Helena Paulina Downing (1841–1881)
Helena Paulina Shearer (1881–1885)
1841/2–85
Irish-born socialist and suffragist. Daughter of Washington and Mary Frances Downing. Lectured on women’s rights and education. Unsuccessfully contested the London school-board elections in Tower Hamlets in 1879. Provisional committee member of the Association of Liberal Thinkers, 1878. Married John Ronald Shearer in 1881.
Sources
Census returns of England and Wales 1851 (The National Archives: Public Record Office HO107/1513/370/25)
letter from M. D. Conway, 18 November 1878
ODNB
Bibliography
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
letter
