Queer Places:
(1920) The Red House, Haslingfield, Cambridge
(1923) 6 North Street, Westminster, London SW
46 St James's Rd, Hastings TN34, UK
Mary
Raleigh Richardson (1882/3 – 7 November 1961) was a Canadian suffragette
active in the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom, an arsonist, a
socialist parliamentary candidate and she later resigned as the head of the
women's section of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Sir Oswald
Mosley. She was devoted to Lillian
Dove-Willcox and wrote poetry about her love for her.[7]
Symbol Songs, a collection of poems she published in 1916 contains ”The
Translation of the Love I Bear Lillian Dove’ – and it was Lillian (by now,
after remarriage, Mrs Lillian Buckley) who wrote Mary’s obituary for the
Suffragette Fellowship newsletter.
She grew up in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. In 1898, she travelled to Paris
and Italy. She lived in Bloomsbury, and witnessed Black Friday.[1]
At the beginning of the 20th century, the suffragette movement, frustrated
by a failure to achieve equal voting rights for women, began adopting
increasingly militant tactics. In particular, the Women's Social and Political
Union (WSPU), led by the charismatic Emmeline
Pankhurst, frequently endorsed the use of property destruction to bring
attention to the issue of women's suffrage. Richardson was a devoted supporter
of Pankhurst and a member of the WSPU. Richardson joined Helen Craggs at the
Women's Press shop and told her of the abuse from men (obsence remarks) and
customers tearing up materials.[2]
Richardson claimed to be at the Epsom races on Derby Day, 4 June 1913,
when Emily Davison jumped in front of the King's horse. Emily Davison died
in Epsom Cottage Hospital; Mary Richardson was reportedly chased and beaten by
an angry mob but was given refuge in Epsom Downs station by a railway porter.[3]
She committed a number of acts of arson, smashed windows at the Home
Office and bombed a railway station. She was arrested nine times, receiving
prison terms totalling more than three years.[4][5] She
was one of the first two women force-fed and released to recover and be
re-arrested under the 1913 Cat and Mouse Act , Prisoners (Temporary Discharge
for Ill Health) Act 1913, serving her sentences in HM Prison Holloway.[6]
Richardson had been given the Hunger Strike Medal ' for Valour' by WSPU.
Richardson would recover at the cottage of Lillian Dove-Willcox in the Wye
valley.
Mary Raleigh Richardson
by Unknown photographer
bromide print, circa 1918
4 1/4 in. x 3 3/8 in. (109 mm x 85 mm)
Purchased, 1989
Photographs Collection
NPG x32606
Mary Raleigh Richardson
by Unknown photographer
bromide print, circa 1918
4 1/4 in. x 3 3/8 in. (109 mm x 85 mm)
Purchased, 1989
Photographs Collection
NPG x32607
In 1913 travelled with
Annie Kenney,
Jessie Kenney and
I.A.R. Wylie to spend a week in France with
Christabel Pankhurst[3].
An act of defiance by Richardson occurred on 10 March 1914 when she entered
the National Gallery in London to attack a painting by Velázquez, the Rokeby
Venus using a chopper she smuggled into the gallery.[9] She
wrote a brief statement explaining her actions to the WSPU which was published
by the press:[10]
"I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in
mythological history as a protest against the Government for destroying
Mrs Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice
is an element of beauty as much as colour and outline on canvas. Mrs Pankhurst
seeks to procure justice for womanhood, and for this she is being slowly
murdered by a Government of Iscariot politicians. If there is an outcry
against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so
long as they allow the destruction of Mrs Pankhurst and other beautiful living
women, and that until the public cease to countenance human destruction the
stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an
evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and
hypocrisy."[11]
In 1932, after forming the belief that fascism was the "only path to a
'Greater Britain,'" Richardson joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led
by Sir Oswald Mosley. She claimed that "I was first attracted to the
Blackshirts because I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the
gift of service and the ability to serve which I had known in the suffragette
movement".[13] Richardson
rose quickly through the BUF ranks and by 1934 was Chief Organiser for the
Women's Section of the party. She left within two years after becoming
disillusioned with the sincerity of its policy on women.[14]
Two other prominent suffragette leaders to gain high office in the BUF were Norah
Elam[15] and
Commandant Mary Sophia Allen.[16]
Richardson published her autobiography, Laugh a Defiance, in 1953. She died
at her flat in Hastings on 7 November 1961.[1]
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