Catherine Blair

Catherine Hogg Blair (née Shields; 8 January 1872 – 18 November 1946) was a Scottish suffragette and founder of the Scottish Women's Rural Institute (SWRI), and member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).

Catherine Blair was bornin North Berwick to Susan Jemima Bertram and James Shields. One of six children, Catherine attended Bathgate Academy and later married Thomas Blair, a farmer, in 1894. The couple moved to Hoprig Mains Farm in East Lothian and had four children.

Blair was an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), and chaired local meetings and wrote to the press. She did not participate in militant protest because of her young family. Blair established her farm as a clandestine refuge for Scottish suffragettes who had been released from prison under licence as a result of the Cat and Mouse Act. She was a friend of fellow suffragette, Nannie Brown, who also worked on the SWRI.

In 1917, Blairidentified the need for a Scottish example of the emerging Women's Institutes movement and consequently founded the Scottish Women's Rural Institute. The first SWRI meeting was held in Longniddry, East Lothian, and Madge Watt was there from Canada – 37 women became members. The SWRI created the chance for rural women to forge new social networks and share skills with one another; something Blair was passionate about understanding the obligatory ties women had to their home lives.

During the 1921 census she was so annoyed that the census would record her as just "wife" that she moved herself and her children to a nearby barn so that the census form would need to show her as a person in her own right.

She became a magistrate in 1921, and helped set up the Lothian Home Arts Guild of Craftswomen.

Blair died in North Berwick on 18 November 1946.