Lady Cynthia Colville

Lady Helen Cynthia Colville, née Milnes, later Crewe-Milnes, DCVO DBE JP FRCM (20 May 1884 – 15 June 1968) was an English courtier and social worker, serving as a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary, while at the same time devoting her energies to alleviating the suffering of Shoreditch, one of the poorest areas of the East End of London.

Helen Cynthia Milnes was the third daughter of Robert Milnes, who succeeded when she was 15 months old as 2nd Baron Houghton (making her the Hon. Cynthia Milnes), by his first wife, the former Sibyl Graham, daughter of Sir Frederick Graham (of the Graham Baronets of Netherby) and Lady Jane St Maur. She had an older sister, an older brother, and a twin sister.

Her mother, Lady Houghton, died young, and her children lived for a time with their unmarried uncle the 3rd Baron Crewe, rejoining their father, a Liberal politician, when he was posted to Dublin as Gladstone's Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (from 1892 to 95). In 1895, having inherited Lord Crewe's estates on his death the previous year, her father, Lord Houghton adopted the surname Crewe-Milnes and was created Earl of Crewe, making her Lady Cynthia Crewe-Milnes. In 1899, Lord Crewe re-married to Lady Margaret Etrenne Hannah "Peggy" Primrose (1881–1951), daughter of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister from 1894 1895, and his wife Hannah, an heiress to the Rothschild fortune. Cynthia's new stepmother was only 18; Cynthia and her stepmother were but three years apart in age.

...
Wikipedia