Empire: World History - 373. The First British Indians: The Sisters Rejected By Queen Victoria (Ep 4)

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

Who were Princesses Irene and Pauline, the forgotten Duleep Singh sisters? Why did  Queen Victoria shun them? Why did Irene choose to leave her fortune to Dr Barnado's, sparking a vicious legal battle? And why has the fate of Paulina remained a mystery to historians for decades? In the final episode of this series, William and Anita explore the darkest chapter of the Duleep Singh family saga: the forgotten lives of Princesses Pauline and Irene Duleep Singh.  Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Bruno Di Castri Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and the Duleep Singh sisters. And I think before we start, we should say it does involve suicide. It involves severe mental illness and it involves young women. So if this is very difficult for anyone listening, just take care. And if you are in the UK or Ireland and you're listening to this and it triggers something, I'll just tell you the Samaritans are available and they are free to call from anywhere in the UK and Ireland. I'm sure if you're listening in the United States, Australia, wherever you are on the world, there are helplines available.

It is a genuinely sad story. It's a fascinating story. And what I love about this series of yours, Anita, is how every one of these stories is quite different. And this story really is as much about class as about race, isn't it? I mean, there are a whole set of disabilities in the 19th century associated with race, but this slaps on an extra level of difficulty for the women we're going to be talking about. So introduce us to us, who are we meeting today?

And can I just say, I'm so glad you said that because, you know, each sister, different story could be a different lifetime, you know, sort of not even intersecting, but they do. So the sisters that we have been sort of circling in previous episodes, the ones I've been dropping their names every so often and saying, we'll come back to them, we'll come back to them, we're coming back to them now. It's Princess Pauline Deleep Singh and Princess Ada Irene Beryl Deleep Singh. There is the story in one name. The whole thing. So just encapsulated in that, these are names not of the royal court. They're not of India. They're not even of the lineage of Dilipe Singh.

No Jindens, no Victorias, no Alexandrinas, but Beryl. They're working class names. And they are the daughters. The reason they are working class names is because they are the daughters of yes, Maharaja Duleep Singh, but also his second wife, Ada Wetherall. Now, do you remember we were talking about Ada and what she did for a living and why this was actually just abhorrent to Queen Victoria that he'd settled instead of, you know, with Bamba who she really liked, with this woman, just remind everyone what she did, because I think they might have forgotten. So there was the question whether she was a chambermaid, a working class chambermaid, or whether she was actually a prostitute. And you, after reading the papers, more to the side of her being a prostitute.

Actually, I wouldn't say that. I would say this is what went on in. the hotel that she worked in. I mean, she could very well have been. You said she worked at a knocking shop was the phrase he used to her stuff. She worked at a knocking shop, but she could have been a chamber made at the knocking shop, but whatever it is, that's where she caught the eye of Maharaja Dilip Singh. And so, you know, when he does that whole fleeing back to take his own kingdom back and abandons, jettisons his family, which is just the worst thing in the world, sort of ends up, you know, Bamber ends up drinking herself to death as a result. He takes off

and settles with Ada. He drags Ada. We'll get to this. But he drags Ada as his companion in revolution or treason, whatever way you want to put it. So give us a sketch of Ada. How much do we know about it? Do we have any writings from her?

Are there any letters surviving from a... We have a photograph, do we? We have photographs, yeah. So just take a look at the photograph that essentially, which ironically, I think you also had Irene, Pauline, and Sophia, who is the only sister who gives the second family the time of day, the only one who recognises that they are blood. So, I mean, Ada... She's a very English-looking face. In the picture that I have in front of me, she's wearing a

sort of boater. Yeah, exactly. She's well-dressed. She's not a beauty. No. And she looks quite tough. You wouldn't fall out with Ada. And this story will only make sense because you've already met the other three. Sapphire, the one who fought, Catherine, the one who loved Bamba, the one who went home. All these three sisters that we've talked about in previous episodes, they had, if not the love of the British establishment, they got money from the British establishment. They had an allowance which was set up from the East India Company. The background to this in general is that the British would overlook brown skin if it had a tiara or a cornet attached to it. And throughout the period of the late 19th, early 20th century,

The British would admit Maharajas to their clubs and to their houses in a way they would not admit people without a title. These were the Mores of the Times. And Dulip Singh was Brown, but he was a Maharaja. And therefore he was admitted to court and he was Queen Victoria's favourite. The people were going to admit to this story today. Ada and her children did not have that safety net and did not have that sort of colour-breaking. sort of magic quality. They weren't the right kind of people.

I mean, they simply weren't the right kind of people. But, you know, in addition to that, there was nobody fighting their corner because Dilip Singh, the time that he has these two little girls, is an enemy of the state. He is a traitor. You see cartoons of him in magazines like Punch, for example, which, you know, lampoon him, horrifyingly. He's dancing with a Russian bear like a fool, you know, sort of dressed up a little bit like Malvolio, Shakespeare's ridiculous.

