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Difino
| • | Dame Lucy Houston (8 April,1857 — 29 December,1936), born Fanny Lucy Radmall, was an English benefactor and adventuress.
As a young woman she was a professional dancer, a chorus girl known as 'Poppy'. She eloped at the age of sixteen to Paris with a brewer, Frederick Gretton, who left his wife. They had a tumultuous partnership and when he died in 1882, he left her £6,000 per year for life.
In 1883 she married Sir Theodore Brinckman, but they controversially divorced in 1895, after a long separation. Her second marriage was to a bankrupt, George Byron, 9th Baron Byron, in 1901. He died in 1917. During this time she was an active suffragette.
In 1919 Lucy, then Lady Byron, was named Dame Commander of the British Empire (D.B.E.) for her support of a home for nurses who had served in the First World War.
Her third and final marriage, on 12 December 1924, was to Sir Robert Paterson Houston, 1st Bt., member of parliament for West Toxteth and shipping magnate. Robert Houston was regarded as a hard, ruthless, unpleasant batchelor. They lived as tax exiles in Jersey. When Sir Robert showed her his will, Lucy tore it up telling him that one million pounds was not good enough. Sir Robert then suffered a series of mental disorders and Lucy employed a food-taster to ensure he was not being poisoned. Even so Sir Robert mysteriously died on his yacht 'Liberty' in 1926, leaving Lady Houston about £5.5 million.
She was described as paranoid with religious delusions and declared mentally unit to manage her own affairs, but she left Jersey on the 'Liberty'. She then negotiated with the British Government the payment of £1.6 million in death duties. Her politic opinions were extreme (she supported Mussolini) and she paid for nine by-election meetings by the British National Government to be disrupted.
Source: [wikipedia: lucy, lady houston]
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