Kitty Marion 12 March 1871 – 9 October 1944) was born Katherina Maria Schäfer in Germany.
She emigrated to
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
in 1886 when she was fifteen, and she grew to minor prominence when she sang in music halls throughout the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
during the late 19th century.
She became known in the field for standing up for female performers against agents, corruption, and for better working conditions. She joined the
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and ...
(WSPU) in 1908, engaged in selling their newspaper ''
Votes for Women
A vote is a formal method of choosing in an election.
Vote(s) or The Vote may also refer to:
Music
*''V.O.T.E.'', an album by Chris Stamey and Yo La Tengo, 2004
*"Vote", a song by the Submarines from ''Declare a New State!'', 2006
Television
* " ...
'' and became a prominent suffragette in the United Kingdom for her participation in civil unrest protests including riots
and arson.
As a result, Marion was arrested many times and is known for having endured 232
force-feeding
Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a human or animal against their will. The term ''gavage'' (, , ) refers to supplying a substance by means of a small plastic feeding tube passed through the nose ( nasogastric) or mouth (orogastric) into t ...
s while on hunger strike in prison. She is quoted as saying “there are no words to describe the horrible revolting sensation.”
When World War I started she emigrated to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, and there she joined the team on
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control ...
’s ''Birth Control Review''. Although she used her tenacity and loud voice to get people to pay attention to her cause, she did not use violence as much as she had in the United Kingdom, although she was still arrested many times for advocating birth control.
Early years
Katherina Maria Schafer was born in
Rietberg
Rietberg () is a town in the district of Gütersloh in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located approximately 10 km south of Gütersloh and 25 km north-west of Paderborn in the region Ostwestfalen-Lippe. The town is lo ...
in
Westphalia
Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants.
The territory of the regio ...
, Germany, on 12 March 1871. Her mother died of
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
when the child was two, leaving Marion with her father. Four years later, when Marion was six, her step-mother also died of tuberculosis. Her father, whose name was Gustav (see Riddell, Death in Ten Minutes), abused Marion and hated that she had red hair.
[Viv Gardner, "Marion, Kitty (1871–1944)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 200]
accessed 8 Nov 2017
/ref> When Marion was fifteen, she was secretly sent by her German uncle to live with her aunt in England, to escape her father's violence (see Riddell).
Career
Actress
From when she was a child, Marion had liked to sing and dance. While in school, she was quoted as saying, " singing and reciting I excelled simply because it came easily to me and I loved it."[Kitty Marion Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations,] Shortly after she moved to England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
to live with her aunt, she started performing on the pantomime stage. She found a natural home in London music hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Bri ...
s, where variety shows included songs and skits
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is ...
that commented on current events. It was a more open, diverse, and informal environment of artists compared to the rest of Victorian England. When she started singing in the halls, her roles were so small that she did not even appear on the program, but she eventually moved her way up through the chorus
Chorus may refer to:
Music
* Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse
* Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound
* Chorus form, song in which all verse ...
and minor roles to become the understudy for lead roles in performances that toured the UK such as ''The Lady Slavery''.[Christine A. Anderson, "(Per)forming Female Politics: The Making of the 'Modern Woman' in London, 1890-1914" (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 2008), 36, http://kuscholarworks .ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/4535/1/ Anderson_ku_0099D_10060_DATA_1.pdf.]
Marion's more significant contribution to the music hall industry was rebelling against the corrupt system that permitted assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in crim ...
s against women within it. The working conditions for performers were harsh, and Peter Bailey has criticized the creation of the "more or less professionalized labor force". The exploitation was very sexist
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...
, as women were expected to perform sexual favors in exchange for jobs. Marion recalls in her unpublished autobiography one of these encounters with an agent called Mr. Dreck. During a meeting about a performance opportunity Dreck tried to kiss her. She resisted, fell, and hit her head. He told her that she would not be able to succeed if she continued to stop sexual advances from men in power. In 1906 she joined the Actor's Association and the Variety Artists Federation (VAF) where she was outspoken about the treatment of female performers. In the same year she gained public recognition when she wrote a response letter to the London Era newspaper after they published actors' lack of loyalty to their agents. Marion wrote that she had "given up hope for a woman who wants to earn her own living, and at the same time rise in the profession on her merits only, without influence of any sort." Over the next six weeks many other women wrote describing their own experiences. Her involvement with the suffrage movement
Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...
harmed her career in the UK because of her damaged reputation. Agents did not want to cause scandals. Conversely, performance opportunities increased when she moved to the United States, but she was not able to work because of her time spent with the ''Birth Control Review
''Birth Control Review'' was a lay magazine established and edited by Margaret Sanger in 1917, three years after her friend, Otto Bobsein, coined the term "birth control" to describe voluntary motherhood or the ability of a woman to space childr ...
''.
Activist
While advocating for performers
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...
