SHARPLES, Rt Hon Baroness (Pamela nee NEWALL) 1923-2022
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She was d of Lt-Cdr Keith William NEWALL 1894-1938 by his c1917 m reg Q1 Kent to (as her 1st h, her 2nd was Lord Claud Nigel Hamilton s of 2nd Duke of Abercorn) Volet Ruby 1894-1984 d of James ASHTON of London. She m 1st 1946 Sir Richard Christopher KCMG OBE MC 1916-assassinated 1973 s of Richard William SHARPLES OBE 1867-1960 by his c1911 m reg Q1 London to Elsie Maud 1890-1978 d of Louis PYWELL 1862-1947 (engine driver) by his 1889 m reg Q2 Lancs to Harriet Maud HALES 1865-1923, and had 2 sons and 2 daus as above. She m 2nd (as his 3rd w) Group Capt Patrick David 1909-80 s of Philip Alexius DE LASZLO MVO 1869-1937 (the portraitist) and Lucy Madeleine GUINNESS 1870-1950 (3xgt gd of Richard GUINNESS c1690-c1766 who was gt gf of Sir Benjamin Lee GUINNESS 1st Bt 1798-1868, the banking & brewing family etc). She m 3rd Robert Douglas 1914-95 s of Thomas SWAN and Mary HUNTER.
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BREMENMURRAY
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Militants shot her husband, the governor, but she said: ‘How does bitterness help you? I just felt what a terrible waste of lives it was’
Baroness Sharples, who has died aged 99, made an energetic contribution to the House of Lords for 44 years after the assassination in Bermuda of her husband, the Conservative MP-turned-colonial governor Sir Richard Sharples.
Well into her 90s Pamela Sharples, still playing golf and sustained by a nightly glass of pink champagne – “it’s a very nice drink but I must get back to whisky” – spoke and voted in the Upper House, only retiring in 2017....
She was married first to Richard Sharples, then to the businessman Gp Capt Patrick de Laszlo, and finally to Douglas Swan, who also predeceased her....
She was born Pamela Newall on February 11 1923 to Lt-Cdr Keith Newall and the former Violet Ashton; she lost her only brother during the war.
Educated at Southover Manor, Lewes, and in Florence, Pamela grew up in Hampshire, and also at St James’s Palace. After her father died when she was 15, her mother married Lord Claud Hamilton, comptroller and treasurer to Queen Mary until her death in 1953...
Once the war ended, she met Major Richard Sharples of the Welsh Guards. “He won the MC and had a large part of his leg blown off – he was lucky not to lose it. But he was a super chap and very nice looking, and a bit taller than me.”
They married in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace in 1946, with Queen Mary – who during the war had taken Pamela shopping and to the theatre – in attendance. “One on one, she was fine,” she would recall of King George V’s widow...
She was still grieving for her husband when in 1977 she met Patrick de Laszlo at a lunch party. They married soon after, but then de Laszlo was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; within three years he was dead.
In 1983 she married her third husband, Douglas Swan. For a while they ran a pub at Horsington, Somerset, winning an Egon Ronay award for their salmon fishcakes topped with prawns. But Swan developed heart problems, dying in 1995....
Lady Sharples was a member of the review body on Armed Forces pay in 1979-81, a director of TVS television between 1981 and 1993, and a trustee of the Wessex Medical Trust.
She is survived by her two sons and two daughters from her first marriage.
Baroness Sharples, born February 11 1923, died May 19 2022
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Widow of the governor of Bermuda known for her lively contributions to the House of Lords
Shortly before midnight on March 10, 1973, Sir Richard Sharples, the governor of Bermuda, took a walk in the garden of Government House, his official residence...Not far from the house [he was] ambushed, shot and killed. Seven months later two members of a small black power group, the Black Beret Cadre, were arrested. ...[They] were hanged on December 2, 1977, the last people to be executed under British rule anywhere in the world.
...Back in Britain, Baroness Sharples found it harder to cope. She was afflicted by depression and anorexia, and was admitted to a nursing home where she was given electric shock treatment. Her grief was not helped by being forced to sell the family’s 2,100-acre farm in Chawton, Hampshire, to pay death duties, the Inland Revenue having rejected her claim for exemption as her husband had died in the line of duty....
...Yet Sharples was nothing if not doughty and she managed to rebuild her life in some style. She married and outlived two more husbands; she bought and ran a pub; and she served in the Lords for 44 years...[and was] the last woman in parliament to have been in the armed services during the Second World War...
Pamela Newall was born in 1923, the daughter of Lieutenant-Commander Keith Newall, a naval officer who died when she was 15, and his wife, Violet. Her only sibling, a brother, was killed in the war. She was raised in Hampshire and at St James’s Palace, courtesy of her mother’s second husband, Lord Claud Hamilton, who was comptroller and treasurer to Queen Mary...As the war ended she met Richard Sharples, a major in the Welsh Guards who had been awarded the Military Cross. They were married in 1946.
...In 1977 she married Patrick de Laszlo, a wealthy industrialist. He bought back part of the Chawton farm but died of pancreatic cancer in 1980... In 1983 she married Robert Swan, a businessman, and the couple bought the Half Moon pub in the Somerset village of Horsington...[he] died in 1995.
...Asked if she would be reunited with her husbands after her death, she replied: “What? All three? I don’t know. It could be a bit complicated.”
Baroness Sharples, publican, was born on February 11, 1923. She died on May 19, 2022, aged 99
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/baroness-sharples-obituary-8nkhwk03c