Following World War I, she met and married her husband. Upon her death at roughly the age of 28 in Lydd, Kent, England, due to pulmonarytuberculosis and spinal caries, she bequeathed to him an unusually large inheritance equivalent to a local resident's yearly earnings.[2] This fact, combined with irregularities in the available information about her, such as the different ages given on her marriage certificate, her tombstone, and her death certificate, the differences in the names given for her, the conflicting stories about her background, Tudor's inexplicable income and return to the 3rd Hussars and promotion in rank following Larissa's death,[3] and certain physical details, led to speculation by author Michael Occleshaw that she was in reality the Grand Duchess and had escaped the assassination of the Romanovs after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
More than 60 years after her death, neighbors immediately identified photographs of Tatiana as being Larissa.
Historians believe that the imperial family were all assassinated on July 17, 1918; however, rumors of the survival of one or more Romanov family members have persisted for nearly 90 years.[4]
Marriage
Larissa married Owen Frederick Morton Tudor, an officer of the 3rd Hussars, in 1923 at the Register Office of St George's, Hanover Square, in London, England. Her marriage certificate listed her address as the York Hotel, Mayfair, and her father as Adolph Haouk. Her age in 1923 was given as 27 on her marriage certificate, though her death certificate in 1926 gave her age as 29 and her tombstone gave her age at death as 28.[5]
Early life
There is little available information about her nationality or early life. According to the wife of one of Tudor's brother officers, there were two accounts about Larissa's background. One was that she was the daughter of a pork butcher, whom Tudor met when he was posted at Constantinople in 1921. Larissa was said to be a belly-dancer at a night club in Constantinople. A second account of her early life was that she was a woman of good family from St. Petersburg. The colonel of Tudor's regiment reportedly sent brother officers either to teach him some Russian before his marriage or to try to persuade Tudor not to marry Larissa. Tudor, who was in love with Larissa, went ahead with the marriage and was forced to leave the regiment.[6] One of Tudor's first cousins was told that Larissa had escaped from Russia and had been "earning her living the only way she could."[7]
Illness
Following the marriage, Tudor transferred to the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Tank Corps, which was based at Lydd, Kent, England. Larissa was ill with pulmonarytuberculosis and spinalcaries and was unable to sit up straight. She spent her days reclining in an elongated bath chair.[8] The couple lived privately, but were often overheard laughing in the garden of their house.[9] Though Tudor's income had been reduced when he left the Hussars and he had no personal fortune, he had enough money to pay for a nurse for Larissa and to keep a horse stabled at a nearby farm.[2]
Death
When Larissa died, she left an inheritance that amounted to two years' pay for the majority of Britain's population.[2] Larissa's husband was devastated by her death and had to be held up by other men at her gravesite.[8] Larissa was buried in a cemetery in Lydd. Her gravestone bore the inscription "To My Very Beloved Larissa Feodorovna Who Died July 18th, 1926 Aged 28 Years The Wife of Owen Tudor, 3rd The King's Own Hussars".[10] Tudor brought flowers to her grave every year on June 10 up until a few years before his own death. Occleshaw pointed out in his book The Romanov Conspiracy: The Romanovs and the House of Windsor that Grand Duchess Tatiana's birthday was June 10.[10]
Following her death, some women in Lydd became fascinated by Larissa's story and contacted author Michael Occleshaw about her. Occleshaw saw irregularities in the available information about Larissa, such as the different ages given on her marriage certificate, her tombstone, and her death certificate, the differences in the names given for her, the conflicting stories about her background, and Tudor's inexplicable income and return to the 3rd Hussars and promotion in rank following Larissa's death.[3] There was no record of a woman named Larissa Haouk entering England between 1918 and 1923.[11]
Occleshaw showed portraits of Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna, along with portraits of unrelated women from the same period, to people who had known Larissa. More than 60 years after Larissa's death, her former neighbours identified portraits of the grand duchess as Larissa.[12] Larissa was described as "being tall, amazingly thin and very beautiful, having brown hair with an auburn tinge to it."[9] This physical description was similar to descriptions of the Grand Duchess Tatiana, wrote Occleshaw.[9]
Speculation about the rescue of a grand duchess
In his 1993 book The Romanov Conspiracies: The Romanovs and the House of Windsor, Occleshaw speculates that Tatiana was flown out of Siberia by British agents in mid-July 1918 and, with assistance from the Japanese, transferred into the hands of Prince Arthur of Connaught, who was traveling from Japan to Canada aboard the Japanese battle cruiser Kirishima in July 1918. With the prince's party, the rescued grand duchess allegedly traveled across Canada before she sailed to the United Kingdom on the Canadian Pacific Ocean Service Ltd. vessel Corsican, which arrived in the United Kingdom in August 1918.[13][14]
