Duke of Hamilton

William Alexander Anthony Archibald Hamilton was born on 19 February 1811 in Grosvenor Place, London. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1843 he married Princess Marie Amelie Elisabeth Karoline, daughter of the Grand-Duke of Baden. In 1852 he succeeded his father and became the 11th Duke of Hamilton.

According to The Complete Peerage, ‘he lived chiefly in Paris or Baden, taking little interest in English politics.’ According to the The Days of the Dandies, he, ‘inherited in some measure his father's grandeeship of manner,’ and was the Duke whom Lord Brougham described as 'very Duke of Very Duke.’ He was a book collector and a member of the Roxburghe Club. His Lancashire estates, which he sold in 1853, realised £329,800.

On 15 July 1863, at the age of fifty-two, the Duke of Hamilton died after falling down the stairs after supper at the Maison Dorée on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. Queen Victoria wrote to her eldest daughter ‘How shocking too is the Duke of Hamilton's death! He had I fear been drinking too much in a café at Paris! Poor thing, I feel so much for her!’

Photographed by André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri of Paris.