'Duchess'

'Duchess'

Owned by: 'Lady' Margaret Whitcombe

Recovered From: Briar Glen Asylum, 1947

'Duchess' was once the cherished possession of an eccentric woman confined to Briar Glen Asylum after tragedy struck her family. Her husband and son both perished in the mysterious 1927 Hollings & Doyle warehouse fire in Chicago, leaving her mind fractured and wandering. In her grief, she began to insist she was of noble blood, a deposed royal whose lineage had been stolen from her.

She demanded that staff and patients alike address her only as Lady Whitcombe, and she carried the doll everywhere, introducing her as Duchess, her “loyal companion and courtier.” To the woman, Duchess was not cloth and paint, but flesh and blood - someone who remembered her true title when others forgot.

Over time, whispers spread through the asylum: the doll’s cracked features seemed to deepen with each passing year, as though absorbing her owner’s sorrow. When 'Lady' Whitcombe passed, Duchess remained on the asylum grounds, her hollow eyes unblinking, her silken dress singed faintly at the hem as though touched by the same fire that had claimed the family.

They say anyone who dared to call her simply the doll rather than Duchess would hear faint, aristocratic laughter echoing through the halls. And Duchess simply stared.