Occleshaw speculated that a rescue mission by air might have been considered by the British at the behest of King George V.[15] An entry in the journal of Col. Richard Meinertzhagen asserts that the rescue took place on July 1, 1918, a date that might have been inaccurate. Meinertzhagen wrote that the rescue was not a complete success because not all the family was rescued. "One child was literally thrown into the plane at Ekaterinburg, much bruised and brought to England where she still is."[16] Critics say that Meinertzhagen's diaries were fantasy.[17] Meinertzhagen's wife, Amorel, traveled from Canada to the United Kingdom aboard the Canadian ship Corsican in August 1918, while the war was still taking place. In the adjoining cabin was a 22-year-old masseuse named Marguerite Lindsay, for whom Occleshaw could find no birth or permanent address records. Occleshaw identified Marguerite Lindsay as a possible cover name for a rescued grand duchess.[18] However, the Ellis Island Web site has two separate listings for travel to New York by passengers named Marguerite Lindsay in 1915 and again in 1923. The Marguerite Lindsay who traveled in 1915 gave her age as 18 and her place of residence as Montreal, Quebec, Canada; the Marguerite Lindsay who traveled in 1923 gave her age as 27 and her residence as New York City.[19] The Bolsheviks were also reportedly alarmed by an airplane flying over the Ipatiev House in mid-July 1918, Sir Charles Eliot, the British High Commissioner for Siberia, later reported.[20] When interrogated by White Russian Army investigators in January 1919, a Red Guard named George Nikolaevich Biron, the Chief Military Communications Officer of the Bolshevik Third Army at Perm, claimed Tatiana had "run away or disappeared with a Red Army officer, a commander of the guard," before the murder of the Tsar.[21]
A photograph that appeared September 4, 1918, in the Harrogate Herald depicts a group of exiled royalty and aristocrats including Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna, who was living at Harrogate. Occleshaw speculates that a young woman in the photo whose face is half-hidden behind Lady Radcliffe, the wife of Sir Joseph Radcliffe, Baronet, might be the escaped grand duchess. In his opinion, the photograph bears "an uncanny resemblance to the Grand Duchess Tatiana." The woman was the only person in the group who was not identified in the newspaper photo caption.[22] Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna founded four hospitals in the area. A sanitarium for treatment of tuberculosis was located near Harrogate at Knaresborough. Spinal caries often developed following an injury, such as that caused by being thrown from a horse or thrown into an airplane, as Meinertzhagen wrote that the rescued grand duchess had been.[23] Occleshaw also speculated that the conditions under which the Romanovs were held would have been "ideal" for a member of the imperial family to contract tuberculosis.[23] Guards at the Ipatiev House, where the imperial family was held captive at Ekaterinburg, later commented on the sickly appearance of Grand Duchess Tatiana and her elder sister Olga. Tatiana had grown extremely thin and "looked as if she was not far from the morgue," recalled one guard.[24]
Since Larissa had mentioned to neighbors that her happiest time in England had been spent in Yorkshire, Occleshaw speculated that the escaped grand duchess might have spent time in a medical facility near Harrogate under the patronage of Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna.[25] Owen Tudor's uncle was Sir Frederick Tudor, a British admiral who was the Commander of the China Station in 1918. Frederick Tudor was responsible for arranging the escape of refugees from Siberia to Japan and then on to Canada. Occleshaw speculated that Owen Tudor might have met Larissa during a visit to his uncle.[26] Occleshaw also noted that the patronymic on Larissa's gravestone was Feodorovna, which was also the patronymic adopted by Grand Duchess Tatiana's mother, Tsarina Alexandra, and that the surname Haouk bears close resemblance to the surname of Countess Julia von Hauke, an ancestress of the Mountbatten family and closely associated with Tatiana's Hessian relatives.[27]
Romanov grave
Two bodies were missing from the mass Romanov grave found in Siberia and exhumed in 1991. Those bodies were identified as Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia and one of the four grand duchesses, generally thought by Russians to be Maria and by Americans to be Anastasia. Historians believe that all of the Romanovs, including Tatiana, were assassinated at Ekaterinburg.[28]
In July 2007, 46-year-old builder Sergei Pogorelov (part of a team from an amateur history group who spent free summer weekends looking for the lost Romanovs) said that after stumbling on a small burned area of ground covered with nettles near Yekaterinburg he had discovered bones that belonged to "a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of Nicholas’ 13-year-old hemophiliac son, Alexei, and a daughter whose remains also never have been found."[29]
On 30 April 2008, DNA tests were performed on the two bodies. A U.S. laboratory compared DNA from the bodies to a DNA sample given by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose first cousins, once removed were the Romanov children. The test confirmed that the bodies belonged to members of the imperial family: Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria, according to Russian news agencies. Therefore, all the Romanovs have now been accounted for, disproving claims of survival.[30]
The House of Romanov was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova, was married to the First Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible. Tsar Nicholas II's immediate family was executed in 1918, but there are still living descendants.
