Mary Irene Curzon, 2nd Baroness Ravensdale, Baroness Ravensdale of Kedleston, CBE (20 January 1896 – 9 February 1966), was a British peeress, socialite and philanthropist.
Irene's father was the successful diplomat-politician George Curzon. After he was appointed Viceroy of India in 1898, she went out with her mother and sisters to live in New Delhi. Shortly after they returned to England, Lord Curzon resigned, in 1905, at the end of a long period of Conservative government. Created Earl of Kedleston and Baron Ravensdale in 1911, the titles were in reversion to daughters as well as heirs male.
Irene was a "tall and stately beauty" according to her friend Charlotte Greenwood. She was intensely musical and passionate about hunting, bridge and parties. She had numerous love affairs within the elite Melton Mowbray hunting clique and had a long relationship with the renowned pianist Arthur Rubinstein, whom she said she slept with on his wedding day.[5] During the Great War she went to a club in the East End of London to sing to the working men and women as part of a voluntary job. And in the last year of the war she went to the gender-specific YMCA to take care of the poor and dispossessed in France.
Both Victor Cazalet and Nevile Henderson proposed to her. She was briefly engaged to Miles Graham on the rebound from a long entanglement with Gordon Leith, but never married or had children.[4][6] She became a guardian to her sister Cynthia’s three children with Oswald Mosley following Cynthia’s death. She was particularly attached to Michael who was a small child when his mother died. She worried that she and her money might be seen primarily as useful accompaniments to a political career and yearned to marry a man who would refuse to leave his wife.[4]
Despite her active social life, she maintained a strong dedication towards welfare work. She was appointed the chair of Highways Clubs Inc. In 1936 which provided music, handicrafts and physical training to young disadvantaged people. She was also appointed vice-president of the National Association of the Girls Clubs and Mixed Clubs. And then she was the obvious candidate to be the president of the London Union of Youth Clubs.[7]
A confirmed Anglican, she was most tolerant of other religions. Her friend, the Asian explorer Sir Francis Younghusband, considered by parliament one of the heroes of the age, helped her form the World Congress of Faiths. It was an ecumenical organisation that aimed to bring all faiths together in a spirit of unity and co-operation. She was chairman from 1942 and in the 1960s became founder president. Most especially she warmed to the caring, compassion of Buddhist gurus for their spiritualism and "priceless truths". In a world of the "unhappy distractions of materialism", she wrote in 1936, "people needed a spiritual design for living in a greater universalism." She said in her peroration "... all the prejudices against women ... are unjustifiable."[8]
Later life and House of Lords
During World War II she was based at the Dorchester Hotel, nicknamed 'the Dorch', her days spent nursing wounded soldiers, working in canteens, lecturing and doing other war work. Curzon was made the fourth female life peer for her work with youth clubs. Her youngest sister, Alexandra, was also recognised a CBE for her tireless efforts on behalf of Save the Children Fund.[2]
In later years she demonstrated how she had worked hard all her career to campaign for others, for charity and to get women into the House of Lords. On 22 October 1958 she was created one of the first four life peeresses and introduced to the Lords.[9]
She sat on the Cross bench when she made a maiden speech on 4 February 1959, in which she discussed funding youth services.[10] She called on the government to take grant aid seriously to fund a voluntary sector that was understaffed. In Charity Commissioners Act 1959, the Macmillan administration conducted a major overhaul of the sector.[citation needed]
Speaking on the Street Offences bill 1959 she criticised the law that blamed women for seeking income from prostitution, and instead sought to punish the men. She accused the government of permitting the burgeoning club scene in London, particularly to thrive, off criminal gangs, pimps and ponces. Her clever use of humour and language interspersed with Tory shock tactics impressed her fellow peers.[11]
In celebrating youth services, the baroness affirmed the Albemarle Report; finding a need for 'professionalised' recruitment was not the answer to a million youngsters by 1962, by moral and ethical principles.[12] Lady Ravensdale died in 1966. She was succeeded in her hereditary peerage by her nephew, writer and biographer Nicholas Mosley, son of her sister Lady Cynthia Mosley and Sir Oswald Mosley.[13]
