▶Date of birth:  19 February 1844        Place of birth: Bank House, Mallow, Co. Cork, Ireland

▶Father:   Frederick Abrahall      Mother:  Eliza Hands

▶Spouse(s): -     Date(s) of marriage:       Place(s) of marriage:

▶Occupation: Mildmay Deaconess

▶Lifestory: Louisa Agnes Abrahall trained as a Mildmay Deaconess and lived for many years at Mildmay Park, presumably serving Mildmay domestic missions in the slums of London. She was born on the evening of Tuesday 19 February 1844, at Bank House, Mallow, Co. Cork, the daughter of Frederick Abrahall, from 1840 manager of the Provincial Bank at Mallow, and his wife Eliza (née Hands).

Her parents had married in Birmingham in 1831 and lived for several years in Hoxton, Middlesex before moving to Cork. In Cork the family lived, before Louisa’s birth, in Wellington Terrace, and Frederick Abrahall was employed as a bank clerk. Louisa had several brothers and two sisters, but at least two died, of scarlatina, before her birth. Her mother died in 1847, at the age of forty-two, when Louisa was three. The following year her father married again, to Catherine Bridget (“Kate”), daughter of Thomas Haines Esq., of Blossomfort, Co. Cork; the couple had further children. Louisa was brought up by her father and stepmother.

At some time (date unknown) Louisa Abrahall trained as a Mildmay Deaconess. As a Mildmay Deaconess she was one of a group of educated young women who joined a Christian organisation set up by William Pennefather in the mid 1860s to provide domestic missions to alleviate the sickness and suffering in the slums of Britain. There were about two hundred Deaconesses at any one time; their distinctive uniform allowed them to work in the roughest areas unmolested.

Louisa does not appear in UK censuses before 1891, but her links with Cheltenham began by at least 1888, when (as “Miss Abrahall”, the eldest Abrahall daughter), she attended the marriage of her stepbrother the Revd. Thomas Haines Abrahall to Priscilla Cecilia, daughter of John Winter Humphreys Esq. JP, of Ballyhaise House, Co. Cavan, and of Berkeley Villa in Cheltenham. In the same year, also in Cheltenham, her stepsister Geraldine married George Savage Martin Baxter, son of Francis Hastings Baxter Esq., of Ivy Lodge, Cheltenham; the service was performed by her brother Thomas, Rector of Kilkeel, Co. Down. By 1891 Louisa Abrahall, aged fifty-seven and still a Mildmay Deaconess, lived with her stepmother Catherine Abrahall and her stepsister Dora Georgina at 3 Selkirk Parade (now 67 Prestbury Road); Catherine Abrahall died at 3 Selkirk Parade in 1898, and Dora married and emigrated to New York.

Louisa may have worked at the new Mildmay Mission  Hospital, which opened its doors in 1892 in Austin Street, Bethnal Green. In 1901 she lived at “Pennefather’s Home”, 68-70 Mildmay Park, Islington; she continued to live at Mildmay Park until her death in Islington in 1925, at the age of eighty-one.

Her estate at death was valued at just over £510. In 1937 Louisa’s stepsister Geraldine Baxter lived at 18 Imperial Square, and died that year in a Cheltenham nursing home.

▶Moved to Pittville from: (uncertain)       Moved from Pittville to: Islington

▶Date of death:  19 October 1925      Place of death: Islington

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: Southern Reporter 24 February 1844; Cork Examiner 26 May. Her father died 24 October 1883 at Castleview, Rushbrook, Co. Cork.      ID: 7039

Contributor(s):  John Simpson