Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan ‘ A Beautiful Nuisance’ A Crime Revisited 100 Years On

 

A TALK TODAY AT PONYTYPOOL, SOUTH WALES

ON THE HONOURABLE GWYNETH ERICKA MORGAN

Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan ‘ A Beautiful Nuisance’

A Crime Revisited 100 Years On : From William Cross, FSA Scot

“..and all that’s best of dark and light meet in her aspect and her eyes” Byron

Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan: 1895-1925 was one of the richest and as a debutante of 1914, one of the prettiest and alluring of girls. The daughter of Lord Courtenay and Lady Katharine Tredegar of Tredegar House, Newport, and, only sibling of the notorious Evan Morgan, the last Viscount Tredegar.

Gwyneth was wayward and unpredictable. She had an adventurous streak and a reputation for being something of a bohemian in the era of the ‘Bright Young Things’. After a chequered childhood, WW1 & difficult struggle in her 20s and after a period of foreign travel including recuperating from ill health Gwyneth suddenly walked out of a house in Wimbledon on 11 December 1924 where she lived with a housekeeper & maid. She left in a thick London fog with £70 in her pocket. She told no one where she was going. After being missing for five months a rotting corpse, was pulled from the River Thames on 25 May 1925. It was claimed as Gywneth’s. But was it? Who benefited by clearing up Gwyneth’s fate?

We'll never really know for sure what happened to Gwyneth Morgan. After spending 7 years investigating her disappearance her biographers Will Cross and Monty Dart reached various conclusions but never found finality & peace.

"One of the saddest things about Gwyneth's death" "was the turquoise amulet found on her body. It had been given to her by her brother Evan ( perhaps to ward off evil influences ) , it was held together by a piece of wire from a ginger beer bottle. It must have meant a lot to her."

Today, as we near the centenary of Gwyneth’s strange disappearance, Will Cross offers some new evidence he’s gathered behind the whole mystery with some unanswered questions and sinister overtones.

A BEAUTIFUL NUISANCE

LINK TO EBAY FOR LAST COPIES OF THE BOOK

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/205889042295

 

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION YOU CAN CONTACT WILL CROSS BY E-MAIL

williecross@aol.com

 

 

Evan Morgan's House Parties and Weekends at Tredegar House 1934-1938

 TREDEGAR HOUSE :WEEKEND PARTIES, FROLICS AND FUN

EVAN MORGAN’S HOUSE GUESTS 1934-1938

A celebration from William Cross, FSA Scot

Author of several books on the  Morgans of Tredegar House

In the years 1934 - 1949 Evan Morgan Viscount Tredegar held court at his Welsh mansion, Tredegar House, an impressive 17th century red brick building set in 100 acres of parkland near Newport. Invitations to Evan's country house weekends were highly prized. But how many house guests passed through the gates of Tredegar House in the Evan years? Who actually stayed there and when? What of the legends of Evan's séances, outrageous parlour game of charades, riotous drinking and orgies to compare with Caligula's Rome? What is the truth, and what are the myths about these crazy weekends? In this book William Cross, author of previous Morgan books reveals the identity of the scores of people who were Evan's guests. Here are the good, bad and the downright disgraceful whom Evan brought together under one roof. The historical icons of the era, male prostitutes, spivs, spies, and traitors as well as a sizable collection of stage and literary figures, politicians, Catholic luminaries and Evan's relatives including his Royal cousins. Evan was a generous host, an excessive party giver, a man whose wealth in theory could support his foibles for pleasure seeking, for indulging in a complex homosexual life style, having footmen wear powdered wigs, and running a large zoo in the Estate grounds comprising wild and exotic birds and animals. But beneath the surface of fun, folly and farce it was a dynasty in decay, the Morgan coffers were crumbling fast under the burden of death duties, heavy taxation and the changing attitude in Society to service and employment on the landed estates. Evan was also a sick man crippled with poor health, moreover he ploughed a dangerous furrow especially during the war years and was subject to surveillance from on high.”

Essential reading for those interested in Newport’s most famous family and their history  and those who want to know the truth about Evan’s hospitality and who he invited to stay under his 500 year old roof during his early years as the lord of the Manor.

