Percy Sanderson

A carte-de-visite portrait of Percy Sanderson (1842-1919), later Sir Percy Sanderson.

Born on 7 July 1842, Percy Sanderson was the son of Richard Sanderson and the Honourable Charlotte Matilda née Manners-Sutton.

He never married. He appears on the 1911 census, a 'retired consul-general (pensioner)' living at Grove Hill, Caversham (near Reading) with his sister Lucy Fanny Mary Sanderson. He died there on 11 July 1919, leaving an estate valued at £10,624.

According to his obituary in the Times (15 July 1919): 'Sir Percy Sanderson, K.C.M.G., of Caversham, Reading, whose death has just occurred, at the age of 77, was born in London, and was the son of the late Richard Sanderson and Charlotte Matilda, daughter of the first Viscount Canterbury. Educated at Eton and Addiscombe, he took a commission in the Royal Madras Artillery in 1859, and five years later was appointed to the Royal Horse Artillery. [He was in fact in the Royal Artillery.] In 1865 he acted as A.D.C. to Sir William Denison, who was then Governor of Madras, and a year later was made a third-class Commissary of Ordnance. In 1868 he became acting A.D.C. to Lord Napier, and in the same year he was appointed first-class Commissary of Ordnance at Fort St George.

'Sir Percy retired on half-pay in 1870, and since then has been Consul at Galatz (1876), Consul-General for Rumania, and Commissioner for the Navigation of the Danube (1882), Acting Chargé d'Affaires at Bukarest from 1881 to 1886, and Consul-General in New York from 1894-1907. He was made a C.M.G. in 1886 and a K.C.M.G. in 1899. Sir Percy was the younger brother of Lord Sanderson, late Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office.'

He was buried in Caversham Cemetery. When his sister Lucy died in 1932 at Godalming in Surrey she was buried alongside him. Her estate was valued at £18,298.

Photographed on 5 March 1862 by Camille Silvy of London.