FASCINATING ROGUE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1923, Page 9

FASCINATING ROGUE.

SALE OF FAMILY PAPERS. RECALLS A -STRATHMORE ROMANCE. A romance of the Strathmore family, the story of the Duchess <j>f York’s great-great-grandmother, was recalled by the sale at Sothebys of an interesting collection of historical ahd family papers from Streatham Castle, the Durham seat. The sufferings of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon’s great-great-grandmother at the hands of a brutal second husband are related in the Stoney-Bowes letters, which were among the papers sold, and the narrative of all she underwent reads more like a chapter from fiction than reality. This poor lady was the ninth Lord Strathmore’s widow and daughter of a coalmine owner of great wealth, Georges Bowes, of Streatham Castle. Durham, and .'Gills'de, also in Durham. .After Lord Strathmore’s death the Countess was wooed by a half-pay naval lieutenant bearing the appropriate name of Stoney (Andrew Robineon were his Christian names), who had already gone through the fortune of one foolish woman.

He was a scoundrel of varied parts, though with a manner that fascinated women, but the rogue eventually overreached himself and his last twentytwo years were passed, in a debtor’s prison. Having married the Countess of Strathmore he began operations for obtaining control of her large fortune, and the full story of his intrigues and plots and of the sufferings and persecutions of his wife is astonishing. He even, it is stated, nailed his wife’s tongue to a table!