Lavinia Talbot

Hon. Lavinia Lyttelton (4 January 1849 – 9 October 1939) was a British promoter of women's education in the United Kingdom. Life Lavinia Lyttelton was born in London in 1849. She was the seventh child of George Lyttelton, 4th Baron Lyttelton and Mary, née Glynne; she was born on 29 June 1870. She had eleven siblings, and in 1864 her elder sisters left her, aged fifteen, to care for her father, younger sister, and eight brothers at Hagley Hall. She escaped five years later when her father remarried and the following year she married. Her new husband however had become the warden at Keble College the year before and she had a new house to run. She took relief attending the lectures for women organised by an ad-hoc group which included Mary Ward, Louise Creighton and Charlotte Byron Green. Members of the committee who organised the lectures for women moved on to join the Association for Promoting the Education of Women in Oxford, including Mary Ward, Louise Creighton, Charlotte Byron Green and Lavinia Talbot. She was joined by her husband and many realised that they would need a new hall where women students could live whilst at university. The consensus was split on religious grounds and Somerville Hall, which ignored a woman's denomination was partnered by Lady Margaret Hall which the Talbots, as strong Anglicans, supported. In 1913 she backed the controversial invitation of Maude Royden, a woman, to talk to the all-male Church Congress about White Slavery.