Which of a British perspective is not unfair, as he was dancing with the Russian bear and was trying to provoke insurrection and evasion. I mean, the issue is this, the Russian bear is not dancing back. I mean, it's such a hopeless case. You know, Dalype's campaign is so awful. But you've got Pauline and Irene, who are not part of the settlement of the official family. And Queen Victoria despised the idea that, you know, her once favourite was hanging around with somebody of such low class.

So what do we have from, I mean, we can imagine exactly what Queen Victoria thought about this should be horrified. Because again, you know, it was fine to be an Indian Maharaja. It was absolutely not okay to go around in knocking shops, marrying chambermates from that perspective. But do we actually have any written remarks by her saying, cut them off or something like that? No, nothing like that, not directly from her, but from people who worked in and around her. I mean, there's a man called Ponsonby, who's very much her senior. courtier. And there are letters that go keeping an eye on Duleep's thing and expressing just how unamused anybody in court is about this latest chapter in Duleep's life. Now, remember, Duleep had been

unfaithful throughout his marriage. These are, you know, usually sort of low-key affairs, indiscretions. They remain in the shadows. There are some really interesting things. I went through some of the birth records around Elverdon. And there's a girl called Kate Singh, who's born in a nearby Norfolk parish of Swoffham in 1876, that's the same year as Sophia. That's very Urquil Poirot or Miss Marple of you, either. It's how I roll as a journalist, that's what you want to know. It's like, you know, where these people are.

Well, I mean, I haven't got DNA, darling, so, but, you know, it's at Kate Singh. How many of those were there to the pound in Norfolk in 1860? 76. In the parishes immediately around Elvis. Of Swoffham. Now, Kate Singh grew up to be a parliament. I mean, I looked at sort of the census records. What is unique and uniquely irritating about the Ada situation

is that he marries her. And he marries her at a time where Queen Victoria is quite convinced he has gone mad. And she does write about that, that he's lost his senses. We should say here that the mores of the times, however, we look at it

today is that it's more or less fine to have affairs with chambermaids. Or illegitimate children. And Edwardian gentlemen in inverted commas would do that sort of thing. It was not okay to marry them. That was the class betrayal. And so what he's doing is he's acting like a foreigner in this case. No Englishman would marry the chambermaid from that class at that time. That's the code that has been broken.

Well, I mean, yeah, and it's one of many codes that Doolope is, is breaking. So after, you know, sitting in Aden and sweating it out, he joins Ada in Paris. From Paris, they go to Moscow because Dilip has it in his mind, he just has to turn up and the Tsar will call on him and the Tsar will say, brother, let's get the Brits. This is the great game. You are a king. You are an important piece on the board. Zah never calls him. He sits in Moscow for a full year in this rather dilapidated boarding house. It's called the Bolshoi. And a year later, Boxing Day, 1887, Ada gives birth to a daughter, Pauline, in that same sort of dilapidated boarding house.

Just to clarify the chronology here, is it your working theory that he's met Ada long before he goes off to Aiden and that she then joins him? She joins him, yes. 100%. It's a segue that is clear. Where do they meet? Paris, first of all, as I said, you know, once he leaves Aidan, he's vowed he's never going to go back to England again. So he goes to Paris instead as a jumping off point to get to Moscow. Boxing day, this is a gift that nobody really wants, Willie, because, you know, he's waiting

for Zahar Alexander to do his thing. Zahar Alexander III is not giving in the time of day. And Ada gives birth to a daughter Pauline in this same dilapidated boarding house there, the Hotel Bolshoi. And Dilip, this whole reason Dilup is there is because he is single-mindedly trying to woo the Tsar, although he doesn't actually when he first arrived thinks he needs to woo the Tsar at all, he's just going to be called upon. It is becoming completely clear to him that the Tsar does not value him at all. You know, he's not this great peace in the great game at all. Do you have a sense of who he's calling on?

Is he just sort of turning up himself at the foreign office and saying, dropping his card? Or what's the process by which he's approaching the Russian authorities? He has sent letters. He sent cart to visit. He has made it known that he is here and he is waiting. There is a very, very good book by a man called Christy Campbell. If you want to get into the depths of that particular story, he does it brilliantly well, the Maharajas box, where he also does talk about the kind of spies who are following Dilip,

who sort of pick his pocket, who make sure he's completely destitute while he's in Moscow. And his dwindling funds are just disappearing. You know, there's an Irish connection. It's far too complicated to go through here. But I tell you, on top of that, there is a suggestion, and I got the sense, although Christy doesn't say it explicitly, that Ada might have been a spy, too, for the British. For the British. to just kind of keep chopping away the ground underneath Duleep's feed for the British.

What gives you that impression? Because it's an important detail. Oh, and you'll see later on in this here episode, Willie, because there are things that will go on towards the end of his life that will tell you why I think this. But anyway, Pauline, it's left to Ada to name her. I mean, Duleep does a little bit of a medal and says, okay, I know. I worked with Sapphire when I sort of gave a middle name that,

pleased Queen Victoria, let's do it with Pauline as well. Alexandrina is the name given to her. Now, it could be to flatter the saw, or it could be just to hedge your bets with Queen Victoria, you know, just keep everybody cool with her. But, you know, the way he was naming his children at this time felt, I mean, homage if you feel generous, but leverage if you feel, actually this is a man who knows he's going to be hitting hard times, they might need to call upon people. So he eventually gives up in Moscow. There's no word from the Russians, no word from the foreign office,

no word from the Tsar. And he heads back to Paris, which has now become effectively his base. And there, two years later, he gives birth to another girl, Irene. And by this stage, they're actually married. Is that right? That's right.

