Revealed: Kate's tragic ancestor who paid with her life for passion (2024)

It was a tragedy that made national ­newspaper headlines. At 3pm on April 17, in the year 1900, a 19-year-old holidaymaker was swept from the rocks off the coast of Filey, a North Yorkshire seaside town popular for its sandy beaches and ­rugged cliffs. Despite the frantic efforts of friends, the teenager, Margaret Middleton, drowned in the roiling sea and her body was never found.

What did wash up on the shore a few days later was her ­camera. A keen photographer, Margaret had been standing on the edge of the long narrow peninsula known as Filey Brigg taking a snap of the breakers when she was hit by a sudden groundswell of water. It was an early equivalent of taking a selfie on a cliff edge. The make of camera wasn’t reported at the time, but Eastman Kodak had only unveiled the Box Brownie earlier that year.

Margaret’s death devastated her family, but it did not deter them from the art of photography. Her brothers, Noel and William, and her nephew, Peter, were all keen amateurs. Today, so too is her great-nephew Michael Middleton ... and Michael’s daughter Kate, the Princess of Wales.

For Margaret is Kate’s great-great aunt, whose own photographic skills are regularly on display today in the official pictures of her children, Princes George and Louis, and Princess Charlotte.

Until now, the manner of Margaret’s death has been lost to the mists of time. No one remembered the quirk of fate that led to her tragically young loss, nor the link with her great-great niece that so resonates today.

Her story can now be revealed thanks to the work of historian Michael Reed, a high school teacher in Melbourne, Australia, who began researching Kate’s family tree with his students after she married Prince William in 2011. Over the years his ­interest has grown, and he has carried on digging through the archives remotely.

‘It is extraordinary that so many generations of the Middleton family were keen photographers,’ he says now. ‘It is obviously in their blood. But it is tragic to discover that her great-great aunt paid for her love of photography with her life. Her family must have been devastated. She was so young and had such a promising future in front of her.’

Indeed Margaret was clearly an unusual and determined young woman, devoted to her artistic hobby and bright enough to be on her way to Oxford University — until that fateful day on the ­Yorkshire rocks.

The holiday had been a happy one until then. It was the Easter break and Filey was a favourite destination of the Middleton family. On this occasion, Margaret had assembled a group of young friends to accompany her, including her cousin Henry Middleton and friend Rachel Dodgson, daughter of the renowned ­Egyptologist Aquila Dodgson.

Two days after Easter Day, on the afternoon of April 17, the friends decided to stroll along the coast to the Brigg – a long headland about a mile north of the town, with fossil-rich cliffs of limestone and sandstone up to 20 metres high on either side, sandy beaches below, and at the end a ledge of flatter rock.

‘Miss Middleton proceeded with her friends to the Brigg for the purpose of taking some photographs of the waves breaking over the rocks,’ stated a news report in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

‘It was about an hour from high water at the time. In order to get a better view of the waves breaking on the furthest point of the Brigg, Miss Middleton advanced on to the ledge of the rock, and the next moment a tremendous wave broke in her vicinity.’ The sea was rough and now ­Margaret was in trouble. ‘Her ­sister called to her to come back, but the water surged over the surface of rock and surrounded Miss Middleton up to the knees. The next second she was swept off into about ten feet of water.’

You can only imagine the chaos and fear in that instant, as ­Margaret struggled to the surface, only to be pulled back down again and again. ‘Three times she was seen battling in the sea but there was no means of effecting a rescue, there being an entire absence of life-saving appliances on the Brigg,’ continued the news report.

‘Her cousin Mr Henry D ­Middleton broke open a refreshment hut on the Brigg near the spot but found nothing inside with which to make an effort at rescue. After she was seen the third time, she ­disappeared and was not seen again. Her friends were only a few yards from her at the time of the accident.’

The friends must have then rushed back to Filey bay to get help – but in vain. ‘It was impossible for a coble [a flat-bottomed fishing boat] to have reached the spot where Miss Middleton ­disappeared owing to the heavy ground swell and the rocks,’ said the Yorkshire Evening Post. ‘Had they made an attempt, the fishermen declare that their craft would have been dashed to pieces.’

Later, several cobles searched the sea at low tide – but her body was never recovered.

It seems the Middleton family’s love of photography goes back even further than Margaret, for though she was just six when her father died, it’s highly likely she inherited her hobby from him.

Born in 1839 – the year that Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype, the earliest form of publicly available camera – John was a solicitor by profession and worked at the law firm Messrs Middleton & Sons, founded five years before his birth by his father William. He and his wife Mary, the daughter of a cloth ­finisher, ­married in 1863 and had eight children from 1865 to 1880 – ­Gilbert, Olive, Ellen, ­William, twins Caroline and Gertrude, Noel on Christmas Day 1878 and, finally, Margaret.

The family split their time between their four-storey bow-fronted townhouse in Hyde ­Terrace, Leeds, near the family firm, and their country home, Fairfield, in Far Headingley. Both houses were crammed full of antiques, oil paintings, silver and crystal, and contained at least one camera, for we know John ­dabbled in photography in his spare time.

