Catherine Duleep Singh

Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh

Penn, Buckinghamshire

1871–1942

Catherine Duleep Singh was the daughter of the exiled Maharaja of the Punjab, Duleep Singh, and the German-Abyssinian Bamba Muller. She was the fourth of six children who survived infancy and was born in Knightsbridge in London.

Catherine grew up on Duleep Singh's family estate at Elveden Hall in Suffolk. Her mother died in 1887 and in 1889 she moved into the care of Arthur Oliphant in Brighton. In September 1890 Catherine and her elder sister Bamba went to study at Somerville College, Oxford, although Oxford University did not grant degrees to women at the time. Catherine studied modern languages. Their contemporary was the lawyer Cornelia Sorabji. Catherine visited India with her sisters in 1903 and 1904, keen also to visit the Punjab and see where their ancestral royal power had lain.

Catherine’s younger sister, Sophia, was the well-known suffragette who was active in London suffrage politics in the 1910s. Catherine was also engaged in suffrage activities, attending suffrage fairs and rallies, and spoke at a suffrage fete in Birmingham in November 1912. Catherine was a member of both the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) but appeared to shun the militant side of the movement.

While under the care of Oliphant in the 1880s, Catherine was taught by Lina Schafer, a German governess. They formed what has been described by historians as an intimate bond. After the First World War, Catherine moved to Germany to live with Schafer in Kassel and remained there until Schafer died in 1937. With the rise of Nazism, Catherine fled Germany in 1938 and returned to England, living in Penn in Buckinghamshire until her death. Catherine used her home to offer sanctuary to German-Jewish refugees before and during the Second World War.

Following her death, Catherine’s body was taken to Golders Green crematorium in London. The only family member present at her funeral was her sister Sophia. In 1997 Catherine’s name was publicized on a list of persons holding dormant Swiss bank accounts from the Second World War. The inheritance was later awarded to the descendants of her sister Bamba's former head servant in Lahore (the chief beneficiary of Bamba's will).