That's right. That's right. A small civil ceremony in April 1889. Yeah. Because while Bamber is, alive, which she is when Pauline is born, they can't get married. And also, I don't know, he probably was that bothered about getting married. But once Bamba is safely dead, he can marry again. And so, you know, Irene is technically legitimate where Pauline is not. And again, Irene, Helen, Beryl,

those are the names. You know, there's nothing Sikh. There's nothing Punjabi. There's nothing even to flatter royalty. So you get through the children's names, I would suggest, a bit of the psychology of the Maharaja as well. And the world that he's living in, yeah. The world that he's living in, but also the world that he thinks he can reach. You know, there's no point in giving this child, this little baby, a flattering name. What's the point? You know, it's not going to work. It hasn't been working. And what is very important is that, you know, these children are rejected by everybody, by the rest of the family, by Queen Victoria's court, by everybody. No. No. People just think he's nuts.

He's got nothing. He'll amount to nothing. And do we have Anita any sense at this point of his relationship with Ada? They've been together for a while. He made his bed and now he's sleeping in it. It isn't like he's just dropping this chambermaid now that things are not working out. He sticks with her. Well, he sticks with her, but I would suggest maybe not out of love,

but there's nothing else for him. Queen Victoria will not receive Ada. She won't receive Duleep either unless he apologises, which he's not keen to do, she will not give any time to Pauline or I mean, these girls are never going to be blessed with, you know, that kind of court dress coming out,

none of that. Do you have a sense of her at all at this time? Do we have any way of indicating what she's up to or thinking or... We'll get a sense of her very soon because it will become apparent that this is a woman who likes the finer things in life, particularly she likes to gamble. Let's just do a little more of a contrast,

if you don't mind, between these lives. because you've got Sophia, you know, christened at Windsor, Queen godmother, you know, the pram that's wheeled around Buckingham Palace, dandling by, you know, Victoria herself. And Pauline and Irene are eventually baptised in a colonial hotel chapel in Algiers in the winter of 1892. How are they suddenly in Algiers? I don't know. There are bits of this story, which by virtue of the fact that this man was living quite a shadowy life, we don't know. We just know from the records. That's where it happened. Now, this is, of course, the beginnings, and we're going to be dealing with this in a very exciting series that I am deep in the reading for at the moment on the French in Algeria. Do you think there's any sense that he could be thinking of settling there?

Because this is when large numbers of French have been given land in Algiers. And they're given great tracts of land which are being expropriated from the locals. Could we imagine Dolipsing ending up as a pied noir in Algeria, though? No, no. No, because this is not a man who knows how to start again. You know, this is a man who is only known in existence where Queen Victoria has been responsible for his downfall, then for his salvation, then for his downfall again.

You ask about the relationship between Ada and Maharaja Dilip Singh, we don't know that such a sketchy existence that they're living at this time, but what we do know for sure, that at the beginning, she's living with the Maharaja in his hotel suite. But then she moves out. She takes her children, she takes her belongings, and she moves to the Western outskirts of Paris, where she sets up home with this new and mysterious female friend,

a woman called Madame Paraton, who London spies conclude, because we've seen the documentation, she must be a Russian agent sent by a Tsar. And they only know that because they're following him, so they know about Paraton. And is this from British intelligence records? British intelligence records.

British intelligence records. So, you know, so London spies thought that Paraton was, this kind of Russian agent who's just keeping an eye, even though the Tsar doesn't want anything to do with her, but they're keeping an eye on, Parroton keeping an eye on him. So you can see this is a really sort of weird existence, which is also sad because his marriage, it seems to have fallen apart. Ada, her two daughters, Madame Parroton, they're living now in an expensive villa at a place called Le Vicinet, but Delip is paying for it. And DeLeep himself is paying for himself to stay in this Paris hotel suite, which is sort of downgraded suite to what he's used to,

and he's dying. So what will happen in the Hotel de la Troumi? It's just two minutes walk from the Chances Lise. It looks glamorous from the outside, inside though. It was faded. It was described as having this sort of musty smell of neglect at the time. He was only 55 years of age. He looked so much older than that, and he has a devastating heart attack. Friends had stopped visiting him. His family weren't seeing him. Irene, Pauline, the last time, you know, he saw Irene saw her father, she was three years old. The last time Pauline saw her father, she was five years old. Ada is living it up, the second family, somewhere else with this mysterious woman spending his money, he dies completely alone on the floor, crumpled up. But the hotel

is still there and it's now of slightly poshah. It's now of tarty five star. It is, indeed. It's a a much nicer place that it was at the time. So Duleep dies, just to give a date to this, 1893, October 1893, and eventually the British government settles some money on Pauline and Irene. It puts them, at least in paperwork terms, on a largely equal footing with Sophia, Catherine and Bamba. But they always refer to, and I think this is really interesting, is the two of the second family. They never refer to by name.

