Highness Gallery

Princess Mary gift tin

Princess Mary gift tin, with sweets, for non-smokers, 1914.Printed on inner sweet block: ?Her Royal Highness The Princess Mary Christmas Fund 1914?.Associated with World War One (1914-1918).Indian and British troops serving on the Western Front in 1914 received Princess Mary boxes from the Royal Family. These were metal cases engraved with an outline of the princess and filled with chocolates, sweets, cigarettes and tobacco. Great efforts were made to distribute the gifts in time for Christmas, and huge demands were made on an already stretched postal service. More than 355, 000 boxes were successfully delivered before 25 December. The boxes also included a picture card of Queen Mary and a copy of George V's greeting to the troops which stated May God protect you and bring you safely home?. Date: 1914

© The National Army Museum / Mary Evans Picture Library

Charles, 2nd Duke of Saxe-Coburg

Charles Edward, 2nd Duke of Albany, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha from from 30 July 1900 to 14 November 1918, (1884-1954). in the uniform of Ninth, Charlie became Duke of Saxe-Coburg in 1899. Prince Alfred's only son had died and although the succession naturally passed to Prince Arthur and then his son, they declined and so Charlie was was uprooted from Eton and England at the age of thirteen and sent to Germany, despite hardly knowing the language. At the Kaiser's suggestion he was sent to Lichterfield military academy at Potsdam and he went on from there to Bonn. He inherited the Coburg title a week after his sixteenth birthday.
1900

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Weybridge, Surrey - The York Column (Monument)

Weybridge, Surrey - The York Column (Monument). Erected by public subscription in 1822 in memory of the late Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia (Friederike Charlotte Ulrike Katharina 17671820), the only daughter of Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia (later King Frederick William II) and his first wife and double first cousin Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Luneburg. She was later The Duchess of York and Albany following her marriage to Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. The Duchess lived for over thirty years at Oatlands in the parish of Weybridge. Date: circa 1910s

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection