Florence C Stevens (c.1890-), her sister Eleanor Stevens, and her friend Rose Barry were supporters of the women's suffrage movement. Florence played in the Drum and Fife Band of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which was formed in 1909, during the summer of which it regularly marched round Holloway Prison to play inspiring music, and also played for special suffrage events and activities. Patricia Woodlock was a member of the WSPU in Liverpool and was repeatedly imprisoned for her suffrage activities. Her release from Holloway Prison after serving three months in Jun 1909 was celebrated by the WSPU by a breakfast in London and receptions in Manchester and Liverpool.
Katharine C Bushnell (1855-1946) was born in Peru, Illinois on 5 Feb 1855. She became a doctor of medicine and a learned scholar of Hebrew and Greek. During her travels in India, Bushnell became involved in exposing the control of prostitution by the Indian government. She then proceeded to England to campaign against its continuance. During the early 1920s, Bushnell returned to America where she worked on her book, God's Word to Women, which was published in 1923. This book was a culmination of the work invested in the 'Women's Correspondence Bible Class'. The lecture notes of this class provided the foundation of the published work. Bushnell held positions such as President of the Union to Combat the Sanitation of Vice (America) and Vice-president of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. Katharine Bushnell died, aged ninety years of age, on 26 Jan 1946. Note: Nothing is known of Mrs F White [TWL 7FWH] other than her being a pupil enrolled on Bushnell's 'Women's Correspondence Bible Class'.
Miss Goodfellow (fl 1896-1979) was born c 1895, in Forest Hill, South London. Like her mother, she became a seamstress when she left school, working for others at first before becoming self-employed, working for private clients. As London expanded and people moved away to other areas, Miss Goodfellow bought a car in 1934 in order to be able to follow her clients. One of the clients was the mother of the filmmaker Julius Hogben, who interviewed her in 1978, when she was aged 82. This became a 24-minute colour documentary that was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 1979. He and Miss Goodfellow attended this event, which produced an article entitled, 'Miss Goodfellow Goes to Hollywood'.
Gertrude Leverkus (1899-1976) was born in Oldenberg in Germany in Sep 1898 just before her family moved permanently to Manchester. From 1910, they settled in Forest Hill outside of London where Leverkus attended Sydenham High School. She proceeded to attend London University College before going to work in an architect's office. She then went on to study architecture, again at London University College, passed the Royal Institute of British Architects' exams and took the Town Planning Certificate in 1925. She was given several commissions for work after this and in 1930 she was appointed architect to the Women's Pioneer Housing Limited and undertook the conversion of around forty large properties into small flats for single women. In the early 1930s she also went into partnership with Eleanor KD Hughes before being commissioned to design the Out Patients' Department at the Annie McCall Maternity Hospital in Clapham. Her place in the profession was demonstrated by her election to the post of Secretary of the Women's Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects in the late 1930s. During the Second World War, Leverkus was appointed as an organiser of evacuees from London. From 1940 she was officially known as the organiser for the Borough of Holborn, working with the Food Advice Bureau and the National Savings Campaign in joint work. However, this work ended in 1943 when she was appointed the Housing Architect in the Borough Architecture and Town Planning Office of West Ham, a position she would hold throughout the time when the area was a used as a model for new theories in housing. She resigned in 1948 and began work for Norman and Dawbarn where she would stay until her retirement at the age of 62 in 1960. During this period she became involved with the Women's Provisional Club. She spent the rest of her life acting as a governor of the Brixton School of Building and nursing her sisters. She died in 1976.
Gwen Lees ([1900-1988]) was born into a poor family somewhere at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Her mother was a servant who found herself unable to take her children with her when she was offered a position as a cook. Because of this, Lees and her brother David were placed in a workhouse. In Apr 1982, when Lees was recovering from a stroke, she sent three chapters of an autobiography provisionally entitled 'Jenny', to an agent Rebecca O'Rourke. The autobiography detailed her experiences as a child, feeling that her experiences of the harsh regime might be of some sociological interest. In 1983, the manuscript was rejected by The Women's Press but the first chapter was later accepted by Sheba Feminist Publishers for inclusion in a new anthology entitled 'Everyday Matters II' published Jul 1983.
D Hamer (fl.1891-1919) was a Congregational Minister in Wales.
John Ellerton (1826-1893) was a hymn writer and editor of hymnals. He was born in London and educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man. Ellerton was ordained deacon in Chichester in 1850 and throughout his life held curacies in Eastbourne and Brighton in Sussex, Crewe Green, Shropshire, Surrey and Essex. He contributed to and edited many volumes of hymns including 'Hymns for Schools and Bible Classes' (1859) and 'Notes and Illustrations of Church Hymns' (1881). He wrote eighty-six hymns including 'The day thou gavest, Lord, has ended' which was chosen for her diamond jubilee service by Queen Victoria in 1897. He married Charlotte Alicia in 1860 with whom he had seven children. He died in 1893.
Sylvia Haymon (1917-1995) was born Sylvia Rosen in Norwich on 17 Oct 1917, the daughter of a Jewish master tailor. She was educated at the London School of Economics but did not complete the course, instead marrying Mark Haymon in 1933. During the Second World War she worked in the United States, where she was employed by a New York toyshop as a buyer. She returned with the first of her two daughters to Britain in 1947 where she became a broadcaster, working with Woman's Hour in the early 1950s. She also became a freelance writer for The Lady, The Times and Punch until the late 1960s, writing articles on subjects including the militant suffrage movement at the start of the century. It was at the end of this decade that she began writing children's books, Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1969, and King Monmouth the following year. Subsequently she began to publish crime novels under the name of S T Haymon, the first being Death and The Pregnant Virgin in 1980, followed by Ritual Murde' in 1982, for which she won the Silver Dagger Award. She published seven of these in all, in addition to two volumes of autobiography: Opposite the Cross Keys (1988) and The Quivering Tree (1990). She died, three years after her husband, in Oct 1995.
Helen Caroline Bentwich née Franklin (1892-1972) was the daughter of Arthur Ellis Franklin (1857-1938), senior partner in the banking house of A Keyser and Co, leader of the New West End Synagogue, and brother-in-law of the Liberal cabinet minister, Herbert Samuel, and Caroline Franklin née Jacob. Helen's brother was the suffrage campaigner, Hugh Franklin (1889-1962); her niece was the scientist Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958). Helen trained in social work at Bedford College and ran a Girl Guide unit in the East End and a Jewish Girls' Club in Soho, London. During a visit to Egypt with her parents in 1910 she met her future husband, Norman de Mattos Bentwich (1883-1971). Norman, who had been educated at Cambridge and called to the bar in 1908, worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Justice until the outbreak of war in 1914 when he joined the British Army in Egypt and took part in the conquest of Jerusalem. The couple married in 1915. During the First World War Helen undertook a variety of work: in a hospital; at Woolwich Arsenal - from which she was dismissed for her trade union activity; and as an organiser of the Land Girls. In 1918 Norman became legal secretary to the British military administration in Palestine and, after the establishment of the Mandate in 1922, the country's first Attorney-General. Helen lived with him in Jerusalem until 1929 when his position, as an official and a Jew, became increasingly difficult; they returned to London, and Norman retired from the Colonial service in 1931. He became Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University in 1932 and was active in many spheres, including serving as director of the League of Nations high commission for refugees from Germany (1933-1935). He also served in the Ministry of Information during World War II and was involved in the National Peace Council (1944-1946). In the inter-war and post-war years Helen was active in Labour politics and stood for Parliament, although she was never elected. However, she was prominent on the London County Council (LCC), of which she became chair in 1956. Helen died in 1972.
Helen Ward (fl. 1924-1925) was a member of the Blanesburgh Committee set up under the chairmanship of Lord Blanesburgh to investigate the question of the parliamentary candidature of Crown servants and their candidature in municipal elections. It reported in 1925.
Hugh Franklin (1889-1962) was born on 27 May 1889 at 28 Pembridge Villas, Paddington, the son of Arthur Ellis Franklin, JP, a senior partner in the banking house of A Keyser and Co, and a director of several companies. The Franklins were practising members of the Jewish faith and were sufficiently prosperous to own property in the country, Chartridge Lodge, Chesham. Hugh Franklin was educated at Clifton College and in 1908 he went up to Caius College, Cambridge, where he read engineering. After his first year at Cambridge he made a break with the family tradition by declaring in a letter to his father his lack of religious belief that remained in some question for the next two years. In 1909 he attended with friends a suffrage meeting at the Queen's Hall, London, addressed by Mrs Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick Lawrence, which was his first contact with the militants. During the summer he took part by selling papers in the processing from Kingsway to Hyde Park. From this he took up the suffragette practice of chalking pavements and sold papers for open-air WSPU meetings, in the Chesham area. At the beginning of the October term, 1909, Franklin decided to abandon the idea of a career in engineering that his father had intended for him and neglected his engineering studies for economics and sociology, which provoked further bitter family controversy. His interest in politics was growing and several drafts for speeches and debates exist for his years at Cambridge. Already a member of the Fabian Society and the ILP and the Cambridge Men's League for Woman Suffrage (for which he arranged meetings for Mrs Fawcett and Lady McLaren), he joined the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement on 22 Feb 1910. He provoked further dispute with his family by finally abandoning religious observance and by declaring his intention of not returning to Cambridge. After persuasion Franklin did return to Cambridge, but devoted all his energies to organising a meeting for Mrs Pankhurst in May at the Cambridge Guildhall and he was disciplined by his College authorities for his attempts at publicising it. On 26 May 1910 he joined the Young Purple White and Green Club. He took little trouble over his final examinations and missed some papers, as he was helping the MPU in London to organise for a Suffrage Procession from the Embankment to the Albert Hall and 'came down for good' from Cambridge at the end of June. In the following months, Franklin took an even more active part in WSPU and MPU meetings, both speaking and organising. He accepted reluctantly (after an initial refusal), an offer from Sir Matthew Nathan, Secretary to the Post Office, to be his private secretary (his uncle, Herbert Samuel, was Postmaster-General at the time). He gave evidence at the trial of Victor Duval, arrested in connection with an attempted protest at a meeting of Lloyd George's, at the Temple in October. He was among those present and was himself arrested during the events of 'Black Friday' (18 Nov 1910), at which large scale brutality by the police was alleged to have taken place when members of the WSPU attempted a mass lobby of Parliament. Franklin was among those who were discharged but he considered Winston Churchill, Home Secretary, personally responsible for police orders and was determined to make his protest. He was among those who interrupted Churchill's meeting at Highbury on 22 Nov 1910 and at Bradford on 26 Nov 1910, being ejected on both occasions. On the same train as Churchill returning from the Bradford meeting, Franklin approached Churchill with a dog whip and attempted to strike him, saying 'Take this, you cur, for the treatment of the suffragists'. For this offence, Franklin received six weeks imprisonment, the first of the three terms which he was to receive during the next three years for militant protests and which also caused his dismissal as Sir Matthew Nathan's Secretary. Franklin's activities were, from November 1910-1913 directed exclusively towards work for the Men's Political Union, as Honorary Assistant Organiser, while in Nov 1911 he resigned from the NUWSS affiliated Men's League for Women's Suffrage, being in disagreement with the League's reliance on a suffrage amendment to the Government's Reform Bill.
