Olwen Elizabeth LLOYD GEORGE (later CAREY EVANS) (1892-1990)

Olwen Elizabeth Lloyd George (1892-1990) was the daughter of Liberal politician and Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.

Olwen Lloyd George was born on 3rd April 1892, the third of five children of David Lloyd George and his wife, Margaret (née Owen).

During the First World War, Olwen enrolled as a British Red Cross volunteer.  Her Red Cross card stated that from 1915-1916, “Mrs Carey Evans (then Miss Olwen Lloyd George) worked from June to October 1915 at the Red X Rest Station at Boulogne and the last month in Headquarters.  Then at Devonshire House until June 1916.  Since then she married and has not been able to work.  Emily Farquhar Bolland, Commandant.”

Olwen was engaged to Captain Thomas John Carey Evans, MC.  Mela Brown Constable was “mad with jealousy” when she discovered that the fiancé of the Prime Minister’s daughter’s had been allowed to come home from Mesopotamia in order to get married, as she told her own fiancé on 1st May 1917.  A letter of 12th June 1917 revealed that Captain Evans’ boat had been torpedoed on the way home.  He was safe, but they were not sure when he would arrive home.  He obviously did reach home in time as he and Olwen were married on 19th June 1917 in a Baptist chapel described in the newspapers as “so tiny that it might easily fit into many a Mayfair drawing-room”.  The service was in Welsh.

Olwen and Thomas went to live in India where they remained in India until 1925.  They had four children.  Her granddaughter is the Canadian historian, Margaret MacMillan, and her great-grandson is the TV presenter and historian Dan Snow.

Thomas was knighted in 1924 so Olwen became Lady Carey Evans.  In 1969, Lady Carey Evans was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, being honoured for her services to hospitals and women’s organizations.

Lady Carey Evans died on 2nd March 1990.