BUTLER, Elizabeth Field
Elizabeth Field Butler was born at Henley-upon-Thames, Oxfordshire on 10 July 1824, and baptised at the Congregational Church, Rotherfield Greys, Oxfordshire on 2 January 1826, daughter of Isaac Butler, a commercial traveller, and his second wife Lavinia née Bowton, who married at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex in 1822, Elizabeth's uncle was Herbert Edward Butler. In 1851, 52-year-old Isaac with children John 32, Lavinia 27, Isaac 21, Arthur 19 and Jane 14, all born at Henley-upon-Thames, were living at Albert Terrace, Victoria Road, Hornsey, Edmonton, but both Elizabeth and her mother were away from home. By 1861, together with her sisters Lavinia and Jane, they had opened a school at 90 Berners Street, Ipswich when it had some twenty pupils but the partnership with her elder sister Lavinia Bowton Butler, school conductors of a ladies' school, was dissolved in 1868, due to Lavinia's marriage that year and her sister Jane died in 1871. In 1866, one of the sixteen Ipswich ladies who signed a petition to Parliament to grant them the vote. In 1881 Elizabeth was 'head of a private school' at Anglesea House, [90] Berners Street, Ipswich with eighteen boarding pupils. A member of Ipswich Art Club 1878-1894 exhibiting over fifty works including amongst others, in 1881 ‘Round Tower, L’Etacq, Jersey’ four oil painting in 1883 ‘Sketch on the Wey, Guildford’, ‘Park Place Woods, Henley-on-Thames’, ‘Old Barn-Ponds Farm, Suffolk’ and ‘St Catherine’s Ruins, Guildford’ and continued to exhibit until 1885 from 109 London Road, Ipswich, but when exhibiting in 1891 was at Goodrich Villas, Cauldwell Hall Road, Ipswich. Elizabeth Field Butler died at Ipswich in 1902, aged 77, she was unmarried.