COWELL, Betha
Elizabeth Byles Cowell was born at Ipswich on 7 September 1838, and baptised on 23 September 1846, daughter of Charles Cowell (15 September 1798-8 May 1842), a corn merchant, and his wife Marianne née Byles (11 December 1801-11 January 1874), who married at St Clement's Church, Ipswich on 17 April 1823. She was a granddaughter of Abraham Kersey Cowell, the Ipswich corn merchant and printer and a sister to Edward Byles Cowell (1826-1903), the Sanskrit scholar. In 1851, Betha as she was known, was a 12-year-old scholar, living at Fore Street, Ipswich with her 48-year-old widowed mother Marianne and her two sibling brothers, Charles Henry 21 and Maurice Byles 14. She studied at the Ipswich School of Science and Art and was a watercolour landscape painter and a member of Ipswich Art Club 1891-1915 who, as Betha Cowell, exhibited in 1898 from South Lawn, Anglesea Road, Ipswich and in 1902, ‘On the Sure, Yorkshire’, in 1903 ‘Silvern Memories’ and two views of Christchurch, Ipswich. She variously gives her name as Edith and Betha and in 1901 was living at South Lawn, Anglesea Road, Ipswich and in 1911, a 72-year-old 'living on own means' at 42 Anglesea Road, Ipswich keeping two indoor servants. Elizabeth Byles Cowell died at Ipswich on 7 July 1921, her age given as 82, she was unmarried.