Jean Woodroffe
Lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth with whom she mingled with the London crowds on VE Day
JEAN WOODROFFE, who has died aged 94, was the second lady-in-waiting appointed to serve Princess Elizabeth as long ago as May 1945. She was 22, the young and pretty widow of Captain Vicary Gibbs, a popular Grenadier Guards officer. She suddenly received a letter from Sir Arthur Penn, Queen Elizabeth’s Private Secretary (and her husband’s godfather), inviting her to be an additional lady-in-waiting on the grounds that she could talk about the Grenadiers and officers’ welfare, Princess Elizabeth, then aged 19, having lately become Colonel of Grenadier Guards.
At the time Jean had never even seen the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth had never seen her. But the arrangement worked well and she stayed full-time until 1953, and part-time after that.
Her first duty was to attend Princess Elizabeth when she inspected the Regiment’s 5th Battalion on May 7 1945, and after that she attended her on numerous public outings, and accompanied her to Balmoral, Holyroodhouse and Sandringham.
She alternated with Lady Mary Strachey, the first lady appointed, and later with Lady Margaret Egerton (later Colville), and she sometimes acted as chaperone as the postwar dances started up again.
Among her most prominent engagements were two State Openings of Parliament, the 1949 visit to Belfast, and the State Visits of President Auriol of France and later of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. She was the lady-inwaiting on Princess Elizabeth’s 1951 visit to Canada.
Occasionally she accompanied Princess Margaret on early solo engagements, and she was present at the christenings of Prince Charles in 1948 and Princess Anne in 1950. Sometimes she acted as their babysitter when the nanny, Mabel Anderson, had an evening off.
Before Princess Elizabeth became Queen, the ladies-in-waiting spent much of their time investigating cases of hardship and misfortune about which members of the public wrote to her. Princess Elizabeth took these letters seriously.
On one occasion she instructed her lady-in-waiting to investigate the case of a child dying of an obscure disease, which proved instrumental in saving the child’s life. An experimental cure was found and for some years the Queen was sent regular bulletins about the boy’s progress.
Jean was one of the small group who accompanied the two princesses when they mingled with the crowds outside the Palace on VE night. In 2015 she recalled: “We went out of one of the back doors of Buckingham Palace and headed up to the left of the Mall. There were lots of people singing and shouting … There were places like Green Park and St James’s which one would never have walked through at night in the war, and there we were. There was the usual thing of people kissing and hugging.”
Their evening included a conga at the Ritz. She added: “When we got back into the palace, the King and the Queen were there. We weren’t exhausted after it all. We were thrilled to have been part of it.” This incident became a film in 2015, called A Royal Night Out.
Jean continued in this role after her second marriage, to Andrew Elphinstone, younger son of the 16th Lord Elphinstone and his wife, Lady Mary Bowes-lyon, and therefore a nephew of Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother).
She stayed with the Princess until her accession but in March 1953 she lessened her duties in order to help her husband, who had lately taken Holy Orders, and had resigned his parish at Wimborne Minster to become Rector of Worplesdon, before retiring from active parochial ministry due to ill health in 1961.
In 1953 she became an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber, undertaking only occasional duties through the 1950s and 1960s, very often on holiday with the Queen at Balmoral. She was in the Queen’s procession at the Coronation (behind the Mistress of the Robes) in 1953 and was appointed CVO in the Coronation honours list.
She was born Jean Frances Hambro in London on February 22 1923, the daughter of Captain Angus Valdimar Hambro, MP, of Milton Abbas, Dorset. She was first married, at the Royal Military Chapel, Wellington Barracks, to Captain Vicary Gibbs on September 19 1942, warrant officers and noncommissioned officers of the Grenadier Guards forming a guard of honour. He was heir to his father, the 4th Lord Aldenham, chairman of Antony Gibbs and Sons.
Serving in the Grenadier Guards, he was killed in action at Nijmegen in the Low Countries on September 20 1944. His commanding officer had detected qualities of reliability in him and given him early responsibility. He served in the King’s Company which was given the task of clearing a vital part of Nijmegen in the dark, and capturing an ancient fort which dominated a vital bridge over the Rhine.
With great coolness he succeeded in getting into the fort only to be killed instantly by a machine gun. His men, left behind, were so upset that they smashed the place in a “wild surge of fury”. He was only 23.
In their short marriage, Gibbs and Jean had two daughters, one of whom, Susan, lived only a few months in 1943, the younger one, Jennifer Susan (Jenny), being born on May 12 1944, shortly before her father’s death.
Jean married secondly, in 1946, Andrew Elphinstone, whom she had met in a lift at Buckingham Palace, he having been billeted there during the war. He was a cousin and close friend of Princess Elizabeth, and there exists a wartime letter she wrote to a friend commenting that he might make a good husband if he were not a cousin.
The second wedding was at St Margaret’s, Westminster, in the presence of the King and Queen, Queen Mary, King George II of the Hellenes, and Prince Philip of Greece (not then engaged to Princess Elizabeth). On this occasion, roles were reversed, Princess Elizabeth attending her lady-in-waiting as one of the bridesmaids. Jean wore a gown of Indian gold and white brocade.
She had two further children, James, 18th Lord Elphinstone, who died in 1994, and Rosemary (Rosie), a god-daughter of the Queen, who married James Leschallas. Andrew Elphinstone died in 1975.
A keen golfer, Jean Elphinstone played for the Ladies’ Parliamentary team, and became Lady Captain of Worplesdon Golf Club, a rare honour in the golfing world.
Finally, in 1980 she was married for a third time, in the Lady Chapel at Guildford Cathedral, to Lt Col John William Richard Woodroffe, formerly of Arnbarrow, Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire. Jack Woodroffe was the widower of her sister. He died in 1990. Latterly she lived at Mere, Wiltshire, and was involved with the local church.
Her daughter Jenny (Mrs Michael Gordon-lennox) was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother and currently serves the Queen in the same capacity.