Mary Ethel Harcourt, Viscountess Harcourt was an American-English aristocrat and philanthropist.
Early life
Mary Ethel was born on 26 August 1874 in Paris, France. She was a daughter of Anglo-American banker Walter Hayes Burns and his wife, Mary Lyman Burns, who lived at 69 Brook Street in Grosvenor Square, London and North Mymms Park in the English countyside of Hertfordshire. She had two older siblings, William Burns, who died young, and Walter Spencer Morgan Burns. A member of the American Morgan familybanking dynasty, her mother was a sister of banker J. Pierpont Morgan, both children of Junius Spencer Morgan and Juliet Morgan. Her paternal grandparents were William Burns and Mary Burns.
Career
Through her, the Harcourt family acquired the famous "Harcourt emeralds". According to her husband's obituary in The New York Times, she was "very popular, and more than doubled her husband's social successes, which were an asset to past Liberal Cabinets." Mary, Viscountess Harcourt, was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John and then Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1918, as well as the silver medal of the American Red Cross and the Belgian Médaille de la Reine-Élisabeth After her husband's death in 1922, she became chairman of the council of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1927.
Hon. Barbara Vernon Harcourt, who married Robert Jenkinson in 1927. They divorced she remarried William James Baird in 1937. She died in 1961, by self-inflicted gunshot wound, a few months after her husband's death.
Lord Harcourt died in his sleep at his London townhouse at 69, Brook Street in the early hours of 24 February 1922, aged 59. He had taken an overdose of a sleeping draught, and there were rumours of suicide following accusations of sexual impropriety by Edward James, a young Etonian who later became an important collector of surrealist and other contemporary art. James's mother spread the story in society although the accusations remained unknown by the wider public for fifty years. Lady Harcourt died nearly forty years later on 7 January 1961 in Westminster, London. She was buried at Old All Saints Church, Nuneham Courtenay.
Descendants
Through her eldest daughter, she was a grandmother of John Baring, who succeeded as 7th Baron Ashburton.
