Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie

• General Notes
  • The eleventh baronet who succeeded to the title in 1872 was born in December 1851 at Manor Lodge, Bognor. He went to Harrow in 1867 but stayed there only until the following year. He was nominated as High Sheriff for Leicestershire in 1876 and was also a J.P. Inheriting his father's enthusiasm for cricket, he often drove his carriage to Leicester to play in matches in Victoria Park. His own ground at Bosworth was twice visited by an All-England team including the famous W.G.Grace who in one match was bowled by a local player named Jackson.
    
    At the age of twenty-three Sir Beaumont married a very remarkable woman; Lady Florence Caroline Douglas the youngest daughter of the seventh Marquess of Queensberry. The wedding took place at St. Peter’s Eaton Square on 3rd April 1875. Lady Florence was a vigorous champion of women’s rights and campaigned for sex equality both in attire and every other way, asserting, for example, that the Royal Succession Law should ensure the succession of the eldest child irrespective of sex. She was widely travelled and by the time she was ten had visited most European countries. In 1878 when twenty-two she explored the unknown wastes of Patagonia in the company of her husband and her two brothers. From there she brought her famous jaguar “Affums” which she kept as a pet until to the great relief of her terrorized household, it was transferred to the London Zoo.
    
    Sir Beaumont also accompanied her to South Africa where, during the Zulu War of 1880-1, she was war correspondent of the Morning Post. When Cetewayo the defeated King was brought to England he lived for a time at Bosworth and Lady Florence was in fact largely instrumental in obtaining his repatriation; the Blue Books show that her arguments in his favour were extremely cogent and the outcome of great industry and ability.
    
    After her return from South Africa she lived for a time near Ballina, one of the worst-stricken famine areas of Ireland where there was dire poverty and discontent. Here, by public and private appeals, she raised a fund of £6000 and thereby helped some twenty thousand peasants to keep roofs over their heads. She actively opposed the Land League in Ireland but was in general a supporter of Home Rule.
    
    Lady Florence was a fine rider and the pioneer of cross-saddle riding for women; horses and dogs, she was wont to say, were her best friends. Although an excellent shot she was nevertheless strongly opposed to gun-sport on the grounds of cruelty. Her varied interests and activities are reflected by the titles of her published writings which included: “The Young Castaways, or Child Hunters of Patagonia”, “Little Cherie, or the Trainer’s Daughter”, a racing and social novel, “Land of Misfortune” (i.e Zululand), “Isola or the Disinherited, a revolt of Women” (a drama in verse) and “The Horrors of Sport”.
    
    This redoubtable Victorian aristocrat was no more than forty-eight when she died in 1905. "Vanity Fair” describes her in 1884 as generous, chivalrous, warm-hearted, loyal, energetic and impulsive. She was also apparently unconventional, for the Old Bosworthian whose memoirs have been referred to in earlier records having seen her walking in Bosworth Park smoking an old clay pipe. The same writer tells us that her husband was gambling away his estates:
    
    large numbers of trees in the Park were being felled in an effort to stave off bankruptcy and drilling gear was rigged in a vain attempt to find coal.
    
    At last, in 1885, Sir Beaumont sold Bosworth Hall to the Scott family. This may have been the result of cumulative difficulties or merely an irrational impulse - a fit of pique as it were. The present baronet inclines to the second explanation. He remembers his grandfather well and describes him in his later years in decidedly unflattering terms; it seems that he was a man of violent and unpredictable temperament.
    
    Thenceforward the Dixies lived in Scotland; Sir Beaumont’s address in the Harrow Register is given as Glen Stuart, Annan, Dumfries. Nine months after Lady Florence’s death Sir Beaumont remarried but this marriage, to Alicia Ewart the daughter of Joseph Jackson, was childless. By Lady Florence, though she cannot have had much leisure for parenthood, he had two sons; George Douglas, who was born in 1876 and became the twelfth baronet, and Albert Edward Wolstan Beaumont. The latter was baptised in 1878 the Prince of Wales being one of his sponsors and, entering the Navy, reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He published “Air Navigation” in 1917. His only son Edward Archibald, a captain in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, was killed in action in Belgium in May 1940.
     
    Sir Beaumont Dixie died in August 1924 and was at Scarborough when he made his last Will in the previous January. He left every thing to his wife Alice. It appears that he had formerly intended to be buried at Kinmount, Dumfries, but his last Will directed that he should be buried at Market Bosworth instead and that space should be reserved for his wife to be buried next to him.

Details of Alexander's family with Lady Florence Caroline Douglas