Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley

Henrietta Maria Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley (; 21 December 1807 – 16 February 1895), was a British Canadian-born political hostess and campaigner for the education of women in England.

She was a founder and benefactor of Girton College at the University of Cambridge, but also a signatory of a petition against women's suffrage. She was the maternal grandmother of philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Early life and family Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lady Stanley was the eldest child of Henry Dillon, 13th Viscount Dillon, and Henrietta Browne, the sister of Dominick Browne, 1st Baron Oranmore and Browne.

In the 1790s her father served as an officer in the "Catholic Irish Brigade" that had been partly stationed in Nova Scotia. In 1814, Henrietta and her family moved to Florence, capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Her non-English upbringing was prominent and her grandson, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, commented:

My grandmother's outlook, throughout her life, was in some ways more Continental than English. She was always downright, free from prudery, and eighteenth-century rather than Victorian in her conversation. Her French and Italian were faultless, and she was passionately interested in Italian unity.

Education campaigns

Lady Stanley cultivated friendships with Thomas Carlyle, F. D. Maurice, and, from 1861, Benjamin Jowett. She presided over an intellectual and political salon, and was one of the original 'lady visitors' of Queen's College, London, founded by Maurice in 1848. This marked her stronger involvement in the campaign for the education of women and her decision to defend, as she later put it, "the right of women to the highest culture hitherto reserved to men". She soon became a prominent supporter of the National Union for the Improvement of Women's Education (1871), the Girls' Public Day School Company that became the Girls Day School Trust (1872) and the London School of Medicine for Women (1874).

Bertrand Russell, her grandson, feared her ridicule and described her as "an eighteenth century type, rationalistic and unimaginative, keen on enlightenment, and contemptuous of Victorian goody-goody priggery". "Grandmama Stanley at Dover Street", according to Russell, "had a considerable contempt for everything that she regarded as silly". She died at her home in Dover Street, which she had shared with her unmarried daughter Maude.

Issue

Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley had 12 children:

Henry Edward John, 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley (1827–1903) Hon. Alice Margaret (20 August 1828 – 19 May 1910), married Augustus Pitt Rivers Hon. Henrietta Blanche (3 July 1830 – 5 January 1921), later Countess of Airlie, wife of David Ogilvy, 10th Earl of Airlie (1826–81); a grandmother of Clementine Churchill, and a great-grandmother of the Mitford sisters Cecilia (3 July 1831 – 22 September 1839), died from head injury after falling from a window in Gosport, Hampshire Hon. Maude Alethea (1833–1915), activist for women and children Margaret Olga Stanley (1 March 1835 – 27 January 1836), died in infancy Lt. Hon. John Constantine (30 September 1836 – 23 April 1878), Grenadier Guards Edward Lyulph Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley (1839–1925) Hon. Katherine Louisa (1842–1874), later Viscountess Amberley, wife of John Russell, Viscount Amberley; mother of the philosopher Bertrand Russell Rt. Rev. Hon. Algernon Charles (16 September 1843 – 23 April 1928), Roman Catholic Bishop of Emmaus (in partibus) Rosalind Frances (1845–1921), later Countess of Carlisle, became the chatelaine of Castle Howard and a radical temperance campaigner. Hon. Mary Ethelfreda Stanley (25 July 1849 – 15 September 1849), died in infancy

Three of their daughters died young. A stained glass window in their memories was erected in 1860 at St Mary's Church, Nether Alderley. On Lord Stanley's tomb in the same church, a brass plaque features an engraving of Lady Stanley and their 12 children.

Lady Stanley's great-great-granddaughter Nancy Mitford wrote of the favouritism she showed in treating her children. Her eldest son, Henry, was her favourite, while her eldest daughter, Alice, was her least favourite and treated accordingly.

Arms