Marion Barbara "Joe" Carstairs

Marion Barbara "Joe" Carstairs
Carstairs holding Lord Tod Wadley
Born	Marion Barbara Carstairs 1900 London, England, United Kingdom
Died	18 December 1993 (aged 93) Naples, Florida, United States
Residence	Whale Cay
Nationality	British
Other names	Joe, Tuffy
Occupation	Heiress, power boat racer
Spouse(s)	Count de Pret (1918–1921, annulment)

Marion Barbara 'Joe' Carstairs (1900 – 18 December 1993) was a wealthy British power boat racer known for her speed and her eccentric lifestyle.

Carstairs was born in 1900 in Mayfair, London, England, the daughter of Frances (Fannie) Evelyn Bostwick, an American heiress who was the second child of Jabez Bostwick and his wife Helen. Joe Carstairs' legal father was Scottish army officer Captain Albert Carstairs, first of the Royal Irish Rifles and later the Princess of Wales's Own. Captain Carstairs re-enlisted with the Army the week before Joe was born; he and Evelyn divorced soon afterwards. At least one biographer has suggested that the Captain may not have been Joe's biological father.

Carstairs' mother, an alcoholic and drug addict, later married Captain Francis Francis, with whom she had two more children, Evelyn (Sally) Francis and Francis Francis Jr. (Frank). She divorced Captain Francis to marry French count Roger de Périgny in 1915, but eventually left him because of his infidelity. Her fourth and last husband, whom she married in 1920, was Serge Voronoff, a Russian–French surgeon who become famous in the 1920s and 1930s for his practice of transplanting monkey testicle tissue into male humans for the claimed purpose of rejuvenation. For some years Evelyn had believed in Voronoff's theories, and she funded his research and acted as his laboratory assistant at the Collège de France in Paris. Evelyn died in March 1921.

Joe Carstairs married a childhood friend, the French aristocrat Count Jacques de Pret, on 7 January 1918 in Paris. The purpose of the marriage was simply to allow Carstairs access to her trust fund independently of her mother. The marriage was annulled immediately after her mother's death, on the grounds of non-consummation. By means of a Deed poll, she renounced her married name and resumed using the name Carstairs in February 1922.