Dan Snow's History Hit - The Adventuress

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

In the 1930s Lady Lucy Houston was one of the richest women in England and a household name, notorious for her virulent criticisms of the government, but politics had been far from her mind when, as young Fanny Radmall, she had set out to conquer the world. Armed with only looks and self-confidence, she exploited the wealth and status of successive lovers to push her way into high society. Seeking influence in national politics, Lady Houston financed the first flight over Mount Everest, backed secret military research, and facilitated the development of the Spitfire aircraft. She even purchased a newspaper. Seeking to expose the Prime Minister as a Soviet agent and promote Edward VIII as England's dictator, Lucy was loved as a patriot but loathed as a troublemaker. Historian Teresa Crompton talks Dan through the life of a once famous woman, now totally forgotten. 

Hello and welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm just in Coventry at the moment. I'm inside the new cathedral. The unbelievable, the cavernous, mighty new cathedral. I mean, it's one of the most remarkable bits of public architecture of the 20th century. I now learn, belatedly, it's situated right next door, adjacent to the medieval cathedral, which the only cathedral destroyed during the Blitz. Gutted. When King Emperor George VI stood near this spot where I'm standing now, he wept. He wept because he saw the results of the Blitz on Coventry in November 1940, 80 years ago this November. Two-thirds of the city's buildings damaged or destroyed. A catastrophic scene which prompted Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, to invent a new word, basically Coventry'd, meaning to reduce a city to rubble. This was the start of a story, or towards

the start of a story, that would end in Dresden, in Tokyo, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'm here making a program for History Hit. In fact, I'm here doing lots of things. I'm making a program for History Hit TV. You can go and check it out. It's the new Netflix for history. If you use the code POD6, P-O-D-6, you get six weeks for free. Check it all out. Don't like it? Don't subscribe.

I'm also here to make a podcast, a film with Sinclair Mackay, who's got a book out about Dresden, which was another devastating raid that occurred 75 years ago this month. All these grim anniversaries coming up this year. This podcast has, well, little bits to do with the rise of fascism in the 1930s. This podcast features Teresa Crompton. She's a historian, she's little over the world, and she has stumbled across the life and the loves of Lucy, Lady

Halston. She was an adventurer, she was a propagandist, she was an entrepreneur, she was one of the wealthiest women in Britain. Extraordinary story. You're going to love it. In the 1930s, she was a household name. Now she's forgotten, but Teresa Crompton has brought her back to life for us all. Just before I go, before you listen to this, thank you so much, everyone who's rated and left reviews, perjured yourself on iTunes. I really appreciate that. It makes a huge difference. And you are very, very generous with your time to do so. Thank you very much. and liquidate. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Therese, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting me, Dan. Who is this remarkable woman who was a household name who now no one's heard of?

Yes, she was a household name in the 1930s, largely because she had her own newspaper. She bought her own newspaper to spread her nationalistic views. She wanted Britain and the empire to be powerful. She felt that Britain's politicians were weakening them. And she was a very big personality. And like she published her own terrible poetry in her journal and made herself a laughingstock really. But it did get her name and her message out. And then when the Second World War came um because she'd been rather pro-hitler and pro mussolini and pro-fascism she kind of disappeared the only um survival really in the second world war of her reputation was with the spitfire which she was instrumental in the development of the

spitfire and so she did get credit for that. Extraordinary. So where was she? Talk to me about her background and upbringing. Well, she was born in London. She had quite a humble background. Her father was a warehouseman in her early life. They lived above the shop. It was a wholesale cloth cellars. They supplied cloth to retail premises. So he worked in the warehouse and she lived she lived there on Newgate Street very close to Newgate Prison so still at that time when she was a child they were doing hangings and so she probably saw the the corpses hanging outside Newgate Prison

when she was a child. And were they was it a tough upbringing? I think it was difficult because she was the second youngest of eight children I think money was rather tight and she was a? I think it was difficult because she was the second youngest of eight children. I think money was rather tight. And she was a very, I think, she said herself, she ran like a street Arab through the streets of the city of London and played in St. Paul's churchyard. You know, I think she was a very willful and strong-willed child, difficult to discipline, which certainly she was when she was older. And where did she, so, but how did she go from there to take this to this journey that would take you to the pinnacle yes she was always very ambitious um sometime in her teens she became the teenage mistress of um you know bass beer at burton-on-trent it was one of the directors of

bass beer he came down to london quite a lot and somehow she met him and he was 17 years older than she was um and she became his his mistress And he was 17 years older than she was. And she became his mistress and he kind of set her up. I think she wanted to go to Paris. He allowed her to go to Paris and supported her. And when she was 26 and he was 43, he died. He was an alcoholic and he left her £6,000 a year, which in 1883 was a huge sum.

