Patricia Ford, Lady Fisher

Patricia Ford, Lady Fisher
Member of Parliament
for North Down
In office
15 April 1953 – 26 May 1955
Preceded by Walter Smiles
Succeeded by George Currie
Personal details
Born Patricia Smiles
(1921-04-05)5 April 1921
Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland
Died 23 May 1995(1995-05-23) (aged 74)
Chilton, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Nationality British
Political party Ulster Unionist Party
Spouse(s) Neville Ford (m.1941-56, divorced); 2 daughters
Sir Nigel Fisher(m.1956-95; her death)
Children 2
Religion Anglican

Patricia Ford, Lady Fisher (née Smiles; 5 April 1921 – 23 May 1995), was briefly an Ulster Unionist Party politician in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. She was the first woman Member of Parliament from Northern Ireland, and the second woman to be returned to a seat in Westminster from a constituency in Ireland (the first to take her seat).

She was born at Donaghadee, County Down, and educated at Bangor Collegiate School, Glendower Preparatory School, London, and abroad. Her father was Ulster Unionist MP Sir Walter D. Smiles and her mother, Margaret Heigway.

Mrs Ford, as she then was, returned from living in Cheshire upon her father's death in the MV Princess Victoria disaster in January 1953 and was returned unopposed to Parliament from his North Down constituency. In her maiden speech to the House she was required to apologise for an article she had written in the Sunday Express in which she mentioned that Bessie Braddock and Edith Summerskill had been snoring whilst asleep in the lady members' room. The matter was referred to the Committee for Privileges.

Ford was a strong proponent of equal pay between the sexes and rode in a horse-drawn carriage to Parliament to draw attention to the matter. She retired at the 1955 general election. In 1972 she founded and was co-chairman of the Women Caring Trust, now Hope for Youth Northern Ireland. She was expelled from the Orange Order's women's section for attending a wedding at the Brompton Oratory.

In 1941, she married cricketer Neville Montagu Ford, son of the Very Rev. Lionel George Bridges Justice Ford and grandson of 4th Lord Lyttelton. They had two daughters: Sally, who married Sir Michael Grylls and whose son is explorer Bear Grylls, and Mary Rose, who is married and has two daughters.

Patricia Ford was divorced from her first husband and married Sir Nigel Fisher, MP, in 1956, acquiring the courtesy title of Lady Fisher and becoming stepmother to Mark Fisher, later a Labour Party MP.

References

    Parliament of the United Kingdom
    Preceded by
    Sir Walter Dorling Smiles    		 Member of Parliament for North Down
    1953–1955     		Succeeded by
    George Currie
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