Suffragist

51

Married

Stock House, Sturminster, Dorset

NUWSS

Complies

Innes Elisabeth Skinner (1859-1944) was born on 22 April 1859 at 57 Eccleston Square - the London townhouse of her parents Charles Binny Skinner (1808-1889), a partner in Jardine, Skinner & Co. of Calcutta, and Frances Mary Andrewes (1827-1900). Innes was one of nine children (5 girls & 4 boys) and was probably educated at home (the 1871 census lists a French Governess). From 1867 to 1897 the family owned The Chantry, a large mansion near Ipswich. In 1887, Innes married the Rev. Cecil George Paget (1853-1929), then vicar of Holt in Dorset. They had nine children, although one son died at 8 weeks old and three sons were killed in the First World War. From 1905 to 1917 Cecil was Rector of Stock Gaylard, a small parish in north Dorset. The family lived on the Stock Gaylard estate at Stock House, a small Georgian country house surrounded by 80 acres of deer park. In April 1909, Innes was a founder committee member of the Sherborne branch of the NUWSS and in the 1911 census she gave her occupation as ‘suffragist’. In August 1916, Innes gave an address to the newly founded branch of the Women’s Union in the neighbouring parish of Fifehead Neville, Dorset. Innes may have inherited her interest in women’s rights from her mother who is known to have hosted events in support of the Irish Distressed Ladies’ Fund (1892) and for the House of Training for Lady Workers for the Mission Field (1900). Innes passed this interest on to her youngest daughter Cecily Innes Paget (1902-1979) who went on to teach at the Tumelong Mission in Pretoria, South Africa. A distant relative of the family, Dame Shirley Paget Marchioness of Anglesey, was National Chair of the NFWI from 1966 to 1969. From 1917 to 1922 Cecil was Vicar of Cassington, Oxfordshire where he commissioned a village war memorial on which their three sons who died in the First World War are commemorated. In 1922, Cecil and Innes retired to 70, Woodstock Road, Oxford, where Cecil died in 1929, and Innes died, aged 85, on 29 December 1944. Researched and contributed by Rachel Hassall.