Lady Selina Morshead

Born in 1833, Selina Anne Harcourt was the daughter of Reverend William Harcourt, the Rector of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire, and his wife Matilda Mary née Gooch. On 8 June 1854 she married Sir Warwick Charles Morshead, 3rd Bt. The marriage produced no children.

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at Binfield in Berkshire. Her husband gave for his profession; ‘J.P. for Berks late Capt. Dragoons’. The household included six servants, among them a footman and coachman.

On the night that the 1871 census was taken, she and her husband were visiting her brother Edward William Vernon Harcourt at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire.

Lady Selina Morshead died, aged 49, on 14 September 1883. According to her short obituary, which appeared in The Times on 18 September 1883: Selina Anne, Lady Morshead, died on Friday at her residence, Forest-lodge, Binfield, Berks. Her ladyship, who was a sister of the Home Secretary, was the third daughter of the late Rev. William Vernon-Harcourt, rector of Bolton-Percy and Canon of York, by marriage with Matilda Mary, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel William Gooch. She was born in 1833, and married in 1854 Sir Warwick Charles Morshead, third baronet, of Binfield. The deceased lady was granddaughter of the late Dr Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York.'

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 19 April 1861.

From an album compiled by the naturalist, editor, travel writer and Conservative politician Edward William Vernon Harcourt (1825-1891), who served as MP for Oxfordshire from 1878 to 1885 and for Henley from 1885 to 1886.