George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen bare-footed stable boy, he became the richest man in Canada and closely associated with George V, whose wife, Queen Mary, was a lifelong friend and confidante of the second Lady Mount Stephen. In 1829, Stephen was born at Dufftown, Banffshire, in a cottage built by his grandfather. He was the son of William Stephen (b. 1801), a carpenter, and Elspet, daughter of John Smith, a crofter at Knockando, Moray. His mother was a first cousin of the philanthropic Grant brothers of Manchester, immortalised as the "Cheeryble Brothers" in Charles Dickens' book, Nicholas Nickleby. Stephen began life as a boy running
Mary Dickens look no further nor are aware of the injury he does them." When Dickens decided to burn all his letters in 1860 in the field behind Gads Hill Place it was Mary and two of her brothers who carried them out of the house in basketfuls. These included correspondence from Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. Mary asked her father to keep some of them, but he refused, burning everything. <br> In 1867 Mary was asked to name and launch a new ship at Chatham Dockyard, where her grandfather John Dickens had previously worked. She became