Louisa was born in the hamlet of St. Thomas Street, Launceston, Cornwall, on 9 September, 1837. It is not known whether she was baptised or not; certainly she was not baptised at St. Thomas the Apostle Church like her older sister Mary Ann had been. The name of Louisa Sandercock does not appear in the 1841 Census, conducted in Launceston, for she had died less than three months before, on 30 March, 1841. The cause of her death was given as Whooping Cough (spelt in those days without a ‘w’, it seems); the death was registered by her father Richard the day after her burial on 31 March in the church yard of St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, in the adjoining parish of Launceston.

The name of Louisa was used again by Richard and Elizabeth for their next daughter, born in 1846 in Cornwall. Such a custom was common in an age renowned for the high mortality rate in infants and young children.