Margaret Campbell
Toronto Daily Star, March 16 1932
Charles Greville, the 7th Earl of Warwick, did not marry Margaret Whigham, as she then was - he married Rose Bingham in 1933. They were divorced in 1938.
Margaret Campbell, the Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993) led an eventful and controversial life. Some highlights:
- When she was 15, the future actor David Niven, who was 18 at the time, got her pregnant. She was sent to a London nursing home for a secret pregnancy termination. (She remained fond of him, and she was a VIP guest at his memorial service in 1983.)
- When she married American businessman Charles Francis Sweeny in 1933 in London, the publicity surrounding her wedding dress tied up traffic in Knightsbridge for three hours.
- The couple had three children before divorcing in 1947, one of whom was stillborn. Before this, she suffered through eight miscarriages.
- In 1943, she fell 40 feet down an elevator shaft, only surviving because she grabbed the elevator cable, losing all of her fingernails in the process.
- In 1951, she became the third wife of Ian Campbell, the 11th Duke of Argyll. The marriage did not last: he was reportedly abusive and she was unfaithful. It ended in 1963 when the duke discovered photographs of the duchess in various compromising positions. Her list of alleged lovers included two government ministers and three members of the British royal family.
- She wrote a memoir titled Forget Not in 1975. Critics apparently panned it for its name-dropping and air of entitlement.
- In later years, she became poor. She passed away in a nursing home in the Pimlico district of London.
Created September 17, 2025.