Catherine Louisa Pirkis - Loveday Brooke: "The fatal day has arrived. I can exist no longer. I go hence and shall be no more seen"

Catherine Louisa Lyne was born in London in 1839. She was the daughter of Lewis Stephens Lyne, an accountant and comptroller-general of Inland Revenue. When her father died in 1859, his obituary gave the cause of death as "the consequences of excessive exertion of the brain." In 1872, at the age of 33, Catherine married Frederick Edward Pirkis, fleet-paymaster for the Royal Navy. The couple tended to move fairly often. In 1874 Catherine gave birth to a daughter and two years later a son whi...