His second militant protest in Mar 1911 was that of throwing a stone at Churchill's house in Eccleston Square, for which he received a further month in prison and was forcibly fed throughout his term. The third and most dramatic of Hugh Franklin's acts of militancy consisted of setting fire to a railway carriage at Harrow station on 25 Oct 1912, for which he was sentenced to nine months in prison. Refusing food during his imprisonment, he was forcibly fed over 100 times and was the first suffragette prisoner to be released, in May 1913, under the Prisoners (Temporary Release for Ill-health) Act, 1913, more familiarly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'. Breaking his parole, Franklin escaped to the Continent, where he stayed under the alias of 'Henry Forster' until shortly after the outbreak of war. Franklin was disqualified for war service on grounds of eyesight and served on the staff of the Ordnance Factories, Woolwich. On 28 Sep 1915 he married Elsie Duval, sister of his MPU colleague Victor Duval, but she died only months after the War ended, on 1 Jan 1919, from heart failure, partly the result over the years of her own experience of forcible feeding. After the War he entered the timber trade and took no further part in politics until 1931 when he left business for writing and rejoined formally the Labour Party. In the 1931 General Election he contested Hornsey and in 1935, St Albans, unsuccessfully on both occasions. After standing in a number of local government elections, he won a seat on the Middlesex County Council in 1946. From 1934-1949 he held various co-opted and elected positions on committees of the LCC, Middlesex County Council and Metropolitan Water Board. He also held office in the New Fabian Research Bureau, the National Executive of the Labour Part and on boards of governors of schools and on hospital management committees. Franklin's imprisonment for his militant suffragette offences led him to a deep and abiding interest in penal reform. In addition to membership of the Howard League, he submitted a memorandum to his uncle, Herbert Samuel, when Home Secretary in 1932, and wrote a play 'On Remand' which he endeavoured to have produced in the theatre or filmed, but without success. In 1921 Hugh Franklin married a second time, Elsie Constance Tuke at Lewisham Register Office. He died 21 Oct 1962.
Elsie Duval (1892-1919) was born in 1892, the daughter of Ernest and Emily Duval who together with their children were keen suffragists. Duval joined the Women's Social & Political Union in 1907, the year after her mother. Unlike her mother, however, she did not leave the organisation to join the Women's Freedom League when the Pankhursts changed the constitution, but the mother and daughter did work together for three years in the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement which Victor Duval, Elsie's brother, founded. The younger female Duval was arrested on the 23 Nov 1911 for obstructing the police. After this event, she was officially accepted by the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) as a militant protest volunteer. On 27 Jun 1912, Duval was arrested for smashing a Clapham Post Office window. Subsequently she was remanded for one week in custody 'for the state of her mind to be enquired into', and then sentenced to one month in the third division at Holloway, during which time she was forcibly fed nine times before being released on the 3 Aug 1912. She was arrested again in Apr 1913 for loitering with intent (with Phyllis Brady) and was again sent to prison for a month. She was forcibly fed during both remand and whilst serving her sentence, being seriously ill throughout and often resisting strenuously. Her prison diary for this year refers to 'pain at the heart' after one of these incidents. She was released under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, 1913, (commonly known as the 'Cat and Mouse' Act) which allowed for prisoners to return to prison on recovery. Duval was the first prisoner released from Holloway under the Act and the second to be released (Hugh Franklin) was the first) from any prison. During her last imprisonment (according to Hugh Franklin's biographical notes) a charge was being prepared for burning Lady White's house at Egham, with 'Phyllis Brady', (Olive Beamish) for which the latter received five years' imprisonment. Duval burnt also Sanderstead station and other places, before her arrest, together with 'Phyllis Brady'. Duval narrowly avoided arrest on her final release, instead, she and her fiancé Hugh Franklin left for France to avoid the re-imprisonment that her terms of temporary release had demanded. She spent several months working as 'Eveline Dukes' in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland armed with false testimonials provided by friends. She was only able to return to Britain at the outbreak of the First World War when a general amnesty was granted to suffragettes. After this she became active in the war work of the WSPU. She and Hugh Franklin were finally married in a Jewish ceremony at the London Synagogue in Sep 1915. Two years later, she joined the Pankhursts' Women's Party, but died on the 1 Jan 1919 of heart failure, a victim of the influenza epidemic.
Helena Florence Normanton (1882-1957) was born on 14 Dec 1882 to Jane Amelia and William Alexander Normanton in Kensington. In 1886 the family moved to Brighton. From 1900 Helena attended York Place Secondary School, Brighton (later renamed Margaret Hardy School, forerunner of Varndean School for Girls). From 1903-1905 she attended teacher training at Edge College, Liverpool. In 1907 Helena obtained a diploma in French language, literature and history from Dijon University. In 1912 she achieved her BA Hon First Class in History (London University). From 1913-1915 she was a senior mistress for History at Glasgow High School for Girls and lecturer to postgraduate students of Glasgow University in Principles and methods of teaching history and then a University Extension lecturer to the University of London. From 1918-1920 she edited India a political weekly.
On 24 Dec 1919 Helena was admitted as a student at the Middle Temple, the day after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act received Royal Assent. On 26 Oct 1921 she married Gavin Bowman Watson Clark (d 1948). On 17 Nov 1922 Helena was called to the Bar, a few months after Ivy Williams had become the first woman to do so (but she did not practise). In 1922 Helena was the first woman to be briefed at High Court (successful divorce petition). In 1924 she was the first woman to be briefed at Old Bailey. Also in that year she was the first married British woman to be issued a passport in her maiden name ('as legal and only name'). In 1926 she was first woman to be briefed at the North London Sessions. In 1948 she was the first woman to prosecute in a murder trial (young soldier found guilty of murdering his wife) in the North-Eastern Circuit. In Apr 1949 she was the first woman KC (with Rose Heilbron)
In 1952 Helena drew up a memorandum of evidence as President of the Married Women's Association for consideration by the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce (criticism led to her resignation, withdrawing the memorandum and forming the Council of Married Women and submitting a revised memorandum to the Royal Commission). In 1956 Helena was the first recorded donor to the fund to create a new university in Sussex. Helena died in Oct 1957 and was buried at Ovingdean churchyard, Brighton.
Positions held : Treasurer and Secretary of the Old Bailey Bar Mess; Honorary member of the New York Women's Bar Association and of the women lawyers' association, Kappa Beta Pi (USA); Principal elected officer for Europe of the International Legal Sorority
Other interests : wrote extensively for Good Housekeeping magazine and other publications eg The Queen, Quiver; Associate Grand Dame for Europe of the International Society of Women Lawyers; Chair of the International legislative sub-committee of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women; Executive member of the National Council for Equal Citizenship; Executive member of the State Children's Association; First Secretary of the National Women's Citizens' Association; Founder and Honorary Secretary to the Magna Carta Society; Founding member of the Horatian Society.
Harriet McIlquham (1837-1910) was born in London in 1837. When young, she attended social and political lectures in Gloucestershire. By 1877, she had become a member of the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage as well as the Bristol and West of England Society for Women's Suffrage. In Feb 1881 she and Maria Colbey were the organisers of the Birmingham Grand Demonstration as well as being one of the speakers at the Bradford demonstration held in Nov 1881. That same year, she was elected as a Poor Law Guardian for Boddington in the Tewkesbury Union. An appeal was lodged to annul her election on the grounds that she was a married woman but it was found that she held her qualifying property independently of her husband and therefore remained in place. However, her attempt to be elected as a county councillor in 1889 failed. By 1889, Harriet McIlquham was a member of the Central National Society and a friend of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. It was the latter who proposed her as president of the Women's Franchise League in Jul 1889, but two years later the pair transferred to the Women's Emancipation Union where Harriet McIlquham became a member of the council. In 1892 her first pamphlet 'The Enfranchisement of Women: An Ancient Right' was published and was widely read. Her writing continued in 1898 when the Westminster Review published a series of articles by her on Mary Astell, Lady Montague Wortley an eighteenth century journalist known as 'Sophia' and other enlightenment advocates of women's rights. Harriet McIlquham was also an active public speaker and in Feb 1893 gave a speech on women as poor law guardians; this was soon followed by an address to the Women's Emancipation Union conference held in Bedford the following year. Her audience and readers were drawn from across the spectrum of the suffrage movement. She was a member of the Cheltenham branch of the moderate National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies but also lobbied MPs in the House of Commons alongside members of the more militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Feb 1905. Later, in 1908 and 1909 Harriet donated sums to both the WSPU and the Women's Freedom League respectively. Just before her own death, she helped organise a 'Grateful Fund' to which those who wished to show their appreciation of Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy's suffrage work could contribute. She died in 1910 after a short illness.
