Ray Strachey
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Ray Strachey (born Rachel Pearsall Conn Costelloe; 4 June 188716 July 1940) was a British feminist politician, artist and writer.


Early life

Her father was Irish barrister Benjamin "Frank" Conn Costelloe, and her mother was art historian
Mary Berenson Mary Berenson (born Mary Whitall Smith; 1864 in Pennsylvania – 1945 in Italy) was an art historian, now thought to have had a large hand in some of the writings of her second husband, Bernard Berenson. Biography Her father was Robert Pears ...
. She was the elder of the two girls in her family. Her younger sister was Karin Stephen, née Costelloe, who married
Adrian Stephen Adrian Leslie Stephen (27 October 1883 – 3 May 1948) was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an author and psychoanalyst, and the younger brother of Thoby Stephen, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. He and his wife Karin Stephen became interest ...
,
Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...
's younger brother, in 1914. Ray was educated at Kensington high school and at
Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...
, where she achieved third class in part one of the
mathematical tripos The Mathematical Tripos is the mathematics course that is taught in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. It is the oldest Tripos examined at the University. Origin In its classical nineteenth-century form, the tripos was ...
(1908). Like some other female Mathematics graduates of the time, such as
Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham Margaret Dorothea Rowbotham (19 June 1883 – 23 February 1978) was an engineer, a campaigner for women's employment rights and a founder member of the Women's Engineering Society. Early life and education Born on 19 June 1883 at 6 Park Villas, ...
and
Margaret Partridge Margaret Mary Partridge (8 April 1891 – 27 October 1967) was an electrical engineer, contractor and founder member of the Women's Engineering Society (WES) and the Electrical Association for Women (EAW). Her business worked with WES to identif ...
, Strachey developed an interest in engineering. She was discouraged by her mother Mary Berensen but nevertheless she took an electrical engineering class at Oxford University in 1910 and planned to study electrical engineering at the Technical College of the
City and Guilds of London Institute The City and Guilds of London Institute is an educational organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded on 11 November 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies – to develop a national system of technical education, the institute has ...
in October 1910. She wrote to her aunt "I have decided to go to London next winter for my engineering" and that she had been encouraged and helped by
Hertha Ayrton Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton (28 April 1854 – 26 August 1923) was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor, and suffragette. Known in adult life as Hertha Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was awarded the Hughes Medal by the ...
. She abandoned her plan due to marriage, but maintained her involvement with the Society of Women Welders which she had helped to found.


Career

For most of her life, Strachey worked for
women's suffrage 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 ...
organisations, starting when she was studying at Cambridge, when she joined what became known as the Mud March in February 1907 and addressing meetings in summer 1907. She took part in the
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies The National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), also known as the ''suffragists'' (not to be confused with the suffragettes) was an organisation founded in 1897 of women's suffrage societies around the United Kingdom. In 1919 it was ren ...
(NUWSS) Caravan tour in July 1908. Most of Strachey's publications are non-fiction and deal with suffrage issues. She is most often remembered for her book ''The Cause'' (1928). Her papers are held at
The Women's Library The Women's Library is England's main library and museum resource on women and the women's movement, concentrating on Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has an institutional history as a coherent collection dating back to the mid-1920s, ...
at the London School of Economics. Strachey worked closely with
Millicent Fawcett Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (née Garrett; 11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English politician, writer and feminist. She campaigned for women's suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain's largest women's rights associati ...
, sharing her Liberal feminist values and opposing any attempt to integrate the suffrage movement with the Labour Party. In 1915 she became parliamentary secretary of the NUWSS, serving in this role until 1920. Strachey took great interest in the employment of women in engineering occupations. In 1919 women found themselves excluded by law from most jobs in the engineering industry under the
Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919 The Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919 was a British Act of Parliament passed on 2 June 1919, which gave soldiers returning from World War I their pre-war jobs back. The Restoration of Pre-War Practices (no. 3) Bill (UK) had its second read ...
. Strachey campaigned on behalf of the Society of Women Welders in 1920 for women to remain in the trade. In 1922 Strachey also created a company to build small mud houses to help the housing shortage, based on a 1922 prototype known as "Copse Cottage". Women were employed to assemble them but there were problems with sourcing the correct clay and the chimney builders refused to co-operate. The Mavat company did exhibit a bungalow in 1925 at the Women's Arts & Crafts Exhibition at Central Hall in London. Strachey was defeated but she found work for all the women involved. In her book Women's Suffrage and Women's Service she described the setting up by the London Society for Women's Service of a school for Oxy-Acetylene Welding. In 1937 she wrote about women's employment in professional and trade roles in Careers and Openings for Women. After the Great War, when some women were granted the vote, and women could stand for parliament, she stood as an Independent parliamentary candidate at Brentford and Chiswick on the General Elections in 1918, 1922 and 1923, without success. She rejected the attempt by Eleanor Rathbone to establish a broad-based feminist programme in the 1920s. In 1931 she became parliamentary secretary to Britain's first woman MP to take her seat,
Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor, (19 May 1879 – 2 May 1964) was an American-born British politician who was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament (MP), serving from 1919 to 1945. Astor's first husband was America ...
, and in 1935 Strachey became the head of the Women's Employment Federation. She also made regular radio broadcasts for the BBC.


