Downton? Forget it! Meet the REAL doughty dowager duchess
The fabulously feisty widow of our premier aristo is on the warpath. So that ‘rude’ Miss Sturgeon had better beware!
WITH his dying words, Angus, 15th Duke of Hamilton and Scotland’s premier peer, urged his wife to continue to ‘make a difference’ after he was gone.
The couple had always been passionate campaigners with a lifetime aversion to cruelty to animals and had successfully shamed some of the biggest names in retail into banning pate de foie gras because of the inhumane treatment to the geese involved in making the popular delicacy.
In the almost eight years since his death, his widow, Kay, has tried to honour his final request by championing the rights of all animals, great and small.
Now, however, Kay – who fits many people’s idea of a dowager every bit as feisty as Maggie Smith’s role as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey – is taking on the SNP Scottish Government over its reluctance to back a proposed UK-wide ban of live animals being exported for slaughter after Brexit.
Today, in an exclusive interview with The Scottish Mail on Sunday, she questions whether First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is ‘too urban’ to understand the plight of cattle and sheep being shipped abroad to be killed by less humane methods than those applied at home.
And she accuses Fergus Ewing, Rural Economy Secretary, who claims such a ban would be detrimental to Scottish farmers, of a dereliction of duty by failing to reconsider.
‘It was Mahatma Gandhi who said the greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated,’ she said. ‘This is shaming to Scotland.
‘I wrote to Nicola Sturgeon and Fergus Ewing a couple of months ago in the hope they would reconsider… but neither have acknowledged it. It’s, frankly, rude.’
So flabbergasted is she by their silence she has now ‘booked herself’ a slot at the SNP conference in Aberdeen in June to speak directly to the membership about the issue. It could prove to be an embarrassment to a party that is quick to stamp out dissent in its ranks as she will be leading a loyal band of supporters, in the form of her local North Berwick branch of the SNP.
‘I believe the Scottish Government’s stance is wrong and if enough people say, “No, we don’t want this”, then they might get the message.
‘Animals are sentient beings, like humans. They feel fear and separation too. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I cannot stay in a party or support the SNP if they do this.
‘I have always wanted Scotland to be independent and I would still back that, but I don’t like what we seem to be becoming.
‘I think highly of Nicola Sturgeon but she didn’t grow up in the countryside and perhaps she’s “too urban” to fully understand the terror and the Hell some of our animals go through when they leave our shores, mainly for the halal meat market. Some have their throats cut by eight-year-olds in a backyard somewhere and take up to ten minutes to die, choking on their own blood.’
She added: ‘I don’t expect people to be vegetarians but I would like to see animals killed in a humane way.
‘I do have issues with slaughterhouses here but generally I’ve got little complaint with animals being killed under strictly-controlled halal conditions in this country, before being packaged and labelled appropriately for exportation abroad. Why Mr Ewing won’t consider this as a valid alternative to transporting live animals, I don’t understand.’
The landed gentry are often associated with pursuits such as grouse shooting and fox hunting but the 15th Duke and his duchess were never ones to conform to such stereotypes.
The Hamilton dukedom is the most senior title in Scotland, dating from 1643. As a result, when the Queen opens the Scottish parliament, the Duke, as Keeper of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Her Majesty’s representative in Scotland, gets to carry the crown.
The Duke himself banned commercial shooting on his land in the 1980s and, with the help of a former member of the special forces, he carried out the undercover rescue of three bull terrier puppies from a dog-fighting gang.
‘Angus and I had the same sense of humour and beliefs,’ said the dowager, who first met the twice-divorced Duke when she ran a refuge for Staffordshire bull terriers and he arrived to get a rescue dog for his children.
The former nurse became his third wife in 1998 and the Duke, a former RAF test pilot, often accompanied her on visits to rescue dogs in need of care. For many years, he would still take his beloved Bulldog biplane out and do a few loop-the-loops.
The couple famously boycotted Edinburgh’s prestigious Jenners store, as well as Selfridges, after they refused to stop selling pate de foie gras. Both stores took action to withdraw the product.
