Born abroad c.1766 as Dorothy Elizabeth Berney. 1781 married Edmund Boehm (1741-1822) a wealthy West India merchant and director of the East India Company. Their country home was Ottershaw Park. They had a new house built at 16 St James's Square and there held parties to which they invited their wealthy and powerful friends, and it was during one of these events that Major Percy arrived with the Waterloo Dispatch.
c.1819, Boehm suffered bankruptcy and died 1822. From 1827 until at least 1841 Mrs Boehm had a grace-and-favour apartment at Hampton Court Palace. At the magnificent Legacy of British Slave-ownership we learn that Mrs Boehm owned 126 slaves in Barbados and in 1836, following the abolition of slavery, she received reparations of over £900.
