(d. 1809), dau. of Jonathan Farr of Moorfields, Mx.; m. 1 John Abbot DD (d. 1760), 2 Jeremiah Bentham (d. 1792, fa. by a former marriage of the philosopher).
1793 - 4 [dep. England 14 Aug. 1793] Verona (13 Oct. 1793), Vicenza, Padua (15 Oct.), Venice (16 - 20 Oct.), Padua, Ferrara, Bologna (22 - 24 Oct.), Florence (25 - 29 Oct.), Siena (30 Oct.), Viterbo (31 Oct.), Rome (1 - 3 Nov.), Naples (5 Nov. - 20 Dec.), Rome (24 Dec. 1793 - 6 Mar. 1794), Civita Castellana, Terni, Florence (8 - 20 Mar.), Pisa (21 - 24 Mar.), Leghorn (24 - 29 Mar.), Modena, Parma (3 Apr.), Piacenza, Novi (6 Apr.), Genoa (7 - 10 Apr.), Turin (11 - 17 Apr.), Milan (18 - 24 Apr.) [Harwich 25 Aug.]
Mrs Bentham, recently widowed for a second time, travelled with her son John Farr Abbot and her invalid daughter-in-law, Mary, for whose health the journey was undertaken. She recorded her travels in a detailed and rather homely diary (Bentham jnl.MSS) which dwells on matters of diet and economy, as well as on society. They reached Italy in October 1793 and proceeded directly to Naples. They spent four nights in Florence at Megit's hotel and three in Rome, where Mrs Bentham rapidly concluded that 'excepting the Magnificence of its Palaces & Churches, and the Beauty of its Fountains, Rome has nothing within nor without its walls to make it desirable for an English person to be an inhabitant.'
In Naples they took an expensive seven-room apartment in the 'Ville de Londres' overlooking the bay, but within five weeks, on 11 December, Mrs Abbot died. Three days later her body was shipped to England for burial in Westminster Abbey. Mrs Bentham and her son did not stay on in Naples, though they found time to visit Sir William Hamilton's 'English Apartment' filled with pictures of Emma by Romney and Vig?e Lebrun. Returning to Rome, they stayed at Margherita's, and their days were filled with calls, dinners and conversazioni. They also visited the studios of Grignion, Deare, Robinson, Angelica Kauffman and Robert Fagan, the last of whom seems to have acted as their cicerone. Emma Hamilton had written from Naples to Angelica Kauffman introducing a 'Mrs Benton and Mr Abbot', and Angelica replied on 31 December saying they were 'very respectable persons', whom she would be happy to assist; her full-length portrait of 'Mrs Benton', dated Rome 1794, allegedly painted for 'her husband Henry Benton',1 was in a private collection in 1955. From Rome Sarah Bentham and John Abbot proceeded to Florence, where this time they stayed at Vannini's; though recommended, they found it inferior to both Megit's and the Aquila Nera (which was kept by Pio). Although Mrs Bentham was not a patron of the arts, she bought at 'Pisanis Manufactory of Alabaster' four vases and a Sleeping Venus. On 20 March they left Florence to visit Pisa and Leghorn, after which they made their way to Genoa and Turin. They had dined at Turin with John Trevor, the British envoy, whom they met again at Milan (just after his precipitate departure from Turin following the French invasion). At the end of April Mrs Bentham and Abbot left Italy.
1. Kauffman 1924, 87, 165.