Nancy Witcher Astor, Viscountess Astor, CH, (May 19, 1879 – May 2, 1964) was the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament (MP) in the British House of Commons. She was the wife of Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor. Nancy Astor was born Nancy Witcher Langhorne on May 19, 1879, in Danville, Virginia, in the United States. The former business of her father, Chiswell Dabney Langhorne, had depended at least in part upon slave labour and had been badly damaged by the effects of the Civil War. Because of this, Nancy Langhorne's early years were spent in near-poverty conditions, but shortly after her birth her father regained the family wealth, first as an auctioneer and later through his involvement with the railroad. Nancy Langhorne had four sisters and three brothers. All of the sisters were known for their beauty; her sister Irene later married the artist Charles Dana Gibson and became a model for the Gibson girl. Nancy and Irene both went to a finishing school in New York City. In New York, Nancy met and married her first husband, Robert Gould Shaw, on 27 October 1897, when she was 18. This first marriage was a disaster. Shaw's friends accused Nancy of becoming puritanical and rigid after she married; Nancy's friends contended that Shaw was an alcoholic adulterer. The couple was married for four years and had one son, Bobbie. Nancy left Shaw numerous times during their brief marriage, the first time during their honeymoon. In 1903, Nancy's mother died and Nancy moved back to Mirador, her father's home in Virginia. She tried to run the household for him but was unsuccessful. She left there and took a tour of England, and fell in love with the country while she was there. Because she was so happy there, her father suggested that Nancy move to England. Nancy was reluctant to go, so he suggested that the move had been her mother’s wish and that it would also be good for Nancy's younger sister, Phyllis, to accompany her. Nancy and Phyllis finally moved to England in 1904. The earlier trip to England had launched Nancy's reputation there as an interesting and witty American. Her tendency to be witty and saucy in conversation, yet religiously devout and almost prudish in behaviour, confused many of the English men but pleased some of the older socialites. They liked conversing with the lively and exciting American who at the same time largely conformed to decency and restraint. Nancy also began at this time to show her skill at winning over critics. She was once asked by an English woman, "Have you come to get our husbands?" Her unexpected response, "If you knew the trouble I had getting rid of mine..." charmed her listeners and displayed the wit that would later become so famous. Despite her protestations, however, she did indeed marry an English man. Her second husband, Waldorf Astor, was born in the United States but his father had moved the family to England when Waldorf was twelve and raised his children as English aristocrats. The pair was well matched from the start. Not only were they both American expatriates with similar temperaments, but they were even born on the exact same day. He shared some of her moral attitudes, and his heart condition may have encouraged him toward a restraint that she found comforting. The marriage's success, therefore, seemed assured. After the Astors married, Nancy moved into Cliveden, a lavish estate, and began her life as a prominent hostess for the social elite. The Astors also owned a grand London house, No. 4 St. James's Square, which is now the premises of the Naval & Military Club. Through her many social connections, Lady Astor became involved in a kind of political circle called Milner's Kindergarten. Considered liberal in their age, the group advocated unity and equality among English speaking people and a continuance or expansion of British imperialism. Several elements of Lady Astor's life to this point influenced her first campaign, but the main reason she became a candidate in the first place was her husband's situation. He had enjoyed a promising career for several years before World War I in the House of Commons, but then he succeeded to his father's peerage as the 2nd Viscount Astor. This meant that he automatically became a member of the House of Lords and forfeited his seat of Plymouth Sutton in the House of Commons. So Lady Astor decided to contest the vacant parliamentary seat. Astor had several disadvantages in her campaign. One of them was her lack of connection with the women's suffrage movement. The first woman elected to the British Parliament, Constance Markiewicz, said Lady Astor was "of the upper classes, out of touch". (While Lady Astor was the first female member of the House of Commons who actually took up her seat, she was not the first woman to be elected to the House. Markiewicz did not take up her seat because of her Irish nationalist views.) Countess Markiewicz had been in prison for Sinn Féin activities during her election, and other suffragettes had been imprisoned for arson; Astor had no such background. Even more damaging to Astor's campaign were her well-known hostility to alcohol consumption and her lack of knowledge of current political issues. These points did not endear her to the people of Plymouth, the constituency from which she was elected. Perhaps worst of all, her tendency to say odd or outlandish things sometimes made her look rather unstable.