Lady Cynthia Mosley

Lady Cynthia Mosley

Oswald and Cynthia Mosley on their wedding day, 11 May 1920
Member of Parliament
for Stoke-on-Trent
In office
30 May 1929 – 27 October 1931
Preceded by John Ward
Succeeded by Ida Copeland
Personal details
Born Born Cynthia Blanche Curzon
13 August 1898
Kedleston, Derbyshire, England, United Kingdom
Died 16 May 1933(1933-05-16) (aged 34)
London, England, United Kingdom
Nationality British
Political party Labour Party
(1924–1931)
New Party
(1931–1932)
Spouse(s) Oswald Mosley
Children Vivien (1921-2002)
Nicholas (b. 1923)
Michael (b. 1932)
Parents George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
Mary Curzon, Baroness Curzon of Kedleston

Lady Cynthia Blanche ("Cimmie") Mosley[n 1] (23 August 1898 – 16 May 1933) was a British politician of Anglo-American parentage and the first wife of the British Fascist and New Party politician Sir Oswald Mosley who was formerly a Member of Parliament in both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Childhood

Born Cynthia Blanche Curzon at Kedleston Hall, she was the second daughter of Hon. George Curzon (later Marquess Curzon of Kedleston) and his first wife, Mary Victoria Leiter, an American department-store heiress. As the daughter of a Marquess, she was styled Lady Cynthia.

Marriage, family and politics

On 11 May 1920, Cynthia married the then-Conservative politician, Oswald Mosley. He was her first and only lover.[1]

Children

They had three children:

Political life

After both joined the Labour Party in 1924, she was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke-on-Trent in 1929, her husband having been elected MP for Smethwick in 1926. After finding the Labour Party unsuitable, Oswald formed the New Party on 1 March 1931 which Lady Cynthia also joined.

The party soon adopted Fascist policies and became less popular by the time of the sudden general election later that year.

Husband's adultery

During their marriage her younger sister Lady Alexandra was a mistress of Mosley, as was, briefly, their stepmother, Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston.[3] In 1932 he began an affair with Diana Mitford, whom he married in 1936, and had further issue. Diana was one of Britain's noted Mitford sisters, known for her friendship with Adolf Hitler.

Electoral defeat and death

All the party's candidates in the 1931 election (including Lady Cynthia) lost their seat or failed to win in constituencies, instead seeing a unified coalition government which involved all main three parties' politicians amid the Great Depression. After their defeat, Lady Cynthia continued to support her husband in his Fascist studies until her death in 1933 at 34 after an operation for peritonitis following acute appendicitis, in London.

Notes and references

Notes
  1. ↑ See also Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom.
    As the wife of a baronet she was occasionally seen in records as Lady Mosley; however by preference always referred to as Lady Cynthia (when used in public with a surname, Curzon/Mosley), her own title as the daughter of a marquess.
  2. ↑ b. 25 February 1921, d. 25 August 2002, aged 81. m. St-Martin-in-the-Fields, London, January, 1949, Desmond Francis Forbes Adam, the son of Colin Gurdon Forbes Adam, of Skipwith Hall, Selby, Chairman of Yorkshire Post Newspapers, by his wife, the former Hon. Irene Constance Lawley, daughter of the 3rd Lord Wenlock. Vivien's father, Sir Oswald, gave her in marriage at the ceremony. The couple had a son, Rupert, born in 1957, and two daughters, Cynthia, born in 1950, and Arabella, born in 1952. The marriage ended, 3 January 1958, when her husband was killed instantly in a road accident at Newark. He was 31, travelling from London to a family christening in Yorkshire, when a car, in which he was a passenger, collided with a lorry.[2]
  3. ↑ One son and two daughters
  4. ↑ Four sons and one daughter
References
  1. ↑ N. Mosley, Rules of the game : Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley, 1896-1933 (Secker & Warburg, 1982), p. 247
  2. 1 2 de Courcy Anne (2003) "The Viceroy's Daughters, The Lives of the Curzon Sisters", Harper Collins,
    ISBN 0-06-093557-X (biography), retrieved from publisher 3/14/2007, below
  3. ↑ N. Mosley, Rules of the game : Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley, 1896-1933 (Secker & Warburg, 1982), p. 248

External links


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