Pares, Mrs Rosamond, Easthayes, East Hill, Ottery St Mary
Rosamond Jeanne Hilda Pares[1] (1870 – 1944) was born Rosamond Epps on 16 May 1870, the daughter of Emma and Richard Epps. Richard Epps was a physician and surgeon, and the family lived at 89 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London. Rosalind had four elder sisters, Emma, Ellen, Annie and Beatrice, and one younger sister, Adrienne Winifred. Their mother Emma died in 1875; Beatrice died in 1876, aged only seven; and Richard in 1877. The girls were left in the guardianship of their uncle, James Epps, who lived in Upper Norwood, Surrey. At the time of the 1881 census Rosamond was living with her sisters Ellen and Annie, in the care of a schoolmistress, Jessie Manby, at 131 Haverstock Hill, Belsize Park, where their status was described as ‘pupils’. Their youngest sister, Winifred, was living with her uncle and aunt.
Ten years later, Rosamond, described as a student, was living with Ellen, Annie and Winifred in a lodging house in Holdenhurst, Bournemouth. What she did between that date and 1910 is uncertain, but on 31 August 1910 she married Thomas Pares in Fulbeck in Lincolnshire. The choice of Fulbeck seems to have been because Ellen was living in the household of the Rector of Fulbeck and his wife. It seems more probable that Rosamond had met Thomas somewhere on the south coast, as he had been living in Lyme Regis in 1901, described as a retired brewer.
Rosamond and Thomas set up home at East Hayes House, Ottery St Mary, where Thomas took up farming. At the time of the 1911 census they were visiting Thomas’s sister, Gertrude Pares, at 10 Leopold Road, Wimbledon, the house Gertrude shared with Dr Beatrice McGregor. Gertrude and Beatrice were both involved in the suffrage movement, and Gertrude is mentioned as leading the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ (NUWSS) Wimbledon Study Circle in 1913.[2] This may have been the connection that drew Rosamond into the suffrage movement.
Rosamond Pares is first mentioned in connection with the suffrage movement in 1911, when she made a donation to the fund set up by the South West Federation to enable the appointment of a paid organiser.[3] She was to continue as a generous donor to NUWSS fund-raising appeals over the course of the next decade, culminating in a donation of £10 to their appeal for a £10,000 Fund for the National Union of Societies of Equal Citizenship in 1919.[4]
Pares is listed as the secretary to the Ottery St Mary branch of the NUWSS from April 1913 and continued to hold that post at least until 1916, after which there are no further references to a secretary.[5] There is a description of a meeting she organised in April 1914, over which Rachel Fell from Exmouth (q.v.) presided. Rosamond’s sister-in-law Gertrude Pares was the principal speaker. Rachel Fell described the establishment of the ‘Friends of Women’s Suffrage Societies’, and four Friends were recruited.[6]
When war broke out, the Ottery Branch of the NUWSS subscribed the relatively large sum of two guineas to the Devonshire Patriotic Fund. A donation of £10 from Mr and Mrs Thomas Pares appears on the same list, suggesting that Rosamond persuaded the branch to make the donation.[7] Pares and the branch became strong supporters of and fundraisers for the NUWSS Scottish Women’s Hospitals for which both Gertrude Pares and Dr Beatrice McGregor worked in Serbia.[8]
Rosamond and Thomas moved away from Ottery after the First World War. After Thomas’s death in the early 1940s Rosamond shared a house at Heathercot, Tilford, Surrey with her sister Ellen. She died on 7 March 1944 and is buried at Churt.
Entry created by Julia Neville, December 2018
[1] Census and family information from www.ancestry.co.uk .
[2] Common Cause, (CC), 28 Nov 1913, 448.
[3] CC, 9 Nov 1911, 537.
[4] CC, 23 Jul 1915, 214; 28 Sep 1917, 466; 12 Dec 1919, 466.
[5] CC, 4 Apr 1913, 889; 24 Mar 1916, 668.
[6] Devon and Exeter Gazette, 3 Apr 1914; CC, 1 May 1914.
[7] Western Times, 15 Sep 1914.
[8] See Chris_B, Wimbledon Suffragists in the Great War, at https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/261019-wimbledon-suffragists-in-the-great-war/ , accessed 3 Dec 2018. WT 25 Feb 1916 gives an account of a meeting at the Town Hall in Ottery St Mary addressed by Gertrude Pares.