Edith Sclater


Dame Edith Harriet, Lady Sclater, DBE was a British dame.

Early life and family

Sclater was born at Hilliers in Petworth into an ancient Sussex family. She was the second but eldest surviving daughter of Sir Walter Barttelot, who was created a baronet in 1875, and Harriet Musgrave, daughter of Rev. Sir Christopher Musgrave, 9th Baronet.
Edith's eldest brother was killed during the Boer War and her second brother, was killed in 1888 while part of the Emin Pasha Expedition in Central Africa. Further tragedy befell the family when her nephew was killed at Teheran in October 1918.

First World War

During the First World War, she operated Lady Sclater's Work Room and Smokes Fund, was president of the Salisbury branch of the Prisoners of War Packing Association, president of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families' Association at Central Hackney as well as the Salisbury Plain Pensions Committee. For these efforts she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours.

Personal life

She married General Sir Henry Crichton Sclater, son of James Henry Sclater, on 12 June 1884. The union was childless.
Sir Henry Crichton Sclater died on 26 September 1923. She died on 29 March 1927 of heart failure following pneumonia at her Ovington Gardens home in London.
Her funeral took place on 2 April 1927 at Four Elms in Kent.