Alicia Adélaide Needham

Alicia Adélaide Needham (née Montgomery; 31 October 1863 – 24 December 1945) was an Irish composer of songs and ballads. A committed suffragette, she was the first woman to conduct at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and the first female president of the National Eisteddfod of Wales (in 1906). Life Needham was born in Oldcastle, Co. Meath, daughter of John Wilson Montgomery (1834-1911), master of the Bailieborough Workhouse and a clerk to the poor law board of guardians; he was also an antiquarian, contributing to local newspapers on the subject, and produced some books of poetry, becoming known as the “Bard of Bailieborough”. The family subsequently lived at Downpatrick in County Down. She went to boarding school in Derry for four years and spent the following year in Castletown, Isle of Man. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, first for one year only (most likely the academic year 1880–1): piano with the Irish pianist and composer Arthur O’Leary, harmony and counterpoint with Francis William Davenport and occasionally with George Alexander Macfarren and Ebenezer Prout. It is not clear what she did in the intervening three years before she resumed her studies in 188