Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, Lady Houston, Baroness Byron ( Radmall; 8 April 1857 – 29 December 1936) was a British philanthropist, political activist and suffragist.
Beginning in 1933, she published the Saturday Review, which was best known for its attacks on what the paper labelled the "unpatriotic" National Governments of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin. She has been acknowledged as an aviation pioneer and "the saviour of the Spitfire" because of her support for its predecessor, the Supermarine seaplane.
Early life
Fanny Lucy Radmall was the fourth daughter of Thomas Radmall, a woollen warehouseman and draper, and Maria Isabella Clark. She was born at 13 Lower Kennington Green, Lambeth, the ninth child of ten children. This Surrey suburb was across the Thames from the city, but now forms part of Inner London. As a young woman, she was a professional dancer, a chorus girl known as "Poppy".
At the age of sixteen, she took up with a wealthy man twice her age, Frederick "Freddy" Gretton, whose family were co-owners of the Bass Brewery. She was his mistress for ten years. Gretton was a keen supporter of the Turf and owner of celebrated racehorses (such as Isonomy, winning the Stayers' Triple Crown). Gretton died in 1882 and left her a legacy of £6,000 per year, an enormous sum (), much to the disgust of his family.
Marriages to Brinckman and Byron
Now set up in life, she wanted a stage career. However, only three weeks in to her first stage role in a production by the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she eloped with Theodore Francis Brinckman, son of Sir Theodore Brinckman, 2nd Baronet. On 3 September 1883 they married but the relationship did not flourish and the couple divorced on 14 January 1895 after a long separation. After a dramatic proposal on her part, she remarried on 1 March 1901, to the retiring and previously confirmed bachelor, George Byron, 9th Baron Byron. During their marriage, as Lady Byron, she was an active suffragette who used her wealth to support the cause and stood bail for Emmeline Pankhurst.
During the First World War she strongly supported the war effort, for example by sending matches to soldiers serving overseas, the boxes labelled 'A Match for Our Matchless Troops from Lady Byron', and her 'Give Him Socks' campaign. Byron died on 30 March 1917. Later that year Lucy was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her creation of the Bluebirds' Nest, a rest home on Hampstead Heath for nurses serving on the Western Front.
Marriage to Sir Robert Houston
Her third and final marriage was to Sir Robert Houston, 1st Baronet, Member of Parliament for West Toxteth, and a shipping magnate. Houston is described in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "a hard, ruthless, unpleasant bachelor." Nevertheless, Lucy Byron chased him for seven years, seeing off his old friend F.E. Smith, who opposed the marriage. Lucy got her way and finally they married on 12 December 1924.
Houston established residence at Beaufield House, Saint Saviour, Jersey for the purposes of tax avoidance, and the couple divided their time between England, Jersey, and Houston's luxurious yacht, . When Sir Robert showed her his will, Lady Houston reportedly tore it up, telling him that £1,000,000 (equivalent to £ million in ) was insufficient. By the time of their marriage Sir Robert was an invalid who suffered from bouts of depression and believed that he was being poisoned. He died aboard Liberty on 14 April 1926, leaving his widow roughly £5.5 million (equivalent to £ million in ).
Lady Houston was now England's second richest woman. Although not liable to pay death duties on Houston's estate she negotiated personally with Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to pay £1.6 million (equivalent to £ million in ) without admitting liability.