In the India Office papers that I've seen, Sir Owen Tudor, The Vice-Roy's private secretary writes about them really coldly. And this is how every piece of documentation about these girls, the five girls, Bamba, Catherine, Sof, and two of the second family will receive about £22,000 each. So you get names for the senior three. The other two are the other two. So you've got Pauline then sort of growing up, and she's super sociable. She's got some money behind her. She's the more sturdy of the sisters.

Where's the money from? Is it the India office or DeLeep has left or something or what's? It's the India office. There is a part of their agreement when they take the whole of the Sikh kingdom is that they will settle on at Deleep to give him a livable amount of money, which he then challenges and says it's not livable and to his progeny they will get some kind of pension, some kind of settlement. And that is what this is.

It's coming basically from a fraction. of what was the Sea Kingdom. And the amount is always something that irks Dilip, because he says, I was a child, you made me sign this, I didn't realize how little you're basically you're letting my children sink in this world. What are you giving us? This is nothing. This is not what you said you were doing.

And so that leads to the resentment before he dies. The one interesting thing does happen is that after Dilip Singh dies, there are two members of the family who extend a hand to Pauline and Irene. And they are, I arguably say, you know, the most altruistic and the people I probably most like to spend time with. And that is Sophia and Freddie, Frederick, you know, the one your favourite. The Antiquarian. The Antiquarian. Who's living in Norfolk, who's collecting Jacobi art, who's just living a quiet little life.

They welcome him. So Freddie's got a home at a place called Blow Norton in Norfolk. and the door is open to these two other girls. And they are also welcome at Faraday House. Not only does she welcome the girls, but that photo of Sophia, Ada, Pauline and Irene is taken at one of Sophia's places. So you've got this sort of warmth that opens up to these girls.

And in January 1911, Pauline, who is the more gregarious of the children, and she's quite a beauty, She is now because of Sophia and Freddie And the position that their sort of affection is given them Is being recognised at least in society papers Because they're scandalous You know, they may not be sort of venerated in the way that Sophia ever was in the press They're daughters of a Maharaja

But they are glamorous So Anita, she's on the cover of country life In the Girls in Pearl section Where you always have a beautiful girl even to this day Sitting there about to get married or something Is she called Princess? on that cover? Yeah, they call her Princess Balleen.

And, you know, it's one of those sort of sniggering titles where you know that it is, for those who know where she and Irene come from, there is never a time where they don't feel that they're being sniggered at at the same time as they're being addressed by their correct time. Nonetheless, the cover of country life is a kind of marker at the time for society and there she is on it.

For upper middle class England, this is really impressive. You know, in 1911, the upper middle classes would have looked. And she looks beautiful. She's a beautiful. I mean, you could do the description of her on country life. She's attractive. She's a very attractive woman. So she is depicted on what looks like a she's long,

and she's wearing a sort of ball gown, and she doesn't look at all Indian, unlike her sisters. She could pass very easily in a Norfolk village if she was wandering around with Freddie for someone from Norfolk. And she's beautiful. You know, she's got that sort of classic Edwardian look, a very, you know, fashionable hair cut. She looks lovely.

So Pauline, who is the more acceptable of the sisters, is keen to get to know the others too. And Sophia wants to be the bridge, the ambassador to that. So when Sophia is out seeing Bamber in Lahore, she says, you know, Pauline, come out and meet us. Come and learn about your father. come and learn about your history. And Pauline goes out in 1907. Bamba is completely against it. She does not want her to come.

We are not surprised that Bamba gives her the curled shoulder. Bamba's that kind of woman. Well, it's also, you know, in her mind, her beloved father, and she does love her father, rejected them for this other woman. And these are the children of the other woman. So, you know, Sophia blasts through this and says, look, you've just got to give her a chance.

Pauline does not make this easy at all. Because when she turns up, she turns up with these three, and these are from Sophia in her diary. Three huge boxes and several small, she says. I bought enough for 10 years. She's brought enough for 20, which is, you know, just this is sort of, again, you know, she's playful but critical as well. Within six weeks, despite bringing enough stuff for 20 years,

Pauline's back on the boat to France because Bamba and her are really, rowing constantly, constantly. And that is largely because Bambas being really cruel while she's there. She does not hesitate to tell Pauline what kind of a woman her mother was. Do we know that? Does Sophia say that in her diary? We know that. Sophia says that in her diaries. You know, so not only, you know, what kind of woman her mother was, but that, you know, she got all of her undesirable qualities from her mother. Pauline in turn, let me tell you, according to Sophia's diary, doesn't make life easy at all. You know, she just won't get out of bed on time.

She'll flirt with the wrong people. She'll be rude to people who matter. She is a sort of, you know, silly 19-year-old who is not making an effort. But also, you know, why would she? She's in a hostile environment. Pambas being just awful to her. So, look, when she sort of realizes that, you know,

things aren't comfortable, she looks for another family. She had a chance. Sophia opens the door. Freddie opens the daughter, this old family. But, you know, when she realizes it just doesn't fit her. You know, her skin doesn't feel right with these people. She married.