Hilda M L Squire, born in 1898, was the daughter of J Edward Squire (1855-1917) a wealthy doctor involved in public health and hygiene. Her aunt was Rose Elizabeth Squire (1861-1938) who had a distinguished career as a Factory Inspector at the Home Office. Their grandfather was William Squire (1825-1899) physician to Lord Cardigan. Hilda studied history and biology in 1915 at one of the Oxbridge colleges and in 1917 was educated at Francis Holland Church of England School, where she was Head of her school year. During 1918-1919 Hilda worked as a VAD, after which she studied for the examinations of the National Health Society. She was awarded diplomas in hygiene, physiology, child welfare and tuberculosis. Furthermore, she qualified under the Sanitary Inspectors Examination Board in 1920. Her career in health visiting started with her working at the Royal College of Saint Katherine in Poplar. She worked here for two years as an Infant Health Visitor. In 1926 Hilda was awarded a certificate in Social Science and Administration from the London School of Economics. She also gained a certificate from the Institute of Hospital Almoners. Following on from this, Hilda spent ten years working at Brompton Hospital, during the 1920-1930s, as a hospital almoner. At the same time, she was also a Tuberculosis Visitor and Secretary to the Tuberculosis Committee of the Chelsea Tuberculosis Dispensary. During [1949-1951] Hilda worked at the Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases as Lady Almoner. Whilst here she specialised in neurological illnesses, such as epilepsy. Hilda was involved with various organisations during her busy career. These included the National Association for Mental Health (1943-1953), the British Council for Rehabilitation (1947-1951), the National Association for the Paralysed (1950-1961 also a founder member), the British Epilepsy Association (1950-1951 also a founder member), the British Rheumatic Association (1953), the British Council for the Welfare of Spastics (1955) and the Queen Elizabeth Foundation for the Disabled from 1966. As a representative of the Institute of Almoners, Hilda served on the councils of the Chalfour Epileptic Colony (1948-1957), the Courtauld-Sargent concert club (1932-1936) and the Mobile Physiotherapy Service Association Limited (1956-1958). She died in 1991.
Rose Squire (1861-1938) was born in London, the daughter of William Squire, a surgeon, and his wife Martha Wilkinson. After being educated at home, she trained in 1893 as a lecturer in health and hygiene. She was the first woman to sit for the sanitary inspector's certificate, in 1894, and worked as a sanitary inspector of laundries and workshops. In 1895 she became a lady inspector of factories, working throughout the country. In 1903 she was appointed senior lady inspector, from 1908-1912 she was based in Manchester, returning to London in 1912. From 1906-1907 Squire was a special investigator to the royal commission on the poor laws. During the First World War she worked with the Ministry of Munitions, where she was involved in the promotion of good factory working conditions, and in 1918 was appointed director of their women's welfare department. She received an OBE in 1918. In 1920 she became the first woman to hold an administrative post in the Home Office. She retired in 1926 and died in 1938.
Helen Pearl Adam (1882-1957) was born on the 25 Apr 1882, the daughter of Mrs CE Humphrey who, as 'Madge' writing in 'Truth', was one of the first women journalists in Britain. Helen began her own career as a journalist in 1899 when she was seventeen. Ten years later, she married another newspaper writer, George Adam. The pair were correspondents in Paris during the First World War, where George Adam had been posted in 1912. There she edited 'International Cartoons of the War' in 1916 and subsequently published her diary of the period under the title Paris Sees it Through. After the war, the couple remained in the city where Helen Pearl Adam met the writer Jean Rhys, allowing her to live in the Adam's flat, editing Rhys' first novel, Triple Sec and introducing her to Ford Maddox Brown. George Adam resigned from The Times in Jan 1921 but remained there working for American newspapers, while his wife wrote articles commissioned by the Evening Standard, the Observer and the Sunday Times amongst others. George Adams died in Paris in 1930 and in the wake of this Helen Pearl Adams returned to England where she continued her work, which included writing the History of the National Council of Women of Great Britain in 1945. She died on the 2 Jan 1957.
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was born in 1802, the daughter of Thomas Martineau, a textile manufacturer from Norwich and his wife Elizabeth Martineau. Both were Unitarians and were in favour of education for girls. Consequently, Harriet and her two sisters were taught in a similar way to their three brothers until the latter left for university. Harriet became deaf at an early age. She began writing while in her period of 'mourning' when her brother James, to whom she was closest, left for university. Her first article, 'Female Writers On Practical Divinity', was published anonymously in The Monthly Repository in 1821. Whilst in 1823 the Unitarian journal, The Monthly Repository, published her anonymous article, 'On Female Education', which described the differences between the sexes as being caused by differing methods of training. Martineau was engaged to John Hugh Worthington but he died of 'brain fever' before the marriage took place. This, combined with the financial difficulties (resulting from the economic crash of 1826) and death of her father, necessitated her earning her own living and freed her to pursue a writing career. she continued to work for the 'Monthly Repository' to support herself. Additionally, she began writing religious works such as Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons and Addresses for the Use of Families, both published in 1826. Martineau worked as a seamstress, taking in sewing at home (as opposed to working in a 'sweat shop'), sewing during the day and writing at night until the 'Illustrations' was accepted for publication. Harriet's interest soon moved to politics and she created the series of stories entitled Illustrations of Political Economy, in order to popularise the utilitarian theories of Bentham and Priestly and the economic of Smith. When the series of 24 volumes was published in 1832-3, they became a huge success and were followed up by Poor Laws and Paupers illustrated (1834). The profits enabled her to set up home in London and undertake a two-year tour of the United States of America. She based two books on this experience: Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). Martineau remained ambivalent towards women's suffrage, arguing that until women had education, access to professions, and economic independence, their votes would be compromised by the men in their lives. She was, however, keen on the Garrisonian branch of the abolition movement, because it focused on emancipation and included women activists, as opposed to more politically-oriented groups as illustrated in one of her chapters entitled 'The Political Non-Existence of Women'.
In this period despite increasing illness, and in addition to her political and historical works, Martineau began writing different genres. Her only novel Deerbrook was published in 1839; followed by a historical biography The Hour and the Man in 1840; and a series of novelettes for children The Playfellow in 1841.
She moved to Ambleside in the Lake District in 1845. In 1847 Harriet went with friends on a tour of the Near East for eight months, returning with the manuscript of 'Eastern Life Present and Past', published in 1848. The proceeds from this work paid for her to build her own home in Ambleside. The work was well received but the religious views that it presented were treated with some hostility. During this period she also worked on The History of the Peace, which was published in 1849.
The publication of 'Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development' in 1851 was received with more hostility. In this work Martineau advocated agnosticism. The scandal with which it was received was due partly to her insistence that three of the world's primary religions - Judaism, Islam, and Christianity - grew out of the same geographical area and the same, or similar, theological systems, and were not necessarily incompatible. The scandal was also due to her challenge to the dating of human life and cultures, as presented in the scriptures. Martineau, as well as her historical and anthropological sources (Wilkinson, for example) predate the scientific revolution heralded by Darwinism, by nearly twelve years (1859). Martineau's views expressed in 'Letters on the Laws' also destroyed the relationship between her and several members of her family.
Harriet returned to journalism in 1852 as a member of staff at the Daily News where she wrote over 1600 articles during a 16-year period. Harriet also contributed articles for other publications, including pieces on the employment of women for the Edinburgh Review and on the state of girls' education for the Cornhill Magazine. Plagued by invalidism periodically throughout her life, ill health became a problem again in 1855 and she wrote an autobiography in that year in the belief that she was dying. However, she recovered and continued with her career in journalism for approximately another twenty years. Harriet was always interested in and vocal on women's employment, women's education and the legal position of married women. In 1866 she joined Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Davies, Dorothea Beale and Francis Mary Buss in creating and presenting a petition asking Parliament to grant the vote to women. Harriet also campaigned for women's entry into the medical profession. From 1864, and again in 1869, Harriet was active in the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts in which she would later be joined by Josephine Butler. Eventually, ill health began to restrict her public activities during the 1870s, though she continued to write until her death. She died of bronchitis aged 74 in 1876.
Hilda Mary Seligman (fl. 1936-1947) founded the "Skippo" Fund, which supplied the first health vans to serve isolated villages in India and Pakistan. The Fund's 'Asoka-Akbar Mobile Health Vans' were given to the All India Women's Conference to administer. She was the author of three small books: When Peacocks Called (1940), Skippo of Nonesuch (1943), Asoka, Emperor of India (1947).
Isobel Denby (fl 1905-1912) was an author active at the end of the nineteenth century. She appears to have undertaken a correspondence with a clergyman from 1905 to 1911. From this emerges a woman who is critical of the contemporary teaching of the Church of England on women. She specifically suggests revisions to the marriage service and advances thoughts on the role of women in the economic system of the time and in the ministry. The intense intellectual relationship between the author and the clergyman seems to have been ended in 1911 through the intervention of a female friend and the correspondence was published the following year as 'Unconventional Talks with a Modern DD Letters Sent and Unsent'.
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1982-2000) was formed in response to NATO's decision in 1979 to base ground cruise missiles at Greenham Common. RAF Greenham Common had first became home to the US Army Air Force in Nov 1943, when the 354th Fighter Group moved in as part of the Allies efforts to meet the Nazi Government's aerial operations. Greenham Common, near Newbury in Berkshire, became a bomber operational training unit. Following the invasion of France, the Americans transferred their resources to France and Greenham Common reverted to RAF control until it was closed in 1946. However, as the Cold War began, it was reopened in 1951 as a US Strategic Air Command, coming into American Air Force operational control in Jun 1953. It was closed once more in 1961 only to be reopened in 1964, when it also became a NATO standby base. NATO's decision in 1979 to base ground cruise missiles at Greenham Common was a response to the proliferation of nuclear forces, which occurred throughout that decade. It was in the wake of this announcement that the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp opened at this site. In Sep 1981 a Welsh group of 36 individuals opposed to nuclear power, called Women for Life on Earth, walked 120 miles from their headquarters to raise awareness of this issue and to protest against NATO's decision to site cruise missiles at Greenham Common. On reaching their destination they chained themselves to the perimeter fence and subsequently established a 'peace camp' there which was to remain for another two decades. The 'camp' itself consisted of nine smaller camps: the first was Yellow Gate, established the month after Women for Peace on Earth reached the airbase; others established in 1983 were Green Gate, the nearest to the silos, and the only entirely exclusive women-only camp at all times, the others accepting male visitors during the day; Turquoise Gate; Blue Gate with its new age focus; Pedestrian Gate; Indigo Gate; Violet Gate identified as being religiously focussed; Red Gate known as the artists gate; and Orange Gate. A central core of women lived either full-time or for stretches of time at any one of the gate camps with others staying for various lengths of time. From the beginning, links were formed with local feminist and anti-nuclear groups across the country while early support was received from the Women's Peace Alliance in order to facilitate these links and give publicity through its newsletter. In Mar 1982 the first blockade of the base occurred, staged by 250 women and during which 34 arrests were made. In May the first attempt to evict the peace camp was made as bailiffs and police attempted to clear the women and their possessions from the site. However, the camp was simply re-located to a nearby site. That same year, in Feb 1982 the camp went onto a women only footing and in Dec 1982, in response to chain letter sent out by organisers 30,000 women assembled to surround the site and 'embrace the base'. In Jan 1983 Newbury District Council revoked the common land bylaws for Greenham Common, becoming the private landlord for the site and instituting Court proceedings to reclaim eviction costs, actions that were ruled as illegal by the House of Lords in 1990.
