8th Marquess of Ailesbury 1926-2024

[Louis Epstein]

Michael Sydney Cedric Brudenell-Bruce,born March 31st 1926,
since 1974 the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury,died May 12th 2024,
having fallen out a window he opened to let his cat out,
according to the UK's Daily Mail and Daily Mirror,the more
prestigious papers' articles not yet having hit the Internet
that I have found.

He his succeeded as 9th Marquess by his son David,born November
12th 1952,who since 1974 has been known as Earl of Cardigan,
the highest-ranked subsidiary title of the Marquessate,which
his grandfather(1904-74) had used from his own father's accession
as Marquess in 1911 until becoming 7th Marquess in 1961;
the 8th Marquess continued to be listed in Who's Who as
"Viscount Savernake",as he had been from birth,until he
succeeded in turn as Marquess in 1974...the 9th Marquess's
son Thomas (born 1982) has likewise used the Savernake title
from birth and we will see if he upgrades to Earl of Cardigan.

(The sons of the present Dukes of Devonshire and Wellington
have forborne to formally change their courtesy style to
Marquess of Hartington and Marquess Douro,having been long
widely known as Earls of Burlington and Mornington respectively).

The new Marquess has since 1987 been 31st Hereditary Warden of
Savernake Forest,which he and ancestors have owned for many
centuries.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Mig.Rhodes]

By unhappy coincidence the marquess's mother, Joan, then Countess of Cardigan, was killed when she fell from a seventh floor window of the Savoy Hotel in London, in July, 1937. Her flowing evening dress failed to act as a parachute.

https://peeragenews.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-8th-marquess-of-ailesbury-1926-2024.html

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Mig.Rhodes
By unhappy coincidence the marquess's mother, Joan, then Countess of Cardigan, was killed when she fell from a seventh floor window of the Savoy Hotel in London, in July, 1937. Her flowing evening dress failed to act as a
parachute.

I have grave doubts that Her Ladyship's coutouriers had prioritized this application
in undertaking its design.

Post by Mig.Rhodes
https://peeragenews.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-8th-marquess-of-ailesbury-1926-2024.html

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Mig.Rhodes]

I will try and find the inquest result. Did she fall accidentally, jump, or was perhaps pushed?

[Mig.Rhodes]

Death of Countess
Savoy Hotel Tragedy
Press Association Copywright
LONDON., - July 27 1937
(Received July 28, at 12.5pm)

The Coroner returned the verdict that Countess Cardigan committed suicide whilst of unsound mind. Her husband in evidence stated that the Countess had not quarrelled with him, but had left their home in Oxford on July 22 without stating her destination. A letter from her alarmed him and he instructed the police to find her. Her mother had committed suicide, and the countess ntalked of ending her life similarly.
The police evidence showed that the Countess had engaged a suite in the Savoy Hotel on July 22. She locked the doors, ate nothing, but repeatedly asked for drink.The management, becoming alarmed, sent up a doctor on the night of July 23. The countess refused his admission. The police found after the tragedy that the pillows were spattered with blood and that the windowsill was marked with blood.A brandy bottle and several glasses were smashed to fragments. A safety razor blade and two notes were on the dressingb table.
Dr Moreton stated that countess's wrists were slashed and that a piece of glass had been found in her stomach.

The coroner returned a verdict that the countess had been quite demented. She had smashed things, cut her arm with a blade, and had swallowed glass. A letter to her husband referred to her affection for him and their children, but showed that she was demented and intended taking her life, the circumstances preventing anyone frustrating her.


-=-

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Mig.Rhodes
Death of Countess
Savoy Hotel Tragedy
Press Association Copywright

First time I've seen THAT rendering,though I have seen a publication mistakenly identify
its copyRIGHTED text as "copywritten".

In any case it is not a matter of the WRITING of the text in question,
nor of its being WROUGHT,
but of the RIGHT to copy it.

Post by Mig.Rhodes
LONDON., - July 27 1937
(Received July 28, at 12.5pm)
The Coroner returned the verdict that Countess Cardigan committed suicide whilst of unsound mind. Her husband in evidence stated that the Countess had not quarrelled with him, but had left their home in Oxford on July 22 without stating her destination. A letter from her alarmed him and he instructed the police to find her. Her mother had committed suicide, and the countess ntalked of ending her life similarly.
The police evidence showed that the Countess had engaged a suite in the Savoy Hotel on July 22. She locked the doors, ate nothing, but repeatedly asked for drink.The management, becoming alarmed, sent up a doctor on the night of July 23. The countess refused his admission. The police found after the tragedy that the pillows were spattered with blood and that the windowsill was marked with blood.A brandy bottle and several glasses were smashed to fragments. A safety razor blade and two notes were on the dressingb table.
Dr Moreton stated that countess's wrists were slashed and that a piece of glass had been found in her stomach.
The coroner returned a verdict that the countess had been quite demented. She had smashed things, cut her arm with a blade, and had swallowed glass. A letter to her husband referred to her affection for him and their children, but showed that she was demented and intended taking her life, the circumstances preventing anyone frustrating her.
-=-

Sad.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Mig.Rhodes]

Obit in the Times of 22 June 2024:
E X T R A C T
The Marquess of Ailesbury obituary: much-married stockbroker

Descendant of Lord Cardigan of Light Brigade fame whose life was a tale
of mixed fortunes

Like his mother, Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury,
fell to his death from a high window.

