Jane Maria Strachey
Jane Maria Strachey | |
|---|---|
,_Lady_Strachey_2.jpg) | |
| Born | 13 March 1840 |
| Died | 14 December 1928 |
Jane Maria Strachey was an English Suffragist and writer.[1][2]
Early Life
Lady Strachey was born on the ship Earl of Hadwick off the Cape of Good Hope in 1840. Her father was British Colonial Administrator Sir John Peter Grant who later served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal and as Governor of Jamaica. Her mother was Henrietta Chichele Plowden. She became the second wife of her father's secretary Sir Richard Strachey, who was 23 years older than her in 1859. The couple had 13 children, 10 of whom survived into adulthood - Lytton, James, Dorothea, Pernel, Oliver, Marjorie, Dick, Ralph, Philippa and Elinor.[1][2]
Professional Life
Her husband introduced her to the works of John Stuart Mill. They moved to Edinburgh in 1866-67 and Lady Strachey began gathering signatures for petitioning the Parliament for women's right to vote. Her first article on suffrage was published in The Attempt which was published by the Edinburgh Ladies Debating Society, which helped to raise interest in the issue in Scotland. She was a member of the Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage but returned to India to be with her husband who was posted in the British Colonial administration again.[1]
The couple returned to London in 1879 and she restarted her suffrage work. From 1880 she supported the New Hospital for Women, an initiative to provide poor women with medical help from qualified female practitioners. She was also a financial supporter of Girton College, Cambridge. She was one of the organisers of the Women's Local Government Society and in 1909 became the chair of its London branch. Her work achieved fruition when a WLGS sponsored bill was included in the King's Speech in 1907. [1][3]
Lady Strachey also published two children's books in 1887 and 1893. She also wrote Poets on Poets in 1894 besides working on an English translation of Alexander Herzen's De l'autre rive.[4]
She was elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in 1907. She and her daughters were also active organisers of the Mud March from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall to demand the right to vote. In 1909 she became an editorial board member of the English Woman's Journal and was also elected as the President of the South Paddington Committee of the London Society for Women's Suffrage. Her professional activities declined after her husband's death in 1909. She was offered the directorship of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists in 1920, which she declined. She died in 1920. Virginia Woolf wrote an extensive obituary essay detailing Lady Strachey's contribution to the women's movement.[1][5]
Further Reading
- Rogal, Samuel J. Jane Marie Grant- Strachey (1840-1928) and Her Eminent Children: A Study of Influence of a Mother on Her Sons. Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 1-4955-0312-7.
References
- ^ a b c d e "Papers of Jane Maria Strachey". Jisc. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
- ^ a b "Dora Carrington". Scottish National Gallery. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
- ^ "'Run by Women, (mainly) for Women': Medical Women's Hospitals in Britain, 1866-1948". Rodopi. Retrieved 2008-09-18.
- ^ "HERZEN (ALEXANDER)". Bonhams. Retrieved 11 March 2017.
- ^ Naomi Black [https://books.google.com/books?id=aSwRkiyyKGgC&pg=PA204 Virginia Woolf as Feminist ], p. 204, at Google Books