Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne

Doreen Geraldine Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne, was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and socialite. She died as a result of her injuries following an attack off the coast of County Sligo by the Provisional IRA targeting her son's father-in-law, Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, in August 1979.

Family life

Doreen was born on 29 May 1896, the third child of George Ulick Browne and Agatha Stewart Hodgson, granddaughter of William Forsyth. On 30 December 1903, her grandfather, Lord Henry Ulick Browne, succeeded his elder brother as 5th Marquess of Sligo. Her father took the courtesy title Earl of Altamont and Doreen became Lady Doreen.
On 22 January 1919, she married the Hon. Michael Knatchbull-Hugessen a son and eventual successor of Cecil, 4th Baron Brabourne.
They had two sons:

Hon. Norton Cecil Michael Knatchbull, later 6th Baron Brabourne
Hon. John Ulick Knatchbull, later 7th Baron Brabourne

On 15 February 1933, her husband succeeded his father as 5th Baron Brabourne and Doreen became The Lady Brabourne. Her husband, Lord Brabourne, served as Governor of Bombay from 1933 until 1937, and then as Governor of Bengal from 1937 until his death.
She was appointed to the Order of the Crown of India on 5 November 1937.
The National Portrait Gallery holds four photographs of her, including two portraits by Alexander Bassano.

Death

On 27 August 1979, the Dowager Lady Brabourne was seriously injured in an explosion which killed Lord Mountbatten, their teenage grandson Nicholas, and local boy Paul Maxwell, on Donegal Bay, County Sligo. A bomb had been planted in Lord Mountbatten's fishing boat by a member of the Provisional IRA. Lady Brabourne died in hospital from her injuries the next day.

Commemoration

Her name is commemorated by the eponymous Lady Brabourne College, which was established in 1939 as the first women's college for Muslim women in Calcutta, India. She took the initiative in establishing this institution following complaints from Muslim girls that they were discriminated against by the Hindu establishment at the elite Bethune College, which was incidentally the first women's college in India.