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6 unusual facts about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu


Artificial induction of immunity

This was practiced in ancient times in China and India, and imported into Europe, via Turkey, around 1720 by Lady Montagu and perhaps others.

Edward Wortley Montagu

He was the son of Edward Wortley Montagu, MP and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose talent and eccentricity he seems to have inherited.

James Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Wharncliffe

Stuart-Wortley was the son of Colonel James Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, son of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute and his wife Mary Wortley-Montagu, Baroness Mountstuart in her own right, daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu and Lady Mary Pierrepont.

In 1837 Lord Wharncliffe brought out an edition of the writings of his ancestress, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Marquess of Bute

Lord Bute married Mary, daughter of Edward Wortley Montagu and his wife, the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

The Lady's Dressing Room

In response to this poem, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem call'd the Lady's Dressing Room.


Grosvenor Chapel

The chapel has been the spiritual home to a number of famous people including John Wilkes, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington and his wife (parents to the Duke of Wellington), Florence Nightingale, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bishop Charles Gore.


see also