On 18th September 1890, Sybil married Thomas Brassey, Baron Brassey of Bulkeley, 1st Earl Brassey, son of Thomas Brassey (1805 – 1870) and Maria Farringdon Harrison. They were married in St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, London, UK. Sybil was the second wife of Lord Thomas Brassey, a former Liberal Member of Parliament, who was a supporter of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society.
The Brassey family were extremely wealthy. Thomas’s father, also called Thomas, was a civil engineering contractor and manufacturer of building materials. He was responsible for building much of the world's railways in the 19th century.
From 1895 to 1900, Sybil's husband was the Governor of Victoria, Australia. Sybil went with her husband when he sailed his three-masted topsail-yard schooner steam yacht “The Sunbeam” to Australia and back. When war broke out in 1914, the couple had their ship converted into a hospital ship and set out for Lemnos, before going on to Imbros, where they arrived on 14th August 1915.
Sybil and her husband returned to Britain, leaving their ship to serve used as a convalescent ship for wounded Allied officers.
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| "The Sunbeam" |
There is very little else I could find about Lady Sybil so I wonder what she did in Britain during WW1?
Lady Sybil died on 20th February 1934 and was buried in Golders Green Cemetery.
Imbros, (now officially Gökçeada) is the largest island belonging to Turkey, located in Çanakkale Province. It is located in the north-northeastern Aegean Sea, at the entrance of Saros Bay. Imbros has an area of 279 km2 (108 sq mi) and has some wooded areas.
Herbert William Hillier (1869 - 1956) British WW1 War Artist - “An annotated panorama, in two sections, showing several warships in Kephalos Bay at Imbros”. Art.IWM ART 4325 a
Herbert joined the Royal Naval Reserve and in 1915 volunteered as a war artist and served as an Able Seaman in the Gallipoli Campaign at the age of 46,aboard a former tramp steamer, requisitioned by the British Navy as HMS Manica, which became the first Royal Naval balloon ship.
Primary Source: An article entitled “A Suffragette in Kephalos Bay” by Jim Claven, published in “The Gallipolian”, Winter 2021 magazine of the Gallipoli Association.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q75345769 and
Other sources:
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/13139
https://thepeerage.com/p7766.htm
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22431816
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brassey
https://www.caltongallery.co.uk/Artist.aspx?id=Artist.HILLIER,%20HERBERT
Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbros
