Two wild cats mounted by renowned Taxidermist & Naturalist, Walter Burton F.Z.S. in about 1895 showed up at auction in 2024. Their story is now revealed....
I discovered that the customer who commissioned the cats from Walter Burton FZS lived at the historic Gosfield Hall in Essex and was none other than Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe Esq, a privileged gentlemen from the English nobility.
Lowe squandered his huge fortune and was embroiled in a society scandal when he discovered that his third wife who was half his age, the musical hall actress Peggy Primrose, was having a very public affair with the infamous Horatio Bottomley, Lowe’s long time friend, and bankrupt financier who was the British MP for Hackney South.
Here’s their story…
The story starts with a label
Walter Burton F.Z.S. mounted the two wild cats for his client, E.A.C. Lowe Esquire, but who was he?
The story starts with a label on the back of one of a pair of Victorian cases that contains a taxidermy cat wildcat mount. On the label is written “from Walter Burton F.Z.S. Taxidermist & Naturalist to EAC Lowe Esq.“
I had already dated these taxidermy cats to about 1895 – the period when Walter Burton F.Z.S. took over the full running of his father’s business – Henry J. Burton & Son, at 191 Wardour Street.
It is well known that Walter Burton F.Z.S. and his father Henry J. Burton were very well connected with leading naturalists and explorers of their day (even advising and travelling with them on foreign expeditions) and their shop was in a prominent position in the centre of London WC at Wardour Street, the perfect place to see and be seen by high-class customers.
E.A.C. Lowe was British Gentry
Burton’s customer turned out to be none other than Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe (b. 1871 d. 1942). His mother, Louisa Ruth Courtauld Harris, was a member of the famous Courtauld family, and his father, Arthur Swann Howard Lowe, was a high ranking member of the British military.
About Gosfield Hall
Gosfield Hall in Essex was built between 1545 and 1560 by John Wentworth although the Gosfield estate itself dates back to 1066.
Gosfield Hall is an historic grade 1 listed 16th century mansion, which was visited by Queen Elizabeth I in 1561 and again in 1869. Louis XVIII also took refuge at the hall during the Napoleonic Wars.
It also housed troops during the Second World War. The building has more than 100 rooms and includes a 16th century oak linenfold panelling in the 100ft long Queen’s Gallery.
E.A.C. Lowe came from the Famous Courtauld Family
Courtauld-Lowe – a significant family of the British Establishment
The Courtauld-Lowe family lived at the historic Gosfield Hall and they were significantly wealthy. The Courtauld business provided employment for many at the factory in nearby Halstead.
About Courtauld
Courtauld was a famous silk, crepe and textile business, that was founded in the late 1700’s. The firm benefitted from the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. On the death of Prince Albert in 1861, when the entire country was plunged into mourning and found themselves in need of black crepe in which to dress, Courtauld’s business boomed. By 1901, Courtauld was a major international firm, making millions from the successful development and marketing of rayon, an inexpensive silk substitute.
Walter Burton F.Z.S. was ideally located in London’s Wardour Street
From 1893 up to 1911 Burton’s customer, Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe, flitted between his family home at Gosfield Hall, which is 40 miles from London, and three or four private addresses in central London, including Marylebone, Charing Cross, Strand and Covent Garden.
From any of his addresses in London, Burton’s wealthy customer Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe was always within a 15 minute walking distance of Walter Burton’s shop at 191 Wardour Street.
How did the cats come to the taxidermist?
I have two probable theories.
Either
that they came from Scotland where Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe had been a guest at a hunt on a Scottish Country Estate.
Or
That they came from the grounds at Gosfield Hall, amidst the expanse of the 300 acre estate with its lake, gardens, stables, lands and servants, and that the gamekeeper wanted rid of them for stalking and killing birds on the land that other people wanted to shoot.
We will never know
But what’s interesting about them is that they’ve never been seen on the market before, and I have never seen another single or pair like them.
The first marriage of Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe in 1893
The first divorce of Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe in 1897
Inheritances from his Father and Aunt
Lowe petitions for divorce from Peggy Primrose in 1913 and names Horatio Bottomley, but the petition is cancelled and they remain legally married
Miss Peggy Primrose in 1916
Horatio Bottomley age 30 yrs date: 1890
Horatio Bottomley dies in 1933 age 71 yrs
Horatio Bottomley is assaulted in the street by Lowe in 1926 (13 yrs after the divorce petition was lodged)
The two cats by Walter Burton FZS – the fountain of this story
The Life of Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe
Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe, the socialite customer of Walter Burton, was born in London in 1871, and was a privileged member of the British Gentry. He was privately educated at home and in 1887 at the age of 16yrs he was enrolled in the elite Cheltenham College.
