 In 1845, during her annual visit to her Exhibition in London, Mary Linwood, by then regarded as the most celebrated needlewoman of her age, caught the flu and died.She was buried in St Margaret's Church, Leicester, a church she regularly attended.Her entire collection was dispersed at Christie's Auction House, after both the British Museum and House of Lords had earlier rejected her offer to donate her collection, the auctioned pieces were sold for sums far below those at which they had been valued a few years previously.