Sarah Mair

Dame Sarah Elizabeth Siddons Mair (23 September 1846 – 13 February 1941) was a Scottish campaigner for women's education and women's suffrage. She was active in the Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women and the Ladies' Edinburgh Debating Society, which she founded before she was 20.

Life Born into a well-to-do family in Edinburgh, Sarah was the daughter of Major Arthur Mair of the 62nd Regiment and Elizabeth Harriot Mair (née Siddons). She was the granddaughter of actor Henry Siddons and great-granddaughter of actress Sarah Siddons.

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. Charlotte Mary Yonge contributed and Mair reviewed in it Josephine Butler's essay collection Women's Work and Women's Culture.

The society and its headquarters in the Mair dining-room were the focus of much effort to promote women's rights and education, spearheaded by women from usually prosperous professional families. Louisa and Flora Stevenson were early members, as were Louisa Lumsden, founder of St Leonards School in St Andrews, and Charlotte Carmichael, mother of Marie Stopes.

The society debated at intervals the question of women's suffrage, 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. 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. Mary Russell Walker returned from London in 1885, qualified to lead the college and later the school. and a DBE in 1931.