Lady Helen Cynthia Colville, née Milnes, later Crewe-Milnes, was an English courtier and social worker, serving as a Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary, while at the same time devoting her energies to alleviating the suffering of Shoreditch, one of the poorest areas of the East End of London.
Family
Helen Cynthia Milnes was the third daughter of Robert Milnes, who succeeded when she was 15 months old as 2nd Baron Houghton, by his first wife, the former Sibyl Graham, daughter of Sir Frederick Graham and Lady Jane St Maur. She had an older sister, an older brother, and a twin sister. Her mother, Lady Houghton, died young, and her children lived for a time with their unmarried uncle the 3rd Baron Crewe, rejoining their father, a Liberal politician, when he was posted to Dublin as Gladstone's Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1895, having inherited Lord Crewe's estates on his death the previous year, her father, Lord Houghton adopted the surname Crewe-Milnes and was created Earl of Crewe, making her Lady Cynthia Crewe-Milnes. In 1899, Lord Crewe re-married to Lady Margaret Etrenne Hannah "Peggy" Primrose, daughter of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, Liberal Prime Minister from 1894–95, and his wife Hannah, an heiress to the Rothschild fortune. Cynthia's new stepmother was only 18; Cynthia and her stepmother were but three years apart in age. Cynthia's maternal uncles and aunts included Violet Hermione, who married the 5th Duke of Montrose; Margaret Frances, who married as her second husband the 3rd Earl of Verulam; and Hilda Georgina, who married Tory politician the 1st Baron Wittenham. Cynthia married the Hon. George Charles Colville, younger son of the 1st Viscount Colville of Culross and the Hon. Cecile Carrington, on 21 January 1908, becoming Lady Cynthia Colville. Their children were:
David Richard Colville
Major Philip Robert Colville
Sir John Rupert Colville, the diarist.
Work
She started her work in Shoreditch, which was a slum, before World War I, focusing on infant mortality. The Socialist borough council co-opted her to their public health committee. In September 1950, she was elected the first chairman of British Epilepsy Association. In February 1952 while serving as Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary it fell to Lady Cynthia Colville to inform Queen Mary of the death of her son George VI. In 1952 she was appointed a lay justice at Bow Street Magistrates' Court.
In 1948, Shoreditch Council renamed a housing estate on Felton Street estate as "the Colville estate" in honour of her long association. In 1963, Lady Cynthia published her autobiography, Crowded Life
Honours and awards
She was invested as an Officer, Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem
