May 1, 1920: Death of Princess Margaret of Connaught, Crown Princess of Sweden and Duchess of Scania.

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Crown Princess of Sweden, Frederick Charles of Prussia, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, King Gustaf V of Sweden, King Gustaf VI Adolph of Sweden, Louise Margaret of Prussia, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught, Prince Luís-Filipe of Braganza, Princess Margaret of Connaught, Princess Victoria Patricia of Connaught, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Margaret of Connaught (Margaret Victoria Charlotte Augusta Norah; January 15, 1882 – May 1, 1920) was Crown Princess of Sweden and Duchess of Scania as the first wife of the future King Gustaf VI Adolph of Sweden.

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom holding her granddaughter Princess Margaret of Connaught

Princess Margaret was the elder daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, and his wife Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. Her father, The Duke of Connaught was third son of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Princess Margaret’s mother, Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, was the daughter of Prince Friedrich-Charles of Prussia (1828–1885), the son of Charles of Prussia (1801–1883) and his wife Princess Marie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1808–1877). Her mother was Princess Maria Anna of Anhalt (1837–1906), daughter of Leopold IV of Anhalt-Dessau. Louise Margaret of Prussia‘s father, was a nephew of the German Emperor Wilhelm I,and a double cousin of the German Emperor Friedrich III, the husband of her sister-in-law, Victoria, Princess Royal.

Princess Margaret was born at Bagshot Park and baptised in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle on March 11, 1882 by Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury. She was also confirmed in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle in March 1898. Princess Margaret was known as “Daisy” to her family.

When Princess Margaret of Connaught was 23 and her younger sister Princess Patricia of Connaught was 18, both girls were among the most beautiful and eligible princesses in Europe. Their uncle, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom wanted his nieces to marry a European king or crown prince.

In January 1905, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited Portugal, where they were received by King Carlos and his wife, Amélie of Orléans, whose sons Luís-Filipe, Duke of Braganza and Prince Manuel entertained the young British princesses. The Portuguese expected one of the Connaught princesses would become the future Queen of Portugal. No marriage proposal materialized.

The Connaughts continued their trip to Egypt and Sudan. In Cairo, they met Prince Gustaf-Adolph of Sweden, the future Gustaf VI Adolph of Sweden, grandson of the Swedish King Oscar II. Originally, Margaret’s sister Patricia had been considered a suitable match for Gustaf-Adolph; without his knowledge, a meeting was arranged with the two sisters.

Crown Prince Gustaf-Adolph of Sweden and Princess Margaret of Connaught.

Gustaf-Adolph and Margaret fell in love at first sight; he proposed at a dinner held by Lord Cromer at the British Consulate in Egypt and was accepted. Margaret’s parents were very happy with the match. Gustaf-Adolph and Margaret married on June 15, 1905 in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The couple spent their honeymoon at Adare Manor in County Limerick, Ireland, and arrived in Sweden on July 8, 1905.

One of Margaret’s wedding presents was the Connaught tiara, which remains in the Swedish royal jewellery collection today.

Wedding of Princess Margaret and Crown Prince Gustaf-Adolf of Sweden in 1905.

The couple had five children. Margaret was a dedicated mother to her children, and was determined to spend time with them. She was not keen on letting them be raised by nursery staff, as was the convention of the day.

When Gustaf-Adolph’s father, Crown Prince Gustaf, acceded to the throne as King Gustaf V in 1907, the couple became Crown Prince and Princess of Sweden.

Coronet of Margaret used for the Coronation of Edward VII in 1902.

The marriage between Margaret and Gustaf-Adolph is described as a happy love match. Gustaf Adolf felt great pressure from the “Prussian” military discipline with which he had been raised by his mother, and he was greatly affected by and attracted to Margaret’s differing English customs. The visiting Infanta Eulalia of Spain wrote that the Crown Princess gave the Swedish court “just a touch of the elegance of the Court of St James’s” and of how much Margaret loved her life in Sweden.

After her arrival in Sweden, Margaret, who in Sweden was called “Margareta“, received lessons in the Swedish language, and asked to be educated in Swedish history and social welfare. After two years, she spoke good Swedish. She was also eager to find out more about Sweden, and on many occasions went on incognito trips.

