Dame Violet Penelope Dickson, DBE (3 September 1896 – 4 January 1991) was the wife of British colonial administrator H. R. P. Dickson. She lived in Kuwait for 61 years, and published several books on the country. Violet Dickson was a keen botanist and published a book on the flora of Bahrain and Kuwait in 1955. The desert plant that she introduced to science, Horwoodia dicksoniae (known as khuzama in Arabic), was named in her honour.
Violet Dickson had a son Saud (died in May 2005), and a daughter Zahra Freeth, who is also an author on Middle Eastern topics. Dame Violet was given the honorific title Umm Saud (Arabic: أم سعود meaning Mother of Saud), and was also known as Umm Kuwait - Mother of Kuwait. She was also given the honorific Hajjiyah, a term of respect meaning a female who has completed the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. This is unusual, as non-Muslims are not allowed to perform the Haj.
The British Political Agency in Kuwait was based in a house that had been built in 1870 for a Kuwaiti merchant. The Dicksons moved in to the house in 1929, and the building served as the British political agency until 1935. Harold Dickson continued to live there until his death in 1959, and Violet until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when she was evacuated, unwillingly, to Britain. She intended to return to her home in Kuwait City, but died on 4 January 1991, some eight weeks before the liberation of Kuwait on 27 February. She was 94. The house was ransacked during the invasion, but has since been restored by the Kuwaiti National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, and is now a tourist attraction. It is one of few surviving examples of 19th-century Kuwaiti architecture, with thirty rooms on two floors.
Violet Dickson had a son Saud (died in May 2005), and a daughter Zahra Freeth, who is also an author on Middle Eastern topics. Dame Violet was given the honorific title Umm Saud (Arabic: أم سعود meaning Mother of Saud), and was also known as Umm Kuwait - Mother of Kuwait. She was also given the honorific Hajjiyah, a term of respect meaning a female who has completed the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. This is unusual, as non-Muslims are not allowed to perform the Haj.
The British Political Agency in Kuwait was based in a house that had been built in 1870 for a Kuwaiti merchant. The Dicksons moved in to the house in 1929, and the building served as the British political agency until 1935. Harold Dickson continued to live there until his death in 1959, and Violet until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when she was evacuated, unwillingly, to Britain. She intended to return to her home in Kuwait City, but died on 4 January 1991, some eight weeks before the liberation of Kuwait on 27 February. She was 94. The house was ransacked during the invasion, but has since been restored by the Kuwaiti National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, and is now a tourist attraction. It is one of few surviving examples of 19th-century Kuwaiti architecture, with thirty rooms on two floors.
Umm Soud was loved by Kuwaities as much as she loved Kuwait and its poeple.
Books and articles by Violet Dickson:
1. A visit to Maskan and Auha Islands in the Persian Gulf off Kuwait, May 7th, 1942" Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 43, 258-264 (Reprinted in Ahmadi Newsletter 7, 5-12) (1942).
2. The Wild Flowers of Kuwait and Bahrain London: George Allen & Unwin (1955).
3. Forty Years in Kuwait London: George Allen & Unwin (1971).
4. Violet Dickson wrote an introduction to Kuwait's Natural History: An Introduction edited by David Clayton. Kuwait: Kuwait Oil Company (1983)
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Dickson
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