page_title: Arthur Cowell-Stepney
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Cowell-Stepney / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: My photo (Rodolph (talk) 22:44, 11 August 2013 (UTC)) of a photo of Catherine Muriel Cowell-Stepney (Miss Alcyone Stepney), aka Lady Howard (1876–1952), in circa 1882.
context_page_description: Sir Emile Algernon Arthur Keppel Cowell-Stepney, 2nd Baronet was a British landowner and Liberal politician. He was the youngest son of Sir John Stepney Cowell-Stepney.
context_section_description: On 24 August 1875 Arthur married Margaret Warren, fourth daughter of the second Lord De Tabley. Margaret was a close friend and confidante of Mary Drew, née Gladstone, the Prime Minister's daughter. The marriage initially seemed to be happy, and a daughter, Catherine Meriel (informally named 'Alcyone' by her mother) was born on 12 September 1876. (Aged five, Meriel was painted by Millais; she later married Sir Edward Stafford Howard.) Only a few weeks later, though, Arthur abruptly abandoned his wife and daughter, (but one presumes not his clubs, Travellers', Brooks's, Reform and St. James's) and went abroad, beginning a habit of extensive travelling and lengthy sojourns overseas that would last for the rest of his life. Margaret's supporters, including her daughter in later years, believed that Arthur was mentally ill. However, during his time overseas he acquired substantial estates in Australia and Canada (near Enderby, BC, where his estates were managed by George Heggie). He also spent much time in the United States, eventually becoming a citizen and ceasing to use his title. In 1901 he transferred the management of his estates to his daughter Meriel and obtained a divorce in Idaho. In 1903 Lady Stepney finally sued for a judicial separation, which was granted on the grounds that the Idaho divorce had no weight in English law. The extensive newspaper coverage of the case turned it into a media cause celebre of the Edwardian period.
  Aged 74, Sir Arthur Cowell-Stepney was found dead on the railway station at Yuma, Arizona, on 2 July 1909, having apparently gone there to try to add a rare butterfly to his collection.
caption: Photo of his daughter and heir: Alcy Cowell-Stepney, circa 1880.
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