Maureen Constance Guinness

Maureen Constance Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava was an Anglo-Irish socialite, known as one of the "Guinness Golden Girls". Guinness was known for her unusual sense of fashion, and is believed to have provided inspiration for Barry Humphries’ character Dame Edna Everage and Osbert Lancaster's Maudie Littlehampton in The Daily Express. After the death of her father in 1949, she and a cousin became the first women to sit on the board of the Guinness Brewery. She later became active in charitable work, raising £50,000 between 1958 and 1965 to build the Horder centre for arthritics as well as donating the site in Sussex. She stood down from this committee due to a disagreement, but she later opened Maureen's Oast House in 1996, as a holiday home for arthritics on her Kent estate.