Margaret of Argyll – the dirty duchess back for a reprise

The salacious details of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll’s lengthy, prurient and headline-grabbing divorce in 1963 are due for a rerun with a new biography and a BBC drama coming out. The Dirty Duchess as she became known, mainly on the basis of a polaroid of the headless man in her bed, one of the rumoured 88 men she slept with during her 12 year marriage to the Duke, which included two government ministers and three members of the Royal Family.

Born 1 December 1912 near Glasgow to a self-made millionaire father she had an extraordinary and event-filled life, starting with the standard unhappy rich-kid childhood, which left her with a stammer. She lost her virginity to David Niven at 15, becoming pregnant, presumably aborted it; and set sail as Debutante of the Year into several failed engagements, then marriage to a US financier which led to eight miscarriages and one still birth before she produced two children. In her late 30s she fell 40 feet down a lift shaft when visiting a chiropodist. After her marriage broke down and a replacement betrayed her, she was pursued by the broke Duke of Argyll and married him having paid over a hefty dowry. Which 12 year match was not improved by his unpredictable temper, alcoholism, reliance on prescription drugs and gambling. It was a very one sided divorce and she appears to have been unable to give the other side of the story. Three weeks after the divorce he married an American heiress.

Her divorce kept the tabloids riveted for weeks and the judge wrote 160 pages of condemnation of her behaviour.  She died in poverty aged 80.

She was a Sun Mars in Sagittarius in a hard-edged, unfair-treatment opposition to Saturn. She had a confident Mercury Jupiter in Sagittarius as well in a pushy opposition to Pluto; and the signature Uranus opposition Neptune of her generation, which was not always renowned for good judgement. And she had a fairly gothic Yod of Uranus sextile Mars inconjunct Pluto which would tend to push her to extremes and make her manipulative.  Her Venus in socially ambitious Capricorn is sparsely aspected if at all by a maybe trine to a Virgo Moon.

By all accounts she was a snobbish woman with a staggering sense of entitlement but still. She was slut-shamed while the grasping Duke got off scot free despite having behaved just as badly.