Mrs Laura Ellicott (1890-1959)
She was a shop proprietor in the Barbican, and a long-standing Conservative Party member, acting as the Honorary Secretary of the Sutton Ward Conservative Association from 1939, and Chairman in 1946, becoming Chairman of the Sutton Ward Women’s Conservative Association in 1948. Her local activities on behalf of the Sutton community, and the Party, brought her into regular contact with Nancy Astor, who encouraged her to stand for election as a local councillor in 1946. Though not successful, she continued to lobby hard locally for a better allocation of housing and small shop resources in the Sutton Ward. Mrs Ellicott was one of the 200 small traders who, in 1939, got together to establish a Plymouth branch of the National Federation of Small Shopkeepers, in response to the challenges facing such traders locally in wartime.