Chatelaine (pronounced shat-l-eyn or shahtuh-len (French))
(1) The wife of a castellan; mistress of a château or castle.
(2) The mistress of an elegant or fashionable household.
(3) A hook-like clasp or a chain for suspending keys, trinkets, scissors, a watch, etc, worn at the waist by women.
(4) A woman's decorative lapel pendant or other ornament resembling this.
(5) Historic legal slang for a sub-set of acquisitive wives for whom the business of divorce is something of a calling (now rare).
1845: From the French châtelaine (a female castellan; wife of a castellan; mistress of a castle or château (country house)), the feminine form of châtelain (castle-keeper, one living in a castle) from the Old French chastelain (owner and lord of a castle, nobleman; keeper of a castle), from the Medieval Latin castellanus (occupants of a castle), the construct being castell(um) (castle, fort (chastel in French)) (diminutive of castrum (castle, fort) from the primitive Indo-European ḱes (to cut off, separate)) + -ānus (the suffix demoting “of or pertaining to”). The use of the masculine equivalent in this context was rare because of historic social and economic structures. In fashion, as a type of ornamental (though originally functional) piece, use dates from 1851; the idea being a piece which resembles the chain of keys a chatelaine would wear.
Gold digging
In the slang of English divorce lawyers, chatelaine was a term for a sub-set of husband-hunting women for whom the most important criterion in their search was the quality of the house which came with the subject, the play on words based on the ancient role of the chatelaine being the "the keeper of the castle". Applied mostly either to the impoverished gentry or aspirational young ladies seeking upward-mobility, chatelaines were famously good "housekeepers"; after the divorce they often "kept the house". The more accessible modern form is gold-digger. An exemplar of the type was the admirable Norah Docker (Lady Docker, née Turner; 1906–1983) a dance-club hostess who was thrice-married, each husband proving more lucrative than the last. Her most famous acquisition was Sir Bernard Docker (1896–1978), chairman of the Daimler motor company for which she helped design half a dozen cars; known as the Docker Daimlers, they were an acquired taste but certainly large and conspicuous as intended, each generating much publicity though it's doubtful they made any positive contribution to Daimler's bottom line. Some of the more generous critics were prepared to concede some weren't as bad as the others.
1955 Daimler DK400 Golden Zebra
The last of the Docker Daimlers, the Golden Zebra was a two-door fixed head coupé (FHC) with coachwork by Hooper, built on the existing DK400 chassis. The interior was finished with an African theme, the dashboard of ivory and the upholstery in zebra-skin while external metal trim was gold-plated. Lady Docker personally chose the zebra skin, claiming mink was unpleasantly hot. It was first shown at the 1955 Paris Motor Show, the French apparently appalled and it's of note this stylistic relic appeared in the same building used for the debut of the Citroën DS.
The decorative belt hook or clasp worn was at the waist with a series of chains suspended from it, a design dating from antiquity when they were a convenient way of carrying useful household tools. By the nineteenth century, in respectable households the chatelaine displayed the status of women in a household and the one with the keys to the desks and other locked cabinets was "the woman of the household". She was the one to direct the servants and tradesmen and lock or lock the valuables of the house, possessing total authority over who had access to what. When a woman married and moved into her father-in-law's house, the mother-in-law would often hold on to the keys but upon widowhood, they were usually passed to the oldest son's wife, status transferring with the keys. Better to show-off this prestige, chatelaines became increasingly elaborate and expensive. In larger houses with a full complement of servants, a similar hierarchy existed and the controller of the keys was the most senior female of the downstairs staff.
