Margaret Whigham came into the world on December 1st, 1912, the only child to a father who doted on her and a mother who, by all accounts, found every opportunity to criticize and belittle her. Born in Scotland, she spent the first thirteen years of her life in New York, raised amid extraordinary wealth and privilege.
By her twenties, she had become a fixture in elite society. She was stunningly beautiful, self-assured, sexually uninhibited and utterly obsessed with glamour. Admirers found her to be charming and captivating, critics found her to be exhausting and manipulative. Either way Margaret was impossible to ignore, turning high society into a spectator sport, making headlines and causing a stir everywhere she went.
Her first marriage was to American businessman Charles Sweeney. After eight miscarriages she gave birth to three children (one stillborn) although little is known about them, seemingly relegated to the shadows of the turbulent and lavish lifestyle the couple lived, hobnobbing with actors, playwrights, and oil tycoons around the globe. Ultimately the marriage collapsed amidst infidelity and bitter recriminations, although its spectacular demise could not compare to the legend that would become her second marriage —to Ian Campbell, the Duke of Argyll.
The Duke himself was an alcoholic, paranoid, financially unstable, philandering mess. Outwardly throughout their marriage, they may have appeared glamorous, sunning themselves on the French Riviera and skiing the Swiss Alps, but behind closed doors they were viciously toxic. And so, by the early 1960’s, they were engaged in one of the nastiest divorce cases in British history, with the Duke stealing and weaponizing Margaret’s private belongings, including letters, diaries and polaroids of Margaret in compromising positions. One image in particular would capture the imagination of the British public and become the stuff of tabloid legend. It showed Margaret wearing nothing but a strand of pearls performing oral sex on an unidentified man whose face was obscured from view. The press promptly christened him “the Headless Man,” and speculation about his identity became a national obsession.
After an eleven-day trial, the Duke was granted a divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery. Although the judge had harsh words for both parties, it was Margaret who received the brunt of his condemnation. In language that today reads as startlingly moralistic, he portrayed her as a promiscuous woman of insatiable appetites and questionable character, leaving little doubt as to his opinion of her.
Following the divorce, her social standing collapsed and her extravagant lifestyle began a slow and sad descent. In 1993, this brash and beautiful woman who scandalized a nation, was immortalized in a Cole Porter song, and slut-shamed by a judge, died penniless at the age of eighty, having never revealed the identity of that headless man.
For a gloriously visual representation of the luxurious and hedonistic world these people inhabited, watch A Very British Scandal. Ian Bettany and Claire Foy brilliantly portray the Duke and Duchess.