Honorific-Prefix: | Her Excellency The Most Honourable |
The Marchioness of Lansdowne | |
Birth Name: | Lady Maud Evelyn Hamilton |
Birth Date: | 1850 12, df=yes |
Birth Place: | St George Hanover Square, London, England |
Death Place: | St George Hanover Square, London, England |
Father: | James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn |
Mother: | Lady Louisa Russell |
Children: | Evelyn Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 6th Marquess of Lansdowne Lord Charles Petty-Fitzmaurice Beatrix Beauclerk, Duchess of St Albans |
Office: | Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Alexandra |
Term Start: | 1905 |
Term End: | 1910 |
Office1: | Viceregal-Consort of India |
Term Start1: | 10 December 1888 |
Term End1: | 11 October 1894 |
Predecessor1: | The Countess of Dufferin |
Successor1: | The Countess of Elgin |
Monarch1: | Queen Victoria |
Maud Evelyn Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marchioness of Lansdowne, (née Hamilton; 17 December 1850 – 21 October 1932), was a British aristocrat and courtier. She was the wife of Henry Charles Keith Petty-FitzMaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, Governor General of Canada from 1883 to 1888. She was then Vicereine of India from 1888 to 1894 while her husband was Viceroy.
Lady Lansdowne was a daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn, and Lady Louisa Jane Russell.[1] On 8 November 1869, she married Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, at Westminster Abbey and they had four children:
From 1905 to 1909 she was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Alexandra; she was Extra Lady from 1910 to 1925. During the First World War she set up the Officers' Families Fund and served as its president, and she and her husband lent their house, Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square, London, to serve as its headquarters. She had previously done the same in the Second Boer War.[2] She also set up an auxiliary Red Cross hospital in the Orangery at Bowood House on their Wiltshire estate.[3]
For this and other charitable services, she was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours.
She died in 1932, aged 81, and was buried (as her husband had been, five years earlier) at Derry Hill church, at the gates of their Bowood estate.