Sir Henry de Hoghton

A carte-de-visite portrait of Sir Henry de Hoghton (1821-1876), 9th Baronet.

Born on 2 August 1821, his parents were Sir Henry Bold-Hoghton and Dorothea née Bold. Henry was educated at Harrow and at St John’s College, Cambridge. He succeeded to the title 9th Baronet Hoghton on 19 July 1862.

On 14 August 1846, he married Louisa Josephine Sanders, daughter of Joseph Sanders. The marriage ended in divorce three years later. At that time a divorce could only be obtained by an Act of Parliament, so all the couple’s dirty laundry was aired several times as the Bill made its passage through Parliament. Every salacious detail was of course reported in the press. Louisa, still barely out of her teens and six months pregnant with her first child, had eloped with a young officer.

Even before the divorce, the story had become common gossip since Henry brought a civil case against his wife’s lover, Lieutenant (later Captain) Clarence Wigney, for ‘criminal conversation’. Wigney was tried in his absence, found guilty and fined £3,000. Given that the convicted paramour was merely a junior officer in the service of the East India Army, and the couple were now far away in India, Henry had little chance of seeing a penny of the damages the jury awarded him.

Henry married a second time on 1 July 1851. His new wife, Aline Jervis-White-Jervis, daughter of a Baronet, died the following year, on 29 December 1852, three weeks after giving birth to a daughter. On 6 September 1854 Henry married for a third time. His bride this time was Ellen Ann Harvey, daughter of Ralph Harvey. She survived him by some thirty years.

Sir Henry de Hoghton died on 2 December 1876, aged 55.

He had several different surnames during his lifetime. At birth he was plain Henry Hoghton, but when he was four years old, his father changed the family name to Bold-Hoghton. Later, Henry changed his name by Royal Licence to de Hoghton.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 10 September 1861.