Margaret Campbell, the famous and beautiful Duchess of Argyll, had been a celebrity, and a source of scandal, even before her debutante days.
But she would be remembered for only one thing : the so-called ‘divorce of the century’, which ended her marriage to the Duke of Argyll in 1963.
Some photos, forcibly taken by her husband and presented as evidence, showed her naked with her distinctive pearls, in what the presiding judge called “a rude form of sexual relationship” with an unidentified man.
Divorce convulsed to the United Kingdom from the decade of 1960, and reflected the changes that were to come.
What perhaps has been lost along the way is the feeling that the Duchess, and indeed the Duke, they were living human beings, made of flesh and blood.
A new miniseries “ A Very British Scandal ” or “A very scandal British ”, with the actors Claire Foy and Paul Bettany playing the Argylls, tries to rectify that.
But this is one of those stories that gives meaning to the old cliché that says: the truth is Stranger than any fiction.
Scandalous and adored
Daughter of a Scottish millionaire, raised mainly in New York , young Margaret Whigham grew up in an atmosphere of privilege, but emotional insecurity.
When she was 19 years, she was already a veteran of engagements: to Prince Aly Khan, the Earl of Warwick, the son of newspaper mogul Lord Beaverbrook, and married millionaire sportsman Glen Kidston.
Also, as she told an aspiring biographer, she became pregnant with actor David Niven and underwent an illegal abortion.
In 1933, to the 20 years, she married the wealthy businessman and socialite Charles Sweeny. There was so much public excitement surrounding her wedding dress that the event brought traffic to a standstill in Knightsbridge, a posh part of London, for three hours.
Such was his status that in a cover of Cole Porter’s hit song ‘ You’re The Top ‘was referring to’ Mrs Sweeny ‘.
But after 13 years, two children, one stillbirth and eight miscarriages, the couple divorced in 1947, comparatively friendly, by the standards of things to come.
“Cold and unpleasant”
Unlike the previous one, Margaret’s marriage four years later to the 11th Duke of Argyll was problematic from the beginning.
Ian Campbell was the head of s u clan, Hereditary Master of the Royal House of Scotland, with many other forceful titles.
But he was also a drink addict, the gambling and prescription drugs, that he continued to suffer trauma as a result of being a prisoner of war in Germany.
His two previous wives spoke of his physical violence and emotional cruelty , and his ruthless determination to use his money for the preservation of his family home, the castle by Inveraray.
The writer Norman Mailer, who married the Duke of Argyll’s daughter from a previous marriage, described him as “one of the coldest and most unpleasant men I have ever met” .
Why did the Dukes of Argyll divorce?
The divorce case of 1963 was just the culmination of a long battle in the one that for about five years the Argylls, now separated, had sued and countersued each other.
During the lengthy legal process, Margaret falsified documentary evidence to suggest that the duke’s children from a previous marriage They were illegitimate and he accused the Duke of infidelity with his own stepmother.
In turn, the Duke obtained a court order to keep her away from Inveraray and ransacked her home in search of her private papers. And among them were the aforementioned photos.
The explicit photographs showed a woman, apparently Margaret, identified by her characteristic pearl necklace of three threads, giving a fellatio to a man.
When the pictures were presented as evidence during the divorce case, public interest focused on the identity of the man, whose head could not be seen and whom Margaret would never name.
Who was the “ headless man “ ?
The known lovers Margaret’s included Duncan Sandys, British Defense Minister and son-in-law of Winston Churchill; the German diplomat Sigismund von Braun; two wealthy American businessmen, and Hollywood star Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
During the process it would be said that there were 88 possible candidates, that Margaret was, in the judge’s words, “a highly sexual woman who was no longer satisfied by normal relationships.”
It was also suggested during the course of the trial that an accident , a fall down an elevator shaft two decades earlier, had triggered what was described as nymphomania.
On the other hand, She said that many of the men whose company she enjoyed were gay, but that she refused to put them in danger by confirming it, at a time when homosexuality in the UK was still illegal.
A scandalous year
In re 1962 Y 1963 the British saw the outbreak of not one, but three extraordinary scandals, all linked in the mind of the press and the public.
The Vassall Affair saw John Vassall, a Government employee at the British embassy in Moscow, caught in a ‘honey trap’ ‘: he was photographed in bed with three other naked men and then blackmailed by the KGB.
Upon returning to England and working in various intelligence offices, he leaked documents in the Soviet Union until their discovery, arrest, trial and sentence in October 1962.
During the following winter, the case continued to spiral until it prompted the resignation of a Lord of the Admiralty, and a witch hunt in official circles; the goal, as Vassall described it, was less to persecute communists than homosexuals.
Most famously, in the spring of 1963, when the Argyll battles reached a climax, it was the Profumo Affair .
In the summer from 1961, the British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, met the “happy girl” Christine Keeler in the swimming pool of the Cliveden Hotel. Also present was another of Keeler’s lovers: Eugene Ivanov, Russian naval attaché and spy.
The brief romance between Profumo and Keeler included ridiculous scenes, with the British minister entering to visit her through the front door as the Russian agent left through the back.
One year later, in the fall of 1962, a knife fight between two of Keeler’s other lovers brought her before the police and into the public eye.
In January of 1963, he told the newspapers that if they wanted stories, he had another one that they could sell better.
And days later, two journalists were jailed for refusing to reveal their sources about the Vassall case; and the angry press was eager for anything that might discredit the government.
As in those other two high-profile stories they made from the spring of 1963 a true season of scandals, there were other issues at stake in the Argyll case.
The case shed light on the relationship between Fleet Street and the establishment , and between sex and politics. After all, and for a moment crucial decade of 1960 : a revolution sexual .
Just a few weeks after the divorced from Argyll, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls – the second highest judge in England and Wales – had a confidential interview with the Duchess and the men who were considered to be most likely her headless mistress.
Her relationship with Duncan Sandys, the British Defense Minister, was considered to open the possibility that she was a risk to national security.
What happened to the Duchess of Argyll?
Margaret’s reputation would never recover of her divorce scandal and, although she survived the Duke of Argyll by two decades and died in 1993, his last years were not happy. In tune with the attitudes of the time, the Duke would be less vilified.
The fierce judgment of 50. 000 words of Judge Lord Wheatley had described her as “a completely promiscuous woman.” Famous for his tough stance on sexual morality, he scoffed that his attitude toward marriage “was what moderns would call ‘enlightened.’”
But the women who had seen the case from the public gallery wrote expressing their support to the Duchess .
And Sarah Phelps, writer of the new television drama, describes her as someone who was “punished for being a woman, for being visible, for refusing to back down, behaving go well and keep quiet. ”
Seen through today’s lens, the Duchess was the victim of ‘ slut-shamming ‘, the act of blaming a woman for behaviors or sexual desires considered contrary to traditional, whether true or not.
In addition, she was abused in her home environment and her private communications were hacked.
It is not the way in which she has been seen for the last half century, but perhaps today she would be considered a hero instead of a villain.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
- Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!