In Apr 1991, CND supporters staged action which involved 70,000 people forming a 14-mile human chain linking Burghfield, Aldermaston and Greenham. However, the first transfer of cruise missiles to the airbase occurred in Nov 1983. Another major event occurred in Dec 1983 when 50,000 women encircled the base, holding up mirrors and taking down sections of the fence, resulting in hundreds of arrests. In 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty was signed by the USA and the Soviet Union, and two years later in Aug 1989 the first step in the removal of cruise missiles from the Greenham Common airbase occurred, a process that was completed in Mar 1991. The American Air Force handed control of the base to the Royal Air Force in Sep 1992, who handed the base over to the Defence Land Agent three weeks later. On 1 Jan 2000 the last of the Greenham Common Women protestors left the camp. A memorial garden was erected after this - the only individual name included in the memorial was that of Helen Wynn Thomas who had died in an accident at Greenham on 5 Aug 1989.
Unknown.
Jessie Kenney (1887-1995) was born in Lees, near Oldham, Lancashire in 1887 to Anne and Horatio Kenney. She was one of 11 children of whom her elder sister Annie, Jane, Nell and herself would later join the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), and all of whom would receive a remarkable education in the family home. From the age of thirteen to sixteen, Kenney worked in a local cotton mill becoming involved in the trade union there. In early 1905, she attended an event at the Oldham Trades Council with her sisters Annie and Jenny. Christabel Pankhurst and Teresa Billington-Greig addressed the meeting and from that moment Jessie and Annie would be involved in the women's suffrage movement. After a brief time working in the local area, Annie Kenney moved to London to become an activist. Jessie would soon follow her, becoming Pethick-Lawrence's private secretary at the age of 19. Two years later, she was appointed as a WSPU organiser in the group's Clement's Inn offices. In Jun 1908 she was arrested at a demonstration and imprisoned for a month and it was after this that her health became an ongoing problem. She stayed in the West Country with the Blathwayt family on a number of occasions to restore her and, in 1910, was taken on a holiday to Switzerland by Pethick-Lawrence. Her health seemed to be re-established and on her return she was appointed as the organiser of the Walthamstow branch of the WSPU. Two years later she undertook the groups operations at the South Hackney by-election but illness returned again and she was sent back to Switzerland the following year with lung disease. Kenney did not return immediately to London after her time in Switzerland but went to Paris to live with Christabel Pankhurst for a short time before beginning a gruelling routine which involved commuting to Glasgow every week to oversee the clandestine production of the 'Suffragette' newspaper. This lasted until the summer of 1914, when the activities of the Women's Social and Political Union were radically transformed and became focussed solely on the war effort. During the First World War Kenney travelled to America to organise the preliminary stages of the Pankhursts' Serbian Mission, returning to help organise the War Work procession which took place in Jul 1916. The following year, she accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst who undertook a ' Mission to the Women of Russia' which took place with the support of Lloyd George, then Prime Minister. The visit to Russia took place between Jun-Sep 1917, addressing meetings, meeting the leader of one of the Women's Battalions formed to repulse invaders of the country, as well as Kerensky, Prince Youssoupoff and Plenkhanov, the leader of the Menshevick party. After the war, she remained loyal to the Pankhursts and joined their Women's Party, but eventually moved to St Cloud near Paris and worked for the American Red Cross. In the 1930s she became a ship's steward but after the Second World War she settled permanently in Battersea and became the administrative secretary to one of the first comprehensive schools in Britain. At the end of her life she moved to a home in Essex where she died in 1985.
Lady Jane Maria Strachey (1840-1928) was born on a ship off the Cape of Good Hope in 1840. Her father was the Anglo-Indian administrator Sir John Grant of Rothiemurchus in Speyside, who would later be Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Her mother was Henrietta Chichele Plowden. In 1859 she married Richard Strachey, her father's secretary and the person who introduced her to the writings of John Stuart Mill. The couple had 13 children with ten surviving into adulthood: Lytton, Richard, Ralph, Oliver, Giles Lytton, Elinor, Dorothea, Philippa, Joan Pernel and Marjorie. The couple were in Edinburgh in 1866-7 and it was there that Lady Strachey helped gather signatures for a petition to parliament requesting the vote for women. She herself published her first article on suffrage in 'The Attempt' printed by the Edinburgh Ladies' Debating Society, which helped to raise interest in the issue in Scotland. By 1868 she was a member of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage before returning to India to be with her husband who had been posted there once more to serve in the administration. The couple went back to London in 1879, where she once again became involved in the movement for women's suffrage. From 1880 she supported the New Hospital for Women of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and continued to financially support Girton College. When the Women's Local Government Society was formed in 1886 in order to promote the claims of women to both elect and be elected to local office, Lady Strachey was one of the organisers and in 1909 she became the Chair of the London branch, liaising between the organisation, candidates and women's suffrage groups. The culmination of this work occurred when a WLGS-sponsored bill was included in the King's speech of 1907 that allowed the election of women to borough and county positions. The same year, she was elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and, with her daughters, helped organise what became known as the 'Mud March' from Hyde Park to the Exeter Hall to demand the vote. At the same time as undertaking significant organising duties, she was a keen writer of pamphlets and songs for the group, which were later published as 'Women's Suffrage Songs'. In 1909 she became a member of the editorial board of the Englishwoman's Journal and was elected president of the South Paddington Committee of the London Society for Women's Suffrage. However, in the following years, particularly after the death of her husband in 1909, her activities decreased. None the less, she actively supported the work of her daughter Philippa in the London Society for Women's Suffrage and that of her daughter-in-law Rachel, or Ray, Strachey. In 1920 the Society of Women Journalists still felt able to offer her the position of vice president, but she declined the offer. She died in 1928.
Joan Pernel Strachey (1876-1951) was born in 1876 to Lady Jane Maria Strachey and Major Richard Strachey. She was educated at Allenswood School and Newnham College, Cambridge. After graduating, she lectured on French at Royal Holloway College between 1900-1905, moving to Newnham in 1905. In 1910 she was appointed as a tutor. In 1917 she became Director of Studies in Modern Languages, then in 1923, she was appointed principal of Newnham College. Pernel Strachey remained at Newnham College until her retirement in 1941. After this, she worked as a volunteer in the offices of the London and National Society for Women's Service, of which her sister Philippa was president. Through her family connections, most specifically through her brother Lytton Strachey, she was considered part of the Bloomsbury set. She died in 1951.
Jill Truman (fl 1980s-) is a writer and peace campaigner. She visited the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp regularly in the 1980s-1990s when she wrote a column for the Bristol Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) newsletter entitled 'News from Greenham'. She also wrote a play about Greenham, 'The Web', which was produced at the Tabard Theatre, Ealing, directed by Jilly Bond, in 1991.
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1982-2000) was formed in response to NATO's decision in 1979 to base ground cruise missiles at Greenham Common. RAF Greenham Common had first became home to the US Army Air Force in Nov 1943, when the 354th Fighter Group moved in as part of the Allies efforts to meet the Nazi Government's aerial operations. Greenham Common, near Newbury in Berkshire, became a bomber operational training unit. Following the invasion of France, the Americans transferred their resources to France and Greenham Common reverted to RAF control until it was closed in 1946. However, as the Cold War began, it was reopened in 1951 as a US Strategic Air Command, coming into American Air Force operational control in Jun 1953. It was closed once more in 1961 only to be reopened in 1964, when it also became a NATO standby base. NATO's decision in 1979 to base ground cruise missiles at Greenham Common was a response to the proliferation of nuclear forces, which occurred throughout that decade. It was in the wake of this announcement that the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp opened at this site. In Sep 1981 a Welsh group of 36 individuals opposed to nuclear power, called Women for Life on Earth, walked 120 miles from their headquarters to raise awareness of this issue and to protest against NATO's decision to site cruise missiles at Greenham Common. On reaching their destination they chained themselves to the perimeter fence and subsequently established a 'peace camp' there which was to remain for another two decades. The 'camp' itself consisted of nine smaller camps: the first was Yellow Gate, established the month after Women for Peace on Earth reached the airbase; others established in 1983 were Green Gate, the nearest to the silos, and the only entirely exclusive women-only camp at all times, the others accepting male visitors during the day; Turquoise Gate; Blue Gate with its new age focus; Pedestrian Gate; Indigo Gate; Violet Gate identified as being religiously focussed; Red Gate known as the artists gate; and Orange Gate. A central core of women lived either full-time or for stretches of time at any one of the gate camps with others staying for various lengths of time. From the beginning, links were formed with local feminist and anti-nuclear groups across the country while early support was received from the Women's Peace Alliance in order to facilitate these links and give publicity through its newsletter. In Mar 1982 the first blockade of the base occurred, staged by 250 women and during which 34 arrests were made. In May the first attempt to evict the peace camp was made as bailiffs and police attempted to clear the women and their possessions from the site. However, the camp was simply re-located to a nearby site. That same year, in Feb 1982 the camp went onto a women only footing and in Dec 1982, in response to chain letter sent out by organisers 30,000 women assembled to surround the site and 'embrace the base'. In Jan 1983 Newbury District Council revoked the commonland bylaws for Greenham Common, becoming the private landlord for the site and instituting Court proceedings to reclaim eviction costs, actions that were ruled as illegal by the House of Lords in 1990. In Apr 1991, CND supporters staged action which involved 70,000 people forming a 14-mile human chain linking Burghfield, Aldermaston and Greenham. However, the first transfer of cruise missiles to the airbase occurred in Nov 1983. Another major event occurred in Dec 1983 when 50,000 women encircled the base, holding up mirrors and taking down sections of the fence, resulting in hundreds of arrests. In 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty was signed by the USA and the Soviet Union, and two years later in Aug 1989 the first step in the removal of cruise missiles from the Greenham Common airbase occurred, a process that was completed in Mar 1991. The American Air Force handed control of the base to the Royal Air Force in Sep 1992, who handed the base over to the Defence Land Agent three weeks later. On 1 Jan 2000 the last of the Greenham Common Women protestors left the camp. A memorial garden was erected after this - the only individual name included in the memorial was that of Helen Wynn Thomas who had died in an accident at Greenham on 5 Aug 1989.
