Duchess of Cambridge’s great-great aunt was a mental asylum patient – just like Prince William’s great-grandmother

The Duchess of Cambridge’s great-great aunt died in a mental institution after living an uncannily similar life to Prince William’s great-grandmother, it has emerged.

Until now the extraordinary parallels between Gertrude Middleton, who was the wealthy sister of the Duchess’ great-grandfather Noel Middleton, and Princess Alice of Battenberg, the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, have gone undocumented.

But now a historian has discovered that both women lived parallel lives, a few years apart, becoming nuns who worked as volunteer nurses during the First World War and later undertaking selfless social work.

While it was known that Princess Alice, who is featured in the third series of The Crown, was a patient in a sanatorium, it has now emerged that Gertrude was treated at The Lawn Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases in the 1930s.

Housed in a palatial Georgian building in Lincoln, Lincolnshire for “superior patients”, she died there on March 15, 1942, aged 66.

Michael Reed, a historian at Australia’s Ilim College, who made the discovery, said: “They basically lived parallel lives, a few years apart. Both were volunteer nurses in connection with the Red Cross - Gertrude during the First World War, and Princess Alice during the first and second. They both acted as dedicated social workers for the homeless and disadvantaged and proved to be generous financial benefactors. They were both very religious, becoming nuns.

“But most startling of all was the revelation that Gertrude, like Princess Alice, had been a patient in a mental hospital. Their stories are both fascinating and sad.

“I was amazed to unearth photos of both ladies in their volunteer nurses uniform.”

Born in 1876, Gertrude was the wealthy sister of the Duchess of Cambridge’s great-grandfather Noel Middleton, a solicitor, director of the family's textile firm and  - through his founding of the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra and his directorship of the Leeds Music Festival -  on friendly terms with the Queen’s aunt, Princess Mary.

A brilliant student, Gertrude completed her schooling at age 18 in 1894 in Scotland at the exclusive ladies boarding school St Leonards School in Fife - modelled on Prince William’s alma mater Eton. The school was surrounded by the University of St Andrews - where the Cambridges met while studying history of art.

Like the Duchess, Gertrude was sporty, playing tennis and lacrosse on the university’s playing fields as well as golf on the school’s own golf course. Gertrude also played the piano like the Duchess.

She continued further study at St Anne’s College, Oxford, from 1900-1902 where her first cousin Henry Middleton was studying law at Oxford and could therefore act as her chaperone.

She later worked as a social worker and was Hon. Secretary of Leeds Girls Clubs, managing the protection and sheltering of  “friendless” and disadvantaged girls in the city and the wider Yorkshire area.

Always very religious, she was a theology teacher in Leeds until the First World War broke out, when she volunteered with the Red Cross alongside her sister-in-law Olive Middleton, the Duchess’ great-grandmother, at Gledhow Hall, near Leeds, the home of Baroness Airedale, Olive’s second cousin. (NB photo taken there in 1915).

In the 1920s, Gertrude was a regular benefactor of the University of Leeds, as was her brother Noel and his wife Olive.

Around this time, Gertrude became a nun at the Anglican Convent of the Epiphany, Truro, Cornwall which had been established by the Bishop of St Andrews, George Wilkinson.

Similarly, following the Second World War, Princess Alice founded a Greek Orthodox nursing order of nuns known as the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, and wore a habit for the rest of her life even though the order eventually failed due to a lack of suitable applicants.

After being diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium in Switzerland in 1930, she dedicated her life to helping others, sheltering Jewish refugees during the Holocaust and working with the poor. She died at Buckingham Palace in 1965, aged 84.