Wealth of details found after digging into dress history
WHO knows how she felt, the 20-year-old Elizabeth Holms-Kerr, waltzing her way around the grand Glasgow Lord Provost’s Ball of 1892.
Maybe she was entranced by the occasion, captivated by the elegant surroundings and esteemed company – or perhaps she and her sister Margaret felt a little in awe?
However she was feeling, Elizabeth could not have imagined for a second that more than a century later, another Lord Provost would be parading through the city streets in a very special tribute to her...
Elizabeth’s stunning going-away dress following her marriage to John Deans Hope is one of the most popular items in the city’s European costume and textile collection.
At the Lord Provost’s Pageant in 2006, Lord Provost Liz Cameron wore a replica of it created by students and tutors at North Glasgow College.
While Glasgow Museums remain closed because of coronavirus restrictions, Rebecca Quinton, curator of the collection, has been researching some of its fascinating items, uncovering the intriguing stories of their makers and wearers. In an occasional series for Times Past, we will be sharing some of those Tales From The Wardrobe.
Rebecca explains: “Liz Cameron had seen the dress on display in Kelvingrove in the late 1980s and had remembered it. The dressmaker was Madame Hayward, a court dressmaker with premises on London’s New Bond Street. As well as dressing society ladies she also dressed the leading actresses in the West End, London and on Broadway.”
Elizabeth was born in 1872, at Kirkland Villa in Bellahouston, the fourth child and second daughter of Robert Kerr Holms (1844-1910) and his wife Margaret Ralston.
Robert, who changed the family’s surname to Holms-Kerr, was a wealthy and successful stockbroker, a partner in HolmsKerr and Hedderwick of St George’s Place and the Glasgow Stock Exchange. Like many wealthy men in Glasgow, HolmsKerr owned a number of yachts and the family participated in a variety of social events in Glasgow and Largs. A portrait of Elizabeth and her older sister, Margaret, by Robert Cree Crawford was exhibited at the Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts in 1890 and “Mr, Mrs and the Misses Kerr-Holmes” were listed among the attendees of the Lord Provost’s Ball in 1892.
Margaret married Harry Hope, the son of James Hope of Eastbarns, Dunbar, a well-known agriculturalist, in 1897, and in 1899, Elizabeth married Harry’s older brother John at Park Church in Glasgow. John was elected MP for West Fife in 1900.
The couple had a son, William, and a daughter, Margaret, and the family and their four domestic servants lived at Bellevue in Haddington.
Rebecca explains: “During his 24 years in Parliament, John Deans
Hope did not make a single speech, although he worked on 10 Parliamentary Commissions. As a result, he was not put forward as a candidate in the 1922 General Election.”
Sadly, the couple’s son William died in 1927. The following year their daughter married John Alfred Valentine Butler, a physical chemist known for the ButlerVolmer Equation. Elizabeth died in 1954, a few years after her husband. The couple were buried beside their son in Haddington.