Aimee Delagarde appears to have lived with her grandparents Frederic and Cecile Loisel at the Old Lodge, Stoneleigh Abbey, for most of her short life, though the reason is unclear.
Her mother, Adelphine Uranie Loisel had been married to Jean Albans De la Garde (there are various different spellings of the surname) on 17 June 1845 at St Martin in the Fields, London. Jean was described as "gentleman" and is probably the same man as one Albans Delagarde who is named in a number of London trade directories as a watchmaker. In 1851 he and Adelphine lived in Soho Square and he described himself as a Geneva watchmaker, showing pride in his skill. He is not to be found subsequently so perhaps moved abroad. Adelphine was a minor aged 19 when she married and thus required the consent of her father Frederic Loisel. She, too, disappears from the records (but for the birth of her children) until recorded living with her mother in Shepherd's Bush in 1877. By 1881 she had become a governess in Cornwall, and died in 1906. It is difficult to know why she parted from her children in earlier years.
Aimee was born on 16 April 1846 and baptised at the French Episcopal Protestant Church in Bloomsbury. Her godparents were members of the Gage family - for whom her grandfather Frederic was working - perhaps this suggests that her parents were peripatetic? Her younger brother Frederic is similarly baptised in 1848, the godfathers being both grandfathers. Neither Aimee nor Frederic is mentioned in the 1851 census but Aimee died of pleurisy and consumption on 3 July 1860 at Stoneleigh, aged 14. She was buried on 7 July and has an extensive inscription on her tombstone, in French and now hardly legible.
See also
B14.1 Loisel.
