Is Isabella Hyde later Mrs John Lionel Whyte of Hamilton, Ont Canada a half-sister to Queen Victoria.?

Question

I read this in The Hamilton Beacon and Herald that Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and 4th son of George III and father of Queen Victoria had children by Madam Julie st Laurent during his 10 yers of residence in Canada prior to knowing his wife.There is also a book called Overture to Victoria.

Answer 1

No. There is no record of the Duke and Mme St Laurent having any children. Some conspiracy theorists speculate that official records were destroyed later on the orders of Queen Victoria, but that theory just doesn't hold water. The Duke's brother the Duke of Clarence lived for twenty years quite openly with the actress Mrs Jordan, had ten children with her whom he acknowledged and gave the surname Fitzclarence; everyone accepted this as normal and proper. The Duke of Kent's 27-year relationship with Mme St Laurent was equally public knowledge; If they had had children there would have been absolutely no reason for him not to acknowledge them in the same way. Not only would it have been virtually impossible for Mme St Laurent, a well-known figure in Canadian society, to have had a string of pregnancies and births without anybody noticing, why should they have tried to hide it?

If there had been any such children, there would have been loads of written evidence of their existence - not only baptismal certificates and other official documents, but mentions in the gossip columns of contemporary newspapers and magazines, in contemporary private letters, in diaries, and so on.  Governments can destroy official documentation but short of burning every copy of every private letter, every private diary and every back-issue of every newspaper and magazine in Canada they couldn't possibly have destroyed the unofficial sources of evidence.