She, in 1914, just before the war, she meets and falls in love with a young army officer called John Shirley Archibald Torrey, second lieutenant rifle brigade. Do we know much about his background? We know that he was killed at the Battle of Luce in just a year after them were married, just one year in 1915.

But we don't know what class he's from. Has she made the class jump? now she's on country life and so on. He's up on middle class. That's what he is. It's exactly the kind of person whose family would have read that magazine. But we do know how he died, because you can look into the war records. And he died, you know, Luce was one of the most horrific engagements in the war for the British.

And it's because of the use of poison gas. You know, they released chlorine from cylinders. The Germans did. The wind blew it back into the British trenches. It's a catastrophe. I mean, they lost something like 60,000 men in four days. Williams, William. And, you know, this is one man who was caught up in it, Pauline's husband. So, you know, she's married at 25. She's a widow at 27. What is interesting at this time is what the

war does to all of these sisters. Some of them are begging their family to side with the Germans, i.e. Catherine, who's with Lena in Germany. Some of them will drop their rocks and decide to be nurses for the war effort, like the majority of suffragettes, Sapphire. Bamba willing the British to lose from India. And then you have Ada and her daughters. Ada does something, you know, altruistic, which from the little we know of her is not really, doesn't come naturally to her.

She volunteers for the French Red Cross at Limoges, and she's part of the ambulance call. We know this. This is not an automatic move for someone who's been hanging out in Monte Carlo casinos. No. No, but she does it. And, you know, she tends to soldiers at Verdun, which is, as everyone who knows this period in history, one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the war. And then she returns afterwards.

That shows some character. It 100% does, you know. So it's from being this chambermaid to a suspected spy living with a Russian agent, then to becoming, you know, somebody. I love this house. Two rival agents living together in a dim Paris suburb. It's wonderful. And if only we knew more, I mean, if only there were more records on who said what to whom and when. Ada does then return to London in 1919, because, you know, after experiencing what she's experienced, Willie, she never wants to see, ever wants to see France again. And she has run up debts, her lifestyle and her time with Madame Barretton and her time at the casino tables of Monte Carlo.

Deats have over, we know, 17,000 pounds. where to call home, desperate, destitute. And it is, again, you know, one of the nice people from the first family who steps in to savour. Where Sophia tried to ease the way for Pauline, at least, to join the rest of the family, Freddie steps in with some material help. Freddie sounds lovely. Always trust an antiquarian, I say. A nice law for antiquarian, just the man you need in a tight spot. So Freddie is a darling, actually. He sort of gives her money. Sometimes he gives her money anonymously. We sort of subsequently find out from records that he was sending money her way. And eventually, it's actually, Ada is not the kind of person who's going to live on the

perhaps promise of somebody's kindness, which may dry up. So she goes to the India office herself, Ada does, and she says, I'm going to make you a deal. You give me a small house and you give me a hat shop and I will never bother you again. I mean, she's plucky man. This is a survivor. Does that correspondence survive? It survives. Yeah. And because the India office is thinking about it and you've got them saying, you know, the whole conversation, if she came in, she said that's all she wants. She wants to be a milliner so she can support herself and she wants a small house. And then you've got this towing and froing. And the indie office. They give it to? They give it to her. And that's what she does. That's a hat shop. So she starts up in a knocking shop. She goes.

As who knows what, may well have been a chambermaid, I don't know. Then she's at Verdunas, a nurse, and now she's a milliner. And also not, you know, not so close to her daughters. You know, it's, you get the sense, if not, you know, the concrete proof, but just the tidal movements of these daughters that they are, they're not close to their mother. They're just kind of, you know, their loss. And Pauline is in grief. You know, you ask me what we know about Torres.

we don't know much except that she loves him because she never remarries. Right. You know, she visits with Sophia, but she really doesn't have a home of her own. And by the 1920s, she's sort of drifted back to Paris, you know,

trying to be a free Parisian, but quietly running out of money. And French is kind of her first language now. It is, yeah. Look, shall we, we haven't talked about Irene. Shall we come back after the break and talk about Irene, who is the most neglected sister of all.

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SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system, and it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Welcome back. We've seen what happens to Ada, Dulip Singh's last wife, who was last seen in a hat shop.

We've now followed Pauline, who is a widow and living in Paris. But what has happened, Anita, to Irene. Irene, Irene, the more fragile of the two children, you know, largely sort of left in neglect by everybody who should have cared with her. Well, not surprising. And if you know anything about psychology, you know, people will look for their own families. if their families have let them down, they try and create their own. So in 1910, so even before Pauline gets married, even though she's a younger child, she marries a Frenchman called Pierre, Marie, Alexandre, Villeux.

And he's a wealthier man, Dantorius is, because the wedding we know takes place at the Church of Saint-Philippe de Roul in Paris on the 15th of March 1910. She is a society wedding. It is of society wedding. She's a society bride because, you know, we see her portrait is taken by Ellis and a whalerie. It's a gorgeous image, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they are society photographers.

