Almina Herbert
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Almina Herbert
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Almina Herbet, the fifth Countess of Carnarvon, was the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild, the first Jewish Director of the Bank of England, and lived in the historic Highclere Castle.
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Almina was born in 1876, and married George Herbert, the Earl of Carnarvon and discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb, in 1895. Almina’s paternal Jewishness was accepted by those in her social circle, her mother Marie Felicie Boyer was viewed with disdain due to her French and Spanish origins. George and Almina had two children together - Henry and Evelyn. At the start of World War I, Almina opened a military hospital at Highclere, which inspired events in the second series of Downton Abbey.
When her husband fell ill in Egypt soon after his discovery of the tomb, Almina travelled to Egypt, returning with his body in 1923. Almina soon remarried, and moved to the Isle of Wight with her husband Lieutenant Colonel Ian Onslow Dennistoun. Dennistoun died in 1938, and Almina was declared bankrupt in 1951. She herself died in 1969, after choking on a chicken bone.
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 Highclere Castle |
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