Lady Jocelyn later turned to photography, focusing on domesticity, a subject that was common for women photographers in the Victorian era.

However, the historian K. D. Reynolds and others have argued that Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston was actually the father of Lady Frances and her brother William.

[11] Lord Jocelyn was staying in the Tower of London in preparation for departure to the Crimea when he contracted cholera.

After his subsequent death in 1854 at the Palmerstons' house,[12] Lady Jocelyn blamed herself and went into isolation, limiting her contact largely towards her children.

[11] The widowed Lady Jocelyn turned to photography in 1858, possibly with the encouragement of Dr Ernst Becker (1826–1888),[13] Prince Albert's tutor, librarian and private secretary, who was himself encouraged to learn photography by the Prince, and who became a founding member of Royal Photographic Society.

[2] This publication also describes the work of her and Lady Mary Georgina Filmer as "demonstrat[ing] the creative energy and inventiveness that could be invested in the production of photographic collages".

She spent much of her time travelling with her children, visiting seaside resorts in England and France for her health.

[7] Several years after her death, Queen Victoria commissioned the artist Eduardo de Moira to copy a miniature that William Ross had made of Lady Jocelyn decades earlier.