Eliza Sheffield

Eliza Dinah Sheffield (née Fairchild; 6 September 1856 – 28 November 1942) was an English entrepreneur, socialite and forger.

Born into a working class family in Southampton, England, she rose through the ranks of society through marriage to Henry Digby Sheffield, a minor aristocrat.

Since Fairchild was a barmaid at the time of their marriage, they had to invent a more prestigious background for her and she took the name Evelyn Diana Turnour Sheffield, presenting herself as the child of a British naval officer and a Spanish aristocrat.

After her husband died in 1888, Sheffield continued to engage with high society and through both romantic and friendly relationships inherited large sums of money, allowing her to pursue her own interests.

[2] Eliza and her brothers attended a school owned and operated by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company in Southampton, until the age of at least 14.

[2] Eliza took the name Evelyn Diana Turnour Fairchild and claimed to have been born in Cádiz in Spain as the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat and a British naval officer.

[2] The Sheffields lived a life of leisure and spent much time in Canada and the United States engaging in fishing and big-game hunting.

[1] Sheffield had the year prior also inherited money from Sir John Sebright, who for some time had acted as her guardian and upon his death in 1890 left her with £500 alongside his photographs and albums.

In 1893, she heard that the engineer Thomas Henry Rees had taken a patent for the use of hot dry air for several medical issues, an idea she herself had also come up with.

The two got into contact and together they took a patent for "An Improved Medical Dry Bath for Applying Superheated Steam or Gases and Medicines in Vapour to the Human Body".

[1] The patented "Tallerman–Sheffield Hot-Air Treatment of Disease" was used to treat joint problems and rheumatism through hot dry air baths (essentially "baking" the patient); the technique was tested successfully at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London in 1894 and quickly began being used in other hospitals in the city as well as internationally in cities such as Paris, Berlin, Baden-Baden and Philadelphia.

Sheffield maintained an interest in the medical field for the rest of her life and remained proud of her contribution to the hot-air treatment.

[2] The trial commenced on 23 February, though Sheffield almost immediately attempted to withdraw once she learnt that Townshend's counsel intended to parade her membership in the Golden Dawn before the court.

[1] It is likely that Sheffield's life story had at least some influence on the play Pygmalion (1913) by George Bernard Shaw, in particular on the protagonist Eliza Doolittle.