The late Duke of Westminster courted controversy in 2002 when he said his young daughters felt safer on a night out in Liverpool and Ellesmere Port rather than Chester.
Gerald Cavendish Grovenor, who sadly died on Tuesday (August 9) aged 64, spoke in advance of a Play It Safe conference run by Cheshire County Council held at the town hall aimed at exploring the problems faced by young people socialising at night in Chester city centre .
The duke, a guest speaker at the event, caused embarrassment for organisers by airing views which were far more forthright than they had expected.
He said his two eldest daughters Lady Tamara , then 22, and her sister Lady Edwina , then aged 20, had turned their backs on the clubs of Chester because they were concerned about drunken brawling on the streets.
The duke, who later invested in the Liverpool One shopping centre, explained: “I was listening to my two daughters while we were having supper one night, and I asked them where they had been the night before. They said they had been to Ellesmere Port and Liverpool. I said, ‘Why have you changed your habits of going to Chester?’
“They said they felt safer – it was a simple as that. It seemed extraordinary that two young girls will pay a lot of money to avoid Chester rather than go into it.”
Soon after the discussion with his daughters, he mentioned the matter to Graham Proctor, then Lord Mayor of Chester, and the idea of a conference to air the issues grew. He joined a panel that included the mayor and the late Judge Elgan Edwards , Recorder of Chester.
The father-of-four, who addressed the conference attended by about 50 young delegates, talked about problems in Britain’s cities including anti-social behaviour, alcohol-fuelled fights and increased pressures on policing and other services.
The duke said his daughters had not encountered any specific problems while socialising in Chester but had witnessed fights as they left the city’s pubs and clubs. He also revealed that he had discussed the issue of drugs with his daughters when they were teenagers, taking them to a project for heroin users in Liverpool where they met addicts.
Interestingly, his second daughter Lady Edwina went on to study sociology and criminology at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is now a potent champion for prison reform.
