Frances Shand Kydd (1936-2004) - Diana's Mother


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Why was Lady Fermoy ruled by ambition?
As a close friend and Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen Mother she of all people knew how unsuited Charles and Diana were. But aside from a mild warning to Diana she chose to remain silent. Born into an upper middle class family IMO she welcomed the thought of her granddaughter marrying the future king. She also testified against her own daughter - Diana's mother - when Frances and Johnnie Spencer divorced.
 
It was totally unfair that Johnnie had Frances tested to find out why she wasn’t having healthy boys; it’s the father who determines the sex of the baby! But I suppose they didn’t know that in the late 1950’s.
 
Genetics is a wonderful thing and we're learning more and more each year. In the late 50s, medical science was a lot different than we know of it today. In fact, PMS hadn't been invented yet and women were told its all in their heads and given "mother's little helpers" to get through the day. I can attest to it still being somewhat the case even in the early 70s. ;)

I've always had an amusing idea that I'd love to time travel back to the time of Henry VIII as a photographer with a geneticist in tow and capture forever the look on Henry's face when it sinks in that its *his* genes that are producing girl children.

As for Frances, I highly doubt that there was any kind of tests at the time to determine why a woman bore one sex of a child over another. As it happened, Frances did produce two boys. John, the child that died before Diana was born and later on, Charles.
 
Genetics is a wonderful thing and we're learning more and more each year. In the late 50s, medical science was a lot different than we know of it today. In fact, PMS hadn't been invented yet and women were told its all in their heads and given "mother's little helpers" to get through the day. I can attest to it still being somewhat the case even in the early 70s. ;)

I've always had an amusing idea that I'd love to time travel back to the time of Henry VIII as a photographer with a geneticist in tow and capture forever the look on Henry's face when it sinks in that its *his* genes that are producing girl children.

As for Frances, I highly doubt that there was any kind of tests at the time to determine why a woman bore one sex of a child over another. As it happened, Frances did produce two boys. John, the child that died before Diana was born and later on, Charles.


In Henry VIII's time, if a queen had a girl or a stillborn boy, she was often blamed for it, as in The Other Boleyn Girl when Anne was harshly questioned "What did you do to kill the baby?" when her baby boy was miscarried with deformities. As we know today, miscarriages are nature's way of getting rid of a non-viable fetus, where the chromosomes may not have aligned properly, and some women are more prone than others for sometimes unknown reasons. My great-aunt had several among her four living children.
 
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If Frances and Earl Spencer had not divorced, how would this have influenced Diana's outlook on marriage?
 
That's a question almost impossible to answer. ;)
 
In a perfect world, I believe the mother and father would have expressed extra caution with a royal prince, until she had spent a lot of time with him. If..if..if, if she was level headed I think she would not have liked him so much, and he could have had Camilla all he wanted for himself.


However, he wanted Lady Diana to go to Buckingham Palace the next day, but she said, "No". So it sounded as she started out being cautious and/or respectable. He let her down and then eventually she let herself down as well. A doting mother and father would have made a difference I would like to believe.


The day draws near for the 23rd anniversary of her death and it always lays heavily on my mind. My cousin called me from Wales over the weekend and it was on her mind as well. (Just speculation on my part as I have no clue).
 
If Diana had turned him down, he'd look for another young aristo, it would be doubtful he'd move on to Camilla as a wife, and she was married to another man.
 
[...] As for her mother leaving her, her mother left because her husband was beating her nearly to death on a regular basis, not because she just wanted a new lover and to marry her new lover. It was survival, not just personal gratification. Yet Diana never saw it that way. She never did grow beyond that little girl who didn't see things the way that she should have later on as an adult.
 
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How do we know that John Spencer was 'beating her (his wife) nearly to death on a regular basis'? I've never read that such was the case.

Frances did not put forward any statements in the divorce court at the time that she was being physically terrorised. AFAIK it was stated in one early biography of Diana that Johnnie had on occasion assaulted his wife. Other Diana biographies have disputed that.

Frances conducted an affair with Peter Shand Kydd for quite some time before she asked for a divorce. The relationship apparently began after the two couples became friends, and both Peter and Frances grew close on a ski trip to Switzerland the four undertook.

Frances had become increasingly unhappy in her marriage for various reasons (violence not being one of them) and so separated from her husband and four children; two of them, Diana and Charles, were very young indeed. Custody was given to Johnny and Diana and Charles were left to deal with the consequences of that divorce. Divorce, as we know, can leave lasting effects upon the children involved.

