Margaret Lloyd George

Dame Margaret Lloyd George, GBE (née Owen; 1866 – 20 January 1941), was the first wife of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George from 1888 until her death in 1941.

Biography

She was a daughter of Richard Owen of Criccieth, Caernarfonshire, a well-to-do Methodist farmer who initially disapproved of the radical young Baptist solicitor. On 1 January 1888, she married Lloyd George and they had five children:

• Richard, later 2nd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (1889–1968)
• Mair Eluned (1890–1907)
• Lady Olwen Elizabeth Carey Evans (1892–1990); grandmother of Margaret MacMillan and great-grandmother of the historian Dan Snow.
• Gwilym, later 1st Viscount Tenby (1894–1967)
• Lady Megan Arfon (1902–1966)

In 1920, during her husband's premiership, Margaret was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) after raising over £200,000 for war charities. Lloyd George presided over a meeting on 21 October 1920, at which the Young Wales Association was founded. The meeting, at the Portman Rooms, Baker Street, was attended by over 400 members of the London Welsh community. Lloyd George subsequently became its President; from 1921-1922. The Young Wales Association, which afterwards became the London Welsh Trust, runs the London Welsh Centre on Gray's Inn Road, London, which was opened by Lloyd George on 29 November 1930.

She died at her home in Criccieth in 1941 (four years before her husband was raised to the Peerage) after a period of illness following a fall when she injured her hip. Her husband later married his secretary and long-term mistress, Frances Stevenson in 1943.