Bonham Carter family

The Bonham Carter family are descendants of John Bonham-Carter (1788–1838), a British Member of Parliament and barrister, and his wife Joanna Maria Smith. The MP was the son of Sir John Carter (before 20 December 1741 – 18 May 1808, Mayor of Portsmouth, and son of John Carter, who was a merchant). He assumed the name Bonham by Royal Licence when he inherited the estates of his cousin Thomas Bonham.[1] Joanna Maria Smith was the daughter of William Smith, the abolitionist MP; her sister Frances was the mother of Florence Nightingale, and her brother Benjamin was the father of Barbara Bodichon and Benjamin Leigh Smith. Most of the Bonham-Carters and their circle belonged to Unitarian churches.

John and Joanna had a daughter, (Joanna) Hilary Bonham-Carter (d. 1865), who was an artist and friend of political journalist Harriet Martineau. Hilary's portraits of her cousin Florence are held in the National Portrait Gallery.[2][3]

Another member of the family was John Bonham-Carter, MP (1817–1884), a son of the elder John Bonham-Carter, MP. This John Bonham-Carter briefly served as a Lord of the Treasury in 1866. His third son by his second wife, The Hon. Mary Baring (a daughter of The 1st Baron Northbrook), was Arthur Thomas Bonham-Carter, KC (1869–1916), who was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge. A.T. Bonham-Carter was a soldier and barrister, eventually serving as a Justice of the bench of His Majesty's High Court of East Africa, which was based in Mombasa.

Justice Bonham-Carter was still a judge on the bench of this court when the First World War broke out in 1914. He later resigned from the colonial bench in British East Africa and joined, as an officer, The 1st Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment, eventually being promoted to the rank of captain. He was killed serving with this regiment on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, and was later buried in Serre Road Military Cemetery No. 2, near Beaumont-Hamel in northern France. Captain Bonham-Carter's name appears on the war memorial at the Muthaiga Country Club in Nairobi.

The Bonham Carter family, as descended from Sir Maurice Bonham Carter and The Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, is the only example so far where three generations have received Life Peerages under the 1958 Life Peerages Act:[note 1] Violet, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury; her son, Mark Raymond Bonham Carter; and her granddaughter, Jane Bonham Carter, were all separately made life peers of Yarnbury in the County of Wiltshire.

The most famous member of the Bonham Carter family is Hollywood actress Helena Bonham Carter, a two-time Academy Award nominee and British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner.