Miss Edwina Crocker
London, England, 1920

NURSE LETTIE ROSS HAD GONE AHEAD TO ENGLAND AND OPENED the house in Mayfair for Edward and Edwina’s visit. She had arranged Edwina’s dresses in order and laid out the matching jewelry. Miss Edwina was particular about color, but never liked to waste her time having to mix and match her evening attire. Edwina was always happy to be in London, but one day, there was a particular excitement in the air.

At Buckingham Palace, Miss Edwina Crocker had just been presented to Queen Mary, also a lady of proud Scottish ancestry. A string quartet played as she descended the stairs, in a white dress, wearing three white feathers, having just received the title of Lady Edwina Crocker, due to her brother Edward’s enormous contributions to England during the war.

Thanks to America, where one had the opportunity to rise above one’s class, a member of a family who had once been thirled serfs now stood in line at a royal reception in her honor. As Edwina smiled and received guests, she wondered what all those poor men, women, and children of her family would have thought if they could see her standing there today. Could they even have dreamed it? Of course, there had been tremendous personal sacrifices for both Edward and Edwina, but still. “Oh, what a lovely day.”

Although Edwina Crocker’s home was on the north coast of Scotland and her brother, Edward Crocker, lived in Alabama, every year, they always spent three months together in London in a magnificent townhome Edward had purchased. Edwina loved to visit the city, and Edward loved to spoil his sister and cater to her every whim.

Whereas Edward was a shy and private man and, while in London, only came out for special occasions, usually having to do with business, his sister was quite the opposite. Edwina, famous for her beautiful clothes and quick wit, enjoyed a whirl of social activities. An invitation to her Sunday afternoon salon was the envy of all London. Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, and Beatrice Lillie were among her many friends. Although not a great beauty, she had a bright mind, and men found her irresistible. Flirtatious by nature, she’d had numerous love affairs, some with quite powerful men, but like her elusive brother, she’d never married. When asked about it, she laughed it off, saying, “I’m waiting to meet a man as kind and as compassionate as my dear brother, Edward, and alas, I’m still waiting.” This was not good news to the array of hopeful suitors who would have been more than happy to marry into the Crocker family. It was rumored that her brother’s holdings were now up into the millions, and some disgruntled suitors began to wonder if Edwina had specific instructions from her brother not to marry. Some even suspected that Edward didn’t trust her to be left alone in London without supervision, because when he departed London, Edwina departed as well.

They had heard that the father, Angus, had been ruthless, but it seemed that now the brother would go to any lengths to protect his fortune, even depriving his own sister of the joys of marriage and children. This was a sentiment felt on both sides of the Atlantic. When several of his eligible male friends from Birmingham had shown up in London on business and requested an introduction to Edwina, Edward had declined the request politely but firmly. However, as protected as Edwina’s life was, it did not stop her from her fun with the men she fancied in London. She once said to a friend about her numerous affairs, “I know it’s quite scandalous, but I have to make hay while the sun shines. All I have is my precious three months in London, and the rest of the year, I might as well be living in a nun’s cell.”

Although she clearly enjoyed the company of men, Edwina was quite a champion of women’s rights. At a reception for the great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, she quipped, “In your delightful play Pygmalion, is it not true that you ask the question, Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” “Yes,” he said. “Quite true.” “But my dear Mr. Shaw, my question to you is, Why can’t a man be more like a woman?” The great man laughed and had to good-naturedly agree. Such public outspokenness from a woman of lesser means, or one not so closely connected to such a powerful man as her brother, might not have been so well tolerated.

While Edwina and Edward had always lived a protected life of privilege, their Scottish nurse, Lettie, had told them firsthand stories from her own childhood of how women of a poorer class were treated, and later, Edwina had observed it with her own eyes when she had visited the workhouses and tenements. Because of her enormous influence on her brother, Edward’s eyes had been opened as well, and he had responded in kind.

Back home in America, Edward’s Birmingham banker noticed that thousands of dollars were being donated to many female causes; one check alone for fifty thousand dollars was sent to Margaret Sanger in New York, a radical famous for promoting birth control. The banker later confided to an associate, “I don’t know who she is, but he has some woman in his ear, telling him what to do.”

He did indeed. What the banker did not know was that both brother and sister had an immediate and personal interest in safe and effective birth control.