This tale was referred to my attention by zabdart, who felt that she fitted the thread profile, as he had never heard of her. Of course I had heard of this lady, but frankly I had forgotten about her ... so lets remedy that oversight now.
Margaret Campbell (b. Ethel Margaret Whigham) was a British socialite, whose activities came to the worlds attention when she was in a divorce from her 2nd husband ... but more of that later. It should be pointed out that in the 1920's and 30's, British and American socialites were followed as avidly by the press as movie stars, and the two groups mixed easily, and often married into each group. Her parents were Helen Mann Hannay and George Hay Whigham, a Scottish millionaire and she was an only child. She lived in New York for the first 14 years of her life being privately educated. In 1930, aged 18 she was presented at Court in London and was known as 'deb' (or debutante) of that year.
On 21 February 1933, she converted to the Roman Catholic faith, so that she could marry Mr Charles Sweeny in London. Such was the publicity surrounding her wedding (and the presses obsession in her Norman Hartnell wedding dress ...
somethings never change), that the traffic in Knightsbridge was blocked for three hours. She had three children with Sweeny until their divorce in 1947.
Following the divorce, she was
briefly engaged to a Texas banker, Joseph Thomas (of Lehman Brothers), but he dumped her. She also had a serious
romantic relationship with Theodore Rousseau, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but that romance also ended as she "
feared that Ted was not 'stepfather material.'" ... but as she noted in her memoirs, "
We continued to see each other constantly".
She also allegedly had an
affair with Joseph Slatton, who was married to Jacqueline Kennedy's cousin. This affair led to his resignation from his Washington post in 1962 as he had access to the White House and there was a
scandal.
On 22 March 1951, Margaret became the third wife of Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll.
The Divorce Of The Century:
In 1963, The Duke of Argyll accused his wife of infidelity (
what! Margaret unfaithful, never! 
) ... anyway, he produced a lot of evidence to back up his claims .... this evidence included the famous set of Polaroid photographs of the Duchess,
nude save for her signature three-strand pearl necklace. If this wasn't bad enough, there were also pictures of the be-pearled Duchess giving a
blow job on a naked man whose face was not shown .. these became the
'headless man' photographs. The press had a field day and names put into the frame included Duncan Sandys, the Minister of Defence (who offered to resign from the cabinet when his name appeared).
Lord Denning was called upon by the government to track down the "headless man" ... handwriting samples of the five leading 'suspects' (Duncan-Sandys; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; John Cohane, an American businessman; Peter Combe, a former press officer at the Savoy Hotel; and Sigismund von Braun, brother of the German scientist Wernher von Braun) were compared with the captions written on the photographs. It is claimed that this analysis proved that the man in question was Fairbanks, then long married to his second wife, but this 'proof' was not made public. Years later, it was claimed that there were actually two "headless men" in the photographs, Fairbanks and Sandys — the latter identified on the basis of the Duchess's statement that the "
only Polaroid camera in the country at that time had been lent to the Ministry of Defence."
The Duke backed these photographs up with a list of around 88 men who he believed had enjoyed his wife's favours during their marriage; the list is said to include
two government ministers and three royals .... The judge, Lord Wheatley, commented that the Duchess had indulged in "
disgusting sexual activities" ...
oh no, cowboy style!
Needless to say the divorce was granted .... The Judge said that the Duchess of Argyll "
was a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied with a number of men". The Duchess never revealed the identity of the "headless man," and Fairbanks denied the allegation to his grave ....
well he would wouldn't he 
Later Life:
For most of her life, she was associated with glamour and elegance, being a firm client (and advert for) both the Hartnell and Victor Stiebel couturier houses in London, before and after the war. Her great wealth, and notorious love life kept her in the headlines, and she was regarded with contempt and fascination in equal measure .....
However her fortune diminished, and she eventually opened her London house, 48 Upper Grosvenor Street, for paid tours. Even so, her extravagant lifestyle and ill-considered investments left her largely penniless by the time she died ... In 1978, her debts were such that she was forced to move from her house to a hotel suite with her maid, and shortly before her death, she found herself unable to pay the hotel bills, and her children placed her in a nursing home in Pimlico, London. Here she was photographed by Tatler magazine, for whom she had previously been a columnist, sitting on the edge of her bed in a grim single room.
She died in penury in 1993 after a bad fall in the nursing home where she spent her last years. She was buried alongside her first husband, Charles Sweeny, in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, Surrey ..... a sad end.
Additional Love Life:
She was a noted 1930's beauty ... a fact that many men were aware of, and she seems to have not bothered to keep her virginity long. Aged 18 she announced her engagement to
Charles Guy Fulke Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick (aka as the actor Michael Brooke, in 'The Dawn Patrol' with Errol Flynn and David Niven). However she cancelled the wedding after starting an affair with Charles Sweeny, an American amateur golfer ... bye bye 'Mr Brooke', and bye bye 'virginity' (
if she still had it).
She had an affair with the married George, Duke of Kent and followed this up with 'romances' with the playboy
Prince Aly Khan (
him of Rita Hayworth fame), the millionaire aviator
Glen Kidston, the car salesman
Baron Martin Stillman von Brabus, and publishing heir
Max Aitken to name but a few (
and there where others who claimed the privileges of her affections) .... well over a 100 men, if her 2nd husbands list of '88 men' was indicative of just one decade.
Quotes:
"
Go to bed early and often".
"
Always a poodle, only a poodle! That, and three strands of pearls! Together they are absolutely the essential things in life".
"
I don't think anybody has real style or class any more. Everyone's gotten old and fat".
Trivia:
- In 1943, she had a near fatal fall down an elevator shaft while visiting her chiropodist on Bond Street. "I fell forty feet to the bottom of the lift shaft, the only thing that saved me was the lift cable, which broke my fall. I must have clutched at it, for it was later found that all my finger nails were torn off. I apparently fell on to my knees and cracked the back of my head against the wall". After her recovery, Sweeny's friends later noted that not only had she lost all sense of taste and smell due to nerve damage, she also had become sexually voracious. Given her affairs prior to this, its a weak excuse.
- Margaret wrote a memoir, 'Forget Not', which was published in 1975 but it was negatively reviewed for its name dropping and air of entitlement. It also didn't name names.
- London house, 48 Upper Grosvenor Street, had been decorated for her parents in 1935 by Syrie Maugham.
- Her last TV appearance was on a Channel 4 After Dark discussion programme about horseracing "so she said, to put the point of view of the horse"
Pictures:
Now try as I might, I couldn't find the black and white polaroids ... sorry.
