WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 58, 26 July 1912, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Coaduetod by "Eileea.") SUTHERLAND ROMANCE. UKATIf OF A FAMOUS DUCHES,

A romance interwoven with tho L tory of the peerage is rivalled by ti; death of Mary Caroline, Duchess of Sutherland, wife of Sir Albert K. Rollil. Tin; late duchess was thrice married. Born in 1848, she was the youngest daughter of the hte Rev. Dr." Richard . Michcll, principal of Hertford College, and Public Orator and Professor of Logic at Oxford. She married first, in 1872, her cousin, Arthur Kimlersley Blair, of the 71st Highland Light Infantry, who died in ISS.'S; secondly, in ISB9, George Granville William, third Duke of SuthI orland, who died in 1832; and thirdly in 189(1, Sir Albert Kaye Rollit, L.L.D.. "thc-n M.P. for South Islington. She had by her first husband one daughter, Irene Mary Countess Bubna, who survives her. Her first husband, Captain Blair, met :: tragic death, a shot from his own gun killing him. He was a. factor to the third Duke of Sutherland, and the affair caused a tremendous sensation, especially as an intimacy between the Duke and Mrs. Blair subsequently led to the complete estrangement of the duchess, with whom Queen Victoria sympathised to the extent of excluding the Duke from Court. The Duke lived at Trent ham Hall, and the Duchess was perforce obliged to seek another residence with her children, for whose sake she refrained from taking divorce proceedings. Afterwards the Duke left the country with Mrs. Blair. On November 25,'1888, the Duchess died, and the Duke, who was then in NewYork, immediately went to Dunedin (Florida) and married Mrs, Blair, who thus became Duchess of Sutherland. In August, 18.02, the Duke made a will leaving all the property not entailed to the Duchess. He left his widow a legacy i of £IOO,OOO, payable within a year of his death, and a further £50,000 by a codicil. He also left her a jointure of £SOOO over the English estates, and an annuity of £4OOO over the Scottish estates. He gave her a lease of Titten--1 sor Chase, Staffordshire, for life, the use of the family diamonds for life, a life I interest in all his collieries, and absolute j bequest of the Sideway Estate, near Stoke-on-Trent, and a legacy of £12,000 J to Miss Irene Blair, the duchess' only I child by her lirst husband. j Under this will the whole of the furf niture at Stafford House, Trentham, and j Dunrohin, with the plate, china, pictures I and a number of works of art, would j have passed to the dowager Duchess. } Naturally, this will was bitterly opposed J by the Duke's oldest son, the present Duke, and the whole of the Sutherland family. Litigation started, the will being disputed under Scottish law. There j was also an action in the Chancery Court, in which the late Duke of Westminster and Mr. Henry Chaplin, as trustees of the 'Sutherland estates, sought to compel the dowager Duchess to give up certain diamonds which thev alleged were heirlooms. It appeared that after the third Duke's death search was made, and these jewels could not be found at | either Trentham or Stafford House, and it was discovered that they had been 'deposited at the dowager Diichess' bankers. She declined to hand them over until she had access to Stafford House. Sir Francis Jeune, in the Probate | Court, had made an order which directed ' that certain tables and boxes containing papers should be removed from Stafford House and transferred to the offices of the solicitor of the administrator, to be there opened in the presence of the Duchess and of the solicitors to the parties in the probate suit. During the reI moval of the papers, a bundle of them j from one of the tables was produced. J The duchess apologised, but was ordered j to pay a fine of £250 and to be imprisoned for six weeks for contempt of court. She was released in May 29, having had her cell in Holloway furnished with blue plush and having received her friends there.

In June, 1894, the litigation was settled, the dowager Duchess receiving £1500,000 down and an annuity of £SOO. The tactful intervention of the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward) is said to have contributed to the settlement. In 189G the dowager Duchess married Sir Albert Rollit, at that time M.P. for South Islington. After eight years' married life, however, they decided in 1904 to live apart, without any formal separation. In 1898 her Grace once more came into notoriety through the theft of her jewels,; valued at £20,000, at the Gare du Xord, in Paris, and their sen-sationaF-discovery in a house in Fulham.

EFFECT OF TIGHT SKIRTS Dr. Karl Francke/a leading Munich physician, is (says the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) evidently of opinion that woman is quite as much in need of sartorial as of political enfranchisement. He has been investigating the physical phenomenon known in Germany a.s "X legs," and in England as "knock-knees," and he has collected data and reached conclusions which possibly may be of significance for other countries as well as for his own. On the basis of a careful and comprehensive research, he has discovered that in the earliest years of childhood some 75 per cent, of members of both sexes suffer more or less from this deformity, "but that subsequently, while the limbs of the males straighten out, those of the females become more crooked. Thus, in the 48th year of life only S per cent, of men, but no fewer than 82 per cent, of women, are the unenviable possessors of ''X legs." Dr. Erancke admits that the general physical structure! of the two sexes is to some extent responsible for this disparity, but he ascribes to it quite a secondary influence. The decisive factors, in his opinion, are exercise and dress. He found that women who, from inclination or necessity, do a great deal of walking, as a rule show no traces of this peculiarity, while exactly in proportion as they lead inactive and indolent lives their limbs take on an inward departure from the perpendicular. Jiut even more prolific of knock-knees than unexercised muscles is, in his belief, modern feminine attire. Close-fit-ting and heavy skirts, he says, hamper the gait, and force the raised knees upwards, so that the shape of their wearers' limbs must inevitably become contorted. He winds up his report in the Munich Medical Weekly with a prophecy that the "time will come when it will be considered a crime to wear close-fitting skirls, and an imb-'cility to sit out one's days in idle luxury."