Sibyl Hathaway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sibyl Hathaway during World War II

Dame Sibyl Mary Hathaway , b. Collings (born January 13, 1884 in Guernsey , † July 14, 1974 in Sark ), had as Dame de Sercq (English: Dame of Sark) 1927–1974 the hereditary function of a feudal lord of the channel island of Sark, which is inhabited by about 600 people . This role had been in the family since 1852 when her great-grandmother acquired it.

Life

The daughter of the studied Anglican theologian William Frederick Collings , the then feudal lord of the island, and the native Canadian Sophia Moffat, she was born in Guernsey in January 1884 , as there was no doctor on Sark. She received her education from French governesses and then, at 14, for a short time at a Sacré-Cœur boarding school in Lille . After fleeing from the sometimes very irascible father and marrying Dudley Beaumont against her father's will in London in 1901, she lived mostly on the British main island of Great Britain . She returned to Sark in 1912 and began raising livestock, but moved to Guernsey for financial reasons after her husband died during the 1918 flu epidemic .

In 1927 she inherited from her father and in 1929 married the native American Robert Woodward Hathaway (1887-1954), who had received British citizenship as a former British aviation officer. According to the traditional Sark tenure, according to which the property of a married woman passed into the property of her husband, Robert Hathaway was from now on until his death the feudal lord ( Seigneur ) of the island.

From 1940, like the other Channel Islands, Sark was occupied by the Wehrmacht . In contrast to the inhabitants of many islands, who had previously been evacuated to England (in Alderney, for example, there were still two households during the occupation), the local inhabitants of Sark stayed on their island. Sibyl Hathaway treated the occupiers politely but authoritarian ( "Your word was law. Even for us [...]" said a German soldier). Sibyl Hathaway was, besides the Guernsey Jurat (judge) Lainé, the only politically influential person who refused to sign German orders. After a largely unsuccessful British raid on Sark two weeks later, 63 people were deported from Sark in February 1943, allegedly all of them former officers, but also women and children. This also included Sibyl Hathaway's husband, who had been a British aviation officer during World War I. Nine people were deported as early as 1942 and interned in barracks in southern Germany. By the end of the 19th century, the island's no longer competitive agriculture had lost its importance; tourism, on the other hand, grew in size. Sibyl Hathaway tried to promote this development: She went on several lecture tours to the United States and wrote an article for National Geographic Magazine . The new port was also built during her reign (1938–1949). The current design of the symmetrical garden of the Seigneur's residence, the Seigneurie, is largely due to Hathaway; the sometimes exotic plants come from her numerous journeys. Hathaway was a staunch advocate of the traditional feudal Sarks government. Under her “influence and charisma”, according to a resident of the island, a “socio-political calm” had occurred.

In 1965 she was ennobled as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire .

Sibyl Hathaway had six children from her first marriage. Her grandson John Michael Beaumont , a trained aerospace engineer, succeeded him as seigneur .

Literature and Sources

  • Sibyl Hathaway: Dame of Sark. To Autobiography. Heinemann, London a. a. 1961.
  • Alfred H. Ewen, Allan R. de Carteret: The Fief of Sark. With Foreword by La Dame de Serk. Guernsey Press, Guernsey 1969, pp. 103-110, p. 166.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Roy McLoughlin: British Isles under the swastika. The German occupation of the Channel Islands. Ch. Links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-305-7 , pp. 18, 31-40, 50, 51 f., 90 ff., 120 (original edition: Living with the enemy. An outline of the German occupation of the Channel Islands with first hand accounts by people who remember the years 1940 to 1945. Starlight Publishing, St. John - Jersey 1995, ISBN 0-9525659-0-0 ).
  2. ^ Sibyl Hathaway (La Dame De Serk): The Feudal Isle of Sark. Where Sixteenth-Century Laws Are Still Observed. With 22 illustrations. In: National Geographic Magazine . Vol. 62, No. 1, July 1932, pp. 101-119.
  3. ^ Testimony of an islander, quoted from: Lars Karbe: The political system of the island of Sark. Models of European dwarf states - the Norman Seigneurie Sark (Sercq) (= European university publications . Series 31: Political Science. Vol. 61). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1984, ISBN 3-8204-7483-8 , p. 165 (at the same time: Munich, Universität, Dissertation, 1980).
  4. ↑ Knights and Dames: HA-HOR at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
  5. ↑ Johannes Bohmann (Red.): Channel Islands. Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark Herm (= HB-Bildatlas. Vol. 197). HB-Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft u. a., Hamburg u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-616-06297-7 , p. 93.
personal data
SURNAME Hathaway, Sibyl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hathaway, Sibyl Mary (full name); Collings, Sibyl Mary (maiden name); Beaumont, Sibyl Mary (first marriage)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Feudal mistress of the Channel Island Sark
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH guernsey
DATE OF DEATH July 14, 1974
Place of death Sark