Ruth Burke Roche, Baroness Fermoy

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Ruth Burke Roche, Baroness Fermoy (2 October 1908 – 6 July 1993) was a friend and confidante of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and the maternal grandmother of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Ruth, Lady Fermoy was born Ruth Sylvia Gill at her father's house, Dalhebity, Bieldside, Aberdeenshire, the daughter of Col. William Smith Gill and his wife, Ruth.^[1] She showed early promise as a pianist and studied under Alfred Cortot at the Paris Conservatoire in the early 1920s.^[2]

Her musical career was cut short when she met, and later married in 1931, the wealthy and much older Edmund Burke Roche, 4th Baron Fermoy. They had three children before he died in 1955, which included her middle child, Frances Ruth (the mother of Lady Diana Spencer).

In 1956, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, appointed the Dowager Lady Fermoy an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber. The Queen Mother, being a widow herself, showed a preference for appointing widows to her household, and four years later Ruth, Lady Fermoy was promoted to Woman of the Bedchamber, a post she held for the next 33 years.^[3]

The Queen Mother and Lady Fermoy became confidantes and it was largely supposed that they engineered the match between Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Fermoy's granddaughter, Diana. However, when asked about it, Lady Fermoy remarked, "You can say that if you like - but it simply wouldn't be true".^[4] It was also said that she counselled her granddaughter against the marriage.^[5]

Lady Fermoy was a firm believer in the sanctity of wedlock. In 1969 she testified against her own daughter's fitness as a mother, thus allowing Edward Spencer, Viscount Althorp to retain custody of their children after the couple's divorce.^[2]

Lady Fermoy died at her home, 36 Eaton Square, London^[6], aged 84. It was reported that she was not on speaking terms with Diana when she died.^[2]

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