Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl

Her Grace The Duchess of Atholl DBE
Member of Parliament for Kinross and West Perthshire
In office 1923 – 28 November 1938
Preceded by	James Gardiner
Succeeded by	William McNair Snadden
Personal details
Born	(1874-11-06)6 November 1874 Edinburgh
Died	21 October 1960(1960-10-21) (aged 85) Edinburgh
Nationality	British
Political party	Scottish Unionist Party
Spouse	John Stewart-Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine (later Duke of Atholl)
Relations	Sir James Henry Ramsay, 10th Baronet (father); John, 7th Duke of Atholl, KT (father-in-law)
Children	None
Residence(s)	Blair Castle and London
Alma mater	Royal College of Music
Profession	Social reformer; parliamentarian

DBE insignia

Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl, DBE (6 November 1874 – 21 October 1960), née Ramsay, and known as the Marchioness of Tullibardine from 1899 to 1917, was a Scottish noblewoman and Scottish Unionist Party politician whose views were often unpopular in her party.

Biography

Early life and education

Katharine Marjory Ramsay was born in Edinburgh on 6 November 1874, the daughter of Sir James Henry Ramsay, 10th Baronet. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and the Royal College of Music. During her school years she was known as Kitty Ramsay. On 20 July 1899, she married John Stewart-Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine, who succeeded his father as 8th Duke of Atholl in 1917, whereupon she became formally styled Duchess of Atholl.

Political career

Known as "Kitty", Stewart-Murray was active in Scottish social service and local government and in 1912 served on the hugely influential "Highlands and Islands Medical Service Committee" (Dewar Report) that has been widely credited with creating the forerunner of the National Health Service; she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1918.

She was the Scottish Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Kinross and West Perthshire from 1923-38, and served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education from 1924-29, the first woman to serve in a UK Conservative and Unionist government.

The historian William Knox has argued that, like other early female MPs in the UK, "she literally inherited" her seat from her husband, but Kenneth Baxter disputes this, noting that her husband had stood down from the former West Perthshire seat in 1917 when he succeeded to the duchy and that it had been won by a Liberal candidate in 1918 and 1922.

Moreover, Baxter claims her victory in 1923 was not seen as "a forgone conclusion". Prior to 1918, Atholl had been opposed to women's suffrage, and in parliament received criticism for this issue form her Conservative colleague Nancy Astor.

She resigned the Conservative Whip first in 1935 over the India Bill and the "national-socialist tendency" of the government's domestic policy. Resuming the Whip, she resigned it again in 1937 over the Anglo-Italian Agreement. Finally she resigned her parliamentary seat in 1938 in opposition to Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler. To permit her resignation (technically proscribed by law), she took Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds on 28 November 1938. She stood unsuccessfully in the subsequent by-election as an Independent candidate.

She argued that she actively opposed totalitarian regimes and practices. In 1931, she published The Conscription of a People - a protest against the abuse of rights in the Soviet Union. In 1936, she was involved in a long-running battle in the pages of various newspapers with Lady Houston after the latter had become notorious for her outspoken support of Benito Mussolini. Stewart-Murray had taken issue with Houston calling in the pages of the Saturday Review on the king to become British dictator in imitation of the European fascist regimes.

According to her autobiography Working Partnership (1958), it was at the prompting of Ellen Wilkinson that in April 1937 she, Eleanor Rathbone, and Wilkinson went to Spain to observe the effects of the Spanish Civil War. In Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid she saw the impact of Luftwaffe bombing on behalf of the Nationalists, visited prisoners of war held by the Republicans and considered the impact of the conflict on women and children, in particular. Her book Searchlight on Spain resulted from the involvement, and her support for the Republican side in the conflict led to her being nicknamed by some the Red Duchess.

However, Cowling cites her as saying that she supported the Republican government because "a government [Franco's] which used Moors could not be a national government". Her opposition to the British policy of non-intervention in Spain epitomised her attitudes and actions (NEEDS CITATION).

Shortly before or even during 1938, she traveled to Romania where she visited "Satu Maru Romanian Women Association" in the city of Satu Mare aiming to support the Romanian cause to preserve the state borders established in 1918 and keep Hungary from regaining the territory that it lost then.

She campaigned against the Soviet control of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary as the chairman of the League for European Freedom in Britain from 1945. In 1958, she published a biography of her life with her husband entitled Working Partnership.

Other

She was also a vice-president of the Girls' Public Day School Trust from 1924-1960. She was also a keen composer, setting music to accompany the poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson.

She was closely involved in her husband's regiment The Scottish Horse and composed the melody "The Scottish Horse" to be played on bagpipes. As Dowager Duchess of Atholl she took over the appointment of Honorary Colonel of The Regiment of Scottish Horse from 1942, until she relinquished it in 1952.

Death

Her Grace, Katharine, Duchess of Atholl, died in Edinburgh, aged 85, in 1960.

Publications

• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (editor) (1908), Military History of Perthshire (1660-1899) and (1899-1902), vol. 2 Volumes, Perth: R A & J Hay {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (1931), Conscription of a People{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (1931), Women and Politics, Philip Allen{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (1933) Main Facts of the Indian Problem.
• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (1938), Searchlight on Spain, Middlesex: Penguin{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) 1st, 2nd & 3rd editions
• Atholl, Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of (c. 1958), Working partnership: being the lives of John George, 8th Duke of Atholl, and of his wife, Katharine Marjory Ramsay, London: Arthur Baker Ltd{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

See also

• Duke of Atholl
• Julia Pirie

Sources

Primary sources

Records relating to Atholl can be found at:

• British Library Manuscript Section – correspondence with Lord Cecil, 1936–1944, Ref Add MS 51142 (web site)
• Churchill Archives, Cambridge University – correspondence with Sir E L Spears, Ref SPRS(on-line catalogue).
• British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections – correspondence and papers relating to Indian self-government, 1928-1935. Ref:MSS Eur 903 (web site)
• National Library of Scotland, Manuscripts Collections, correspondence and papers regarding the Scottish National War Memorial, 1919–1958, Ref: Acc 4714. (web site).
• King's College London Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Ref: LIDDELL: 1/27 (on-line catalogue).
• Institute of Education Archives, Girls' Day School Trust collection 'Katherine, Duchess of Atholl', 1960. Ref: GDS/2/3/1 (on-line catalogue).

Published sources

• Maitland, Frank (1937), Searchlight on the Duchess of Atholl, Edinburgh: Revolutionary Socialist Party
• Cowling, Maurice (1975), The Impact of Hitler - British Politics and Policy 1933-1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 403, ISBN 0-521-20582-4
• Stobaugh, Beverly Parkers (c. 1978), Women and Parliament, 1918-1970, Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, c 1978.: Exposition Press, ISBN 0-682-49056-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
• Hetherington, Shelia (1989), Katharine Atholl 1874-1960, Aberdeen University Press
• Knox, William (2006), "Chapter 8: Katherine, Duchess of Atholl: The Red Duchess?", Lives of Scottish Women. Women and Scottish Society, 1800-1980, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0-7486-1788-4
• MacLeod, Douglas (2005), Morningside Mata Haris: how MI6 deceived Scotland’s great and good, Edinburgh: Birlinn, ISBN 978-1-84341-021-8

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Duchess of Atholl
• Portraits of Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Documents on the duchess's role in the Spanish Civil War from "Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labour", a digitised collection of more than 13,000 pages of documents from the archives of the British Trades Union Congress held in the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
• Works by or about Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl at the Internet Archive
• Works by Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)