Lady Muriel Paget

Lady Muriel Paget (1876 - 1938), nee Finch-Hatton, wife of Sir Richard Surtees Paget, second Baronet of Oldfallings Hall, Wolverhampton, pictured with her youngest child and only son, John Starr Paget (1914-1992), later aeronautical engineer and company director. Lady Paget was a humanitarian relief worker, first establishing soup kitchens in the poor districts of London, becoming secretary of the Invalid Kitchens' Fund. She then opened a kitchen catering for Belgian refugees in London at the start of the First World War. Her work then extended to Russia and Eastern Europe where she opened field and base hospitals, ambulances and worked indefatigably for the poor and needy both during and after the war - lobbying, training, recruiting social workers and nurses. In 1924 she organised the rescue and relief of stranded Britons in Russia called the British Subjects in Russia Relief Association. Lady Paget had five children, who were cared for by a nanny while their mother worked abroad almost continuously.