Kitty Marion: Radical Suffragette

Criminal Records Office c.1913

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 & 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 April 1913, the Grand Stand at Hurst Park racecourse in June 1913, various houses in Liverpool in August 1913 and Manchester in November 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.

read more here:

@ Time

@ Wikipedia

@ BBC News

@ The Spectator

@ BBC Radio

@ History Today

read also:

• Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette by Fern Riddell
• The Company She Kept: The Radical Activism of Actress Kitty Marion from Piccadilly Circus to Times Square by Christine Woodworth
• Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson
• The Suffragette Bombers: Britain's Forgotten Terrorists by Simon Webb

see also:

@ Wikipedia: List of Women's Rights Activists

Matilda Joslyn Gage - Forgotten 19th Century Suffragist

It’s easy to say that great strides have been made toward racial and gender equality in the last 150 years, yet one can’t help being struck by the parallel discourse surrounding human rights between then and now. Nowhere is this more evident than in the battles between women’s rights and the religious right. And nowhere is it more clear than in reviewing the works of Matilda Joslyn Gage.

From her first public speech, at age 26, in front of the 1852 National Woman’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, to her culminating thoughts in the 1893 book Woman, Church, and State, Gage used philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and science to rewrite the place of women in socio-political life throughout history.

What Gage saw was that you can’t just “get out the vote.” You have to change the mythologies. New stories need to be told, even if they are the old stories that have been forgotten.

Read entire article by Brent Plate here @ USC Annenberg - Religious Dispatches

Welsh Women

From Wales Online comes these three interesting articles on Welsh women:

Welsh Women & The Vote:

In the summer of 1913 many Welsh women took to the roads. They were usually quite well-off, professional women themselves or married to professional men, and could afford to travel by train or sometimes even by car or carriage. They were walking to make a political point. They wanted the vote and they were using a peaceful way to campaign for it. Read More HERE

Kate Bosse-Griffiths:

Kate Bosse-Griffiths was born in Wittenberg, the German town where Martin Luther had initiated the birth of Protestantism, in 1910. Having studied Archaeology and Egyptology in Berlin, Bonn and Munich, she gained a doctorate for her thesis on the human figure in late Egyptian sculpture in 1936 and was appointed to a post in Berlin, poised for a career curating the world-renowned collections in its museums. Read More HERE about this Egyptologist who fled Nazi persecution.

Women & the National Library of Wales:

The National Library of Wales opened to the public in 1909 in a temporary location at the Assembly Rooms in Aberystwyth before moving to its permanent home on Penglais Hill in 1916. Between the years 1909 and 1912 around 350 individual readers used the library’s reading room and consulted more than 1,300 books, manuscripts, maps and prints.

Unsurprisingly, men were in the majority, but 14% of the readers during this period were women. It was predominantly a younger female generation who used the library, as almost two-thirds of the female readers were under 30 and many were enrolled as university students. Read More HERE and meet the women academics of the 19th Century.

Saudi Women Welcome Suffrage

From Voice of America:

Saudi women are hailing King Abdullah's promise of expanded political rights, with the hope it is another step toward equality in the ultraconservative kingdom.

The king's announcement that women may run for office and cast votes in the next round of municipal elections, set for 2015, is the latest in a string of reforms -- modest compared to most countries but domestically radical and long opposed by members of the Saudi elite.

The monarch's promises also include their appointment to the largely ceremonial Shura council, an advisory body. Women will not be allowed to take part in municipal elections this Thursday, however, and some Saudi women are continuing to push for other basic freedoms such as the right to drive a car or leave the country without a male relative's permission.

The initiative comes as leaders across the Arab world struggle to meet the demands of their people, or risk going the way of the ex-leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Already this year, King Abdullah announced a $130 billion program to boost salaries, build housing and fund other popular measures.

But Basmah Omair, director of the al Sayeda Khadija bin Khawlid Center at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, says it would be a mistake to think the latest move is a result of only the Arab Spring.

