Sophia Hull

She was born in Millman Street, London,[1] the daughter of James Watson Hull and his wife Sophia (née Hollamby). She met Raffles in Cheltenham, where she lived, in 1816, and married him on 22 February 1817.[2] She was thirty, and her husband five years older.

Raffles had previously been married to Olivia Mariamne Devenish, who was ten years older than him and had died in West Java in 1814; his grief at her death was such that he erected a memorial to her which still stands at the Taman Prasasti Museum, a former cemetery, in Jakarta.[3] There were no surviving children from this first marriage.

Sophia had five children by Raffles:

• Charlotte Raffles (1818–1822)
• Leopold Raffles (1819–1821)
• Stanford Marsden Raffles (1820–1822)
• Ella Sophia Raffles (1821–1840)
• Flora Nightingale Raffles (born and died 1823)

Charlotte was born on board ship during the voyage to Sumatra, made by the couple soon after their marriage. All the children succumbed to tropical diseases and were buried overseas, apart from Ella, who was sent back to Britain for the sake of her health. In 1825, Sir Stamford and Lady Raffles also returned to Britain; the journey took nearly a year, having lost many of their possessions in a fire on board East Indiaman Fame, which they barely escaped with their lives, and both were in poor health on board Mariner by the time they arrived.[4]

After her husband's death on 5 July 1826, Lady Raffles found she was in debt to the East India Company. She was nevertheless determined to write Sir Stamford's biography, which she did in the years that immediately followed, and the first edition of Memoir of the life and public services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F.R.S. & C., particularly in the government of Java, 1811–1816, and of Bencoolen and its dependencies, 1817–1824 was published in 1830. Her remaining daughter, Ella, became engaged to marry John Sumner, a clergyman and the son of Bishop Charles Sumner. Ella met John after her father's death, when her mother Sophia spent some time recuperating from an illness at the bishop's home in Winchester.[5]

Ella and John were due to marry in the summer of 1840, but Ella herself was then taken ill, initially with a broken blood vessel. Having deteriorated over a period of a few months, she died on 12 May 1840, to her mother's despair. Sophia's friend and former neighbour, Samuel Wilberforce, described the funeral:

...the deep sobbing of Lady Raffles and John was most affecting. Then Lady Raffles had to be removed: and it was almost too much. She clung to the coffin and kissed its repulsive blackness: saying in a sort of thrilling whisper of agony "My child, my child, my babe. Must I leave thee."

Sophia Raffles' grave at St Paul's Church, Mill Hill

Lady Raffles lived on at Highwood House in Highwood Hill, Middlesex, where she died in 1858, aged 72. She was buried in the graveyard of St Paul's Church, Mill Hill. Following her death, her husband's heir, his nephew Rev William Charles Raffles Flint, tried to sell the collection of Sir Stamford's possessions (known as the "Raffles Collection") to the British Museum; they declined to purchase it, and he eventually donated it in any case.[6]