Sibyl Montgomery
(1845-1935)
9 October 1860

Volume 2, page 32, sitting number 1425.

Born at Hampton Court on 28 May 1845, Sibyl Montgomery was the younger daughter of Alfred Montgomery, a ‘Commissioner of Inland Revenue,’ according to several censuses, who was a personal friend of the Prince of Wales. Her mother was the Honourable Fanny Charlotte née Wyndham, daughter of George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield of Leconfield. 

When the census was taken in 1861, fifteen-year-old Sibyl was living at 8 Chesterfield Street in Mayfair with her father, an aunt, a Swiss governess and six servants. She was ‘cultivated and artistic. She spoke French and Italian and was well-versed in poetry and the classics.’ From her father she had inherited ‘a taste for art and culture’ (Julia Wood, ‘Mother Love: Lord Alfred Douglas and Sibyl Queensberry.’ The Wildean, No. 17, July 2000). 

On 26 February 1866 she married John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, whose brutishness later became notorious. Their marriage produced five children, including their third son Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie), whose tempestuous affair with Oscar Wilde led to the writer’s downfall. 

In 1881 she was living at 64 Cromwell Road in Kensington with three of her children, their tutor, a secretary and seven servants.  

In 1887 the Marquess and Marchioness were divorced. ‘The marquis and marchioness have not lived together for twelve years. The case has been taken to Edinburgh for trial, so that the wife can get a divorce on the plea of adultery alone. In England in addition to this cruelty has to be proven before a divorce is granted [if the wife were suing the husband, but a husband only needed to prove adultery]. Lady Queensberry alleges no cruelty’ (Eastern Evening News, 7 January 1887).

In 1901 she was living at 18 Cadogan Place in Chelsea with a married daughter and her husband (civil engineer St George Lane Fox-Pitt and Lady Edith Fox-Pitt). The household included four servants, all female. 

According to a British phone book of 1926, her address at that time was 16 Draycott Place in Chelsea. 

Lady Queensberry died, aged 90, on 31 October 1935 in a nursing home at 13 St Ann’s Court, Nizells Avenue, Hove. Until a year previously she had been living with Bosie at 35 Fourth Avenue in Hove. ‘Bosie was devasted. She was the only person who had been with him throughout all his troubles and battles’ (Julia Wood, op. cit.) A convert to Roman Catholicism, Bosie buried his mother at the Franciscan Friary in Crawley. When he died in 1945 he was buried alongside her in the same grave. 

[From an album compiled by Bertha Amelia Yorke, daughter of the Very Rev. and Hon. Grantham Munton Yorke.]