Margaret was also interested in art, and was an admirer of the works of Claude Monet. She photographed, painted, and took a great interest in gardening. She and her spouse received Sofiero Palace as a wedding gift, and they spent their summers there and made a great effort creating gardens in an English style on the estate; her children participated in their improvement.

During World War I, Margaret created a sewing society in Sweden to support the Red Cross. The society was called Kronprinsessans Centralförråd för landstormsmäns beklädnad och utrustning (“The Crown Princess’s central storage for clothing and equipment of the home guard”), which was to equip the Swedish armed forces with suitable underwear.

When paraffin supplies ran low she organized a candle collection, and in November 1917 she instituted a scheme to train girls to work on the land. She also acted as intermediary for relatives separated by the war. With her help, private letters and requests to trace men missing in action were passed on. She was also active in her work on behalf of prisoners. She aided prisoners of war in camps around Europe, especially British nationals. Margaret’s efforts during the war were pro-British, in contrast to mother-in-law’s strictly pro-German attitude.

At 2 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, May 1, 1920, her father’s 70th birthday, Crown Princess Margaret died suddenly in Stockholm of “blood poisoning” (sepsis). Some time before this she had suffered from measles, which aggravated her ear, and she underwent surgery to remove a mastoid. Since the previous Sunday, she had been suffering from pain in her face from something below her eye, and doctors decided to perform another procedure. On Thursday, symptoms of erysipelas appeared under her right ear.

She fell gravely ill on Friday night when symptoms of sepsis became evident, and she died within hours. At the time, she was eight months pregnant with her sixth child. In announcing her death during traditional International Workers’ Day celebrations, Swedish Prime Minister Hjalmar Branting said: “the ray of sunshine at Stockholm Palace has gone out” (Solstrålen på Stockholms slott har slocknat).

In Britain, there had been reports, vicious rumors, that Margaret was unhappy in Sweden and that her death actually had been a suicide.

Princess Margaret was buried according to her specific and detailed wishes, written in 1914. She asked to be buried in her wedding dress and her veil, with a crucifix in her hands, in a simple coffin made from English oak and covered in British and Swedish flags. She requested that there should be no lying-in-state after her death.

As mentioned her death occurred on her father’s 70th birthday and she died 30 years before her husband’s accession to the throne of Sweden. Through her daughter, Princess Ingrid of Sweden who married King Frederick IX of Denmark Princess Margaret was the Grandmother of the current Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Queen Margrethe II was named after her grandmother and, like her grandmother, is known as Daisy within the family.

On 3 November 1923 at St. James’s Palace Crown Prince Gustaf-Adolph married Lady Louise Mountbatten, formerly Princess Louise of Battenberg. Her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was an admiral in the British Royal Navy, renounced his German title during the First World War and anglicised his family name to “Mountbatten” at the behest of King George V.

He was then created the first Marquess of Milford Haven in the peerage of the United Kingdom. From 1917, therefore, his daughter was known as “Lady Louise Mountbatten”. Her mother was Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Lady Louise was a sister of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and of Princess Alice of Battenberg, who was the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. She was also a niece of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. Lady Louise was also a first cousin once removed from her husband’s first wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught.

This date in History. October 13, 1911: Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn is appointed Governor General of Canada.

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Canada, Frederick Charles of Prussia, Frederik IX of Denmark, German Empire, Governor General of Canada, Ingrid of Sweden, Marie Louise of Prussia, Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught, Wilhelm I of Germany

Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (Arthur William Patrick Albert; May 1, 1850 – January 16, 1942) was the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He served as the Governor General of Canada, the tenth since Canadian Confederation and the only British prince to do so. In 1910 he was appointed Grand Prior of the Order of St John and held this position until 1939.

Queen Victoria and Prince Arthur.

On his mother’s birthday (May, 24) in 1874, Arthur was created a royal peer, being titled as the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex. Some years later, Arthur came into the direct line of succession to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in the German Empire upon the death in 1899 of his nephew, Prince Alfred of Edinburgh, the only son of his elder brother, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. He decided, however, to renounce his own and his son’s succession rights to the duchy, which then passed to his other nephew, Prince Charles Edward, the posthumous son of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany.

