MILLIONAIRESS SUFFRAGETTE

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 March 1933, Page 9

MILLIONAIRESS SUFFRAGETTE

MRS BELMONT DEAD.

PARIS, January 27

Mrs Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, millionairess, suffragist, and philanthropist, who by her first marriage was Mrs W. K. Vanderbilt and the mother of Consuelo Duchess of Mailborough (now Mme. Jacques Balsan), died at her house in Paris to-day. The body will be taken to NewYork for burial.

Mrs Belmont was SO years of ago last week, and she attributed her good health to the fact that she slept, only four hours a day. • “Sleep is. man s nearest state to death,” she said. “Too much of it atrophies both mind and muscles.” She was the daughter of a cotton planter, Mr Murray Forbes Smith. Five years after' her marriage to Mr Vanderbilt she captured the leadership of New Y’ork society, haying behind her the power of the invited list of “everybody of importance” in it, with the exception of the Astors. When emissaries asked why the admitted leaders of the select “400” had been uninvited Mrs Vanderbilt said she could not invite persons who had never called. The Astors called on the forceful young woman, belated invitations were hurriedly despatched, and the new leaders became hosts to the old. The “400” had turned a corner.

BERATING A BISHOP. Divorced from Mr Vanderbilt in 1895, she was married in 1896 to Mr Belmont, who died in 1908. Her divorce and re-marriage created a sensation, and Bishop Manning asked her to resign from the board of a seaside home for children which she had given to the church. Mrs Belmont resigned, but not until she had berated the bishop. After the quarrel with Bishop Manning came a cable from her grandson, the Marquis of Blandford, asking her to stand with the King as godparent to an heir, at whose christening the Archbishop of Canterbury would officiate. “Bishop Manning repudiates me and accepts my gift,” Mrs Belmont declared, “but the Archbishop of Canterbury permits me to stand with his Monarch at a christening.”

Of marriage she said: “It is a sort of slavery, and I would not recommend it for any girl. I would not say that marriage is a failure, but it seems to me that statistics speak for themselves.”

A hint of her dominance came to light in 1826, when the marriage of her daughter, Consuelo, to the Duke of Marlborough was annulled by the Roman Catholic Diocesan Court at Southwark and the action confirmed by the Holy Roman Rota. The petition for annulment stated that Consuelo had been forced into the marriage by her mother. Mrs Belmont was actively interested in hospitals, children’s homes, the abolition of child labour, and more sanitary conditions for working women, while her enthusiasm for the women’s suffrage movement earned her the title of the “Mrs Pankhurst,” vowing that she would pot spend more than a cent in this country because of the “brutal” way suffragettes were being treated, and stayed in a. private suite atdhe Ritz Hotel.

She gave 100,000 dollars to the Nassau Hospital at Mineola, and presented the Woman’s Party with Alva Belmont House and grounds at Washington, valued at 100,000 dollars.