Charles, Earl Spencer's, views on his parents, and their parenting.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/princess-diana-brother-charles-spencer-shared-childhood-trauma
 
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This is going off topic but certianly there were biographies of Diana that did state that Johny had been phyiscally cruel to his wife.. However I dont think it is true. I think that he wasn't an easy person to live with, and Frances was bored with him and hurt by all the issues about having a male heir and she got fed up with him.. She turned to Peter Shand Kydd and I get the impression that Johnny was prepared to overlook the affair for a time.. but Frances wanted more.. She wanted to get out of her marriage and marry the man she had now fallen in love with... So she left and took the 2 younger children. I think that Johnny was blindsided.. He wasn't a very smart guy and he didn't realize that his marriage had gotten to such a pitch that his wife wanted out of it and wasn't coming back.. and then he got angry and tried to make it difficult for her and one of the things he could do was contest the custody of the children. His mother in law was angry at Frances and stiffened Johnny's resolve to at least make sure the children did not go to live with their mother
 
This is going off topic but certianly there were biographies of Diana that did state that Johny had been phyiscally cruel to his wife.. However I dont think it is true. I think that he wasn't an easy person to live with, and Frances was bored with him and hurt by all the issues about having a male heir and she got fed up with him.. She turned to Peter Shand Kydd and I get the impression that Johnny was prepared to overlook the affair for a time.. but Frances wanted more.. She wanted to get out of her marriage and marry the man she had now fallen in love with... So she left and took the 2 younger children. I think that Johnny was blindsided.. He wasn't a very smart guy and he didn't realize that his marriage had gotten to such a pitch that his wife wanted out of it and wasn't coming back.. and then he got angry and tried to make it difficult for her and one of the things he could do was contest the custody of the children. His mother in law was angry at Frances and stiffened Johnny's resolve to at least make sure the children did not go to live with their mother

I can attest to the fact that psychological abuse is far worse than physical abuse can be. Physical wounds heal easily. There comes a point where for one's own sanity, they come to the point of saying "no more".

I've walked out on a marriage of 20 years because of psychical and mental abuse. There was physical abuse but to be honest, that wasn't a deciding factor as mentally, I was primed to believe I deserved it.

What happened at the time of Johnny and Frances' divorce boiled down to that status and the money and the "respectable" standing of both parties. Baroness Ruth Fermoy actually saw her daughter's actions as going against "the pale" which is described as "beyond the pale. Used other than as an idiom: beyond the extent or limits (of the thing named). (idiomatic, of a behaviour or person) Outside the bounds of morality, acceptable behaviour or good judgement, etc.". In other words, she'd accepted what her daughter's actions were rankled against what was "acceptable". We have to remember that Baroness Fermoy was a close friend and confidante of the Queen Mum at the time. Those two also conspired that Diana was the "perfect" bride for Charles. On paper.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/08/obituaries/the-dowager-lady-fermoy-diana-s-grandmother-84.html

What isn't generally known is that Ruth Fermoy's roots lie on the other side of the pond. She married Maurice Fermoy, 4th Baron Fermoy whose parentage were the 3rd Baron Fermoy, James Roche and American socialite Frances Ellen Work. Being totally on the "aristocratic side" of her heritage, it served her well to go as the rules of the aristocrats deemed was grounds for custody of children. This was 1967 and the idiom rang true that men brought home the bacon and the wife was expected to cook it up for him.

Ruth Fermoy was more concerned about "standing" in an aristocratic world than actually having the guts to stand by her own daughter. At least, that's how I see it.
 
I think a distance developed between them because Frances felt resentful that her husband assumed there was something wrong with her because they had no male heir. Earl Spencer actually determined the sex of the baby but he took her to clinics for many tests. Also, their baby John died soon after his birth and Frances was not allowed to view the body after he died. She also was pregnant again before Diana and had a miscarriage and did not tell her husband lest he show "disapproval." Her having the male heir (Charles) did not save the marriage, they were estranged after she "fulfilled" her duty to the Spencer family.
 
One of my least liked aristocrats was Lady Fermoy. She testified against her daughter, which allowed Viscount Althorp to retain custody of Diana and her siblings. She denied that she and the Queen Mother were in collusion to match up Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. However for her to give testimony against her own daughter Frances in the divorce can not be denied and if you are family oriented like myself, that was the ultimate in the betrayal of trust or confidence of a blood relative. The old saying comes to mind, "If you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."

