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The Lady Brabourne | |
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 Brabourne in 1925 | |
| Born | Doreen Geraldine Browne 29 May 1896 |
| Died | 28 August 1979(1979-08-28) (aged 83) |
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Doreen Geraldine Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne,CI DStJ (néeLady Doreen Geraldine Browne; 29 May 1896 – 28 August 1979) was anAnglo-Irish aristocrat and socialite. She died as a result of her injuries followingan attack off the coast ofCounty Sligo by theProvisional IRA targeting her son's father-in-law,Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, in August 1979.
Doreen was born on 29 May 1896, the third child ofGeorge Ulick Browne and Agatha Stewart Hodgson (1867–1965), granddaughter ofWilliam ForsythQC. On 30 December 1903, her grandfather,Lord Henry Ulick Browne, succeeded his elder brother as 5thMarquess of Sligo. Her father took thecourtesy title Earl of Altamont and Doreen becameLady Doreen.
On 22 January 1919, she married the Hon.Michael Knatchbull-Hugessen a son and eventual successor ofCecil, 4th Baron Brabourne.
They had two sons:
On 15 February 1933, her husband succeeded his father as 5th Baron Brabourne and Doreen becameThe Lady Brabourne. Her husband, Lord Brabourne, served asGovernor of Bombay from 1933 until 1937, and then asGovernor of Bengal from 1937 until his death.
She was appointed to theOrder of the Crown of India on 5 November 1937.[1]
TheNational Portrait Gallery holds four photographs of her, including two portraits byAlexander Bassano.[2]
On 27 August 1979, the Dowager Lady Brabourne was seriously injured in an explosion which killedLord Mountbatten (the father of the wife of her younger son), their teenage grandson Nicholas, and local boy Paul Maxwell, onDonegal Bay,County Sligo. A bomb had been planted in Lord Mountbatten's fishing boat by a member of theProvisional IRA. Lady Brabourne died in hospital from her injuries the next day.[3]
Her name is commemorated by the eponymousLady Brabourne College,[4] which was established in 1939 as the first women's college for Muslim women in Calcutta, India. She took the initiative in establishing this institution following complaints from Muslim girls that they were discriminated against by the Hindu establishment at the eliteBethune College, which was incidentally the first women's college in India.