Lucy Baldwin Lucy Baldwin Lucy Baldwin, Countess Baldwin of Bewdley, ("née" Ridsdale; 19 June 1869 – 17 June 1945) was an English writer and activist for maternity health. From 1892 until her death in 1945, she was the wife of Stanley Baldwin, three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was invested as a Dame of Grace, Order of Saint John of Jerusalem and a Dame Grand Cross, Order of the British Empire, and styled as Countess Baldwin of Bewdley on 8 June 1937. She was born Lucy Ridsdale in Bayswater, London, the oldest daughter of Edward Lucas Jenks and Esther Lucy
Stanley Baldwin to commemorate the centenary of Baldwin's birth, in "The Spectator" ("Don't Let's Be Beastly to Baldwin", 14 July 1967) Rab Butler defended Baldwin's moderate policies which, he claimed, helped heal social divisions. In 1969 the first major biography of Baldwin appeared, of over 1,000 pages, written by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, both Conservatives who wished to defend Baldwin. In 1999, Philip Williamson published a collection of essays on Baldwin which attempted to explain his beliefs and defended his policies as Prime Minister. Williamson asserted that Baldwin had helped create "a moral basis for rearmament in the mid 1930s" that