At St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, on March 13, 1879, Arthur married Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, the daughter of Prince Friedrich-Carl of Prussia and Princess Maria Anna of Anhalt-Dessau. Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia was a great-niece of the German Emperor, Arthur’s godfather, Wilhelm I.

Duke & Duchess of Connaught and family.

The couple had three children: Princess Margaret Victoria Charlotte Augusta Norah (born January 15, 1882), Prince Arthur Frederick Patrick Albert (born January 13, 1883), and Princess Victoria Patricia Helena Elizabeth (born March 17, 1886), who were all raised at the Connaughts’ country home, Bagshot Park, in Surrey, and after 1900 at Clarence House, the Connaughts’ London residence.

Through his children’s marriages, Arthur became the father-in-law of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolph of Sweden; Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife; and Sir Alexander Ramsay. Arthur’s first two children predeceased him; Margaret while pregnant with his sixth grandchild. For many years, Arthur maintained a liaison with Leonie, Lady Leslie, sister of Jennie Churchill, while still remaining devoted to his wife.

Governor General of Canada

Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn

It was announced on March 6, 1911 that King George V had, by commission under the royal sign-manual, approved the recommendation of his British prime minister, H.H. Asquith, to appoint Arthur as his representative.His brother-in-law, the Duke of Argyll, had previously served as the country’s governor general, but when Arthur was sworn in on October 13, 1911 in the salon rouge of the parliament buildings of Quebec, he became the first Governor General of Canada who was a member of the British royal family.

To Canada, Arthur brought with him his wife and his youngest daughter, Princess Victoria Patricia, the latter of whom would become an extremely popular figure with Canadians. The Governor General and his viceregal family travelled throughout the country, performing such constitutional and ceremonial tasks as opening parliament in 1911 (to which Arthur wore his field marshal’s uniform and the Duchess of Connaught wore the gown she had worn at the King’s coronation the previous year) and, in 1917, laying at the newly rebuilt Centre Block on Parliament Hill the same cornerstone his older brother, the late King Edward VII, had set on 1 September 1860, when the original building was under construction.

Duke & Duchess of Connaught, Princess Victoria Patricia and staff.

The family crossed the country a number of times and the Governor General made another trip to the United States in 1912, when he met with President William Howard Taft.

When in Ottawa, Connaught maintained a routine of four days each week at his office on Parliament Hill and held small, private receptions for members of all political parties and dignitaries. The Duke learned to ice skate and hosted skating parties at the royal and viceroyal residence— Rideau Hall— to which the Connaughts made many physical improvements during Arthur’s term as governor general. The royal family also took to campingand other outdoor sports, such as hunting and fishing.

In 1914, the First World War broke out, with Canadians called to arms against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Arthur maintained a wider role in the empire— for instance, from 1912 until his death, serving as Colonel-in-Chief of the Cape Town Highlanders Regiment — but the Connaughts remained in Canada after the beginning of the global conflict, with Arthur emphasising the need for military training and readiness for Canadian troops departing for war, and giving his name to Connaught Cup for the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, to encourage pistol marksmanship for recruits.

He was also active in auxiliary war services and charities and conducted hospital visits. Though well intended, upon the outbreak of the war, Arthur immediately donned his field marshal’s uniform and went, without advice or guidance from his ministers, to training grounds and barracks to address the troops and to see them off before their voyage to Europe. This was much to the chagrin of Prime Minister Robert Borden, who saw the Prince as overstepping constitutional conventions. Borden placed blame on the military secretary, Edward Stanton (whom Borden considered to be “mediocre”), but also opined that Arthur “laboured under the handicap of his position as a member of the royal family and never realised his limitations as Governor General.”

Duke of Connaught later in life with his granddaughter Princess Ingrid of Sweden and her husband, future King Frederick IX of Denmark (parents of current Queen Margarethe II of Denmark).

At the same time, the Duchess of Connaught worked for the Red Cross and other organisations to support the war cause. She was also Colonel-in-Chief of the Duchess of Connaught’s Own Irish Canadian Rangers battalion, one of the regiments in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and Princess Victoria Patricia also lent her name and support to the raising of a new Canadian army regiment— Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.

His term as Canada’s Governor General ended in 1916.