Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton

Died in 2013. "She was born Natalie Scarritt Wales in Cohasset, Massachusetts, on August 6 1909. Her father, Nathaniel Brackett Wales, was the inventor of an early electric refrigerator and a direct descendant of a Nathaniel Wales who had sailed to America from Bristol in 1635 and been granted land at the original settlement of Braintree in Massachusetts in 1638 .

"Natalie grew up in Boston and New York City . Educated at private school in New York, Natalie was taken to Europe when she was 17, and while in England threatened to marry the only son of the 33rd Lord Kingsale; her mother, however, deemed her to be too young and removed her to New York, where she studied at Columbia University.

"In 1929 she married the first of her four husbands, Kenelm Winslow, a stockbroker with whom she had two daughters. Her second marriage, to former diplomat Edward Latham, lasted from 1937 to 1939.

"By 1947, after her success with Bundles for Britain, she was married to her third husband, Edward Bragg Paine, with whom she established Common Cause, an organisation that sought to combat the influence of communism. After Paine’s death in 1951, she arrived in London to promote Common Cause and met the third son of the 13th Duke of Hamilton, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, MP for Inverness-shire and an ardent anti-communist who had won a DFC as a wartime Spitfire pilot. At the time he was married to Queen Elizabeth’s cousin Pamela Bowes Lyon, but they divorced, and he married Natalie in 1953.

"In the mid-Fifties they made their home in America, where in 1956 they set up the American-Scottish Foundation to strengthen ties between Scotland and the United States. They continued to work together until 1964, when Lord Malcolm was killed, along with his 21-year-old son Niall, in a plane crash in Cameroon, West Africa. Lady Malcolm inaugurated the annual Scottish Ball at the Plaza Hotel. Her friends — including clan chiefs and the Dukes of Argyll and Atholl — were flown over by British Caledonian at its own expense for the Ball, which became a highlight of the New York social calendar.

"In 1974, when British Caledonian was beset by an industrial dispute, Lady Malcolm — resourceful as ever — telephoned her friend Howard Hughes, telling the multi-millionaire film-maker and aviator: “Howard, I need a plane.” Hughes duly provided one to transport her guests from Scotland to New York for the Ball. (Lady Malcolm herself was frightened of flying, and always crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth.)

"Lady Malcolm’s elegant apartment on East 74th Street and Third was full of unusual artefacts: a mummy wrapping from an Egyptian tomb; neolithic axes; a piece of moon rock said to have been obtained from the vaults at Nasa. A devout Christian, she had a long association with the fashionable St Thomas’s church on Fifth Avenue.nShe is survived by her younger daughter, Mimi . "

She played a leading role in the Committee to Unite America and in the American Security Council Foundation. [1] [2]

In 1978 she was a board member of the Institute for American Strategy. [3]

• Founder, Center of American Living

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch

• Citizens for Freedom [4]
• Common Cause - powerbase