I suspect she was too worried about her family’s reputation in front of the royal family and felt that had more importance than the love of her daughter. Maybe I have read too many unkind remarks about her, and so possibly just pure speculation.

I did like Diana’s mother, even though many unkind remarks were made on her as well. However, Ken Wharfe and Patrick Jephson both exclaimed that they liked Frances.
 
One of my least liked aristocrats was Lady Fermoy. She testified against her daughter, which allowed Viscount Althorp to retain custody of Diana and her siblings. She denied that she and the Queen Mother were in collusion to match up Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. However for her to give testimony against her own daughter Frances in the divorce can not be denied and if you are family oriented like myself, that was the ultimate in the betrayal of trust or confidence of a blood relative. The old saying comes to mind, "If you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."

I suspect she was too worried about her family’s reputation in front of the royal family and felt that had more importance than the love of her daughter. Maybe I have read too many unkind remarks about her, and so possibly just pure speculation.

I did like Diana’s mother, even though many unkind remarks were made on her as well. However, Ken Wharfe and Patrick Jephson both exclaimed that they liked Frances.
They may have liked her, but Diana had a difficult relationship with her...
 
They may have liked her, but Diana had a difficult relationship with her...


That is true but sometimes they got along rather well and it was said that Diana confided in her. Compare that to Lady Fermoy's betrayal.
 
That is true but sometimes they got along rather well and it was said that Diana confided in her. Compare that to Lady Fermoy's betrayal.
I'd say that as an adult Diana's relationship with her mother was much more off than on. She was a stormy person but even so I think she had reason to be wary of her mother and sadly, they were on non speaking terms for several months at the end of Di's life and Diana died without ever making up with her. And Frances' own behaviour was far from ideal. Lady Fermoy was also a selfish woman but not more than Frances IMO... She wanted the best for her grandchildren and thought that they'd be better being brought up on their father's estate than in London with their mother and her husband whom she considered "in trade". However it was the 1960s and a deserting or unfaithful wife did often lose custody of her children...
Frances had access to her children but after a few years she moved away and wasn't so easily accessible to them... either in Scotland or Austrailia....
 
Both Lady Fermoy and the queen mother were both 1950's widows no wonder they got on so famously.
 
One of my least liked aristocrats was Lady Fermoy. She testified against her daughter, which allowed Viscount Althorp to retain custody of Diana and her siblings. She denied that she and the Queen Mother were in collusion to match up Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. However for her to give testimony against her own daughter Frances in the divorce can not be denied and if you are family oriented like myself, that was the ultimate in the betrayal of trust or confidence of a blood relative. The old saying comes to mind, "If you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."

I suspect she was too worried about her family’s reputation in front of the royal family and felt that had more importance than the love of her daughter. Maybe I have read too many unkind remarks about her, and so possibly just pure speculation.

I did like Diana’s mother, even though many unkind remarks were made on her as well. However, Ken Wharfe and Patrick Jephson both exclaimed that they liked Frances.

That act of betrayal was indeed cruel, and no surprise that she was in cahoots with the Queen Mum, another woman who had to have her own way and was quite a different person in private. Both women thought they may have been gracious, upstanding women but both were privately something else.
 
Both Lady Fermoy and the queen mother were both 1950's widows no wonder they got on so famously.

There were other reasons, too - both had no liking for those who went against the family narrative and sought a degree of personal happiness.

Both, actually, cannot be seen as very good role models, either. You just don't betray family!
 
That act of betrayal was indeed cruel, and no surprise that she was in cahoots with the Queen Mum, another woman who had to have her own way and was quite a different person in private. Both women thought they may have been gracious, upstanding women but both were privately something else.

In what way was she "in cahoots" with the queen mother?
 
There were other reasons, too - both had no liking for those who went against the family narrative and sought a degree of personal happiness.

Both, actually, cannot be seen as very good role models, either. You just don't betray family!

perhaps Lady Fermoy saw Frances as betraying family, in being unfaithful to and walking out on her husband. Maybe she believed that the children would be better with their father.. and indeed a few years after the divorce Frances moved away from London and while she still saw her children she wasn't close enough to see them as much. And in later Life Diana was on pretty bad terms with Frances who was by then divorced agian and an alocoholic
 
Common ground as both had long widowhoods and by accounts they did.
Lady Fermoy was a friend and lady in waiting to the queen mother, but I dont see why widowhood should make them friends. I woudl guess that they shared common interests....
 
Looks like the cats who eat the canaries. Maybe put on a kind face for show only?
 
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