During their marriage, the couple lived in a farmhouse nine miles from the 14th-Cen- tury ancestral Lennoxlove House, near Haddington, which had been bought by his father in 1947 to house furniture and pictures from Hamilton Palace, the family’s huge former seat which had been demolished in 1922 because of mining subsidence.
There was never enough money to maintain the house in good order as a predecessor, the 12th Duke, had squandered nearly all the family fortune. And when the 14th Duke died in 1973, the new Duke came under great pressure to sell the house but did not want to see the collection dispersed or the house
turned into an institution. His answer was to found a charity to run Lennoxlove and to open it to the public. A little-known fact is that his grandmother, Duchess Nina, was a founder of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection, which went on to become Advocates for Animals. She also tirelessly campaigned for slaughterhouse reform and helped abolish the practice of letting pigs bleed to death. ‘He was immersed in animal rights from a young age,’ said his widow, who now lives in a cottage in the East Lothian village of Dirleton and keeps a small flock of five sheep in a field next to her garden. They each have a name: ‘Sam’ (the ram), ewes Aggie and Mary, and their two offspring, Lily and Eva.
The couple’s passionate views on animal cruelty were reinforced by a poignant scene they witnessed after the death of one of three ‘rescue’ turkeys they kept.
She recalled: ‘We had one turkey, whom Angus thought would be fun to call Ankara. When she came to us at first from the SSPCA she was partly plucked, I’m not sure why. Anyway, Ankara was a dear soul and went on to have a very happy life but, when she died, I remember trying to touch her in the yard and one of the other turkeys pecking me to stay away. It had never done that before and I thought it strange at first and went back inside.
‘We waited and waited and, looking out of the farmhouse window later, Angus and I were stunned to see all our animals, geese, ducks, hens and the other turkeys, gathered in a small circle around Ankara’s body, as if in sympathy. It was quite humbling. It made us realise animals have feelings too.’
Exports of live animals were estimated to be worth about £51 million to the Scottish economy in 2015. The Westminster government plans to launch a consultation process within weeks to look at ending live exports. But Mr Ewing has said Scotland will ‘not participate’ in any such scheme, adding: ‘I will not support anything that creates further challenges for our farming sector or puts Scottish agriculture at a disadvantage.’
The dowager duchess, who is patron of charities including OneKind and Scotland for Animals, said while she understands that the Government represents farmers too, she does not accept its ‘hands are tied’ on the matter.
‘Other countries can do it,’ she said. ‘It’s not about stopping animals moving around the UK. It’s about the terrible injuries, dehydration and overcrowding that many of our animals suffer on their way to cruel deaths in other countries. I know Angus would have backed me to the hilt on this.’
The 15th Duke died in June 2010, aged 71, five years after being diagnosed with a vascular form of dementia. Today, in the cottage where he spent his final months, his widow is surrounded by the
memorabilia of a life well lived. The devoted couple used his condition to campaign for better services for dementia sufferers.
Thanks to a £1.5 million campaign organised by Alzheimer Scotland and spearheaded by the dowager duchess, specialist dementia nurses were finally introduced in every NHS board in Scotland and, now, every mainstream ward.
She said: ‘I’m very proud of what we achieved together. My concerns were purely with how hospitals looked after confused dementia sufferers while they were receiving medical treatment – in Angus’s case it was for a hip replacement – and encouraging them to look at alternatives to sedatives.
‘We were very fortunate, we had the finance to look after Angus properly. However, it takes a terrible toll on families who have very little money or help.
‘I miss him terribly but I’m determined to carry on our legacy of fighting injustice wherever I see it. As his health failed, among his last words to me were: “Kay, keep making a difference”. I try to live by that final request every day.’
With a final smile, she strolls down her garden path, in her hand a bag filled with animal feed and quartered apples for her twice-daily ritual of feeding her sheep.
In the months to come, however, it is clear it is a different kind of flock that Kay Hamilton, a new light of battle shining in her eyes, is hoping to win over.