Photograph of Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

52361

Title

Photograph of Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair, President of the Edinburgh Ladies Chess Club, 1905-1941

Description

One framed black and white profile photograph of Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair, promoter of women's education and campaigner for women's rights. She wears her hair in a bun, a slim framed pair of glasses and a white fur collar to the wrobe she wears over her dark top.

Accession number

SH.2022.503

Copyright

The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries

Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair was a Scottish campaigner for women's education and women's suffrage. When Mair was 19, she started the Edinburgh Essay Society, soon renamed the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society. She became its president and remained so for 70 years. The society met in the spacious Mair family home in the New Town and offered Edinburgh women of a certain background the chance to discuss social questions, while learning public speaking and debating skills. They published The Attempt, renamed the Ladies' Edinburgh Magazine in 1876, which linked them with readers across the country. It was edited by Mair and Helen Campbell Reid. Louisa and Flora Stevenson were early members of the society, as were Louisa Lumsden, founder of St Leonards School in St Andrews, and Charlotte Carmichael, mother of Marie Stopes. Mair belonged to the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage, which had been founded in 1867 as the first Scottish society to campaign for votes for women, and sent speakers to events all over Scotland, including Dr Elsie Inglis, its honorary secretary from 1906. Mair later became its president, and then president of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. In 1886 she was involved with Mary Russell Walker and others in setting up St George's Training College, followed by St. George's High School for Girls in 1888.[6] The training college was the first Scottish institution to train women to teach in secondary schools and the high school the first Scottish day school for girls that taught them up to university entrance level. Girls from St George's were among the first female graduates of Edinburgh University. Mair also acted as treasurer of the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women's Masson Hall project, and chaired committees of the Bruntsfield Hospital for Women and Children and the Elsie Inglis Memorial Maternity Hospital. She also found time to prove a woman could have skill in both archery and chess, and belonged to the Ladies' Chess Club. An obituary in The Scotsman called her a "woman pioneer" and a "venerable and notable Edinburgh lady, one who has helped make history in her time." She is remembered also on her paternal family's memorial in St. Cuthbert's Churchyard, Edinburgh

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