Anna Leonowens - Later Years

Later Years

Leonowens resumed her teaching career and taught daily from 9 am to 12 noon for an autumn half at the Berkeley School of New York at 252 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, beginning on 5 October 1880; this was a new preparatory school for colleges and schools of science and her presence was advertised in the press.

Leonowens visited Russia in 1881 and other European countries, and continued to publish travel articles and books. She settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she again became involved in women's education, and was a suffragette and one of the founders of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After nineteen years, she moved to Montreal, Quebec.

Leonowens's daughter, Avis, married Thomas Fyshe, a Scottish banker who ended the family's money worries, while her son, Louis, returned to Siam and became an officer in the Siamese royal cavalry. He married Caroline Knox, a daughter of Sir Thomas George Knox, the British consul-general in Bangkok (1824–1887), and his Thai wife, Prang Yen. Under Chulalongkorn's patronage, Louis Leonowens founded the successful trading company that still bears his name. The Louis T. Leonowens Co. Ltd. is still trading in Thailand today.

Anna Leonowens met Chulalongkorn again when he visited London in 1897, thirty years after she had left Siam, and the king took the opportunity to express his thanks in person.

Anna Leonowens died on 19 January 1915, at 83 years of age. She was interred in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.

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