Blanche Edith Baughan (16 January 1870 – 20 August 1958) was a New Zealand poet, writer, botanist and penal reformer.

[3]: 42  Similarly some sources assert that Ruth murdered John[5][6] but Markwell’s research found that he died of natural causes.

[3]: 34–37 After John’s death the family of six children continued to live in Montpelier Rd, Brighton with the eldest daughter Kate as head of the household.

[3]: 46 [7][8] After graduation Baughan lived and worked in the Settlement Movement in Shoreditch and Hoxton in the East End of London.

[1][3]: 67  She was active in the suffrage movement,[1] having attended Royal Holloway College at the same time as suffragist Emily Davison.

[1] She became part of the literary community making friends with other writers such as Jessie Mackay, Johannes Carl Andersen, James Cowan and the Australian A.G.

[3]: 128–138  Baughan, Jessie Mackay and another writer Mary Colborne-Veel founded the Canterbury Women's Club in 1913 to learn about topics of interest in the wider world such as social work, education, the arts and current events.

[3]: 156  With her love of hiking and mountaineering, which had begun in England, she explored many parts of the country, writing about them in her travel essays.

In 1914–1915 she travelled to America where she was able to visit the Vedanta temple in San Francisco and make contact with some swamis, with whom she later corresponded.

[3]: 174–175 [8] Her association with that cause, support for conscientious objector Archibald Baxter and the fact that she spoke German put her under some scrutiny at that time.

[1][24] Whitcombe and Tombs published a number of her essays as books and booklets including ones on Arthur's Pass and the Otira Gorge in 1925 and on Mt Egmont in 1929.

[3]: 262–272 As a result of her spiritual beliefs, being able to live on private means and her experience of social work in London, Baughan was committed to, and campaigned for, civil liberty and prison reform.

[3]: 186  An article in The Spectator prompted her, with her friend Berta Burns, to found the first branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform outside Britain in 1924.

[3]: 191  In 1936, assisted by another penal reformer Frederick de la Mare and printed by Bob Lowry, she published the book People in Prison using the pseudonym 'TIS'.