Alexandra Feodorovna, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and bore a haemophiliac heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years. She and her immediate family were all murdered while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia was the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra. She was born at Peterhof Palace, near Saint Petersburg.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.
Anna Anderson was an impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered along with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg, Russia, but the location of her body was unknown until 2007.
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was the youngest child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II.
Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich of Russia was the Head of the Imperial Family of Russia, a position which he claimed from 1938 to his death.
Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia has been a claimant to the headship of the House of Romanov, the Imperial Family of Russia since 1992. Although she has used Grand Duchess of Russia as her title of pretence with the style Imperial Highness throughout her life, her right to do so is disputed. She is a great-great-granddaughter in the male line of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley was a Russian nobleman and poet who was murdered by the Bolsheviks when he was 21 years old.
Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna Romanova of Russia was the consort of Vladimir Kirillovich, Grand Duke of Russia, a pretender to the Russian throne. She was aims advanced by Vladimir and their daughter, Maria Vladimirovna, to be accepted as the legitimate Heads of the Romanov dynasty and de jure sovereigns of the Russian Empire.
Princess Maria of Greece and Denmark was a daughter of King George I of Greece and his wife Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia. She was a sister of King Constantine I of Greece and a first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and King George V of the United Kingdom.
Princess Helen of Serbia was a Serbian princess. She was the daughter of King Peter I of Serbia and his wife, the former Princess Ljubica of Montenegro. She was the elder sister of George, Crown Prince of Serbia and King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Helen was also a niece of Queen Elena of Italy, Princess Anastasia of Montenegro, wife of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia and of Princess Milica of Montenegro, wife of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia, the women who introduced Grigori Rasputin to Tsarina Alexandra.
Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, about his time with the family. In his memoirs, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandra's torment over her son's hemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy.
Admiral Sir Frederick Charles Tudor Tudor, was a British Royal Navy officer who went on to be Third Sea Lord.
Owen Frederick Morton Tudor was a British Army officer in the 3rd The King's Own Hussars and the husband of Larissa Tudor, a woman some claimed could have been Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia.
Members of the ruling Russian imperial family, the House of Romanov, were executed by a firing squad led by Yakov Yurovsky in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918, during both the Russian Civil War and near the end of the First World War.
Princess Nina Georgievna of Russia,, was the elder daughter of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Maria Georgievna of Russia. A great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, she left her native country in 1914, before World War I finished her education in England and spent the rest of her life in exile. In London in 1922, she married Prince Paul Chavchavadze, a descendant of the last king of Georgia. They had one child, Prince David Chavchavadze, born there two years later. In 1927 the family of three moved to the United States and settled in New York. In 1939 they bought a home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Princess Nina was an artist, her husband worked as an author; he wrote five books and translated several others. Their son, Prince David Chavchavadze, served with the U.S. Army during World War II and, thanks in part to his knowledge of Russian, eventually became a CIA officer. After his retirement, he wrote his memoirs and published those of his grandmother, Grand Duchess George, as well as a book about the grand dukes of Russia.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia was the eldest child of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Emperor Nicholas II, and of Empress Alexandra of Russia.
Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva, also known as Shura Tegleva and Sasha Tegleva, was a Russian noblewoman who served as a nursemaid in the Russian Imperial Household. As nursemaid to the children of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, she went with the family into exile in Tobolsk following the abdication of Nicholas II during the February Revolution, but was ultimately prevented from staying with them during their house arrest at Ipatiev House. She survived the Russian Revolution and married Pierre Gilliard, a Swiss academic who served with her in the Imperial Household as the children's French tutor. She moved to Lausanne as a white émigré and remained there the rest of her life. Tegleva worked with her husband to investigate and debunk the claims made by Anna Anderson, a Romanov impostor who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
References
King, Greg, and Wilson, Penny, The Fate of the Romanovs, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., ISBN0-471-20768-3
Massie, Robert K. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. 1995. ISBN0-679-43572-7
Occleshaw, Michael, The Romanov Conspiracies: The Romanovs and the House of Windsor, Orion, 1993, ISBN1855925184
Meinertzhagen, Richard, hints at rescue of Russian Grand Duchess (Tatiana?)in unpublished diaries. Mentioned in Occleshaw book above
Edwards, Sue, No Resting Place for A Romanov, 1998, ISBN0-9529292-1-X
Occleshaw, Michael, Armour against fate: British military intelligence in the First World War, Columbus Books, 1989
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