Eleanor Acland

Eleanor Margaret Acland, née Cropper (1878 – 12 December 1933) was a British Liberal Party politician, suffragist, and novelist. Until 1895 she was known as Eleanor Cropper, from 1895 to 1926 she was known as Eleanor Acland, and from 1926 to her death in 1933 she was known as Lady Acland. She served as president of the Women's Liberal Federation. Background Eleanor Margaret Cropper was born the daughter of Charles James Cropper and Hon. Edith Emily Holland in the Lake District. She was educated at St Leonards School. She then entered Somerville College, Oxford in 1898, graduating with a first-class degree in history in 1900. After graduating, she worked at the University Women’s Settlement in Birmingham. On 31 August 1905 she married Francis Dyke Acland, the son of a prominent Liberal Party baronet. They had three sons and one daughter. Francis Acland was to sit as a Liberal MP. Her eldest son Richard Acland also sat as a Liberal MP, and her son Geoffrey Acland also stood as a Liberal candidate. The other children were Cuthbert Henry Dyke Acland, who was High Sheriff of Westmorland, and Eleanor Edith Dyke Acland, who died in 1923 aged 10 in a road accident at the gates to their country house of Killerton in Devon. During the First World War, Acland worked with Belgian refugees becoming a patron of the Chelsea Committee for Belgian Refugees and Committee Secretary of the Belgian Repatriation Fund for which she was awarded the Queen Elisabeth Medal. In 1926, when her husband succeeded to the family baronetcy, she became Lady Acland.