Background on Elizabeth Battey
A domestic servant to the English aristocracy of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Elizabeth Battey was born in Leamington, Warwickshire, in about 1855. Although little is known of her life, she had apparently been married and perhaps widowed by the time of the census of 1901, when she was recorded as Housekeeper to the Countess of Warwick, Frances Evelyn Greville (1861-1938). Living in the resplendence of Warwick Castle, Battey sat at the apex of the hierarchy of domestics, responsible for overseeing the female staff and maintaining the house's furnishings, and she worked for one of the aristocracy's most controversial figures, a Socialist and former lover of Edward Albert, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII).
By 1904, Battey left Warwick to become Housekeeper to Richard George Penn Curzon (1861-1929) shortly after he inherited the title of 4th Earl Howe. Firmly implanted in the highest echelon of the British aristocracy, an intimate of the Royal family, Curzon married Georgiana Elizabeth Spencer-Churchill, daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and was therefore brother-in-law Randolph Churchill, and by the time he ascended to his title, he had served as Member of Parliament for Wycombe, as Lord-in-Waiting to both Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, as Lord Chamberlain to Queen Alexandra, and as Treasurer of the Royal Household (1896-1900). Fitting to his station, Curzon owned several residences, including the Woodlands in Uxbridge, Leicestershire, where he lived from his marriage in 1883 until taking his title, Gopsall, a massive mid-eighteenth century estate in Leicestershire, and Acton Place (Suffolk).
Battey managed the staff at the Curzon estates through rounds of formal visits, parties, and shoots; she took care of the family properties during her masters' absences; and she helped oversee the upgrading of facilities at Gopsall, the Woodlands, and the Curzons' London home. Enjoying a comparatively privileged position in the household, though by no means intimate with her employers, she witnessed the death of Lady Georgiana in 1906 and the subsequent remarriage of Lord Howe, the marriage of their only son, Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon, 5th Earl Howe (1884-1964), and his installation at the Woodlands. Nearing sixty by the start of the First World War, little is known of Battey's later years. Gopsall was sold out of the family, and then to the Crown in 1927, and after severe use while occupied by the army during the Second World War, it was demolished by 1952.
