Helena Paulina Downing (1841–1881)
Helena Paulina Shearer (1881–1885)

Irish-born socialist and suffragist. Daughter of Washington and Mary Frances Downing. Lectured on women’s rights and education. Unsuccessfully contested the London school-board elections in Tower Hamlets in 1879. Provisional committee member of the Association of Liberal Thinkers, 1878. Married John Ronald Shearer in 1881.