Mary Gawthorpe
-
Standard Name: Gawthorpe, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Eleanor Gawthorpe
Nickname: Nellie
MG
, from a working-class family with a tradition of self-education, became a remarkable speaker and writer on behalf of women's suffrage. She co-edited The Freewoman, working somewhat uneasily with Dora Marsden
. Her memoirs, published in her old age after her emigration from England to the USA, give a vivid account of her early struggles.
Connections
Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Family and Intimate relationships | Emmeline Pankhurst | She later deeply impressed Mary Gawthorpe
by being the only woman she knew to declare that if given the chance she would not change one iota of her life experience, including her marriage and her... |
Family and Intimate relationships | Dora Marsden | At about this time a close friendship began between two influential early twentieth-century feminists: DM
and Mary Gawthorpe
. Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990. 48 |
Friends, Associates | Emmeline Pankhurst | EP
was by now a legendary figure for suffragists of her own generation and the next. Mary Gawthorpe
recorded her first sight of her as neat, dainty, the very picture of discontent and mutinous intention... |
Friends, Associates | Isabella Ormston Ford | The sisters were friends of a large group of local female socialists who all campaigned for sex equality, many of whom were influenced by Carpenter. These included Katharine Bruce Glasier
, Edith Priestman
, Julia Varley |
Friends, Associates | Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence | October 1906, with the prospect of the re-opening of parliament, was full of suffrage activity for EPL
and her husband. They had Christabel Pankhurst
as a permanent guest at Clements Inn, occupying an office below... |
Friends, Associates | Dora Marsden | Introduced to each other by Mary Gawthorpe
, DM
and Rebecca West
began a friendship based on their shared interest in feminist issues. Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990. 93 Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995. 16-17 |
Intertextuality and Influence | Dora Marsden | The Freewoman's other writing contributors included Rebecca West
, radical feminists Ada Neild Chew
and Theresa Billington-Greig
, Stella Browne
(later founder of the Abortion Law Reform Association
), anarchists Rose Witcop
and Guy Aldred |
Literary responses | Annie Besant | The future suffragist Mary Gawthorpe
, encountering Karma about ten years after it was written, was profoundly affected. She felt that she sensed a reciprocal understanding, and read this with a different part of her... |
Literary responses | Sylvia Pankhurst | The book was well received, and enhanced SP
's reputation with the general public. George Bernard Shaw
praised it in a speech on the BBC
in which he compared SP
to Joan of Arc
... |
Occupation | Dora Marsden | |
Occupation | Dora Marsden | DM
was the major but not the sole driving force behind The Freewoman. The journal was launched with funds from Mary Gawthorpe
, who also served for some time as its co-editor. Gawthorpe's tenure... |
politics | Isabella Ormston Ford | IOF
, along with her friend Mary Gawthorpe
, travelled together to Leicester to attend the first annual conference of the Women's Labour League
. Hannam, June. Isabella Ford. Basil Blackwell, 1989. 117 |
politics | Constance Lytton | She was motivated by several cases of brutal treatment of ordinary suffragists in prison, and by an exchange she had on this subject with Mary Gawthorpe
. Her idea was to test the difference in... |
politics | Dora Marsden | DM
, Mary Gawthorpe
, and Rona Robinson
were arrested in their academic gowns at Manchester University
after protesting against the recent start of force-feeding at Birmingham's Winson Green Prison
. Garner, Les. A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden, 1882-1960. Avebury, 1990. 36 Barash, Carol. “Dora Marsden’s Feminism, the Freewoman, and the Gender Politics of Early Modernism”. Princeton University Library Chronicle, No. 1, pp. 31 -56. 39 |
politics | Dora Marsden | Christabel
and Emmeline Pankhurst
, Mary Gawthorpe
, and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
also spoke at this event. |
Timeline
3 January 1880
The popular Girl's Own Paper began as a weekly published by the Religious Tract Society
; it later became a monthly.
18 January 1894
The monthly magazineHome Notes (another of those which Mary Gawthorpe
called specialized offerings for women, edited by men) began publication.
23 March 1895
A weekly magazine entitled Home Chat began publication, one of those called by Mary Gawthorpespecialized offerings for women, edited by men. . . . all small, dainty in their appeal.
23 October 1906
During a demonstration at the opening of Parliament
, eleven Women's Social and Political Union
supporters were for the first time arrested and imprisoned: for two months in Holloway
.
11 December 1906
Millicent Garrett Fawcett
gave a banquet at the Savoy Hotel in London to celebrate the release from Holloway Prison
of suffragists arrested on 23 October.
1907
Alfred Richard Orage
and Holbrook Jackson
acquired the weekly reviewNew Age (founded in 1894).
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, No. 2, pp. 33 - 5.
34
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Orage
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online.
23 November 1911
Dora Marsden
and Mary Gawthorpe
edited the first issue of The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, a paper about sexual reform.