You could live very comfortably on that sum. So that began her in life, set her on the first step. That's amazing. So there's some alcoholic older lover. Yes. These are some money. Was that known? Was that a problem for her?

She was struck out into fashionable society? Well, he was very, apart from running the brewery, Was that known? Was that a problem for her? She sort of struck out into fashionable society? Well, he was very, apart from running the brewery, he was very, Frederick Gretton, his name was, very keen on horse racing. And so she loved the buzz, the excitement of race courses. And, you know, she went to Ascot and all the, you know, the best ones. And when she was older, she told somebody that once she wore a sequined dress covered in sequins and

she said every head was turning to me and not looking at the horses and she said it was a dress that no lady could have worn so she she knew what she was she enjoyed it enjoyed the attention and where does she go so she's got some money she's got some money um of course she's not respectable at all but she decided that she wanted to go on the stage. And so she achieved that. Such was her personality. So she got a small part. It was a proper, you know, talking part in a play at Drury Lane Theatre. But after three weeks, she ran away and eloped because she'd fallen in with the son of a baronet, Theodore Brinkman. And apparently, the press said later that she told him that she was pregnant, which she wasn't.

And so they got married all very quickly. So there she was, suddenly Mrs. Brinkman. She's achieved respectability in society. But the marriage didn't last long. They were too different. He was the son of a baronet and They were incompatible, their education and background. Is this a story about women in the 1930s as well? To what extent is she an important example of a woman trying to make her way in the world? Either the stage, was that a place where women could be independent, for example? Yes, it was, of a lot of women who call themselves miss this and that were married i once um a feminist when i was writing a book once

asked me strong feminists asked me about her and i said well she made her way in the world by climbing up a staircase a succession of men and so i don't know i'm not sure but maybe that was that was how it had to be done that was how it had to be done. That was how it had to be done, because men were the people with the influence and the money in her world. So she's climbed up through this baronet's... Yes. Then they get divorced. By that time, they'd separated, but she was in her 30s, early 40s. The prime of life.

Yes, the prime of life. They got divorced. Again, which is not unusual in this period. I think there were 300 divorces in Britain a year at that time. Right. Yes, 360, something like that, in that year particularly. Then she was sort of plunged down in society because a divorced woman was not respectable. Even if it was no fault of their own, they were somehow looked on as sort of tainted. So she sort of had to retreat into private life.

She had a house in Portland Place where she lived with her sister. So she had even more money then from that divorce, got a trust fund. And so she lived well, but in seclusion, you know, you couldn't, as a divorced woman, you couldn't sort of, you weren't respectable. So I think she got tired of that. And she was a woman who was always looking, always looking for opportunities for, you know, how to advance things. She had a lot of ideas.

So there'd been a story in the newspapers about the 9th Lord Byron, who was, the famous poet was the 6th Lord Byron. He was his great nephew. He'd been swindled by a society con woman and he was bankrupt. It had been a big case in the press. So she got a friend to go to him and propose to him that she would marry him for his title and she would pay off his debts. Clever.

And it was a brilliant move for both of them. It solved the problems of both of them. She could come out into society. Of course, society knew what her background was. But with the title Lady Byron, you're very, you know, acceptable in high society. And he could live on her and she gave him an allowance of £300 a year. And it was a great arrangement. I don't think it was the greatest romantic match in history because he was 40 and never shown any inclination to get married, but it was good. So she's now Lady Byron. Do we know how society, I mean, obviously people, some people look down

and they're like, was she able to move in those circles? And was she, what does it tell us about how permeable the sort of British aristocracy was in the 1930s? Yes, yes, certainly. If you had money or a title, that opened doors. And she really entered into that. She became a great philanthropist. She worked for charities. She went to, you know, when they had special benefit performances at theatres, you know, she was there. And so she was moving in circles with other titled people. circles with other um titled people land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows,

where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes

every week and so once you have a bit of character if you have a positive bank balance and you have a title and you're married people are prepared

