History

 Lady Henrietta Stanley (1807-1895) was a Canadian-born campaigner. Her father was the Viscount Dillon, and her mother the sister of the Baron Oranmore and Browne. Due to her family’s status, she received education in Canada and Italy. 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.” In 1826 she married Edward Stanley, who became the Baron Stanley in 1850. She used this influence to help the cultivation of Queen’s College, and staunchly defended “the right of women to the highest culture hitherto reserved to men”. She founded Girton College and supported the newly founded GPDSC.