Her father was corporation counsel for New York City from 1875 to 1882, United States Secretary of the Navy from 1885 to 1889 (under President Grover Cleveland), and a force in street-railway affairs until his retirement in 1902.
She received a large fortune from her uncle, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne (1839-1917), one of the founders and original directors of the Standard Oil Company.
During the First World War, at the Summerdown convalescent camp in Eastbourne and at other facilities in England, she organized the Almeric Paget Massage Corps to provide physiotherapy to injured soldiers by trained masseuses.
[7][8] Pauline Paget died after a three weeks' illness at Esher, Surrey, on November 22, 1916, at the age of forty-two.
Lord Queensborough later remarried to another American heiress, Edith Starr Miller, with whom he had three additional daughters before their divorce.