Louisa Fagan

Background

Mission Ballard learned to play chess as a child from her father William who married Angela De Deo in Naples in 1847.

Career

Mistress Fagan was part of the chess scene in India, and has some of her problems published in The City of London Chess Magazine. She was the younger sister of Doctor William Robert Ballard, born in Naples in 1848, a strong London chess player in the late 19th, early 20th century.

Achievements

• She was a winner of a chess tournament in Bombay, India, in which 12 men took part. She won all her games, but was disqualified because she was a woman playing in a club whose membership was confined to mentor She appealed this decision in court and won.

Membership

Mistress Fagan became an emancipation activist, and was one of the founding members of the Ladies" Chess Club of London, which boasted 100 members at its peak and lasted until after World War I. She took 2nd place, behind Mary Rudge, in the first Ladies’ International Chess Congress held at the club in London from June 22 to July 3, 1897.