Gertrude Eaton (1861 – 8 March 1939) was a Welsh singer, and co-founder of the

Society of Women Musicians The Society of Women Musicians was a British group founded in 1911 for mutual cooperation between women composers and performers, in response to the limited professional opportunities for women musicians at the time. The founders included Katharine ...

. She was also active as a suffragist, and on the issue of prison reform.

Early life and education

Gertrude Eaton was born in

Swansea Swansea (; cy, Abertawe ) is a coastal city and the second-largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Swansea ( cy, links=no, Dinas a Sir Abertawe). The city is the twenty-fifth largest in ...

, the fifth daughter of businessman and magistrate Robert Eaton of Bryn-y-mor, and his wife Helen. The Eatons were a prominent family; the imposing Bryn-y-mor was built by an ancestor in the eighteenth century. Eaton studied music in Italy, and from 1894 to 1897 at the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a music school, conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the Undergraduate education, undergraduate to the Doctorate, doctoral level in a ...

Career

In 1911 Eaton co-founded the Society of Women Musicians with composers

Katharine Emily Eggar Katherine Emily Eggar (5 January 1874 – 15 August 1961) was an English pianist and composer. Eggar was born and died in London, England, the daughter of Thomas Eggar and Katherine MacDonald. Eggar was active member of the feminist movement espe ...

and Marion Scott. The first meeting was held in October 1911, when Eaton was elected treasurer; she also spoke at that first meeting. She served a term as president of the Society from 1916 to 1917. Gertrude Eaton was also active on the issues of suffrage and prison reform, and served a term as president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. Eaton used her musical training to teach fellow activists to use their voices for confident public speaking. As secretary of the

Women's Tax Resistance League The Women's Tax Resistance League (WTRL) was from 1909 to 1918 a direct action group associated with the Women's Freedom League that used tax resistance to protest against the disenfranchisement of women during the British women's suffrage move ...

, in the summer of 1911, her household silver was seized when she refused to pay taxes as a suffrage protest. She also evaded the census in 1911 as part of an organized suffrage protest. She was said to be "instrumental" in getting penal reform on the agenda of the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

. Eaton was one of the British delegates to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in 1919. Eaton died in 1939, at Hampstead. Her colleague Margery Fry wrote in an obituary of Eaton, "She would take endless pains to help a cause or an individual when her sympathy was aroused."Margery Fry, "In Memoriam: Gertrude Eaton" ''Howard Journal of Crime and Justice'' 5(4)(January 1940): 230. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.1940.tb01053.x

References

External links

"Photograph of Suffragette Gertrude Eaton"
Museum of London.

featuring another portrait of Gertrude Eaton, Museum of London. {{DEFAULTSORT:Eaton, Gertrude 1861 births 1939 deaths English suffragists English pacifists Alumni of the Royal College of Music 20th-century English singers 20th-century English women singers