They don't bother with just anybody's marriage. So then she's got some money. Well, her husband, to be, has some money. I mean, she's dressed up in a proper bright light for you here with a long train. She's got sort of fluffy, not a tiara, what you call it, with those sort of ostrich feather. It's a fascinator. Yeah. It's a fascinator.

It's a fascinator. And she's looking pretty fascinating in her fascinator, standing on some steps, all set to get married. This should be her happily ever after, Willie, and it clearly isn't because we know that actually it's a bit of a disaster from the start. There are records of her having epileptic fits as early as 1915. We know that she starts unraveling psychologically and we can't immediately draw the line, but it is suggested that her husband does not treat her very well. So in the 1920s, she spends time in a nursing home being treated for something called neurasthenia. one of those Edwardian catch hole diagnosis for somebody who is just burnt out, depressed and anxious. You know, there wasn't another name for all of that.

So severe depression and anxiety. So my grandfather had that and he was subjected to electric shocks at this period. So was Irene. So was Irene. So she was, that was the cure back then, electroshock therapy. And Freud was saying it was at the time, this is what the thinking was, that it was the result of unfulfilled sexual stimulation or non-completed coitus that causes very Freud.

We have learned a lot since then. So after this rather brutal treatment, and I don't know how your grandfather was after the electroshock therapy. And it scarred him for life, actually. Well, you know, Irene moves back to an apartment that she has in Paris on the Avenue Hoche. It's an elegant, expensive street. It must be something that was settled through, you know, her separation with her husband. Although she does have some funds of her, and we know this.

And she seems okay. She takes up painting. She has friends. You know, we know that she dines out. But secretly, you know what? This return to France is not good for her because she's estranged from the people who knew her best. And Paris reminds her of her most miserable times with them. Remember, you know, she was born in Paris.

It wasn't a good time. Her father dies in Paris, Maharaja Dilip Singh, dies in Paris who didn't really give much of a damn about her. And Ada, who also didn't give very much of a damn about her, sort of left her to go and gamble in Monte Carlo. So, you know, this is not a good place. And it is in Paris that she starts losing touch with reality. So no amount of the painting or the reading or, you know, there's a music scorebook from her. childhood that she was trying to learn in Paris. She's trying so hard to push back against what today we will call quite clearly depression and anxiety. And she is fighting and doing her best,

but there just weren't the tools or the understanding at that time to help her. There was electro-shock therapy. So what you see at this point is that a creative, very beautiful young woman is breaking into pieces. In August 1920, any kind of idea that she is happily married with Villemort, that just goes out the window because Villemort decides to separate with her. And within days, Irene climbs to the top floor of their apartment building in Paris and throws herself from a window. The fall breaks her body, but she doesn't kill herself.

And what it does, oh God, makes her life already a really difficult life even worse, because you've got the French press descending, you know? The Princess, Indian, suicider, is what they, you know, sort of headline it. 925, she's throwing herself out of a window but hasn't died. 1926, Freddie, her half-brother, does die. The antiquarian in Norfolk. Is that old age? Because he can't be that old by 1926.

He's quite fat and not very healthy. And clearly there's a heart problem that runs in the family because his father dies at 55, remember. You know, so he dies. He just kills over and dies. I mean, what Freddy's death means? is that, you know, that one person who's trying to, particularly since we're talking about Irene and Pauline, who was trying to be that father figure, you know, who tries to get them, you know, to come to Blow Norton his home in Norfolk, you know, who puts adjoining coach houses in for, you know, so that his sisters can come and go as they please and feel like they have a safe place. You know, when he dies, all the gloves come off. And Bamba, who is the one who, you know, has been perhaps, biting her tongue a little bit, she basically comes out and so when she hates them. Now she doesn't even have to play nice now that Freddie has gone.

Irene is alone now in Monte Carlo trying to cheer herself up. Like her mother before her, she's been gambling. She has been spending what little she has and she's been losing. And the funeral, Freddy's funeral, is the last time you'll see the other four sisters in the same place. They'll get together at St. Andrew's Church and Blow Norton, but Irene will not be there. She can't come because she's on the Riviera and she's convinced that she is losing her mind. So she's in no fit state, even though she has affection for Freddie. Who could not have affection for Freddie?

Freddy is the only really very lovely person who shows sort of unconditional love to these young women. She won't come even for the funeral, even though Pauline will put aside all her. differences with Bamber and stand at a grave side with the woman she most detests in the world. Likewise for Bamber, you know, Irene can't. And this is now turning into, this wonderful succession of stories that you've presented us with in this series. We now sort of end up in this side of paradise. We're in a kind of F. Scott Fitzgerald novel because we're in the south of France and Irene

is down there with mental health issues. Yeah, and, you know, I should probably say that, you know, it's a trigger warning, this is what it is, but if you find any discussion of people taking their own lives, difficult, this is what we're going to talk about next. So just to just be aware of that. On the 8th of October, 1926, less than two months after Freddie's funeral, Sophia receives a telegram. A fisherman has dragged out a woman's body out of the waters of the Riviera. She was wearing expensive. of clothes. She was believed to be in her mid-30s. And they know it's Irene because Irene has left a note on a nearby rock explaining who she is and what she's about to do. In fact, she writes two notes, Willie. One note on the rock identifies herself. One letter is for her lawyer and a very sort of loyal friend, if you like, a man called Lancelot Smith. And she writes it on the morning of her death. And I'm going to read the letter because I think actually we owe it to to Irene because she so easily just disappears through the cracks of these stories and because I think

