Prince George, Duke of Cambridge (1819–1904) was the son of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (1774–1850) and Augusta, Princess of Hesse-Cassel (1797–1889). His father had been the seventh son of George III, thus making him a cousin of Queen Victoria. He followed a military career and served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army from 1856 until 1895. Both he and the queen were in firm opposition to any reforms proposed. He had a reputation as a philanderer and entered into a marriage contrary to the Royal Marriages Act with an actress, Sarah Fairbrother, with whom he had three children, as well as having a number of other liaisons. Like his grandmother Queen Charlotte, he collected snuffboxes and acquired an important collection which was sold at Christie’s after his death in 1904. Nellie Lisa Bass (1873–1962) was a member of the Burton upon Trent brewing family Bass & Co., founded by William Bass in 1777. Her grandfather Michael Thomas Bass had transformed the company into one of the largest breweries in England and had represented Derby as a Liberal MP for thirty-five years. Michael Thomas Bass had refused the many honours offered to him, but his son Michael Arthur first accepted a baronetcy and then was raised to the peerage as the 1st Baron Burton of Burton upon Trent in 1882. A second barony, of Burton upon Trent and of Rangemore in the County of Stafford, was created in 1897 and remaindered to his daughter as he had no male heirs. As described on this box, she had married Colonel James Evan Bruce Baillie of Dochfour in Inverness-shire in 1894 and, following his death in 1931, married Major William Eugene Melles en deuxième noce. The title was inherited by Baroness Burton’s grandson on her death in 1962.

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