A year later in 1888, his father, who suffered from mental illness, jumped from a window at Gosfield Hall and was killed.
He inherited large sums of money from his father’s estate, as well as from his Aunt Sarah Cawston, although 40 years later his mother left him only £8,000 upon her death, bequeathing the rest of the Courtauld estate at Gosfield and many thousands of pounds to his older brother, Arthur Courtauld Willoughby Lowe.
It appears that Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe was a “wild child” and he appears not to have entered any specific profession.
He also had two unsuccessful marriages and a third very rocky one. His first two wives came from distinctive, establishment and military families and his third wife was a comedy actress.
In 1893 at the age of just 22yrs he married Irene Perronet Thomson, with whom he had a son in 1894, but was soon divorced.
In 1901 he married a widow from a very wealthy noble family, Mary Kathleen West (nee Capell) and that marriage failed after accusations of adultery and brutal behaviour, and the tragedy of their child who survived only a few hours after birth.
In 1907, after his second divorce, and the disgrace of particularly public and detailed damning reports of his behaviour having been widely covered in all the newspapers, Edward Aubrey sailed off to New York to stay in a hotel to get away from it all. The ship’s records describe him as “5ft 11 inches, fair hair, blue eyes, and with a distinctive mark of a snake on his left arm”.
1908 - he marries the actress Peggy Primrose
In 1908 Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe age 37yrs married Miss Peggy Primrose (real name May Esther Fitzmaurice b. 1890 d. 1956) age 19yrs.
By 1913, he petitioned for divorce from her on the grounds of her adultery with Horatio Bottomley who also happened to be a long-time friend of Lowe. If his two earlier divorces had caused public disgrace and shame, then his third marriage and his wife’s public affair caused a sensation.
Lowe had employed private detectives, and Bottomley (already married!) was cited as a co-defendant in the divorce proceedings alongside Peggy. The divorce petition (dated 2 October 1913) lists them as having committed adultery at Bottomley’s mansion ‘Dicker’, his apartment at 56a Pall Mall, The Royal Hotel Princess Street Edinburgh, The Bush Hotel Farnham, at Douglas on the Isle of Man, The West End Hotel on Piccadilly, at Bedford Court Mansions in Bloomsbury (which was the location of the flat where Bottomley had ‘installed’ Peggy), and at Ostend in Belgium and ‘on diverse other dates unknown’.
The divorce did not reach the decree nisi stage, but that isn’t the end of the story.
Lowe was declared bankrupt in 1919, which was also a huge headline grabber. He attributed his financial predicament to the amounts of cash he had to pay for his second divorce settlement, and further the theft of his money by a crooked solicitor who ran off to New Zealand. The crooked solicitor just happened to be the well known lawyer, Andrew Newton. And guess what? Lowe, Bottomley and Newton had all been very close friends.
Lowe finally ended up living in Brighton, Sussex, where he died in 1942 age 71yrs. The census shows that his third wife was living with him there and a granddaughter is also seen there.
However, they had lived a lie, or at the very least a huge compromise, because until the death of her lover Horatio Bottomley in 1933, Mrs Lowe had been otherwise occupied outside of her marriage to Edward Lowe as Horatio’s constant companion. She had paid for her lover’s funeral (or Lowe did!), and she eventually scattered his ashes, but she didn’t collect the ashes until four years later in 1937. She had disappeared between 1933 – 1937, finally being contacted by the nephew of Bottomley, and had been found to be living in rooms in North London. She also had a daughter, but the records can’t be traced, so the heritage of her daughter is unclear.
After inheriting many thousands of pounds in his lifetime, and squandering it all, Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe died leaving just £31 to Peggy Lowe. But who was Peggy? Well, Peggy Lowe was the one and same third wife who had had a very public affair. The wife whom he had not managed to divorce. She was also known as “Maisie”, but better known as Miss Peggy Primrose, long term mistress of the married Horatio Bottomley and ex-friend of her husband.
The Taxidermy Cats' Legacy
In 2024 the taxidermy cats turned up at auction in the neighbouring county of Kent. It’s not too far a stretch of the imagination to wonder if they had been handed down and kept by various members of Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe’s extended family, who lived in Sussex and Kent, then finally sold nearly 130 years after they were commissioned.
Edward Aubrey Courtauld Lowe started and ended his life under scrutiny. He had privilege, money, and connections but the one thing he didn’t have and couldn’t buy was the uncompromising commitment of his wife.
All this from an old label on the back of a Victorian case.
Who ever said history was boring?
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