Elizabeth Biddulph, Baroness Biddulph

Lady Elizabeth Philipa Biddulph (1834–1916) was an English humanitarian and temperance leader.

Biography

Elizabeth Philipa Yorke was born in England, November 15, 1834. She was a daughter of the Charles Yorke, 4th Earl of Hardwicke, and first married to Henry John Adeane, M.P., who died in 1870. In 1877, she married Michael Biddulph, afterward Baron Biddulph of Ledbury, Herefordshire, a member of the banking firm of Cocks, Biddulph, and Co., London. Lady Biddulph was led to join a temperance society in Ledbury through the unwillingness of her physician, the eminent Sir Andrew Clark, to prescribe alcoholic stimulants for her during an attack of illness. His prescription of total abstinence resulted in such positive benefit that she took the total-abstinence pledge and put on the blue ribbon, becoming an active worker in the cause of temperance reform. She was soon afterward elected president of the Ledbury Temperance Union. She also united with the Rechabites and the Good Templars. During 1896-98, she was president of the Women's Total Abstinence Union. Mr. Biddulph was raised to the peerage in 1903. Besides her activities in the temperance cause, Lady Biddulph devoted much of her time to the relief of the poor, and the promotion of various movements for the better care of the sick and dependent classes. Lady Biddulph was a member of the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert. She died in 1916.

Selected works

• Charles Philip Yorke, fourth Earl of Hardwicke : a memoir by his daughter, the Lady Biddulph of Ledbury, 1910 Text

External links

• Photo, Lady Elizabeth Philippa Adeane (née Yorke, later Lady Biddulph) by Camille Silvy, albumen print, 1860, at the National Portrait Gallery