Judith Hubback was born in 1917, the daughter of Sir John Fisher-Williams. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1936 and married Eva Hubback's son the following year. After her marriage she taught until the first of her children was born but later returned to part-time coaching. In the late 1940s, Judith Hubback's mother in law, Eva Hubback, began a survey on housewives which was to have formed the basis for a chapter of a book on contemporary women. However, she died suddenly in 1949 before this could be completed. Judith Hubback took the information that the survey had revealed and analysed the data it contained, then wrote to the Manchester Guardian with the results. By 1950, she began work on expanding the survey and applied for funds from the government to conduct an inquiry into the part-time work available for married women but failed to gain the grant necessary. Instead, she reformulated her study to research the conditions and opinions of married female graduates and received a grant of 50 pounds from the Leche Foundation to carry it out. The survey was conducted from her home, sending out questionnaires to 1500 graduates, and had a 65% response rate. From the data which she received, she wrote the pamphlet 'Graduate Wives' in 1953 and the book Wives Who Went to College in 1957, both of which proved landmark works in the field. Hubback subsequently became involved in Jungian psychotherapy, training to be a psychotherapist at London University College and practising as a Jungian analyst from 1963 to date. She also published a series of articles in this field as well as books of poetry.
Kathleen Burton (fl 1939-1945) appears to have worked for the British Red Cross Society during the Second World War.
Kathleen Courtney (1878-1974) was born in Chatham in 1878 to Alice Margaret Courtney (née Mann) and Major David Courtney of the Royal Engineers, one of seven children. She was brought up in Kensington and after attending an Anglo-French School in London, and boarding school in Malvern, she spent a year at boarding school in Dresden. She subsequently became a student in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in Jan 1897 where she read French and German and met Maude Royden. After graduation, she volunteered at a girls club in Lambeth before returning to Oxford to work for the University Extension Delegacy. She became active in the non-militant section of the women's suffrage movement and accepted a post as a paid secretary for the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage in 1908. Subsequently, she was elected Honorary Secretary of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1911 and became a member of the first Election Fighting Fund Committee in 1912. However, after the outbreak of the First World War, she found herself in opposition to many of her colleagues within the NUWSS. The president, Millicent Fawcett, argued that members should focus on relief work as a means of showing that women would be worthy of the vote. In contrast to this, several executive members such as Isabella Ford, Maud Royden, Helena Swanwick, and Catherine Marshall wanted to oppose the war altogether. A meeting of the executive committee refused to send delegates to the International Women's Peace Congress at the Hague in Apr 1915, prompting several members of the committee to resign. Courtney was one of those. In the event, only a handful of British women were present at the Congress: Courtney herself, Chrystal Macmillan, both of whom were already in Holland, and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who travelled from America. There, a new organisation began, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which formed the British branch of the International Committee for Permanent Peace. Courtney became its first vice president. In 1916 she also went to Salonika and Baxtia to carry out work with the Serbian Relief Fund for with she was later decorated by the Serbian government. After the war, Courtney helped her friend, Dr Hilda Clark, at the Friends' Relief Mission in Vienna, and also travelled to the Balkans and Poland.
In 1916 she became the joint secretary of the National Council for Adult Suffrage with James Middleton of the Independent Labour Party. Towards the end of the war, however, she rejoined the NUWSS and was re-elected to the executive committee in Mar 1918, despite her opposition to the limited nature of the franchise that was at last being offered to women. With the new electoral situation, the objectives of women's movement had to change and a new organisation emerged: the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. Courtney became a member of the executive committee and as such attended the conference on the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship in Paris in 1923. In the 1930s she went on to become Vice President of NUSEC. However, this was a time when there was no consensus within the women's movement regarding the appropriate response to 'protective' legislation that applied only to women and had been created with the aim of 'protecting' them against industrial exploitation. An ideological split occurred at this time between those, on the one hand, who supported ideas such as an 'Endowment of Motherhood' being paid to women to ensure their financial independence and, on the other, those who adopted a more strictly equalist position. In the mid-1920s, the Labour government proposed a series of bills which would extend this protective legislation and many members of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship of the time were keen to change its equalist policies to support the status of women in this manner. Unlike some, who left to form other organisations in opposition to this position, Courtney remained in the group and even went on to chair the committee of the Family Endowment Council, which shared many of these perspectives. However, her work on the status of women did not end her peace activities at this time, and she soon became the president of the British Section of the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, and organiser of the Women's Pilgrimage for Peace of 1926. Courtney was also active in the international effort that culminated in the presentation of a petition signed by several millions to the Disarmament Conference of 1932 and she was an observer at the conference on behalf of several women's organisations. In 1928 she was appointed to the executive of the League of Nations Union, of which she became the vice-chair in 1939. It was in this capacity that she travelled the world as a speaker in the 1930s. During the Second World War she worked with the Ministry of Information, particularly in relation to the UK's relations with the United States of America in that period. When the United Nations was formed after the war, she became its deputy Chair and was awarded the CBE in 1947. In 1949 she was elected Chair and joint president of the United Nations Association. She retired in 1951 from the organisation, but remained active in its work into her nineties. At the age of 80 she undertook a trip to the United States and Canada. In her 90s she was still an active participant in UNA business. Close friends of Courtney's included Agnes Maude Royden, Gilbert Murray, the classical scholar, and Lord Robert Cecil. Courtney was created Dame 1952. She died 7 Dec 1974.
Kathleen Hill (1900-) was born in 1900. During her life she was involved in the operation of the Poor Law after the 1930 Poor Law Act, which introduced limited financial public assistance and which was means tested from the following year. From that point onwards, only the aged found their way into the Workhouses and outdoor relief introduced. She went on to be a member of the National Assistance Board that replaced it after the 1948 National Assistance Act.
Kitty Marion (1871-1944) was born Katherina Maria Schafer in Westphalia in 1871. Her mother died when she was two years old and when she was fifteen went to live with her aunt in England. She learnt English and it became clear that her ambition was to become a music hall actress, which she achieved three years later in 1889 when she was cast in a pantomime in Glasgow. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in around 1908, taking part in their marches on parliament and selling copies of their journal 'Votes for Women' in the street. When the Actress' Franchise League began in 1909, she was one of the first members. That same year she was arrested for the first time. The second arrest came in Newcastle a few months later when she threw a stone through the window of a post office, an offence for which she received a month's prison sentence. In Holloway jail she was force fed and reacted by setting her cell on fire. Further attacks on property ranging from breaking windows (Mar 1912) and a fire alarm (late 1912) to burning properties (Levetleigh House in Sussex in Apr 1913, the Grand Stand at Hurst Park racecourse in Jun 1913, various houses in Liverpool in Aug 1913 and Manchester in Nov 1913). These incidents resulted in a series of further terms of imprisonment during which force-feeding occurred followed by release under the Cat and Mouse Act. Fellow WSPU workers finally took her to Paris in May 1914. At the outbreak of war in Aug 1914, Marion's position became doubly uncertain: firstly, there was some question, soon dropped, of returning the suffragette prisoners to jail to serve the rest of their term; secondly Marion was a German by birth and therefore suspect. Despite briefly resuming her career on the stage, she was finally deported, going to America in 1915 where she would spend most of her remaining years. There she quickly became active in the family planning movement and after 1917, she began working with the Birth Control Review published by New York Women's Publishing Company under Margaret Sanger. Marion, with her experience selling 'Votes for Women', became a street hawker, selling the Review in New York for 13 years. She was arrested several times for violating obscenity laws, and was imprisoned for 30 days in 1918. She was granted US citizenship in 1924. She returned to London in 1930 to attend the unveiling of the statue to Mrs Pankhurst and began work in the Birth Control International Centre under Edith How Martyn. However, she finally returned to New York where she worked in Sanger's office once more before retiring to the Margaret Sanger Home in New York State where she died in 1944.
Kay Pilpel (fl 1930s) grew up in the Jewish community of Stamford Hill, London, in the 1930s as the daughter of a lithographer. She attended Tottenham High School for Girls.
Annie Lacon (1880-1968) was born in Birmingham in 1880. She attended a meeting in Birmingham in 1906 at which Emmeline Pankhurst was a speaker and immediately became the first member of the Birmingham branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). There she also met the man who was to become her husband. In 1907 she was selected as a delegate from Birmingham sent to protest at the House of Commons. During this event on the 20 Mar 1907, she was arrested with around seventy other women and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The following day she was tried and fined five shilling which she refused to pay. She was then held for fourteen days in solitary confinement. She subsequently continued as a member of the WSPU, later giving birth to a daughter whom she named Emmeline. This occurred two months after the death of her husband and she subsequently went to live with her sister before moving to Northampton in 1948 where her daughter was employed. She remained a member of the Labour party there until the end of her life, as well as belonging to the Northampton Business and Professional Women's Club. Lacon was also a member of the Women's Freedom League and birth-control campaigner. She died in 1968.
Louie Luker (1873-1971) was born in Kensington in London in 1873 to a family of artists. She studied art in Bushey, in Hertfordshire, under Hubert von Herkomer from 1900-1903 but emigrated to South Africa in 1904. There she worked as a painter before marrying Philip Burrell, only returning to Britain in 1908 for the birth of her daughter, Philippa. Her husband died in Durban before being able to join her. In London, she resumed her career as a portraitist and achieved considerable success as a society artist. She was also the General Secretary of Artists' Suffrage League. She became ill in 1912, subsequently recovering during a trip to Canada. Her career in Britain ended abruptly in 1914 when commissions stopped as the First World War began. In the light of this, she travelled to California where she spent the rest of the war and where she found a new audience. She returned to London in 1919 but was unable to find work. Instead she rented out rooms and became a cook until 1923 when she came to the attention of Mrs Stanley who became her patron. She travelled to India in 1928 where she painted members of the ruling classes including the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and Field Marshall Sir William Birdwood. However, her career ended soon after due to ill health. She died in 1971.