she deserves to speak in her own voice. Nobody will ever hear of me again as I am going to commit suicide this afternoon. I am homeless. My nerves have prevented me continuing my studies, but I have grasped my object. I've been staying a week at Monte Carlo, but here I only play the fool and lose my pocket money. Please forget. give me for troubling you in such troublesome times, but it is the last time. I am homeless. Now, that is something that doesn't speak well, really, of the rest of the family, because they're not looking after their sister. Her sisters have Faraday house, and Bamba has Gulzar in Lahore. Catherine has Colhatch House in Penn. And Irene, at 36 years old, the dast daughter of the last

Maharaja of the Punjab has nowhere. She's literally. homeless and that's what she writes in her letter. Yeah, but you know, doors were opened to her. Sophia absolutely would have taken her in, but she doesn't want anything to do with this family that she, in some way, thinks of as part of her disease, part of her sadness. You know, this name, this lineage, this family story has brought her nothing but sadness. And perhaps made it impossible, although we don't know how her husband treated her,

but impossible to form and keep an attachment because he does certainly leave her. They're not good at marriages in this family. Well, that letter when I read it was, you know, heartbreaking and it's heartbreaking to read it now. So, you know, as I say, if that triggers anything for anybody, I do apologize, do reach out. There are people who can help. Let's talk about what happens after Irene dies because Irene did have some money, you know, quite a bit of money. She left, you found a will, didn't you, Anita, which you show has rather more in it than I might have expected for someone who says she's homeless.

She left £30,000, which is a fair amount of money in the 1930s. And so while she's homeless, she's not destitute. No, she's not. I think it's completely fair. And also, you know, there's a material settlement from Villemort as well, you know. Who was an aristocrat and had money? Yeah, and who may not have been able to live with her anymore or wanted to live with her, and we don't know how cruel he may have been with her, but, you know, he certainly they weren't

together, but he still puts aside money to look after her, but she was homeless in spirit. You know, I say that, and, you know, that letter to Lance Lott Smith, that letter to Lancelot Smith, she changes her will in it. This is like, it tells you everything you need to know about her, because her old will had left everything to Sister Pauline. The new will leaves everything to Dr. Bernardo's, which is a children's charity. You know, so the message can't be clearer.

She at the end wanted to leave everything that she owned, around this 30,000 that you were talking about, to Dr. Bonardo's home for poor and unwanted children. What do you see in that? I mean, the message to the family is clear. I've been unloved. I was unwanted to. and that's all she can think of.

They don't deserve anything. It is only, you know, she wants the money to help others who are in her same situation. And because of this, because of this changed will at the very end, we have this terrible postscript where Bamba shows herself at her very worst. Yeah, and Bamba really does behave appallingly. So Pauling contests the will. You know, you're not going to be surprised by that. These two are full-blood sisters, you know, saying that she was not of sound mind,

her final hours, you know, it goes into the courts and Dr. Bernardo's fights back. And then out of absolutely nowhere, Bamba decides to intervene. She hires one of the most feared Kings councils in the country. He's a baronet. He's a conservative MP. His name is Sir Ellis Hume Williams. He is an absolute Rottweiler in court. And for days, William, he tears Irene's reputation apart. And you can see in the way that papers cover this, it is awful. You know, things like black blood ran in her veins and she would scratch to get it out. You know, they, this is what he says. This is Ennis Hugh Williams. Yeah. And, you know, this is the scratching of her, you know, that she would self-harm. That's how we get to know that she was self-harming. Things

that, you know, the family would really possibly rather not have made public. But, you know, Bamber, when she's fighting for something, she's all in. fighting for something. You know, he talked about her skin conditions, you know, the fact that she was causing that herself as well, pulling her hair out, you know, all of this kind of stuff that really was humiliating and embarrassing to the postscript of somebody who, when, you know, she was covered in the newspapers, it was that beautiful photograph of her. It's a complete train crash, this. Oh, it's just hideous. And Pauline and Bamber after this case, which, by the way,

Bamba loses and not only does she not get a penny of Irene's money but she has to pay all the court costs Yeah Oh it's just awful So you know they never speak to each other again Pauline disappears after this

Terrible experience with her family And the only other time that Pauline will see Sophia is at Ada's funeral In 1930 Neither Bamba nor Catherine will come Sophia's the only one who shows up And they mourn together a woman that Sapphire would have had every reason to despise,

but the only mother that Pauline has ever known. There is a postscript to this, and I didn't put that all of what we've talked about is in the book that I wrote Sophia. But there is new stuff which I didn't know about, and which Peter Bunce, who I've mentioned the historian, who has sort of spent years tracking the Dilip Singh story. He's been following this trail ever since, hasn't he? Even before he was collecting all the ephemera of Dilip Singh,

it's largely his stuff that you can see at the Kensington Palace exhibition. You should go, should read and buy Anita's book, and then you should go and see Peter Bans's exhibition because they're both extraordinary. Well, that's very kind of you. And for me, the trail kind of stopped after the funeral. Maybe I just, you know, stopped looking perhaps. But in the 1950s, when Patiala, there's a Patiala University historian called Gandh Singh, He actually interviewed Bamba in Lahore for his book, Maharaja Deleep Singh and his correspondence.

