Person    | Female  Born 6/6/1873  Died 21/4/1938

Lady Ottoline Morrell

Categories: Art, Literature

Literary hostess and patron of the arts. Died in a clinic at Tunbridge Wells.

Her Wikipedia page gives much information about her life and confirms that she was born on 6 June 1873 as Ottoline Violet Cavendish-Bentinck, the youngest of the four children of Lieutenant-General Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck (1819-1877) and his second wife Augusta Mary Elizabeth Cavendish-Bentinck née Browne, 1st Baroness Bolsover (1834-1893). On 23 July 1897 she was baptised at St Thomas's Church, Portman Square, Marylebone, where the baptismal register showed her father as a Major-General and that the family were residing at 5 Portman Square.

On 8 February 1902 she married Philip Edward Morrell (1870-1943) in London and on 18 May 1906 both their children were born; their son Hugh Morrell, who died two days later on 20 May 1906, and their daughter Julian Ottoline Morrell (1906-1989). On the night of the 1911 census she is shown as living at 44 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, with her husband, their daughter, a nurse, a cook, a lady's maid, a housemaid, an under-housemaid, a parlour-maid and a kitchen maid. Also shown on the census as a visitor, was the Australian artist Henry Lamb (1883-1960).

In 1913 her husband bought Garsington Manor, 28 Southend, Garsington, Oxford, OX44 9DH, where they lived until 1928 when electoral registers from that year show her and her husband listed at 10 Gower Street, Holborn. Soon afterwards she developed cancer of the jaw, which meant a long stay in hospital and an operation to have her lower teeth extracted and part of her jawbone removed. She told her friends that the "pain was indescribable" but far worse than the pain was the indignity to live with a seriously disfigured chin. She did her best to disguise this with swathing veils and scarves, tying them with typical Ottoline flamboyance.

She suffered a stroke in 1937 and received treatment at Sherwood Park, a clinic in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, run by Dr Alexander John Douglas Cameron (1887-1938), who on 21 October 1924 had been sentenced to nine months imprisonment for the unlawful killing of John Rowlatt Corner (1897-1924), a farmer of Kelmarsh, Northamptonshire, on 9 June 1924 at the Northampton General Hospital. He treated her with Prontosil, an untested new drug. She got worse and Cameron committed suicide on 19 April 1938. Two days later on 21 April 1938, she died, aged 64 years, of heart failure and was buried at St Winifred's Churchyard, Church Lane, Holbeck Woodhouse, Worksop, S80 3NQ. Probate was granted on 20 July 1938 to her widower husband and her effects totalled £1,832-17s-8d.

Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Lady Ottoline Morrell

Commemorated ati

Lady Ottoline Morrell

Greater London Council Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1873 - 1938, literary hostess ...

Read More

Other Subjects

Freeform Arts Trust

Freeform Arts Trust

Free Form is unique in providing the full range of arts and creative services for the built environment to place art at the heart of urban regeneration.

Group, Art, Craft / Design

5 memorials
J. F. Richards

J. F. Richards

Designer active 1920.

Person, Art

1 memorial
Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Sculptor. Born Brighton. One of thirteen children of a clergyman, he remained religious all his life. Passionate believer in the "carving direct" method. His sculptures would sometimes depict contr...

Person, Art, Craft / Design, Sculpture

4 memorials
Benjamin Haydon

Benjamin Haydon

Historical painter and diarist. Born Plymouth. Not a successful man; Haydon's biographer, Paul O'Keefe, says that Haydon has been called "the William McGonagall of British painting". One morning af...

Person, Art, Tragedy

1 memorial
Gerald Moira

Gerald Moira

Gerald Edward Moira was an English painter best known for his murals. Born in London, the son of a former Portuguese diplomat. His first commission was a mural for J. Lyons and Co., for the Trocad...

Person, Art

1 memorial