Lydia Becker (1827-1890) was born in the Manchester area in Feb 1827 the eldest of 15 children the surviving siblings being Mary, Esther, Edward, Wilfred, Arthur, John and Charles. Her father, Hannibal Leigh Becker (1803-1877) was the son of Ernest Hannibal Becker (1771-1852) a German immigrant who had settled in England and become a naturalised citizen. Hannibal married Mary Duncroft and became the proprietor of first a calico-printing works at Reddish and then a chemical works at Altham in Lancashire. The couple had fifteen children. Her early life was conventional her main interests were in astronomy and botany, and she wrote one book on each subject. In 1865, the family moved to central Manchester where Becker founded the Manchester Ladies' Literary Society, which was a centre for scientific interests and at the first meeting a paper written by Darwin for the event was read. The previous year she had attended a Social Science Association meeting and heard Barbara Bodichon lecture on women's emancipation. Bodichon encouraged her to contact Emily Davis. Through these individuals, Becker became involved with local suffrage groups. In Feb 1867, she was named honorary secretary of the Manchester Committee for Women's Suffrage and was instrumental in rewriting its constitution as the Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage.
In 1868 she became treasurer of the Married Women's Property Committee. She travelled about the country organising meetings and support for the issue throughout the 1860s and was involved in the campaign to have women ratepayers included on the electoral register. She worked alongside Jacob Bright as the parliamentary agent of the National Society for Women's Suffrage to have the amendment to the Municipal Franchise Bill passed in 1869 so that this could be achieved at a local, if not a national, level. However, her efforts were not restricted to suffrage. In 1870, she was the first woman to be elected to the Manchester School Board, she was also the founder-editor of the 'Woman's Suffrage Journal' in 1870. In the 1870s she was active in the campaign to have the Contagious Diseases Acts repealed and worked beside Josephine Butler and Elizabeth Wolstenholme in the Vigilance Association for the Defence of Personal Rights. She organised a significant repeal meeting in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 1870 with JB, Elizabeth Wolstenholme and James Stuart. She also served on the LNA Executive Committee between 1872-1873. She introduced the first motion against Bruce's Bill at the Conference of Repeal Organisations, 29 Feb 1872. However, parliamentary developments in 1874 led many to believe that the vote might be granted to single though not married women. Becker pragmatically supported this as an interim measure, leading to criticism from the Pankhursts, the Brights and Wolstenholme Elmy. In the later part of that decade she was secretary to the Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and remained with it when the London societies divided over opposition to the CD Acts in 1888. However, her health began to deteriorate and she withdrew from active work in 1889 and travelled to Aix-les-Bains to recuperate. On the 21 Jul 1890 she died in Geneva, Switzerland having contracted diphtheria.
Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873-1943) was the daughter of James Skelton and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. She had one brother, Alan Garrett Anderson, and a sister, Margaret, who died of meningitis in 1875. She was educated at St Leonard's School (May 1888-Apr 1891) and later Bedford College (1890-1893). In 1892 she entered the London School of Medicine for Women, and qualified with a MB in 1897, and BS in 1898. In 1900 she gained her MD. Louisa did a postgraduate year at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore in 1902. As well as becoming established as a doctor Louisa was politically active, taking a keen interest in suffrage activities, like many of her family. She was a member of: the London Society for Women's Suffrage; the London Graduates' Union for Women's Suffrage (where she chaired the inaugural meeting); the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU); the United Suffragists (Vice-President); and the National Political League.On 4 Mar 1912 Anderson smashed a window in Rutland Gate in protest at a speech made by an anti-suffragist Cabinet minister. She was arrested and sent to Holloway Prison for 6 weeks with hard labour (later reduced to one month by direct intervention of the Home Office).
Louisa founded the Women's Hospital for Children, 688 Harrow Road, with Dr Flora Murray, in 1912. Murray was a former student of the London School of Medicine for Women, also an active supporter of the WSPU, and it is likely that the two women met in the course of their suffrage work. Louisa was also on the staff at the New Hospital for Women as an assistant surgeon.In Aug 1914, together with Flora Murray, Louisa founded the Women's Hospital Corps, under the auspices of the French Red Cross. Louisa was the Chief Surgeon. The two women established a hospital in the Hotel Claridge in Paris, which ran from Sep 1914 to Jan 1915. In Nov 1914 they were asked to open a second hospital at Wimereux, under the Royal Army Medicine Corps (RAMC), which also ran until early 1915. They were then offered hospital premises in London, so closed both hospitals in France and returned to England. The Endell Street Military Hospital, the first hospital in the UK established expressly for men by women, ran from May 1915 until Dec 1919, and during that time treated over 26,000 patients, 24,000 of them male. The hospital has been largely forgotten today, partly because of its relatively small size, and partly because of its anomalous position as a women-run institution in a largely hostile RAMC. The best source of the activities of the Women's Hospital Corps in World War One is the account by Flora Murray, published in 1920: Women as Army Surgeons: being the history of the Women's Hospital Corps in Paris, Wimereux and Endell Street, Sep 1914-Oct 1919 (London: Hodder and Stoughton). In 1917 Murray and Anderson were awarded the CBE for their war work.Flora Murray was Louisa Garrett Anderson's close friend and companion from about 1910 until Murray's death in 1923. They jointly owned a house, Paul End, at Penn in Buckinghamshire. Before meeting Murray, Anderson had had a close relationship with the suffragist Evelyn Sharp - there are a few passionate letters from Anderson in the Evelyn Sharp Papers in the Bodleian Library. In her diary, Evelyn Sharp describes how she wrote an obituary of Anderson, published in the Manchester Guardian (a copy is in the Women's Library Biographical Press Cuttings collection). After the war the two women continued to work at their hospital in the Harrow Road until forced to close it because of lack of funds in 1921. They then retired to the country.
Murray had a brief illness in 1923 and was diagnosed with rectal carcinoma. She had a series of operations at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and died at a nursing home in Belsize Park in 1923. Anderson continued to live at Penn. She was a magistrate, and remained interested in women's issues. When war broke out she let her house and came to London to stay with Louie Brook, former Secretary of the London School of Medicine for Women, in Russell Square. She was given a place on the surgical staff at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. In 1943 she was found to have disseminated malignant disease, and was taken to a nursing home in Brighton, where she died on 15 Nov 1943. Louisa was cremated at Brighton and her ashes scattered there, but her family arranged for an inscription commemorating her friendship and work with Flora Murray to be placed on the latter's tombstone in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, Penn.
Lady Helen Nutting (1890-1973) was born Helen Ogilvy in 1890, the daughter of the sixth Earl of Airlie. In 1909 she married the Hon. Clement Bertram Ogilvy Mitford-Freeman DSO 10th Hussars, who was killed in action in 1915. (He was a son of the first Baron Redesdale). In 1918 she married Lt-Col. Henry Courtney Brocklehurst, 10th Hussars. The marriage was troubled and they divorced in 1931. He was later killed in action in Burma 1942. In 1933 she finally married Lt-Col. Harold Bligh Nutting. She had, by this time, become involved with issues concerning women's status and rights, especially economic equality between husband and wife. She became a member of the Married Women's Association in 1945 and was appointed its deputy Chair in 1947. In 1952 certain members of the Married Women's Association opposed the President's draft evidence to the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce. The President (Helena Normanton), Chair (Doreen Gorsky), Deputy Chair (Nutting) and the Hon. Secretary (Evelyn Hamilton) left the Association. They went on to occupy identical positions in a new organisation called the Council of Married Women. Gorsky resigned as Chair in 1953 due to her new appointment at the BBC and Lady Nutting became Chair until its dissolution. Through the 1960s the Council encountered financial difficulties and the organisation's work largely devolved upon Lady Nutting alone. The organisation was wound up in 1969. She died in Dec 1973.
Lois Lang-Sims (fl 1936-1995) was a distant relation of Agnes Maude Royden and a member of her congregation at the Guildhall in 1936. Through this, the two became friends until the latter's death. Lang-Sims had a strong interest in spiritual matters, which was exhibited in a number of books which she published over a series of decades from One Thing Only: A Christian Guide to the Universal Quest for God, to The presence of Tibet in 1963 and Canterbury Cathedral in 1979. She also had a brief friendship with the writer Charles Williams whose letters to her were published as Letters to Lalage in 1989.
Louisa Twining (1820-1912) was born in 1820, the grandchild of Richard Twining, the head of the firm of tea and coffee merchants. She was educated at home and later attended lectures at the Royal Institute. She was a talented artist and her first publication, in 1852, was the book Symbols and Emblems of Early and Mediaeval Art. It was the year after this that she became aware of the problems presented by the workhouse when she visited a former nurse in one such establishment. She organised a workhouse-visiting scheme amongst her friends but attempts to implement it were rejected by the local Poor Law Board. Attempts to sway the board through personal interventions, letters to the press and lectures met with little success until 1855, when the Rev. JS Brewer published one of Twining's lectures in 'Practical Lectures to Ladies'. A further pamphlet entitled 'A Few Words about the Inmates of Our Union Workhouses' followed this, while a petition was also circulated. The effect of this was that the first visiting committee was set up in 1857 and the following year she established a campaigning organisation under the title of the Workhouse Visiting Society that published its journal from Jan 1859 until 1865 and was active in workhouse reform. It's stated aim was 'the promotion of the moral and spiritual improvement of Workhouse inmates' and the organisation was especially concerned with the care of children and the ill, work which would lead her to take an interest in the question of nursing in later life. This work over a period of five years had equipped Twining with a significant knowledge of the Workhouse system and consequently she was asked to give a paper to a meeting of the Social Science Association that took place in 1857. Two years later, she undertook several interviews with the Poor Law Boards and was subsequently asked to give evidence on Poor Schools the following year. Her statement called for women poor law inspectors and for girls to receive training in a suitable trade, a call that resulted in the appointment of Mrs Nassau Senior as the first female Poor Law Inspector in 1872. She went on to try to have measures adopted to improve the standard of workhouse nursing and in 1870 set up the Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association. Her interest in training for girls had been evident for a number of years. Since 1850 she had given classes for women at the Working Men's College as well as attending lectures herself at Queen's College and she would later become involved with the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women. She was elected as one of the first female poor law guardians in 1884 (she was a guardian for Kensington and Tunbridge Wells) and remained in this post until 1890. In 1900 she retired from work and died in Tunbridge Wells in 1912.
