Lady Muriel Evelyn Vernon Paget CBE DStJ (née Finch-Hatton; 19 August 1876 – 16 June 1938) was a British philanthropist and humanitarian relief worker, initially based in London, and later in Eastern and Central Europe.

The aim of this charity was to provide, at the nominal cost of 1d, well-prepared and nourishing meals for expectant and nursing mothers, sick children, and convalescents whose would otherwise have been unable to afford them.

The kitchen was situated in Scovell Road, with meals being served between 12 noon and 1 p.m.[10] Later on, the charity's rules were revised and the charges were assessed according to the earning capacity of each individual's family.

In 1917, to raise funds for the Anglo-Russian hospitals, she organized a large Russian exhibition on the theme of "Russia in Peace and War" at the Grafton Galleries in London, which ran through May of that year.

The exhibition included a series of Russian concerts (where Feodor Chaliapin sang to raise money for her), lectures on various Russian-related topics, dramatic performances of Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy, etc.

However, in February 1918, in the wake of the Bolshevik coup d'état, the majority of the British staff at the Anglo-Russian Hospital in Petrograd returned to the UK, leaving a Russian Red Cross commission with supplies for a further six months.

She later reported that some of the problems were caused by rampant inflation (the price of clothing, she maintained, was 1,000% higher, when compared with the pre-war rates); others had arisen because during the Russian occupation there had been widespread commandeering.

Cultivation was poor, the potato crop had been destroyed, and some peasants had gone to Hungary to work there for the harvest season as was usual, only to find that they were taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks, with the result that their families at home were left without support.

[21] A small number of British residents in the Soviet Union were unable (for example, because of age or infirmity or poverty) – or in a few cases, unwilling – to leave Russia after the October Revolution of 1917.

Since many of these were associated, in the minds of the Soviet authorities, with the employment in which they had been engaged under the Old Regime (e.g. private tutors, governesses, technical or clerical staff with British companies), their position became highly vulnerable, even though they might have married into Russian families or (in certain instances) they may have been born and brought up in Russia and spoke little or no English at all.

[23] In March 1938, Bulgarian Christian Rakovsky, a former Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom, was on trial in Moscow, accused with 20 others of conspiring with Leon Trotsky against Stalin and other treason.

On 9 March 1938, Ellen Wilkinson (Labour Party MP for Jarrow) claimed Lady Muriel had "been lecturing on (her) experiences as (a member) of the British Intelligence Services".

Wilkinson retorted that "those who know something about her work have reason to doubt the statement just made by the Prime Minister", and Willie Gallacher (Communist Party member for Fife West) asserted that Rakovsky was telling the truth.