Caroline Alice Elgar and he died when Alice was aged only 12. She was from a distinguished family: on her mother's side her grandfather was the Rev. Robert Napier Raikes, her great-grandfather Robert Raikes (1736–1811) was the founder of the Sunday school movement, and her uncle was British Indian Army General Robert Napier Raikes (1813–1909). As a girl she studied with the amateur geologist Rev W. S. Symonds and they and a group of her friends went fossil-hunting on the banks of the river Severn. She wrote the index to a book by him. She studied the piano with Ferdinand Kufferath in Brussels
Robert Raikes the Elder employed by a wealthy distiller, Samuel Hasbart, to launch a newspaper in Norwich. Hasbart commissioned Raikes to print a newspaper in favour of the tory party, in opposition to the whig-leaning "Norwich Gazette". Raikes' newspaper was unsuccessful, and failed after a few weeks. By June, Raikes had moved to Huntingdonshire, where he launched the "St Ives Post Boy". On 2 May 1720, Raikes, in partnership with William Dicey, founded the "Northampton Mercury". A year later, the partners set up a second press in Northgate Street, Gloucester, from where the "Gloucester Journal" first appeared on 9 April 1722. In September 1725,