Amelia Scott

Amelia Scott (16 January 1860 – 25 March 1952) was a British social reformer and campaigner for women's suffrage. She was one of the first two women elected as Tunbridge Wells councillors. Early life Amelia Scott was born in Byfleet, Surrey on 16 January 1860, the fourth child of Syms Scott and his wife, Ellen (née Nicholls). Her father was Clerk to the Lord Chamberlain of London and the family were reasonably prosperous, employing in 1861 three servants, a housemaid, nursemaid and cook. By then they had moved to Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells, where Amelia’s youngest sister, Louisa, was born in 1862. Syms Scott died while his children were still young and their mother later remarried. By 1881 Louisa and Amelia were living with an aunt and their grandmother, the three of them being attended to by a cook and three maids. Amelia Scott’s background was therefore comfortably middle class – her aunt and grandmother were described as ‘living on own means’ – although the family was not exactly wealthy. Her maternal grandmother was the widow of a clergyman and there is clear evidence of Amelia’s own religious belief and commitment. After their grandmother’s death Amelia and Louisa Scott set up home together, living in several premises in the Tunbridge Wells area, before finally settling in Lansdowne Road where they lived with another sister, Florence. None of the woman married but they lived in respectable residences and could afford to employ one servant. Together with their siblings, they each inherited a share of their father’s estate and the sisters do not seem to have needed to take on paid work but budgets were necessarily tight as their income was limited.