Hers was on the seventh floor of the Savoy Hotel. His was at his home in
Shepherds Bush, west London. The only witness to his fall was a cat.

It was the latest strange twist in a family saga that could be traced
back to Lord Cardigan who, as he led the charge of the Light Brigade,
declared: “Here goes the last of the Brudenells!”

As it happened, Cardigan beat the odds to survive the infamous “valley
of death” debacle at Balaklava, but when he died in 1868, childless, so
in effect did the single name. The earldom of Cardigan passed to his
distant kinsman George Brudenell-Bruce, 2nd Marquess of Ailesbury.

In 1961, Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the future 8th Marquess, might have
taken the title. His grandfather the 6th Marquess having died, and the
marquessate passing to his father, Chandos Sydney Cedric
Brudenell-Bruce, he chose not to take Cardigan as a courtesy title, or
the Bruce earldom of Whorlton in the County of York, keeping instead the
junior style by which he had been known since birth: Viscount Savernake

It takes some following, but every earl and then marquess of Ailesbury
since 1685 had held the hereditary wardenship of Savernake Forest,
southeast of Marlborough in Wiltshire. Moreover, since William the
Conqueror made Richard Estormit (later, Esturmy) warden in 1083, the
succession of hereditary wardens had never been broken, passing from
father to son, or occasionally from an heiress-daughter to son. The
Esturmy family lived at nearby Wolf Hall, but in 1427 the line ended
with three daughters, one of whom married an ancestor of the Ailesbury
family, taking with her the wardenship of Savernake.

To Michael Brudenell-Bruce, the viscountcy of Savernake seemed
preferable to the Cardigan earldom, especially after the publication in
1953 of Cecil Woodham Smith’s The Reason Why, which was critical of the
commander of the Light Brigade.

Michael Sydney Cedric Brudenell-Bruce was born in 1926 at Tottenham
House, the eldest son of the Earl of Cardigan and later 7th Marquess of
Ailesbury, and Joan Houlton Salter. His mother, “while of unsound mind”,
died when he was 11 after falling from the Savoy Hotel window.

…In 1950 Captain Brudenell-Bruce, now demobilised, became a stockbroker,
and two years later married Edwina, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Sir
Ernest de Winton Wills, Scots Guards. The marriage was dissolved in
1961. He married, secondly, in 1963, Juliet Adrienne Kingsford, of
Marlborough. That marriage was also dissolved, in 1974, the year in
which he succeeded to the marquessate. In the same year he married,
thirdly, Mrs Caroline Elizabeth Romilly. That marriage was also
dissolved, in 1992.

Always a handsome man, Ailesbury was soon attached to Teresa Marshall de
Paoli, a former model who had once dated Frank Sinatra…

…he had handed over the hunting horn, the token of wardenship of the
[Savernake] forest, to his son and heir, David, who had assumed the
style Lord Cardigan in 1974 on the death of his grandfather. The earl,
as owner and warden of 4,500 acres, enjoyed mixed fortunes, however. The
estate was held in a trust, controlled by the family. In 2013 Cardigan
filed a lawsuit against the trustees, alleging mismanagement, but was
defeated in the High Court, and the house was sold, together with 800
acres.

In November 2014 the 31st Hereditary Warden of Savernake, who had
studied at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, was said to be
living with his second wife and baby daughter in an unheated lodge in
the grounds of Tottenham House on a £71-a-week jobseeker’s allowance
while training to be a lorry driver. He would ultimately benefit from
the sale, but was bitter about the loss, believing that he was “put on
this earth to take care of Savernake and I will never let it go”.

…His son from his first marriage, the former Earl of Cardigan, who
becomes the 9th Marquess, is contesting the will, which was changed two
years ago to include Marshall de Paoli. He survives him, together with
four daughters: of the first marriage, Lady Sylvia and Lady Carina; and
of the second, Lady Louisa and Lady Kathryn.

The Brudenell-Bruce motto, Fuimus, colloquially translated as “We have
endured”, had so often seemed apt.

Michael Brudenell-Bruce, 8th Marquess of Ailesbury, 30th Hereditary
Warden of Savernake Forest, was born on March 31, 1926. He died after a
fall on May 12, 2024, aged 98

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/the-marquess-of-ailesbury-obituary-much-married-stockbroker-rkqxtb2nm