British Empire Article

Lady Randolph Churchill

On 1 June 1918 Lady Randolph Churchill married Montagu Phippen Porch (1877-1964), the son of Reginald Porch, of The Abbey, Glastonbury, Somerset. He was a colonial official serving in Nigeria; he was then forty-one and she was sixty-four. 'He has a future', she remarked, 'and I have a past, so we should be all right'. She did not take his name, nor did she return with him to Nigeria, but the marriage was placidly successful. 'My second marriage was romantic but not successful; my third marriage was successful but not romantic.' At the end of the war Porch resigned from the colonial service; in 1921 he returned to Africa, in search of a fortune. During his absence, Lady Randolph fell downstairs while visiting friends in Somerset, breaking her ankle. Gangrene set in, and her leg was amputated. She died suddenly at home, 8 Westbourne Street, London, after a haemorrhage of an artery in the thigh, on 29 June 1921. She was buried in Bladon near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, next to her first husband.

The Career of M. P. Porch in Northern Nigeria Article