The Dalbiacs came from Albi (hence d’Albiac) in the South of France, the centre of the Cathar religion which was ruthlessly suppressed by Pope Innocent III in the thirteenth century, leading to the Protestant Dalbiacs fleeing to Nimes. However, Protestants, or Huguenots as they were also known, were persecuted there too and sadly most of the Dalbiac family were murdered but in 1681 two brothers survived to flee to England hidden in hampers, becoming two of around 50,000 Huguenots who found the freedom to practise their religion in England, and introducing the word refugee into the English language. The two Dalbiac brothers ended up in Spitalfields, just outside the walls of the City of London, joining the thriving Hugeunot weaving community there, working and worshipping in a French-speaking ready-made support group. One of the brothers, Captain James Dalbiac, had a grandson called Jacque (later James) who was born on 11 June 1750 and baptised a month later at l’Eglise de l’Artillerie, a French Huguenot church in Spitalfields (now the Sandy Row synagogue).
James grew up at 20 Spital Square in a beautiful weaver’s house built for his grandfather, Captain James, a maker of silk and velvet and a fine upstanding member of the community who became a trustee of the courthouse and took eighty of his workers to defend the king against the (Catholic) Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie. When James grew up he also took his civic responsibilities seriously, paying for extra watchmen to patrol Spital Square. James married Elizabeth Archdale of Leyton on 18 December 1777 but she died less than a year later. On 30 December 1779, he married again: Maria Bernard (1762-1798) from Holborn. Many of the prosperous Huguenot businessmen in Spitalfields were assimilating into British society, anglicising their names and moving out to the suburbs. The Dalbiacs kept their name but left Spitalfields and moved to Dulwich Common in 1798. Their house, Thurlow Lodge, was at the junction of what is now Alleyn Park, Gallery Road and the South Circular, diagonally opposite Brightlands, the Dulwich Prep London boarding house. It was a large house with 11 acres behind it, now intersected by the railway line. The Dalbiacs had four daughters: Maria married William Brien at St Clement Danes, Matilda married Archibald Buchanan, Caroline married Christopher Hodgson and Louisa married James Ochterlony Lockhart Mure. James’s cousin, Susannah Dalbiac, who continued to live in Spitalfields, wrote a diary which still exists. It mentions staying home to make tea for ‘Cousin James’ and ‘Cousin James went to town before dinner’.
Maria died in 1798, James Dalbiac in 1824 at Morden College in Blackheath. They are buried in the south-east corner of the burial ground in a tomb (No. 61) built in December 1798 and measuring, ‘according to the measurements of Mr Lee the bricklayer’, 8ft 6in by 7ft 4in and holding four people. It cost Mr Dalbiac £13 and 1 shilling, though the College ‘did not take the odd shilling’. No visible trace of the tomb survives but we know that Mr Palmer (whose tomb, No. 54, does survive) specified that he wanted his to be ‘the same size as Mr Dalbiac’s, near which it stands’. Mr Lee the bricklayer also built his tomb (No. 26) ‘the same size as Mr Dalbiac’s’.