HODGSON, Mrs William (Freda Violet nee WILLIAMS, formerly Mrs Sydney Hinde) 1913-2021

[Richard R]

She was d of Sir William Willoughby WILLIAMS 5th Bt 1888-1932 and his 1st w Violet Henrietta POWELL 1887-1987. She m 1st 1937 (div 1950) Sydney Walton HINDE 1903-67 and had a son and three daus. She m 2nd 1959 William Vere HODGSON 1904-2000.

Obit from the Times of 26 May 2021:
EXTRACT
OBITUARY
Freda Hodgson obituary
Colourful centenarian who lived through two pandemics, ran a tearoom in Rhodesia and cooked for the Queen
...Her baronet father, Sir William Willoughby Williams, had inherited Bodelwyddan castle in north Wales...
She was a toddler when the family moved to Knightsbridge, where their garden backed on to Rotten Row in Hyde Park...
...As a debutante she was presented by her aunt to George V and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace...The lord chancellor called her name. “The King and Queen were seated on thrones on a dais . . . My aunt made a low curtsey to the King and then to the queen and I followed at the correct distance behind.” The royal party later walked through the debutantes. “Queen Mary stopped to speak to my aunt . . . we both curtseyed again to the queen, who said to me, ‘You look charming my dear’ and passed on.”...
...Freda Violet Williams was born in a village near Andover, in Hampshire, in 1913, the only daughter of Sir William Willoughby Williams, 5th baronet, and his wife Violet (née Powell), an actress. Her father planned to celebrate the birth of an heir with a village fair and a peal of church bells, but cancelled them when the newborn was a girl. He organised a large gathering for her baptism. “I was christened Freda Violet, Freda after one of his girlfriends and Violet after my mother,” she wrote. Her mother was not present but, fearing for her daughter’s soul, arranged a private Catholic baptism where she was christened Mabel, a name that did not stick....
...she met Sydney Hinde, of the British South Africa police [in 1936]. They married the following year on Anglesey. “I knew at the wedding it was wrong,” she said. “But I couldn’t back out — we had 400 guests.”
The couple returned to Africa and had four children: Deirdre, who was killed in 1979 when terrorists shot down the Air Rhodesia flight on which she was a passenger; Richard, who died in 2018; Patricia, who lives in Perth, Australia; and Caroline, who died in a car crash in South Africa.
The marriage was dissolved in 1950 and she raised her children alone, running the Zuvanyika tearoom and guest cottages ... She also [...] gave etiquette lessons to upwardly mobile Rhodesians. In 1959 she married Vere Hodgson, who worked with horses in Kenya but whom her children considered “a scoundrel”.
The Williams baronetcy of Bodelwyddan (motto: strong and crafty) had been created in 1798 for John Williams, formerly high sheriff of Flintshire. It became extinct in 2018 after the death of Sir Lawrence Williams, the ninth baronet.
Freda Hodgson, centenarian, was born on September 26, 1913. She died on May 15, 2021, aged 107
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/freda-hodgson-obituary-hqznxs3rz