Family

She married at Cambridge on 31 May 1911 the civil servant
Oliver Strachey Oliver Strachey CBE (3 November 1874 – 14 May 1960), a British civil servant in the Foreign Office, was a cryptographer from World War I to World War II. Life and work Strachey was a son of Sir Richard Strachey, colonial administrator and ...
, with whom she had two children, Barbara (born 1912, later a writer) and
Christopher Christopher is the English language, English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek language, Greek name Χριστόφορος (''Christophoros'' or ''Christoforos''). The constituent parts are Χριστός (''Christós''), "Jesus ...
(born 1916, later a pioneer computer scientist). Oliver Strachey was the elder brother of the biographer
Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychological insight ...
of the
Bloomsbury group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...
; other siblings in the
Strachey Strachey is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Strachey family of Sutton Court, Somerset *John Strachey (d. 1674), friend of John Locke **John Strachey (geologist) (1671–1743), British geologist ***Henry Strachey of Sutton Cour ...
family included psychoanalyst
James Strachey James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of ''The Standar ...
, novelist
Dorothy Bussy Dorothy Bussy ( Strachey; 24 July 1865 – 1 May 1960) was an English novelist and translator, close to the Bloomsbury Group. Family background and childhood Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family, one of ten children of Jane St ...
, educationist
Pernel Strachey Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey (4 March 1876 – 19 December 1951) was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College. Life Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieuten ...
. Ray's mother-in-law was Jane Maria Strachey, a well-known author and supporter of
women's suffrage 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 ...
who co-led the suffragist Mud March of 1907 in London.


Art

Strachey painted her sister-in-law,
Pernel Strachey Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey (4 March 1876 – 19 December 1951) was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College. Life Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieuten ...
, around the year 1930, and the young Fellow of King's College, Cambridge,
Dadie Rylands George Humphrey Wolferstan Rylands (23 October 1902 – 16 January 1999), known as Dadie Rylands, was a British literary scholar and theatre director. Rylands was born at the Down House, Tockington, Gloucestershire, to Thomas Kirkland Ry ...
at about the same time. Both paintings are in the National Portrait Gallery in London.


Death

She died in the
Royal Free Hospital The Royal Free Hospital (also known simply as the Royal Free) is a major teaching hospital in the Hampstead area of the London Borough of Camden. The hospital is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs services at Barn ...
in London in her early fifties of
heart failure Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, a ...
, following an operation to remove a fibroid tumor.


Posthumous recognition

Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the
plinth A pedestal (from French ''piédestal'', Italian ''piedistallo'' 'foot of a stall') or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In c ...
of the
statue of Millicent Fawcett The statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, honours the British suffragist leader and social campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett. It was made in 2018 by Gillian Wearing. Following a campaign and petition by the activist Caroline ...
in
Parliament Square Parliament Square is a square at the northwest end of the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster in central London. Laid out in the 19th century, it features a large open green area in the centre with trees to its west, and it contai ...
, London, unveiled in April 2018.


Publications

*''The World at Eighteen'' *''Marching On'' *''Shaken By The Wind''


Biographies

*''
Frances Willard Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (September 28, 1839 – February 17, 1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Willard became the national president of Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1879 an ...
: Her Life and Work'' (1913) *''A Quaker Grandmother:
Hannah Whitall Smith Hannah Tatum Whitall Smith (February 7, 1832 – May 1, 1911) was a lay speaker and author in the Holiness movement in the United States and the Higher Life movement in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was also active in ...
'' (1914) *''
Millicent Garrett Fawcett Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett (née Garrett; 11 June 1847 – 5 August 1929) was an English politician, writer and feminist. She campaigned for women's suffrage by legal change and in 1897–1919 led Britain's largest women's rights associati ...
'' (1931)


Non-fiction about women's roles

*''Women's suffrage and women's service: The history of the London and National Society for Women's Service'' (1927) *''The Cause: a Short History of Women's Movement in Great Britain'' *''Careers and Openings for Women'' *''Our Freedom and Its Results''


References


External links

* *
Ray Strachey, The Women's Library at London Metropolitan University

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strachey, Ray 1887 births 1940 deaths 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British women writers Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge British feminist writers British suffragists British women novelists Independent British political candidates Ray Writers from London