Sir Richard Paget, 2nd Baronet
| Sir Richard Paget, 2nd Baronet | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Richard Arthur Surtees Paget 13 January 1869 Cranmore, Somerset, England |
| Died | 23 October 1955 (aged 86) Knightsbridge, London, England |
| Occupation | Barrister, amateur scientist |
| Known for | Paget Gorman Sign System |
| Spouse(s) |
Muriel Finch-Hatton (1897–1938; her death) Grace Hartley Glover (1939–1955; his death) |
| Parent(s) | Sir Richard Paget, 1st Baronet and Caroline Surtees |
Sir Richard Arthur Surtees Paget, 2nd Baronet (13 January 1869 – 23 October 1955) was a British barrister and amateur scientific investigator, who specialised in speech science and the origin of speech. Following the publication of his book on these topics, Human Speech, in 1930, Paget worked for the remaining decades of his life on a new type of signing system for the deaf, which became the Paget Gorman Sign System.
Paget was born in 1869 at Cranmore Hall, Somerset. His father was Sir Richard Paget, 1st Baronet, a Conservative member of parliament; his mother was Caroline Isabel Surtees, the daughter of Henry Edward Surtees, another MP, of County Durham. He was educated at Eton College, and then at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received a third-class degree in chemistry. He succeeded his father as Paget Baronet in 1908.
Paget was called to the bar as a barrister at the Inner Temple in 1895. His sharp legal and scientific mind saw him appointed to a number of legal commissions, boards and committees, including the London Court of Arbitration, the Patent Law Committee, and the Admiralty Board of Invention and Research.
Educated as a chemist and having worked as a physicist, Paget held a deep interest in various fields of science. He was also well-versed in music and the arts (and had written several songs as well as constructed his own musical instruments), but his reputation was that of an "eccentric amateur" scientist.
Sir Richard's daughter, Pamela Paget (later Lady Glenconner), was often a subject of his experiments. Pamela's son and Sir Richard's grandson, Alexander Chancellor, wrote in his "Long Life" column in The Spectator that Pamela had broken her arm when Sir Richard encouraged her to throw herself backwards from the open platform of a London bus on Park Lane to demonstrate his theory that, due to air currents, one could fall horizontally from a bus travelling at a certain speed and land safely on the road. According to Lady Glenconner's obituary in The Telegraph, Sir Richard had also filled his daughters' ears with treacle (to simulate deafness) while testing his sign language system.
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