Louisa Pitt

Who was Louisa Pitt?

Hon. Louisa Pitt, was born in 1754 in Stratfield-Say, Southampton, Hampshire, England, the second daughter of the British diplomat and politician George Pitt, 1st Baron Rivers and his wife Penelope Atkins. She married Sir Peter Beckford on 22 March 1773 in Dorset. Sir Peter Beckford was a writer, a huntsman, and the cousin of the English novelist William Thomas Beckford, author of the famous Gothic novel Vathek. They had several children, of whom the surviving son became 3rd Baron Rivers, succeeding his maternal uncle and maternal grandfather by special remainder.

Louisa Beckford had an affair with her husband’s cousin William Beckford after her marriage; at one point, totally smitten and desperate to regain his attention, she offered to participate in a menage-a-trois at an infamous house party at Fonthill. She died of tuberculosis in 1791 in Firenze and was buried in the Old English Cemetery in Livorno, Italy.

Child of Hon. Louisa Pitt and Sir Peter Beckford:

Horace William Pitt-Rivers, 3rd Baron Rivers of Sudeley Castle