Author: Bousfield, Frances Brackenbury
Biography:
BOUSFIELD, Frances Brackenbury (1787-1855: ancestry.co.uk)
She was the daughter of William Bousfield (d 1836) and his wife Frances Brackenbury (d 1824: one poem in her 1829 book is to her “revered departed mother”). She was baptised in St. Botolph’s, Boston, Lincolnshire, on 8 Aug. 1787. Little is known about her life. The subscription list in Admonitory Rhymes is dominated by subscribers from Lincolnshire and includes Alfred and Charles Tennyson (qq.v.) and members of their family. A “Miss Bousfield” was governess to Alfred Tennyson’s sisters and one of his earliest known letters, from 1824, is addressed to her as “Dulcinea.” Likely this was not Frances, however, but her sister Sophia (1789-55) who later ran a school in Horncastle, Lincolnshire. Their brother, William Brackenbury Bousfield (1784-1836) was the Tennyson family’s physician. Frances appears in the 1851 Census as “Fanny Bousfield,” resident of an Islington boarding house; her occupation is given as “Independent.” She died at Ramsgate, Kent, on 29 May 1855 and was buried on 2 June in the churchyard at St. George’s church, Ramsgate. She left her estate to be shared equally among two sisters and a friend, Priscilla Grieve. (C. Y. Lang and E. F. Shannon, The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1821-50 [1981]; ancestry.co.uk 16 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 16 Mar. 2023) SR
Other Names:
- F. B. Bousfield