Laetitia Anna Layard Dowbiggin

Laetitia Anna Layard Dowbiggin (7 February 1844 – 5 December 1930) was a British Christian missionary and teacher in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Laetitia Anna Layard Dowbiggin
Laetitia Anna Layard Dowbiggin, from a 1922 publication.
Born
Laetitia Anna Layard

7 February 1844
Colombo
Died5 December 1930
Colombo
OccupationMissionary, educator
Children7, including Herbert Dowbiggin
Parent(s)Charles Peter Layard
RelativesCharles Layard (brother)

Early life

Laetitia Anna Layard was born in Colombo, Ceylon, one of the nine children of Sir Charles Peter Layard and Louisa Anne Layard. Her father was also born in Colombo, and was the city's first mayor. Her brother Charles Layard was Attorney General of Ceylon.[1]

Other notable members of the extended Layard family of Ceylon included archaeologist Austen Henry Layard and his brother Edgar Leopold Layard.

Career

Dowbiggin and her husband were Anglican missionaries with the Church Mission Society at Cotta (Kotte) in Ceylon,[2][3] her home country, from 1869 to 1901.[4][5] They founded a church at Angampitiya,[6] and boarding schools for boys and girls, during their work.[7][8] She served as the girls' school matron,[9] overseeing between forty and eighty resident students,[9][10] into her widowhood, retiring in 1906.[11]

She took a furlough in England in 1910 and 1911, then returned to Ceylon to live at Liyanwela as an independent missionary and community worker.[7] "She had a remarkable way of keeping in touch with the old girls, and a wonderful power of winning and retaining the love of her pupils," according to a history published in 1922.[7]

Personal life

Laetitia Anna Layard married Rev. Robert Thomas Dowbiggin in 1869. Their seven children included Herbert Layard Dowbiggin, who became a forensics expert and Inspector General of Police in Ceylon.[12][13] The Dowbiggins took a furlough in 1891;[14] Laetitia Dowbiggin spent time in England in 1896 at her daughter's deathbed.[15] She was widowed when her husband died at sea in 1901, and she lived with her single sisters Mary, Matilda, and Henrietta in Surrey for a time after that, and again in 1911.[16][17] She died in 1930, aged 86 years, at a nursing home in Colombo.[18]

References
  1. "A Visiting Representative". Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1950). 1900-12-21. p. 1. Retrieved 2020-11-07 – via Trove.
  2. Dowbiggin, E. (1873). "Last Christmas at Cotta Station, Ceylon". The Female Missionary Intelligencer. 16: 184–188.
  3. Marvin, Enoch Mather (1878). To the East by Way of the West: Giving an Account of what the Author Saw in Heathen Lands During His Late Missionary Voyage Around the World ... Bryan, Brand & Company. pp. 183–184.
  4. Delmar, Shalom. "Christ Church, Kotte". Church of Ceylon Diocese of Colombo. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
  5. Church Missionary Society (1897). Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East... Church Missionary House. pp. xxxix, 295.
  6. Wijesinha, D. J. (December 1883). "A Short Account of the Church Built at Angampitiya". Church Missionary Intelligencer: 759.
  7. Balding, J. W. One Hundred Years in Ceylon (Diocesan Press Vepery, 1922): 57, 138-141.
  8. Clay, E. (July 1881). "Two Days in Ceylon". Church Missionary Gleaner. 7: 73.
  9. Dowbiggin, R. T. (March 1890). "The Girls' Boarding-School, Cotta". The Church Missionary Gleaner: 38–39 – via Internet Archive.
  10. "Cotta". Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East: 323. 1902.
  11. "A Fairwell Function at Cotta" The Ceylon Church Missionary Gleaner (May 1906): 39.
  12. Blum, Binyamin (August 2017). "The Hounds of Empire: Forensic Dog Tracking in Britain and its Colonies, 1888–1953". Law and History Review. 35 (3): 621–665. doi:10.1017/S0738248017000232. ISSN 0738-2480.
  13. "Ceylon Police Chief's Visit". Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954). 1937-07-13. p. 9. Retrieved 2020-11-07 – via Trove.
  14. "Ceylon Mission". Proceedings of the Church Missionary Society: 160. 1891.
  15. "The Autumn Reinforcements". The Church Missionary Review. 47: 922. December 1896.
  16. Census Returns of England and Wales, 1901. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives, 1901. via Ancestry.
  17. Census Returns of England and Wales, 1911. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA) Series RG14, 1911. via Ancestry.
  18. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1931; page 144.
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