to overlook it's a blank slate yes yes I mean probably the best people in society wouldn't sort of would rather shun her but other people were plenty willing to uh to talk to her yes and so what was her life like she's doing philanthropic stuff yes then then she got into

suffragism and she knew mrs pankhurst and uh and other you know senior suffragettes and she would um pay for them to come out on bail you know when they got in prison. Because what year are we talking now? This is about 1912. Okay. Those sort of years. It was several years before the First World War. She didn't go out and march, but she did go out into Hyde Park and speak and, you know, talk to people on high days and holidays to further the cause of suffragism. So she did that. And then, of course, the First World War came. And so this is when her patriotism first really came out. And she threw herself into supporting the war effort,

as so many private people did. She raised money for various charities. She had her own charities. She sent out matchboxes to the troops, saying a match for our matchless troops from lady byron she sent out pullovers you know she bought like a hundred thousand pullovers or maybe not that many um sent them out to the troops in the trenches and footballs because she was all the time thinking of how to um encourage the men she got a great socks give him socks campaign and she appealed

nationally in the newspapers for people to knit socks and send them to her and sent them out to the troops she said this is a great need you know lack of socks is making their life a misery and do you think she was doing this to increase of her build her brand or was she generally genuinely sort of philanthropic and cared about these issues I think both I think her background in which she'd known ordinary people and understood life she was a compassionate woman. I think she could imagine the men out there with their feet rotting in dirty, wet socks

and really cared about that sort of thing. Did she live with Lord Byron at all? Yes, they lived together. They lived in Hampstead. There's a road north end up the side of the Bull and Bush pub, and she lived at the end there, backing onto the the park her house had a garden onto the park so he died in 1917 before the war ended convenient yes and then she started chasing she started chasing Robert Houston who was a Liverpool ship owner she'd known him for

years I probably had her eye on him for years and she chased him for seven years then she managed to achieve what no other woman had ever achieved because he never married at the age of 70 she got him to marry her and then she was lady houston that's how she became lady houston and how old was she at this point i think she was 68 something like that right but after two years he died leaving her the second richest woman in britain now we're talking god so she has just she's gone up through the yes the pay brackets yes yes she really set her eyes on the on the stars and and reach them so now she's lady houston she's getting a little bit old but she's got so many what does she do do with it? Yes, well, she kind of, I think then she gave up on men.

You know, she'd reached the top and she turned her mind to nationalism. That was what she wanted, Britain and the Empire. And that's when she began to wage her campaigns. So her sponsoring of the Spitfire aircraft was so that Britain could enter into the Schneider Trophy competition, which was a sort of international flight competition, because she wanted Britain to show its supremacy in the air and in its technology. And then she funded the first flight over Everest, over Mount Everest, from British India, because she wanted, at that time, Gandhi and, you know, the nationalist, Indian nationalist campaign was building up.

And really, she wanted to show those Indian nationalists that the British were a superior race in technology and in everything and could fly over Mount Everest. So that was why she spent all this money on these things, to show the power of Britain and to promote the power of Britain. So she worked with the Supermarine Company to build the original Spitfire? Yeah, she funded R.J. Mitchell, who worked for Supermarine, and his development of the Spitfire, yes.

But her politics was... She was friendly towards the continental fascists. Yes. You see, I'm not too happy with her being described as a fascist because she said, I have no political affiliation. What she wanted was Britain and the empire to be great. Now, if she had to align herself with fascists to do that, that's what she'd do. But if it had been the communists who wanted that, she would have aligned herself with them. You see, she wasn't interested in the politics so much as she wanted tough men to rule.

And so she admired Mussolini because he had dosed the communists in Italy with castor oil, which was a laxative. And so she greatly admired a man who took strong action like that, you see. And she got her a newspaper. Then in, yes, the early 1930s, she bought her a newspaper to promote her views. During that time when she had her newspaper, she became a friend of Edward VIII, the future Edward VIII, the Prince of. During that time when she had her newspaper, she became a friend of Edward

VIII, the future Edward VIII, the Prince of Wales at that time. And she tried to push him to become Britain's dictator on the lines of Mussolini and Hitler. And she was really trying to push him forward. She'd also tried to push Lord Lloyd, who was a well-known person in those days, but not so well known now. And Churchill, Winston Churchill, she tried to push him forward to really stand up against Ramsay Macdonald and Stanley Baldwin and the Britain's leaders that she considered weak and useless and running Britain down. She believed that those two men were run from Moscow.

