Preceded by James Gardiner Name Katharine Duchess Role Politician | Nationality British Education Royal College of Music Children None Political party Unionist Party | |
 | ||
Born 6 November 1874
Edinburgh ( 1874-11-06 ) Relations Sir James Henry Ramsay, 10th Baronet (father);
John, 7th Duke of Atholl, KT (father-in-law) Residence Blair Castle and London Died October 21, 1960, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Spouse John Stewart-Murray, 8th Duke of Atholl | ||
Succeeded by William McNair Snadden | ||
Katharine Marjory Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl, DBE (née Ramsay; 6 November 1874 – 21 October 1960), 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.
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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" (authors of the 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 foregone conclusion". Prior to 1918, Atholl had been opposed to women's suffrage, and in parliament received criticism for this issue from 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 1938 in opposition to Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler and to the Anglo-Italian agreement. According to her biography, A Working Partnership she was then deselected by her local party. 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.
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.