Mrs George (Clara) Daymond (1873-1957)
Clara Daymond (née Townshend) was one of the two first women elected to the Plymouth Borough Council in 1919. Best remembered as the Queen of St Budeaux, she was the daughter of a Devonport Dockyard shipwright, and Plymouth’s first woman Councillor, elected to Plymouth Borough Council in 1919. Clara became a member of the Plymouth Women’s Co-operative Guild as a young woman, as well as being a Salvation Army member, and a Methodist – unsurprisingly she was also a strong supporter of teetotalism. Her husband, George, was a local builder, involved in the development of the new Devonport suburb of St Budeaux, where they moved in the mid-1890s. An energetic woman who took seriously the idea promoted by the Co-operative Guild of the need to involve women in current affairs and local politics, she became a Poor Law Guardian for Devonport in 1909 (by this time, St Budeaux was formally part of Devonport). An enthusiastic campaigner for women’s suffrage, she set aside her Liberal convictions to campaign for Nancy Astor’s election in 1919, arguing that Nancy was ‘a woman who would represent women in every sense of the word and bring credit to the town of Plymouth’. In 1922, Clara and George became Conservatives. She continued, interwar, to work tirelessly for women and children’s interest in Plymouth, and for the interests of St Budeaux. She remained an influential Councillor until, in 1939, she was elected Alderman after her husband’s death. She was an ardent supporter of women’s involvement in public life in all possible ways, leaving a significant legacy of service in Plymouth.