Dame Meriel Lucy Talbot, DBE (16 June 1866 – 15 December 1956) was a British public servant and women's welfare worker. During the First World War, she organised the Women's Land Army and edited their magazine The Landswoman.
During the 1880s and 1890s Meriel Talbot participated in the settlement movement. She was secretary, jointly with Idina Brassey, of the Bethnal Green Ladies' Committee in 1889, chaired by her mother.[2] In 1891 she combined work at the Women's University Settlement (WUS) for the Children's Country Holiday Fund, the post of secretary to the Ladies' Branch of Oxford House (again chaired by her mother), and social work training at the WUS relating to the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants. She also took on some of the house management work that had fallen to Margaret Sewell, the incoming Warden of WUS.[3] In 1897, again with Idina Brassey, she was joint secretary in the newly formed West End Association.[4]
From 1901 to 1916 she served as secretary to the Victoria League, and in this capacity travelled widely throughout the British Empire.[1]
In 1915, she served on the official advisory committee for repatriating enemy aliens. The following year she was appointed the first woman inspector with the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and in 1917 she became director of the Women's Branch of the Board, in charge of the recruitment and co-ordination of the Women's Land Army.[1] The Land Army had 23,000 recruits by the end of the war and there was a monthly magazine named The Landswoman which Talbot edited.[5]