Lisa Pottesman (1881-1959) was born in Romania in 1881 and came to London as a member of a theatre troupe. In 1903 she married Wolf Pottesman and in the early 1920s became a patient of Dr Harold Burt White, who in 1932 was subsequently struck off the Register for ' improper conduct with a lady patient' . Lisa's campaign for his re-instalment brought her into contact with Sylvia Pankhurst and a friendship developed between the two women. After Lisa's organisation of a petition to the General Medical Council, and her seeking of public support for Dr Burt White, he was reinstated in 1937. Restrictions on his practice however caused Lisa again to plead his cause with County Hall (London County Council) in 1939. He died in 1952, Lisa died in 1959.
Mary Alexander Jackson (1905-1977) was born Mary Telford in Abergavenny in 1905. She studied French and History at Aberystwyth University, later going on to become a member of the British Federation of University Women and becoming involved in the movement to establish playgrounds for children in urban areas. In the 1920s she met John Jackson who, in 1928, went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a surveyor. She followed in 1929 in order to marry him. They had three children who moved around the island with them continually in the course of John Jackson's work. They remained there until the outbreak of the Second World War, then Mary Jackson and her children were evacuated to Natal in South Africa. The whole family returned to Cambridge in 1948. Mary Jackson became employed teaching French nearby in Cottenham Village School and took part in a large number of voluntary organisations such as the Children's Playground Association which she founded in 1949. She became particularly involved in the National Council of Women at both a local and a national level. She was the local chair for three years, and during the 1950s was one of the twelve representatives of the NCW on the government commission sent to West Germany to study women's voluntary work there. She also retained an interest in the welfare of African women in the United Kingdom and was active in trying to organise centres for their use. She died in 1997.
Mary Ann Rawle (1878-1964) was born in Lancashire in 1878 and from the age of ten worked in a cotton mill. In 1900 she married Francis Rawle, an iron turner, with whom she had two children. She became active in local industrial politics and was a member of her local branch of the Independent Labour Party at Ashton-Under-Lyne. Six years later she was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and was one of the group of 400 women textile workers who went as a deputation to the Prime Minister on 19 May 1906. During this event, she came into contact with Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie and Jessie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and accompanied the group who was allowed into the Foreign Office on that occasion. In the autumn of that same year, she assisted Hannah Mitchell when she was appointed a part-time organiser for the WSPU in Oldham. In Mar 1907 she attended the second Women's Parliament (dressed in shawl and clogs) and was arrested in London and sentenced to two weeks in Holloway Prison. In 1907, however, she left the WSPU for the Women's Freedom League and became the secretary of its Ashton-Under-Lyne branch. She moved to Grantham in 1910 and presided at a branch meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies there in 1913. She would later stand as a Labour candidate in the Grantham municipal elections and was chair of her branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild for 17 years. In 1945 she was chair of the Grantham branch of the Old Age Pensions Association. She died in 1964.
Mildred Anna Rosalie Tuker (1862-1957) was born in Apr 1862, the daughter of Rosalie du Chemin and Stephen Tuker. She was educated privately before studying moral sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1880 to 1883. Her work appears to first have been published in 1887 and she would continue to work as a writer until the period just before the outbreak of the Second World War. She spent the period in 1893-1910 mainly in Rome, which became her second home. Her most important works were The School of York in 1887, The Liturgy in Rome in 1897, Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome in 1897-1900, Cambridge in 1907, Ecce Mater in 1915, The Liturgy in Rome in 1925 and Past and Future of Ethics in 1938. In the early part of the twentieth century she became involved with the women's suffrage movement as well as the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church. Her articles on Catholicism were published in a wide range of periodicals such as Hibbert's Journal and the Fortnightly Review. By 1911 she had become a member of both the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society and the Women's Social and Political Union. She published a number of articles in the pages of Votes for Women, signing herself MART, as well as being asked by Christabel Pankhurst to lobby MPs on a number of occasions. She took part in the series of major marches that took place in London in 1908 and 1910 and was in the Joint procession that took place in 1911. In addition to her suffrage and theological activities, she was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia, Rome and a Lady of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem as well as being on the expert adviser's panel of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1927. Her writing focused on the historical position of women, particularly in the Christian religion, and the theological and ethical rationale for this. She died in Mar 1954.
Mary Beatrice Crowle (1874- fl 1930) was born in Brisbane in 1874, the daughter of Mr WE Finucane. In her lifetime she was a suffragist, voluntary worker, health practitioner, holder of public office and broadcaster. After her marriage to the naval officer Captain Crowle, she began a series of travels that would eventually end in her settling in England. Crowle was active in the suffrage movement in the pre-war period, becoming a member of the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association by 1913 and the honorary secretary of the Plymouth branch in the following year. During the first year of the First World War she worked with the Red Cross as a nurse and established a Ladies Rifle Club in the naval town. The following year, she was one of the first members of the local branch of the Women's Police Force and began lecturing on the role of her native Australia in the war. In the post-1918 period when women had been given a vote, she became a member of the committee of the Bath and District Women Citizens' Association and was elected to the Bath Union Board of Guardians. During the 1920s she became involved with broadcasting and became a Selborne Society Lecturer, following this activity in the 1930s by joining the League of Nations Union. Towards the end of her life, she became concerned with issues of vivisection and homeopathic medicine.
Margaret Elizabeth Byham (1865-c 1913) was born in Jul 1865, the daughter of George Byham (principal of the British War Office) and Mary Elizabeth Woods. She was a member of both the Women's Social and Political Union and the Church League for Women's Suffrage. Before leaving her hometown of Ealing in 1907, she was the Honorary Secretary of the local branch of the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants. She was the Honorary Treasurer of the Women's March from Edinburgh to London in 1912, one of the six who completed the journey in its entirety and accompanied Florence de Fonblanque to the door of 10 Downing Street to present the petition for women's suffrage. She subsequently became the Honorary Treasurer of the 'Qui Vive' Corps that was founded after the march had been completed and which contained members of all suffrage societies.
Margery Corbett Ashby was born at Danehill, Sussex in 1882 to Charles Corbett, the future Liberal MP for Grinstead, and Marie Corbett. At the age of eighteen, she formed a society called the Younger Suffragists with a group of friends and her younger sister Cicely. The following year, in 1901, Margery won a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, to read Classics. Three years later, despite passing her examinations, Cambridge refused to grant her a degree on the grounds of her gender. Subsequently, she obtained a place at the Cambridge Teachers Training College, though she would later decide against teaching as a profession. That same year, in 1904, she and her sister attended the first meeting of the International Women Suffrage Alliance in Berlin with their mother.
She had been involved in the women's suffrage movement since Cambridge, where she had joined the local branch of the National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies. In 1907 Corbett was appointed Secretary of that same organisation and editor of the journal, The Common Cause, positions that she held until she was elected to the executive committee two years later. It was in 1909 that she also became a member of the Cambridge Women s Suffrage Association as well as becoming involved in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance as a speaker at their conferences in Berlin and Stockholm. The following year, she married the barrister, Brian Ashby, giving birth to their only child four years later. In 1912 she became a poor law guardian in Wandsworth and in 1914 was the chairperson of the Barnes, Mortlake and East Sheen branch of the London Society for Women s Suffrage. However, when that year the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, Corbett Ashby felt compelled to resign form the organisation.
Corbett Ashby passed the First World War carrying out work in hospitals and running a canteen at an outbuilding of Woodgate for local schoolchildren. In 1919, she attended the Versailles Peace Conference in place of Millicent Garrett Fawcett as a member of the International Alliance of Women. After the passing of the Qualification of Women Act in 1918, she became one of the seventeen women candidates that stood in the post-war election. She stood as the Liberal candidate for Ladywood, Birmingham, but lost her deposit in the process, having advocated feminist policies that would have given women full political equality with men. The following year she took part in the first post-war congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and was elected president of the organisation in 1923, a position she would hold until she retired in 1946. She succeeded Eleanor Rathbone as the president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and co-founded the Towns Womens Guild with Eva Hubback in the late 1920s which she also presided over for a time. In 1932 Corbett Ashby was the British delegate to the Geneva Disarmament Conference, but resigned from this position in 1935 in protest at the British Government's refusal to support any practical scheme for mutual security and defence. That same year, she resigned from the head of the Towns Womens Guild but accepted the presidency of the Women s Freedom League instead. Around the same time, she became the vice president of the Fawcett Society.
Corbett Ashby continued to be active in politics after the Second World War. In 1952, at the age of seventy, she became editor of International Women's News. Her last political action was at the age of ninety-eight when she took part in the Women's Day of Action in London in 1980. She died at Danehill on 22nd May 1981.
Mary Stocks (1891-1975) was the daughter of Roland Danvers, a General Practitioner, and Helen Constance Rendel. She was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School, London and at the London School of Economics (LSE) where she studied economics, graduating in 1913. In 1913 she married John Leofric Stocks. Mary went on to have an academic career at the University of Oxford, LSE, King's College of Household and Social Science, Manchester University and Westfield College London, of which she was Principal from 1939-1951. Whilst still at school, Mary had become a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She carried a banner in the 1907 'Mud March' and stewarded at meetings, distributed literature, attended conferences and addressed street corner meetings. In 1914 she became a member of the Executive Committee of the NUWSS and in 1928 remained involved in the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. In addition she was active in the birth control movement and was a member of various royal commissions and statutory committees, including the Unemployment Statutory Committee. Mary Stocks also wrote and broadcast widely. Her publications include 'The Industrial State: A Social and Economic History of England' (1921), 'The Case for Family Endowment' (1927), a biography of Eleanor Rathbone and histories of district nursing, the Manchester University Settlement and the Workers Educational Association. In addition, she published two autobiographical volumes, 'My Commonplace Book' (1970), which contains an account of her suffrage activities, and 'Still more commonplace' (1973). She was created a life peer in 1966. She died in 1975.
Mary Eliza Haweis née Joy (1848-1898) was the eldest daughter of the Victorian portrait artist Thomas Musgrove Joy and his wife Eliza. She herself painted and exhibited. She illustrated books, designed book covers and many of her woodcuts appeared in Cassell's magazine. However, she is best known as an important figure in the female literature of household taste that flourished in the 1880s, her most famous work being The Art of Decoration (1881). She wrote several books and also contributed widely to contemporary women's magazines, mostly on women's clothes and interior design. In 1867, aged 19, she married Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), popular preacher, musician, lecturer and incumbent of St James, Marylebone. The couple lived in Welbeck Street and later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at the centre of an intellectual, scientific and literary circle. The marriage was a difficult one, with her husband's extra-marital affairs causing pain to Mary Eliza. They had three children Lionel (b. 1878), Hugolin and Stephen (who was delivered by the female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson). Mary died in 1898.