"In recent years, you have seen women take leadership positions like the deputy of the ministry of education and vice mayor of Jeddah," he said. "So it's not something [new], but maybe the media is concentrating [on these events] now and that is why they are just thinking of the recent events of 2011."

Swiss women celebrate 40 years of suffrage

From Swiss Info:

Swiss women have come a long way since 1971, the year they were granted the right to vote at the federal level.

Exactly 40 years after their first chance to do so, around 125 representatives of the Swiss political, social and economic scenes celebrated the milestone in Bern on Monday.

On February 7, 1971, 66 per cent of Swiss men voted in favour of allowing women to vote as well. The first opportunity came on June 6 of that year – when nationwide issues included environmental protection and financial regulations.

Many women who remember that momentous year were at the Bernerhof on Monday to reminisce and discuss what still needs to be done.

“This is a very important event because we still have a number of problems and challenges in terms of equality. Some examples include equal pay for equal work and the glass ceiling,” said former parliamentarian Rosmarie Zapfl-Helbling, president of alliance F, an umbrella organisation for 140 women’s groups in Switzerland.

Heroic Women of Dundee

From the Courier News:

As the old saying goes, “Behind every successful man lies a woman.”

Dundee Township Historical Society members wholeheartedly agree and said it was high time that the women of Dundee’s past be rightfully recognized.

On Sunday, the group presented, “Women in History: The Story of Heroic Women in Dundee Township,” one of many public programs it has offered to help keep the area’s rich history alive.

It’s often been the men in Dundee’s past that have received all the acclaim for their roles in purchasing land, starting up companies, and furthering societal efforts such as the Underground Railroad.

However, none of those advances would have been realized without the help and support of their wives, according to DTHS president Marge Edwards.

The Amazon

From BBC News:

A rare Jacobean manuscript of a play about women's liberation, which was found in a trunk at a castle, is expected to fetch £90,000 at auction.

The unknown play by Lord Edward Herbert was found during a valuation by auctioneers Bonhams at Powis Castle in Welshpool, Powys.

It is believed the play was to have been performed before James I and his court in 1618, but it was cancelled.

The manuscript of the play, called The Amazon, includes crossings out.

Bonhams said the play was about women's liberation, and "how well women would do without men" and "how useful divorce is".

Repeal Women's Right To Vote?

Digital Journal:

Women’s suffrage, according to British-American John Derbyshire and Ann Coulter, U.S. conservative pundit, has caused so many problems America would be better off if it hadn’t happened. So should the women’s vote be repealed?

Women were given the right to vote following the passage of the 19th amendment on August 16, 1920. Although initially those against women’s vote were concerned there might be a gender gap with voting, history shows this did not initially materialize, as women tended to vote Republican and more conservative than men until 1980. It was after that there began to be a slight difference between men and women in voting. This occurred during the Reagan – Carter election where women gave Carter 47% of their vote and 45% to Reagan.

What has been more remarkable is that women vote in greater numbers than men, which is the reason political parties look to the women’s vote in political matters since they have constituted approximately 52% of the vote since 1980. Where the difference in gender voting has been more pronounced is between stay-at-home mothers versus stay-at-home fathers where mothers vote more liberally on social issues than men according to a study reported in mid-September 2009. It has also been found that since 1980 the definition of “family” and therefore “family values” has become more value and therefore the play to “family values” has had varying effects depending upon how those values have been described.

So as women have expanded political power following the right to vote, how they vote has differed throughout history and according to present accounts can’t be predicted unless they happen to have children at home. This information provokes the question once again: Should women retain the right to vote if it is principally young mothers where the gender gap in voting is shown?

Equal Rites Awards

Wonderful satirical article from Ellen Goodman at the Columbus Dispatch. Read as she doles out the awards in anticipation of the upcoming milestone in women's suffrage.

Every year at this time, we prepare to celebrate Aug. 26, the anniversary of women's suffrage, in our own quirky way. I cheerfully distribute the Equal Rites Awards to those who have done their best over the past 12 months to set back the cause of women.