And he asked Bamba, whatever became of, because nobody knew what happened to your half-sister, Pauline. And she says, I don't know. And just kind of barked at him, you know, didn't know, didn't care. And there were really lots of lurid theories, you know, that she might have been killed in a bombing raid during the Second World War, that she might have ended up in a German concentration camp, that she might have been a collaborator, that she was part of the resistance, that she simply disappeared in wartime France. But thanks to Peter, actually, none of it's true because we know now that he got an email from a distant relative of Lieutenant Tory.

The guy killed in the Battle of Luce. Exactly that, you know. And this relative had been researching his own family tree and had come across this French record, a burial of a woman, date 1941 in the southwest of France. So this is a place in the foothill of the Pyrenees, at a place called Sanatorium de Trespie, and it's high above the town. And Peter did spend months pursuing this, and he recovered Pauline's French death certificate. Well done, Peter.

Brilliant work. And recovered her last Will and Testament. Yeah, I know, really, I mean, excellent, excellent work. And all it said, you know, the document that he recovered just said death report of a foreign subject in France. And so we could piece together what happened. She developed TB towards the end of her life in the late 1930s. And in those days, it could be a death sentence, no antibiotics, you know, nowhere for them. Not a nice death at all.

No, I mean, you would put in quarantine units and these sanatoriums and, you know, sometimes then the only other way to go is the graveyard. She did not tell her sisters that she was dying. You know, she couldn't tell, so far, she couldn't tell anybody. And so she died at this sanatorium on the 10th of April, 1941, at the... age of 53 and was buried by the authorities in a cemetery where no family was present, no mourners were present, no word was sent. Like a dad.

Sad. Sad, sad, sad, sad. It's been a decade now nearly since you wrote your book. And when you look back at this tragic succession of train crashes, for most of them, it's a very, very sad story. What do you take away from this story? That it is exactly that. It's a sort of a tragedy.

that does have a hard full stop. Because what to me has always been remarkable that none of the children of the first or second family ever have children of their own, you know, apart from Freddie, who finds some modicum of happiness. Is Freddie married? No. No.

He has a very close relationship with a local priest. Yeah, I mean, he's sort of happy being a collector, and he goes on sort of trips with this local vicar. and they seem to be sort of having just a nice life, you know, sort of fumbling about. So he's then about Bachelor, he never gets married. Victor, you know, we mentioned in one of the previous episodes, dies fairly young, and buried in Monte Carlo, never has children. Sophia sort of, you know, has some kind of purpose to her life, even at the end.

Catherine has love, loses love, but then also has a mission when she's, you know, as it has been put, you know, the Indian shindler. and then you've got these two Pauline and Irene who sort of just evaporate, which is very sad, and there's no one else left. So I think what I'm struck by is, number one, truth is stranger than fiction. Because I know for a fact, if I'd have taken this as some kind of proposal for a Bridgeton series, people would have said, can you go back and make this more believable? Because this many things can't happen to one family. It's crazy. Are you nuts?

And number two, isn't it good to put people back into their story? Because for many, the story has always been really simple. Duleep Singh was the one with the tragic life. And his children, the Sikh children, the cubs of Ranjit Singh, the lion of Punjab, were Sikhs and then not much else. So to actually follow them through and follow that story and follow, you know, to deal with the complexity, even of Duleep himself. because he's not a hero in this story. You know, when he's older, he's not a hero in this story. And although these are now mascots for the Sikh community in Britain

and people, you know, there are blue plaques and there was a massive party for the exhibition opening and all that sort of thing. None of these girls, I get the impression, nor Freddie particularly embrace their secret. They're Christians. I mean, they were Christians. Their father converted to Christianity.

Their mother was a devout Christian. He did. But, you know, by that time he's estranged from his children. You know, he's doing it because it's, well, look, there's one school of thought that says he converts back because he really truly believes and he was duped while in the care of, you know, a Scottish foster father and mother to give up his Sikh identity. But there is another that suggests actually, you know, converting back will again make him beloved by his old, you know, sort of kind of. who will then help him with this revolution to get the British out and pay Victoria back for doing all the things that he says she had done to him. But there were the children with Christians.

They were all Christians when they died. When you go to Elvedon, it is in a Christian graveyard. It is at a Christian graveyard. And how ironic is it that he, the Maharaja, is buried next to Maharani Bamber, the woman whose life he kind of ruined and whose heart he broke. and Little Eddie, who's the most innocent of them all. Anyway, that's all we've got time for. I hope you enjoyed this mini-series.

You've really cheered us up today, Anita. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnh. Goodbye from me, William Durember.