Two ships pass in the night
The Duchess of Cambridge’s great-great-aunt died in a mental institution after living an uncannily similar life to Prince William’s great-grandmother, it has emerged.
Until now the parallels between Gertrude Middleton, who was the wealthy sister of the Duchess’s great-grandfather Noel Middleton, and Princess Alice of Battenberg, the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, have gone undocumented.
But a historian has discovered that the women lived parallel lives, becoming nuns who worked as volunteer nurses during the First World War and later undertaking social work.
While it was known that Princess Alice, who is featured in the third series of The Crown, was a patient in a sanatorium, it has emerged that Gertrude was treated at the Lawn Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases in the 1930s.
She died in the institution for “superior patients,” housed in a palatial Georgian building in Lincoln, on March 15, 1942, aged 66.
Michael Reed, a historian at Australia’s Ilim College who made the discovery, said: “They basically lived parallel lives, a few years apart. Both were volunteer nurses in connection with the Red Cross — Gertrude during the First World War, and Princess Alice during the First and Second.
“They both acted as dedicated social workers for the homeless and disadvantaged and proved to be generous financial benefactors. They were both very religious, becoming nuns.
“But most startling of all was the revelation that Gertrude, like Princess Alice, had been a patient in a mental hospital. Their stories are both fascinating and sad.”
Born in 1876, Gertrude was the wealthy sister of the Duchess’s great-grandfather Noel Middleton, a director of the family’s textile firm.
A brilliant student, Gertrude completed her schooling aged 18 in 1894 at the exclusive ladies’ boarding school St. Leonards, in Fife — modelled on Eton, the Duke of Cambridge’s alma mater. The school was surrounded by the University of St. Andrews — where the Cambridges met while studying history of art.
Always very religious, she was a theology teacher in Leeds until the First World War broke out, when she volunteered with the Red Cross alongside her sisterin-law Olive Middleton.
Similarly, following the Second World War, Princess Alice founded a Greek Orthodox order known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, and wore a habit for the rest of her life even though the order eventually failed.
After being diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland in 1930, she dedicated her life to helping others, sheltering Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and working with poor people. She died at Buckingham Palace in 1965, aged 84.