John handled all the legal work for Leeds Permanent Benefit Building Society, was president of the Leeds Law ­Society, and also founded the Leeds and County Conservative Club, acting as an election agent for Tory parliamentary candidate Richard Dawson in 1885 and 1886.

Perhaps it was overwork that caused his heart disease. By 1887, he was suffering from angina, and after returning to Yorkshire on a Friday after acting for a Leeds businessman in a case at London’s Chancery Court, he suffered a heart attack. John died at the age of 48, at home in Far Headingley on July 16 1887, a month after Queen ­Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

It is in his obituary in the Leeds Times, published a week after his death, that we learn of his artistic hobby. A brief line records: ‘He was an adept in photography, and an active member of the Leeds Philosophical Society.’

After John’s death, his widow and children lived in Hyde ­Terrace, but there was more heartache to come. Just two years later, Mary died of typhoid fever and a ­pulmonary embolism while on holiday in that same favourite seaside town, Filey.

Fortunately, she left £13,627 in her will – worth more than ­£2 million today – meaning the children would still live a ­privileged lifestyle, with those of school age remaining at private school. The girls all went to Leeds Girls’ High School while Margaret and ­Gertrude would later board at St Leonards School, in St Andrews, Fife, an exclusive ladies’ school modelled on Eton.

The family had three servants, a nurse, cook and housemaid, to help care for the children. But that was no compensation for the loss of both their parents at such a desperately young age – or the tragedy which was yet to come.

By the time of Margaret’s death in 1900, the oldest child Gilbert, then 34, had qualified as a solicitor and was ­married with two children while younger brother William, 25, was an ­engineer, recently married to Agnes.

Kate’s great-grandfather Noel was 22, and after graduating from Leeds University, followed in the family tradition by becoming an articled clerk. He lived at Hyde Terrace with his five unmarried sisters, though both Margaret and Gertrude were due to join their cousin Henry at Oxford later that year – a rare privilege for women at the time. Of course Margaret never made it; Gertrude went up alone.

After her death, her siblings donated a ‘beautifully carved prayer desk’ to Leeds Girls, bought with the remains of her pocket money. It bore a brass plaque with the inscription ‘The sea is His and He made it’.

All of the sisters were deeply religious and philanthropic, volunteering for girls and women’s charities, including the Women’s University Settlement, which was co-founded by social reformer Helen Gladstone, ­daughter of the late Liberal Prime Minister, to ‘live among the poor, visit them, and get to know them’ in order to help them ‘help themselves’.

In a sermon shortly after ­Margaret’s death, Reverend A H Pete, senior curate at St George’s Church in Leeds, ­recognised ‘one of the brightest and youngest of those worshipping among them had in a moment passed into the immediate presence of her Lord’.

While she is the only one of the girls known to have inherited their father’s photographic ambitions, the boys took up the hobby too.

Her older brother ­William moved to ­Lymington in Hampshire and in his spare time ­photographed churches for the Photographic Section of the Hampshire Field Club.

Kate’s great-grandfather Noel was another keen amateur, perhaps even by way of tribute to the sister he was so close to. In turn, he passed that interest to the youngest of his three sons Peter, the Princess of Wales’ grandfather and the man she credits with teaching her how to use a camera.

Peter was an RAF pilot, who flew in peace time for British European Airways and was First Officer to the late Duke of Edinburgh when he piloted himself on a flying tour of South America in 1962. When Kate was a child, he showed her his slides, perhaps of his travels, to pique her interest.

And it certainly worked. Both Peter’s son Michael Middleton, who took the first official ­photograph of his grandson Prince George after he was born, and of course Kate, are keen photographers.

When Kate went to St Andrews University to read history of art, she also studied photography and wrote her final dissertation on the photographs of Lewis Carroll.

Kate is also rumoured to have flown to New York for a couple of lessons with Mario Testino, a favourite of Princess Diana, who memorably photographed the princess shortly before her death.

She took the cover photograph of Queen Camilla for her profile in Country Life magazine to celebrate her landmark 75th birthday two years ago. Country Life’s managing editor Paula Lester described her as ‘incredibly ­professional’ about the job, taking it ‘very seriously’ and creating a set of ‘beautifully shot images’. Today Kate is also a patron of the Royal Photographic Society.

Of course, Kate’s pictures have not always earned praise. On Mother’s Day this year, she suffered a backlash when the photograph she posted of her three children, reportedly taken by Prince William, was digitally altered and multiple picture agencies issued ‘kill notices’ on the image.

Kate, who was recovering from abdominal surgery at the time – and had yet to reveal her cancer diagnosis – immediately apologised, although she had actually done nothing wrong.

Kate has also contributed two images to the Imperial War Museum’s 2023 exhibition Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors.

In 2007 she put on an exhibition of work by the celebrity portrait photographer Alistair Morrison, whom she met as a history of art student at St Andrews, to raise money for the United Nations children’s fund Unicef.

‘She is very, very good, and it shows,’ said Morrison. ‘She takes very beautiful, detailed photographs. She has a huge talent and a great eye.’

It’s a talent, and a passion, that clearly runs in the family. Tragic Margaret Middleton did not live to enjoy her art, but you feel she’d be very proud to know how successful and renowned her great-great niece turned out to be.