Private Means

34

Married

Nubia House, Baring Road, Cowes PO31 8DH

NUWSS

Complies

Eva was born Eva Hermione Mackintosh in May 1876 in Inverness, Scotland. Her father, Alexander Aeneas Mackintosh, was the 27th chief of Mackintosh. Her Mother, Margaret Frances Graham, was the daughter of a Baronet. She married politician Godfrey Baring in 1898. They had four children, most notably Helen Azealea Baring, who was the lover of both the future king George VI and Prince George, Duke of Kent and part of the aristocratic group ‘Bright Young Things’. Godfrey was the liberal MP for the Isle of Wight from 1906-11 and was considered the father of the Isle of Wight County Council due to his 60 years of service. While living at the Nubia house in Cowes, Eva was active within the liberal associations on the island, expressing her belief in women’s suffrage. She was elected as executive of the Newport Women’s liberal association in 1906, and attended many meetings with the president, Mrs Russell Cooke. Eva, Like Mrs Russell Cooke, was a strong suffragist and did not support the militant suffragettes' actions. She was president of the Cowes Women’s Liberal association by 1907, and she chaired multiple meetings for her branch and beyond. In November 1908, she chaired a Portsmouth town hall meeting on women's suffrage attended by Lady Frances Balfour and the Liberal MP for Portsmouth. Mrs Baring was popular with the island's liberals, as the audience at a Freshwater liberal meeting in 1909, which she attended with her husband, requested she make a speech on women's suffrage. She used her position to sponsor a ball in aid of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage in June 1909, which was attended by the likes of Lady Castlereagh and Lady Frances Balfour. Eva complied with the 1911 census, in which she is recorded as living at 195 Queens Gate, London, very near to the Royal Albert Hall. As the wife of an MP and a member of the aristocracy, the family had a home in London to be close to the centre of politics and society itself. However, she has been plotted on the map at her main home on the Isle of Wight. This was the family home and the place where she actively engaged in the suffrage movement impacting her home community. During the Second World War, Eva was the commandant of Northwood Auxiliary Hospital, which was opened in 1915 after the War Office requisitioned it to be used as a Red Cross military hospital. Her service led her to be given an M.B.E. by King George V in his 1919 New Year's honours. In 1920, she became the first woman on the Isle of Wight to be appointed a country magistrate. She was the chairman of the Isle of Wight women’s nursing association as well as a member of the county education committee for the island. She was also the country commissioner of the Girl Guides. Eva passed away on the 9th of June 1934 while visiting her stepsister Lady Helen Cassel at Putteridge Bury, Luton. She had gone to stay there after being taken ill in London a month before. Her funeral in Cowes was widely attended by nobility with whom she socialised and was an integral part - Prince George and Princess Beatrice sent a wreath, as Eva had hosted the royal family during Cowes Week regatta multiple times - but also by nurses and Girl Guides who attended to “give their last salute to a former chief” demonstrating the social breadth of Eva's life and work. Sources: Mosley, Charles, Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage: Clan Chiefs, Scottish Feudal Barons (Stokesley, Burke’s Peerage & Gentry, 2003); Beauclerk, Peter, Burke’s Landed Gentry of Great Britain (Routledge, 2001). Contributed by Becca Aspden, URSS student researcher, History Dept., Warwick University