1826-1927
Louisa was born at the Russell family’s seat in Woburn in 1826, where she was still living at the time of the 1841 census along with her parents and seven younger siblings. Her father, James, was a gardener on the Woburn Estate, and they lived in an estate cottage. Louisa was named after her mother.
By the time Louisa was 25, she was already working as a governess in London, in 1851 for two girls aged 6 and 4, and by 1861 with teenagers aged 16 and 14.
By 1871, Louisa was running Woodside House, along with her sister Eveline. Woodside House was a boarding school for ‘young ladies’, where between 1860 – 1887 it educated the daughters of the nobility. Louisa and her sister were schoolmistresses there along with a language teacher, cook and a variety of domestic servants from the surrounding area. In 1871 there were 12 scholars listed as present for the census, and in 1881 there were 10.
On the occasion of the Rev. Wriothesley Russell’s Jubilee, Miss Forbes and the school presented him with a gold watch.
Louisa eventually retired from working at Woodside, and by 1891 went to live in Abingdon, where she lived with her brother, a widower and vicar and his 2 children aged 1 year and 3 months plus 6 staff. The following year, Woodside House was purchased by the Dowager Duchess Adeline, widow of the 10th Duke of Bedford where the house was extended and gardens designed and planted by Edwin Lutyens, whose sister Mary Constance Elphinstone Lutyens (1868-1951) had attended Woodside House between 1884-1885.
Louisa lived to see her 100th birthday, receiving congratulations from both her previous students and Buckingham Palace in March 1926, and died in 1927.