She believed they were just mouthpieces of the Russian communist regime and that's why Britain was getting weak in her view. Old age has hardened her up a bit. Certainly, yes. I think she always had been pretty tough, but by that time, when she was in her 70s, she didn't care anymore. How old is she when war breaks out?

She dies. She died in December 1936. So in 1936, British popularity, there was a lot of... Hitler was quite popular in the Berlin Olympics and Germany had done a big charm offensive around the world. And so it's been unfortunate for her because there were other people who were also admirers of Hitler because of what he'd done in Germany, how he pulled Germany's socks up. Of course, nobody knew what was going to come, although some people could see what was coming. But she died just at the height of that,

and so she was never able to repent, cover over her tracks, deny it, as some other people did afterwards, you see. So she's sort of gone down in history as rather tarred with that brush. There are other people just as keen, but it didn't happen to them. And on her desk, she was a really prominent figure. Yes, she was a household name, certainly, yes. I mean, there were skits in theatres, well, certainly one skit in theatres and about,

so she was pretty well-known, yes. It's amazing how you can... It's not that amazing, I suppose, but it's fascinating how you can be that well known. And then now nobody has heard of him. Yes, yes. And of course, when Edward VIII, when he became king, she was then a friend of the king. You know, they used to visit each other. He even came to her house, Byron Cottage, and visited her at home. But then he disappeared before she did.

And so perhaps if he'd stayed on as king, she would have been able to have more influence and prominence but really his disappearance his abdication killed her that's what her doctor said um it kind of broke her heart and she had a frenzy of activity in his last days before the abdication trying to stop the abdication blaming russia writing to queen um queen mary his mother and all sorts of things she was doing and really she was been a semi-invillain before and it was just too much for her. She couldn't see a future. In a way, he was her last man.

Yes, he was her last love. Yes. So she climbed all the way from the baronet to the king emperor. Yes. Yes, and then... It all fell apart eventually. Now, what happened? Did her reputation just dissipate within months of her death? She didn't leave anything tangible behind? Yes, I mean, everything just evaporated.

Her money went to distant nephews and nieces. Her yacht was sold off for scrap. Her jewels were sold at the sale rooms by her relative. Her newspaper, she'd given her newspaper to some staff who worked for it and she'd sort of given it the kiss of death, really. It had been the old Saturday Review. It had been a very famous journal in the 19th century, but she'd turned it into something rather strange.

And so that folded after a couple of years and House Soul just disappeared. She had no children, you see. They never had any children. And so how on earth did you come across her and decide to write this biography? I was working on my PhD, which was on early British Imperial aviation. I was doing that with Sheffield Hallam University.

And I came across her because of the Spitfire and the Everest, Mount Everest expedition flies. And so when I finished the PhD and I was looking around for something interesting, I thought, ah, I'll look into her. And then just more and more stuff unfolded. And she had this series of identities all through her life. And it was just fascinating how much I discovered. And I discovered things that had never been discovered before about her. So it's a story of remarkable upward social mobility. I mean, was it very, do you think that was very unusual? There were some other women, very, didn't that was very unusual? There were some other women, there were quite a number of actresses who did that, attracted the eye of a rich man, that sort of thing, yes, but it was,

I mean of course it was probably the dream of many girls from the East End, you know, to do that. And did she talk, once she was at the pinnacle, did she talk about being from the East End or did she sort of try and cover it up? No, she was always a bit cagey. She would tell friends and things, but she was always cagey. Yes, I mean, and she didn't always tell the truth. She told some people that she was the oldest of ten children. In fact, she was the second youngest of eight, that sort of thing. I think something she wasn't happy about or proud of. And so she changed them a bit, yes.

She reinvented herself. She certainly did. Yes. She reinvented herself. She certainly did. Yes. It's an extraordinary story. Thank you very much for coming to the podcast. The book is called? Adventuress, The Life and Loves of Lucy Lady Houston. Amazing.

Thank you very much for sharing the story. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world. he tells us what is possible not just in the pages of history books but in our own lives as well i have faith in you hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask i totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money makes sense but if you

just do me a favor it's for free go to itunes or wherever you sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts.

It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.