Letitia Anne Layard

Laetitia Anna Layard Dowbiggin (7 February 1844 – 5 December 1930) was a British Christian missionary and teacher in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

Early life Laetitia Anna Layard was born in Colombo, Ceylon, one of the nine children of Sir Charles Peter Layard and Louisa Anne Layard. Her father was also born in Colombo, and was the city's first mayor. Her brother Charles Layard was Attorney General of Ceylon.

Other notable members of the extended Layard family of Ceylon included archaeologist Austen Henry Layard and his brother Edgar Leopold Layard.

Career Dowbiggin and her husband were Anglican missionaries with the Church Mission Society at Cotta (Kotte) in Ceylon, her home country, from 1869 to 1901. They founded a church at Angampitiya, and boarding schools for boys and girls, during their work. She served as the girls' school matron, overseeing between forty and eighty resident students, into her widowhood, retiring in 1906.

She took a furlough in England in 1910 and 1911, then returned to Ceylon to live at Liyanwela as an independent missionary and community worker. The Dowbiggins took a furlough in 1891; Laetitia Dowbiggin spent time in England in 1896 at her daughter's deathbed. She was widowed when her husband died at sea in 1901, and she lived with her single sisters Mary, Matilda, and Henrietta in Surrey for a time after that, and again in 1911. She died in 1930, aged 86 years, at a nursing home in Colombo.