Meriel Talbot

Dame Meriel Lucy Talbot, (16 June 1866 – 15 December 1956) was a British public servant and women's welfare worker. During the First World War, she organised the Women's Land Army and edited their magazine The Landswoman. Talbot was born in Westminster, the daughter of the politician John Gilbert Talbot and his wife, Meriel Sarah, daughter of George Lyttelton, 4th Baron Lyttelton. She was educated at Kensington High School. During the 1880s and 1890s Meriel Talbot participated in the settlement movement. She was secretary, jointly with Idina Brassey, of the Bethnal Green Ladies' Committee in 1889, chaired by her mother. In 1891 she combined work at the Women's University Settlement (WUS) for the Children's Country Holiday Fund, the post of secretary to the Ladies' Branch of Oxford House (again chaired by her mother), and social work training at the WUS relating to the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants. She also took on some of the house management work that had fallen to Margaret Sewell, the incoming Warden of WUS. In 1897, again with Idina Brassey, she was joint secretary in the newly formed West End Association. From 1901 to 1916 she served as secretary to the Victoria League, and in this capacity travelled widely throughout the British Empire.