“Beloved Duchess” Was Good Friend To Miners

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27426, 12 August 1954, Page 2

“Beloved Duchess” Was Good Friend To Miners

NEWS FOR WOMEN

(From the London Correspondent of "The Press”)

LONDON, August 5. A duchess who was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1935 after 45,000 miners had petitioned King George V to confer some honour on “that angel, our beloved Duchess,” died at her home, Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, this week. She was Winifred, Dowager Duchess of Portland. She was 91. The Duchess won the hearts of all the miners in her county during the dark days of the depression in the 1930’5. On many occasions, she paid for the medical treatment of miners who were injured; she helped their welfare organisations; and she ran cooking and sewing classes for their families. When an old minep who conducted a fish-and-chip shop fell ill, she secured a specialist for him, and then served in his shop to keep the business going until he was well again. She also paid for a miner artist to study at London art schools. The Duchess’s marriage was one of the great romances of the peerage. Her husband, the sixth Duke, saw her standing on the platform of a lonely station in Scotland. He turned to a friend and remarked: “I must find out who that girl is. I mean to marry her.” They later met at a house party, and

a few months later were married in London. The Duchess’s kindness was proverbial in Nottinghamshire. In the year of her marriage, she suggested to her husband that he set aside the winnings of two racehorses in his stable of thoroughbreds to establish almshouses for old people. The two horses were record stake-winners for the year, and the money they won was used to build homes for old people. The homes are still known locally as “The Winnings.”

As well as for her interest in the care of old people and poor children, the Duchess was well known for her love of animals. At her home, Welbeck Abbey, she had a large stable where she ,cared for worn-out horses, pit ponies, and donkeys rescued from seaside resorts. As president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, she frequently carried out campaigns against the wearing of osprey feathers and birds-of-paradise plumes at a time when it was high fashion for these plumes to be worn. One of her last appeals a few months before she died was on behalf of a fund established to alleviate the sufferings, of arvav# jp British Guiana.