Laura McLaren, Baroness Aberconway
Laura Elizabeth McLaren, Baroness Aberconway CBE, DStJ was a British suffragist, author and horticulturalist.
Life
Her birth was registered in the Salford district of Lancashire on 14 May 1854. She was the daughter of Henry Davis Pochin, a noted industrialist and chemist, and his wife, Agnes, a leading women's rights activist.She married the journalist and Liberal MP Charles McLaren, a business associate of her father's, at Westminster on 6 March 1877. Charles McLaren was later created Baron Aberconway. They had four children. Laura McLaren's two sons became Liberal MP's, Henry D. McLaren for the West Staffordshire constituency and, Francis McLaren for the Spalding constituency in Lincolnshire. Francis married Barbara Jekyll, a niece of the famous garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. He was killed in a flying accident in 1917. Her daughter Priscilla, also a noted activist and suffragist, married Sir Henry Norman and, with him, developed gardens at Ramster Hall, Surrey. Laura's other daughter, Elsie Dorothea, married Sir Edward Johnson-Ferguson, 2nd Baronet.
Baroness Aberconway was a campaigner for women's suffrage, founding the Liberal Women's Suffrage Union and publishing some writings on the subject. During World War I, she converted her house in London into a hospital and helped run it.
She died in 1933 at her home, Château de la Garoupe, on the Cap d’Antibes in France.