Mary Gawthorpe

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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.
  • BirthName: Mary Eleanor Gawthorpe
  • Nickname: Nellie
    As a girl MG was called not by her first name but by a diminutive of her second.

  • Married: Sanders
Sepia photograph of a young Mary Gawthorpe leaning sideways in an armchair with her head propped on one hand. She wears a blouse with full sleeves and a waistcoat over it. Her short, curly hair is centre-parted and brushed back. An inscription in capitals reads "Miss Mary Gawthorpe. National Women's Social and Political Union, 4 Clements Inn London W. C."

Milestones

12 January 1881

MG was born in Leeds, probably at 5 Melville Street in the district of Woodhouse. Mother's home
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
17
was the way she remembered this house.
“Guide to the Papers of Mary E. Gawthorpe, 1881-1990”. The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Autumn 1907

While recuperating from a long illness caused by appendicitis, MG wrote and published through the Women's Press her suffrage pamphlet Votes for Men.
This seems likely to have appeared after the first number of the paper Votes for Women in October this year.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge, 1996.
132

Late November 1971

On the occasion of US Thanksgiving, MG wrote a letter full of her old jaunty cheerfulness to L. Dockray , who had been one of her pupils nearly seventy years before.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge, 1996.
243 and n33

12 March 1973

MG died at ninety-two, after a decade of widowhood, at the Clearview Nursing Home in Whitestone (Queen's), New York, USA. In England she had been imagined to be already dead for some years.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“Guide to the Papers of Mary E. Gawthorpe, 1881-1990”. The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

Biography

Yorkshire Born, Yorkshire Bred

12 January 1881

MG was born in Leeds, probably at 5 Melville Street in the district of Woodhouse. Mother's home
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
17
was the way she remembered this house.
“Guide to the Papers of Mary E. Gawthorpe, 1881-1990”. The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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