the Earl of Carlisle, and has left a family of five sons and two daughters.’

Photographed by the Southwell Brothers of London.