Biography
She served several times as Mistress of the Robes to her great friend Queen Victoria, a post which was later held by her eldest daughter Elizabeth Georgiana (Duchess of Argyll) and her daughter-in-law Anne (Duchess of Sutherland). The duchess was an active Whig and a close friend and correspondent of William Ewart Gladstone. She introduced the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi into London high society and organised a petition from the women of England in support of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Her stance on slavery was heavily criticised by Karl Marx when her mother-in-law, the previous Duchess was then (1853) associated for the near-genocide of local Gaels in Sutherlandshire three decades prior, so that she could appropriate 794,000 acres of land. The facts were also carried over in Carlo Cafiero's "The Compendium of The Capital" (1878).
In 1871, while her son-in-law, the Duke of Argyll, was serving in the Cabinet, his son (Harriet's grandson), Lord Lorne, married one of Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise. Harriet's eldest son became 3rd Duke of Sutherland in 1861, and her younger daughters became wives of the 12th Lord Blantyre, the 4th Duke of Leinster and the 1st Duke of Westminster, respectively.
In 1861 the 4th Rogart Company of the 1st Sutherland Volunteer Rifle Corps formed up and bore the title, Duchess Harriet's Company Rogart upon the pouch-belt plate. See Grierson's 'Records of the Scottish Volunteer Force' published 1909
She died on 27 October 1868 at her London residence, Stafford House, aged 62. She was subsequently interred in the Dukes of Sutherland's mausoleum in Trentham, Staffordshire. Gladstone was one of the pall-bearers at her funeral.
Read more about this topic: Harriet Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, Duchess Of Sutherland
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