Isabella Somerset

Isabella Caroline, Lady Henry Somerset (née Lady Isabella Caroline Somers-Cocks; 3 August 1851 – 12 March 1921) was a British philanthropist, temperance leader and campaigner for women's rights.

Lady Isabella Caroline Somers-Cocks was born in London as the first of three daughters of Charles Somers-Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers, and his wife Virginia (née Pattle). She was maternally a niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron and first cousin of the writer Virginia Woolf's mother, Julia Stephen. Lady Isabella was given a private education. As she had no brothers, she and her sister Adeline were co-heiresses to their father, the third sister, Virginia, having died of diphtheria as a child. Deeply religious, she contemplated becoming a nun in her youth.

Lady Isabella married Lord Henry Somerset on 6 February 1872, and became known as Lady Henry Somerset. The match appeared to be perfect. Her husband was the second son of Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort, and as such stood to inherit almost nothing, unlike her. On 18 May 1874, a son was born to the couple and named Henry Charles Somers Augustus. However, Lord Henry was homosexual, and the marriage was doomed to fail. Male homosexuality was a criminal offence in the United Kingdom at the time, but women were expected to turn a blind eye to every kind of their husband's infidelity. Lady Henry defied the social conventions by separating from her husband and suing him for custody over their son, thereby making his sexual orientation public. She won the court case in 1878 and resumed the style of Lady Isabella Somerset, but was ostracised from society. Lord Henry departed for Italy, but the couple never divorced due to her strong religious inclinations. Lady Henry retreated to Ledbury, near her family home, where she occupied herself with charity work. Her father died in 1883, leaving her Eastnor Castle, estates in Gloucestershire and Surrey, properties in London and slums in the East End. Baptised and raised as Anglican, she became a Methodist in the 1880s.

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