Margaret Eleanor Scott (1859-1929) was born in Norwich in 1859. Between 1872 and 1876 Scott was apprenticed as a pupil teacher of St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich and received a Bishop's Certificate of Norwich diocese for five years of scripture examinations. She gained a first class Queen's Scholarship in 1876, and went on to study at Norwich Training College between 1877 and 1878, gaining a first division certificate. Between 1879 and 1884, and again in 1889, Margaret Scott studied at Cambridge University, focusing mainly on sociology, physiology and history. Scott taught at a number of schools during the 1880s including Cringleford Public School, Norwich between 1878 and 1881, St Paul's City Trust School, Norwich between 1881 and 1883, Marylebone Queen's Scholarship Class of the Central Classes for Training Young Teachers and Wordsworth College for Training Teachers, Kilburn, in 1887. Scott was also headmistress of All Souls' Schools, South Hampstead during the 1880s. During the 1890s Scott was Special Lecturer to the National Health Society and lecturer on hygiene, domestic economy, history and literature to the Central Classes for Teachers, Marylebone. She went on to co-write Domestic Economy: Comprising the Laws of Health in their Application to Home Life and Work with Arthur Newsholme in 1893. In 1897 Scott was on the committee of the Norwich Sanitary Aid Commission, she had gained a diploma for proficiency in Sanitary Knowledge granted by the Sanitary Institute (London), and was the only woman in the United Kingdom qualified to act as a Sanitary Inspector under the Public Health Acts during this period. Scott married Edward Pillow, an engineer and later Organising Secretary for Technical Education, Norfolk County Council, in 1891. They had two sons, Edward and Henry Montgomery. Margaret Scott died in 1929.
ME Roberts (fl 1881-1968) was born around 1881. She became a member of the Sheffield branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) around 1906 before leaving this to join the local branch of the Women's Freedom League which came into being around Dec 1908 after Charlotte Despard and her associates followers broke away from the Pankhursts and other WSPU's leaders. Roberts seems to have taken part in the Pageant of Women that was held in Sheffield in 1910. She would later become the local secretary of the Sheffield WFL. In 1909 she took part in a deputation to 10 Downing Street to hand in a petition to the Prime Minister. She kept an interest in the militant suffrage movement throughout the 1930s, keeping in correspondence with the Record Room of the Suffragette Fellowship. In 1940 she moved to Liverpool where she lived for the rest of her life. She retired to a home around 1968.
Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor (fl 1910-1914) and her husband Captain Thomas Smithies Taylor were friends of the Pethick Lawrence family, Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (her sister) and her brother-in-law Mark Wilkes. By early 1912 Mrs Taylor was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union which was then engaged in a campaign of militant action against government and private property. On 4 Mar 1912 she took part in a window smashing party with a Miss Roberts and a Miss Nellie Crocker, attacking a post office in Sloane Square. They were arrested and brought before a magistrate at Westminster Police Court, who referred their case to the Sessions. From the 5-22 Mar 1912 they were placed on remand at Holloway Prison until Taylor went before Newington Session and was given a three months sentence. While in prison, she went on hunger strike, though she was not forcibly fed, and was subsequently discharged and taken to her sister's house on the 27 Apr 1912. She was imprisoned a second time in Jul 1913 under the alias of Mary Wyan of Reading. Mrs Ellen Mary Taylor refused release under the Cat and Mouse [Temporary Discharge for Ill-health] Act of 1913. She claimed complete discharge and declined to give the prison governor any address. When she was conveyed to a nursing home she refused to enter until her full release was granted and continued her strike on a chair in the road outside. The police then removed her to the Kensington Infirmary where she eventually gave up her protest. Around this time, the Woodford assault case took place, touching the Taylor's immediate circle of friends.
Lady Mary Gertrude Emmott (1886-1954) was born Mary Lees in Oldham in 1866. She was the daughter of John William Lees and Elizabeth Lees and was educated at Queen's College in London. She married the Liberal MP Lord Alfred Emmott in 1887, with whom she had two daughters. She became the Mayoress of Oldham in 1891, the same year that she became one of the original members of the Board of the Oldham branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This social welfare work was to continue through her life, she was the first woman to be elected to the Oldham Board of Guardians in 1898 and went on to represent the Women's Industrial Council on the Council of the National Association of Women's Lodging Houses in 1910. During the First World War she was involved in organising aid to Belgian refugees and in its aftermath she was appointed to the Chair of the Women's Subcommittee Advisory Council by the Ministry of Reconstruction. Her interest in housing was continued by her work as a member of the Housing Advisory Council overseen by the Ministry of Health, membership of the Advisory Council of the Local Government Board on Housing in 1919, membership of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association from 1932-3 and presidency of the Women's Homes Association in the 1930s. Emmott was also active in the area of women's status. She helped establish a branch of the National Council of Women in Oldham in 1897 and became the vice-chair of the Women's National Liberation Foundation. Later she would be successively a member of the Executive committee, president of the London branch and the Chair of the National Council of Women's Parliamentary Legislation Committee before being appointed acting vice-president in 1927 and president from the following year until 1938. She was also closely associated with the London Society for Women's Suffrage, as a member of the Executive Council from the end of the nineteenth century to its transformation into the Fawcett Society in 1951, of which she was elected President months before her death in 1954.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) was born in Suffolk in 1847, the daughter of Newson and Louisa Garrett and the sister of Samuel Garrett, Agnes Garrett, Louise Smith and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The sisters' early interest in the issue of women's suffrage and commitment to the Liberal party were heightened after attending a speech given in London by John Stuart Mill in July 1865. Though considered too young to sign the petition in favour of votes for women, which was presented to the House of Commons in 1866, Millicent attended the debate on the issue in May 1867. This occurred a month after she married the professor of political economy and radical Liberal MP for Brighton, Henry Fawcett. Throughout their marriage, the future cabinet minister supported his wife's activities while she acted as his secretary due to his blindness. Their only child, Philippa Fawcett, was born the following year and that same month Millicent Garrett Fawcett published her first article, on the education of women. In Jul 1867, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was asked to join the executive committee of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and was one of the speakers at its first public meeting two years later. She continued her work with the London National Society until after the death of John Stuart Mill in 1874, when she left the organisation to work with the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage. This was a step which she had avoided taking when the latter was formed in 1871 due to its public identification with the campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Fawcett, despite her support for the movement's actions, had initially believed that the suffrage movement might be damaged by identification with such controversial work. However, the two groups later merged in 1877 as the new Central Committee for Women's Suffrage and a new executive committee was formed which included Fawcett herself. Her influence helped guide the group towards support for moderate policies and methods. She did little public speaking during this period but after the death of her husband in 1884 and a subsequent period of depression, she was persuaded to become a touring speaker once more in 1886 and began to devote her time to the work of the women's suffrage movement. In addition to women's suffrage Millicent Garrett Fawcett also became involved in the newly created National Vigilance Association, established in 1885, alongside campaigners such as J Stansfeld MP, Mr WT Stead, Mrs Mitchell, and Josephine Butler. In 1894 Fawcett's interest in public morality led her to vigorously campaign against the candidature of Henry Cust as Conservative MP for North Manchester. Cust, who had been known to have had several affairs, had seduced a young woman. Despite marrying Cust's marriage in 1893, after pressure from Balfour, Fawcett felt Cust was unfit for public office. Fawcett's campaign persisted until Cust's resignation in 1895, with some suffrage supporters concerned by Fawcett's doggedness in what they felt was a divisive campaign. In the late nineteenth century, the women's suffrage movement was closely identified with the Liberal Party through its traditional support for their work and the affiliation of many workers such as Fawcett herself. However, the party was, at this time, split over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. Fawcett herself left the party to become a Liberal Unionist and helped lead the Women's Liberal Unionist Association. When it was proposed that the Central Committee's constitution should be changed to allow political organisations, and principally the Women's Liberal Federation, to affiliate, Fawcett opposed this and became the Honorary Treasurer when the majority of members left to form the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. However, in 1893 she became one of the leading members of the Special Appeal Committee that was formed to repair the divisions in the movement. On the 19 Oct 1896 she was asked to preside over the joint meetings of the suffrage societies, which resulted in the geographical division of the country and the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was appointed as the honorary secretary of the Central and Eastern Society that year and became a member of the parliamentary committee of the NUWSS itself. It was not until the parent group's reorganisation in 1907 that she was elected president of the National Union, a position that she would retain until 1919. By 1901, she was already eminent enough to be one of the first women appointed to sit on a Commission of Inquiry into the concentration camps created for Boer civilians by the British during the Boer War. Despite this, her work for suffrage never slackened and she was one of the leaders of the Mud March held in Feb 1907 as well as of the NUWSS procession from Embankment to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908. She became one of the Fighting Fund Committee in 1912 and managed the aftermath of the introduction of the policy, in particular during the North West Durham by-election in 1914, when other members opposed a step that effectively meant supporting the Labour Party when an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing in a constituency. When the First World War broke out in Aug 1914, Fawcett called for the suspension of the NUWSS' political work and a change in activities to facilitate war work. This stance led to divisions in the organisation. The majority of its officers and ten of the executive committee resigned when she vetoed their attendance of a Women's Peace Congress in the Hague in 1915. However, she retained her position in the group. During the war, she also found time to become involved in the issue of women's social, political and educational status in India, an area in which she had become interested through her husband and retained after the conflict came to an end. She remained at the head of the NUWSS when the women's suffrage clause was added to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 and attended the Women's Peace Conference in Paris before lobbying the governments assembled there for the Peace Conference in 1919. She retired in Mar 1919 when the NUWSS became the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship but remained on its executive committee. She also continued her activities as the vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, to which she had been elected in 1902, for another year. After this she became the Chair of the journal, the 'Women's Leader', and appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1925. It was in that year that she resigned from both NUSEC and the newspaper's board after opposing the organisation's policy in support of family allowances. She remained active until the end of her life, undertaking a trip to the Far East with her sister Agnes only a short time before her death in 1929.