MARQUIS’S DAUGHTER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 295, 10 November 1934, Page 11

MARQUIS’S DAUGHTER.

“MOTHER OF THE POOR.”

Her name is in Debrett; but you will not find it in the telephone book. Her official residence is a country house in Ireland ; but she lives in a poor street in Pimlico, says a special representative of the Daily Express. On her rare appearances at Court she wears famous jewels belonging to the Lichfield and Waterford families; but Her ordinary dress is so ordinary as to be dowdy, and she doos_ not worry about the current fashions in hats, To dukes and princes, lords and common ers, she is known as Lady Clodagh. Anson, daughter of the fifth Marquis of Waterford, niece of the late Lord Beresford, wife of the Hon. Claud Anson, a son of Lord Lichfield. But to her innumerable friends who sleep nightly under the stars she is known affectionately as the “White Lady, the “Welcome Lady,” and the Mother of the Poor.” ... When recently Lady Clodagh went to the Old Bailey to plead for a man accused of obtaining cigarettes with false coins, a little group of men sat at the back of the Court listening intently. They were her friends, representatives of the homeless, the workless, the “down-and-outs,” whom she never ceases to work for and champion. Behind this incident is a story of devotion and self-sacrifice. Lady Clodagh from her childhood showed a passionate interest in the welfare of those not so fortunate as herself. Often on returning from a ball in the days when she kept a carnage, she would tell her coachman to drive home by way of the Embankment, and, defying convention, give words of sympathy and gifts of money to the unfortunate members of her own sex who had no other bed. The scenes she saw in those days always remained with her. She lived for many years on a ranch in Mexico, but never forgot London and the problem of its poor. When she returned she gave more and more time to it. During the past ten years she has given most of her life. She has given, too, she frankly admits, most of her private fortune.

Until a year ago she lived in a mansion fiat in Chelsea. Now she is content with her modest home in Pimlico.