, Marion was drawn to the Suffragette Movement
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for women's suffrage, the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in part ...
. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom from 1903 to 1918. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and ...
(WSPU) in 1908 and the Actresses Franchise League (AFL) in 1909. Her first role at the WSPU was selling their newspaper, ''Votes for Women
A vote is a formal method of choosing in an election.
Vote(s) or The Vote may also refer to:
Music
*''V.O.T.E.'', an album by Chris Stamey and Yo La Tengo, 2004
*"Vote", a song by the Submarines from ''Declare a New State!'', 2006
Television
* " ...
'', on the streets. Although she initially did not like doing it, eventually she became comfortable with her job and developed into one of the best members according to Barbara Green. Marion embraced the militant activism the WSPU used, and participated in processions during which police officers became violent against them. She threw bricks into windows of post offices, grocery stores, and once threw a package of suffragette literature through the window of the Home Office. She handled many terrorist
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
arson attacks and bombings, not intended to hurt people, in churches and train carriages. They did not cause as much damage as current bombs do because the bombs smoked before they detonated, giving people time to get away. She once submitted a false fire alarm for inspection and refused to pay a fine. She would rather serve jail time, so she went to jail for a month with the support of other suffragettes. Her most notorious act was burning down the Hurst Park Race grandstand on June 8, 1913 with Clara Giveen
Clara Elizabeth Giveen, also known as Betty Giveen, later Mrs Betty Brewster (1887–1967) was a British suffragette. She was known for an arson attack on the grandstand at the Hurst Park Racecourse in 1913, and for her "Prisoners (Temporary Dis ...
. She was sentenced to three years in prison, and it was there she received extensive force feeding
Force-feeding is the practice of feeding a human or animal against their will. The term ''gavage'' (, , ) refers to supplying a substance by means of a small plastic feeding tube passed through the nose ( nasogastric) or mouth (orogastric) into t ...
. While in prison, many suffragettes would go on hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...
, so the prison staff would hold them down and insert tubes down the nostrils, mouth, or throat while liquid food was poured. Sometimes it would be administered so incorrectly it would cause stabbing pain or even loss of consciousness. Marion was administered this 232 times, sometimes three times a day. She remembered it to be "hellish torture," but after she was released from prison, she was only more motivated from her experiences.
Marion received a Hunger Strike Medal
The Hunger Strike Medal was a silver medal awarded between August 1909 and 1914 to suffragette prisoners by the leadership of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). During their imprisonment, they went on hunger strike while serving th ...
for valour from the WSPU.
Marion had to leave the United Kingdom at the start of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
because of anti-German sentiment, and with the help of influential suffragettes she was able to emigrate to the United States. She met Margaret Sanger at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
, and started working with her selling Sanger's magazine, the ''Birth Control Review
''Birth Control Review'' was a lay magazine established and edited by Margaret Sanger in 1917, three years after her friend, Otto Bobsein, coined the term "birth control" to describe voluntary motherhood or the ability of a woman to space childr ...
''. She became a familiar New York figure as she would be standing in Times Square to Coney Island, selling diligently. It was a form of protest as well as education, because it forced people to pay attention to what she was talking about. She filled this position for 13 years, and although her actions were not as militant as they were in the UK, she was still arrested many times. In November 1918 she spent thirty days in jail for selling a pamphlet to a Vice Society member. There she met Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist, writer, and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Co ...
, a political dissident. Smedley remembers Marion coming down the hallway every morning yelling "Three cheers for birth control." She returned to England briefly to see the unveiling of a statue of Mrs. Pankhurst, but because of this trip she was dismissed from the ''Birth Control Review''. When she came back to the United States, she started working at the Speech Improvement Project at the WPA
WPA may refer to:
Computing
*Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard
*Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing
* Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada
* Windows Performance An ...
where she helped children learn English.
Marion died in the Sanger Nursing Home in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
on 9 October 1944.[
]
Further Information
Marion compiled a scrapbook of her suffrage activities which has been digitised.
See also
*Suffragette bombing and arson campaign
Suffragettes in Great Britain and Ireland orchestrated a bombing and arson campaign between the years 1912 and 1914. The campaign was instigated by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), and was a part of their wider campaign for women's ...
Notes
References
*Engelman, Peter C. (2011), ''A History of the Birth Control Movement in America'', ABC-CLIO, .
* Riddell, Fern (2018), ''Death in Ten Minutes: The forgotten life of radical suffragette Kitty Marion'', Hodder & Stoughton, .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marion, Kitty
1871 births
1944 deaths
American birth control activists
American feminists
American socialists
American women's rights activists
Free speech activists
German emigrants to England
English emigrants to the United States
19th-century English people
British people of World War I
English women in politics
British women's rights activists
English feminists
English suffragists
Feminism and history
British socialist feminists
English socialists
People from the Province of Westphalia
Hunger Strike Medal recipients