The book is 150 pages long, over 55,000 words with over 400 End Notes. The main text  contains  over  100 images. There is also a  directory of over 300 guests whom Evan entertained, with biographical details, and dates when they visited Tredegar House,  some entries have photographs ”. Enquiries William Cross 58 Sutton Newport, Newport, NP 19 7JF 

e-mail

 williecross@aol.com

“Evan Morgan, Lord Tredegar's House Guests 1934-1938. “  Compiled by  William Cross. ISBN 9781905914531.  ( 2019) Copies of the book can be obtained direct from the Author.   Contact him by e-mail.

 Last Copies may still be available on  e-bay  / Amazon

NB SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY

Contact William Cross directly ( by e-mail )  for latest book offers.


An illustrated  talk is also available about the book from William Cross. 

SIGNED COPIES AND ILLUSTRATED TALK ON EVAN MORGAN'S HOUSE PARTIES 

NEWPORT U3A  Shaftsbury Church, Newport : BOOK LAUNCH

7 November 2019

http://lecturelist.org/content/view_lecture/16498




UPDATED 21 December 2019

Lois Sturt : New Book By William Cross, FSA Scot

Lois Ina Sturt 1900-1937

LAST COPIES FOR SALE OF

An album of sexually explicit verses and jokes

From the Collection Of

Lois Ina Sturt and Reggie Pembroke

Compiled by William Cross, FSA Scot

The  material  comes  from the collection of Lois Sturt and Reggie Pembroke, two  minor aristocrats and sometime lovers.   The ditties  are what these two central characters laughed and sniggered about before, during and after making love.

The  lovers read  them out to each other in bed whilst they drew breath, enjoying an accompanying cigarette and a  glass of bubbly before returning to love-making.

Transcribed  from the records  in the National Library of Wales, the originals are in handwritten form but  some  pieces are typed up. They are  housed  in tatty exercise books, maintained by Lois,  with some  contributions from Reggie, usually appended to one of  his many  love letters to his “Darling Lois”. [i]

When the affair started  in 1919-20 Lois was aged 19, not ‘under age’, the age of consent  for heterosexuals at the time was 16. [ii]  Reggie was a  39- year-old married man.  

The relationship  lasted  several years. It staggered along after the open-secret  lovers were reported by informants to Reggie’s wife and Lois’s mother.

There were several long gaps in the romance,  sometimes of months at a time during the years it lasted.  It was finally fizzling out by 1925 and was over by the end  of  1926.  [iii]

To add a whimsical interpretation to this quaint and curious legacy of  Lois and Reggie there’s an array of adjoining  cartoons, photographs and drawings with the verses. These images are mostly  taken from contemporary sources of the same  time.

                                           Lois and Reggie in 1926

Reggie Pembroke was a Peer of the Realm, an Earl, a landowner,  a soldier and  politician. He was one of several men Lois favoured for having sex. Lois was the daughter of a Baron (an English Lord); her mother was an Earl’s daughter.

Neither Lois nor Reggie maintained exclusivity or fidelity during their affair. Reggie was handsome, self-centred, vain,  a womaniser and a  chronic gambler.  Although Lois was still a teenager and unmarried,  described as “more attractive than beautiful” [iv],  she was  an experienced lover and adored seducing older men. Mature men  were  more grateful than her clumsy male contemporaries, especially the 1920s crop of  ‘Hooray Henrys’.

The time setting for the smutty  material  is the period  c.1919-1925,  after the horrors of the  Great War. That was the age of the vulgar limerick and the saucy French postcards that were both humorous and rude. Lois and Reggie’s crop of poems etc celebrates  British smut.

Women’s rights were won in part in 1918 with an extension of the franchise and  the war between the sexes was played out in all kinds of spheres. In the verses etc. both sexes are equally lampooned.

Contact the compiler William Cross, by e-mail for further details.  The book is available on Amazon and e bay.

williecross@aol.com

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[i] Reggie was forever inventing new ways of addressing Lois.

[ii] The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent for heterosexuals to 16.

[iii] There is a photograph in this book of Lois and Reggie taken together at a racecourse in November 1926  indicating they were still happy to be seen together. Reproduced above.

[iv] Attributed. Daily Mirror Review of one of Lois’s films.