John Roach Bovell

Son of John William Bovell of Barbados and brother of John Bovell (1801-1837) and Michael Nihell Bovell (q.v.).

1. Son of John William Bovell of Barbados, school Charterhouse. Admitted pensioner Trinity January 1821; matriculated 1822, BA 1826.  Admitted Lincolns Inn 1825. Died 15/01/1852 at St John's Wood.

2. Location in the 1830s is uncertain, and indeed his family appears to have been transatlantic. He registered enslaved people in the 1832 Registration in Demerara. His children were baptised at St Mary Bryanston Square (1838, 1839 and 1841, when he was shown as living at 29 Montagu Square, 34 Montagu Square and 105 Gloucester Place respectively), Brighton Sussex (1842 and 1844) and St John Paddington (1845). Buried at All Souls Kensal Green 19/01/1852 aged 48 when his address was given as 4 Ordnance Villas St Johns Wood, Marylebone. In the will of Sarah or Sarah Ann Alleyne widow of Liverpool proved 14/02/1856 Sarah Louisa Bovell, a legatee, was described as widow of John Roach Bovell of Brighton. John Roach and Sarah Louisa Bovell's son Edmund died in Demerara in 1862. Sarah Louisa Bovell herself died 19/02/1887 aged 74 at Wyndham Place, Bryanston Square.

3. John Roach Bovell's daughter Emily married William Allen Sturge 22/09/1877. She appears in the ODNB as a member of the Edinburgh Seven, women who sought to gain professional medical qualifications at the University of Edinburgh between 1869 and 1873. Her sub-entry reads: Emily Bovell [married name Bovell Sturge] (1841–1885) was born at 105 Gloucester Place, London, on 21 February 1841, the daughter of John Roach Bovell (1803–1852), of no occupation though with slave-owning interests in British Guiana, and his wife, Sarah Louisa, née Jones. Her paternal grandfather was a medical practitioner in Barbados. Following her father's death, her mother became superintendent of a boarding house for students at Queen's College, Harley Street, and she herself became a teacher.' She ultimately took her MD in Paris and practised at Garret Anderson New Hospital for Women.

T71/887 British Guiana claim nos. 2272 (Belfield) and 2274 (Verkoinven (?)).

1. Ancestry.com, Cambridge University Alumni 1261-1900 [database online].

2. T71/432 p. 1368; Ancestry.com, London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 [database online]; Ancestry.com, England and Wales Christening Records, 1530-1906 [database online]; Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online]; PROB 11/2226/345; Times 11/05/1862 p. 1; National Probate Calendar 1889.

3. Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online]: M. A. Elston, ‘Edinburgh Seven (act. 1869–1873)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2015 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/61136, accessed 14 Sept 2016].