Guianan escapade
From Mr Leslie Slater Sir: 'When the last Prince of Wales visited Guyana in 1923, he caused a scandal' is the opening sentence of Robert Hardman's article ('King of Hearts', 4 March). Things were not quite as he describes them. I was there at the time and I remember what happened. Throughout that visit the Prince was the guest of the governor and his wife at Government House, Georgetown, capi- tal of then British Guiana.
In the Prince's honour a posh ball for the upper crust of the colony's society — my parents among them — was held at GH during which the Prince met and danced With Mrs Effie Woolford, the attractive wife of the then mayor of Georgetown, Eustace Woolford (later knighted). It so happened, also that night, that there was a mayoral ball at the nearby town hall to which Effie invited the Prince. This he did by sneaking alone out of GH, going by car, supplied by the mayor, to the town hall where he remained into the early hours and again danced with Effie. This minor royal escapade of the 29-year-old Prince was the source of the scandal, such as it was.
The Prince did not dance with Phyllis Woolford, as Robert Hardman claims. Phyllis, daughter of Effie, was such a young child in 1923 as to be incapable of dancing with the Prince or anyone else. Effie was not of 'Creole origins' in the sense in which Mr Hardman uses that term; neither she nor Phyllis were 'known for evermore as the Duchess'. That title was bestowed upon Phyllis's sister, Miss Winnie Woolford, who having in the mid-1930s completed her schooling in Europe and Britain, returned home to BG. She was a young woman of a beauty so striking, with a body of such mag- nificent shapeliness, that the combination demanded the visual attention of every man and woman fortunate enough to see her.
Leslie Slater Demerara, St Barbados
Previous page
