Millicent, Duchess Of Sutherland

Millicent, Duchess Of Sutherland

ID: CAITHHORZ_THUFM_PH037 DESCRIPTION: Millicent Fanny Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland (20 October 1867 - 20 August 1955) was a society hostess and social reformer. She was born in Fife, the eldest child of Robert St Clair-Erskine, 4th Earl of Rosslyn and his wife, Blanche. On her seventeenth birthday she married Cromartie Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford (1851 - 1913), and soon became established as a successful London hostess. In 1892 her husband succeeded to the title of Duke of Sutherland, and to the extensive estates in the Scottish Highlands, Staffordshire, and Shropshire. Her work as a social reformer included attempts to revive the home-spun woollen industry in the Highlands, helping to found a rural technical school at Golspie, and serving as president of the Scottish Home Industries Association. Her second husband, Percy Desmond Fitzgerald, was an army officer and so at the outbreak of World War I Milicent also went to France with a Red Cross ambulance unit. She was captured in the German advance on Namur but managed to escape. She went on to run one of the British Red Cross hospitals at Calais until the end of the war. She spent much of the rest of her life in France where she died in 1955. She was cremated in Paris and her ashes were returned to the Sutherland private cemetery at Dunrobin. This image may be available to purchase. For further information please email us PLACENAME: unidentified DATE OF IMAGE: 1905 (c.) PERIOD: 1900s SOURCE: North Coast Visitor Centre COLLECTION: Caithness Horizons Asset ID: 4157 KEYWORDS: