- In 1889 Mary Orchard fixes Alix's hair.
- She served Princess Alice's ( Grand Duchess of Hesses ) children for 40 years.
- Mary Orchard was the Nanny to the children of Princess Alice ~ Queen Victoria's daughter.
- Mary Ann Orchard was born in 1830 at Fordington which is now a suburb of Dorchester, the county town of Dorset in southern England. She was almost four when her father died and two years later she gained a step-father when her mother Jane married David Pitman, a shoemaker. In the 1841 census she was living with her family in Mill Street, Fordington which was said to have been a slum area.
- Hesse was involved in the Austro-Prussian War which took place in 1866 and led to Prussian dominance over the German states. For their safety Alice's two daughters travelled to England to stay with their grandmother and it was during this time that Queen Victoria engaged Mary Ann Orchard as a nurse to her two little granddaughters.
- In 1866 she received the following telegram: the queen has sent for you to see if you will suit Princess Alice. Come here by the first train tomorrow morning. Mary Ann duly arrived on the Isle of Wight, was interviewed and found acceptable to become nanny to Princess Alice's children.
- Nothing was said of her life before 1866, when she was found by Queen Victoria to replace Elizabeth Moffatt as nurse to the Hesse children; she must either have been working for someone known to one of the Queen's ladies or she herself may have known one of the royal nurses.
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