Katherine Courtauld

Last updated

Katherine Courtauld
Born
Katherine Mina Courtauld

(1856-07-13)13 July 1856
Died5 July 1935(1935-07-05) (aged 78)
Knight's Farm, near Colne Engaine, Essex, UK
OccupationAgriculturalist
Known forPromoting training of women in agriculture
PartnerMary Gladstone

Katherine Mina Courtauld (1856 - 1935) was a British farmer and suffragist. She was an advocate for providing training about agriculture for women. She was a member of the Courtauld family.

Contents

Personal life

Courtauld was born on 13 July 1856 at High Garrett, Bocking, Essex in the UK. [1] Her parents, George and Mina (née Bromley) Courtauld were part of the wealthy Courtauld family. [2] She was the eldest child. She was a boarder at a private girls' school in Hampstead, London. She later sought and obtained training in practical and theoretical aspects of farming on her father's farms and through farm visits since, being a woman, she was unable to attend agricultural college. There were some lectures provided by Essex County Council that she was able to attend. [1]

Courtauld was a supporter of women's suffrage. In the 1911 census she spoiled her return by writing at the bottom of the form 'As a householder and ratepayer I deeply resent being denied the privilege of a citizen in the exercise of the parliamentary franchise'. [1] [3]

She lived at Knights Farm with her partner, Mary Gladstone (1856–1941) for over 50 years. She participated in country sports and sailing in her own yacht, the Petrona. [1]

She died, of cancer, at home on 5 June 1935. [1]

Career

When Courtauld was 21 her father bought her the 243 acre Knights Farm in Colne Engaine, Essex where she lived for the rest of her life. [1] It was a mixed farm with a range of grain and fodder crops as well as dairy, beef, sheep, pigs and poultry. There was also a fruit orchard and its produce, especially apples, won prizes in agricultural competitions. By the 1900s she was well-known and featured in the agricultural press. She had women trainees on the farm and as well as running her own farm with its workforce of 15, also managed additional family estate land and other farms totalling 2,000 acres. [1] [2]

Public activity

Courtauld was very active in public life both locally and nationally.

She was deeply involved with the Women's Farm and Garden Association from its inception in 1899 and a member of its founding council. She was its chair in 1907. She and Louise Wilkins were the proponents of the WFGA's idea to create small holdings for single women who had been in agriculture during the first world war. Wilkins had studied agriculture [4] and had led recruitment for what became the Women's Land Army. Courtauld's financial support was a major factor that allowed the organisation to buy land near Lingfield, Surrey in 1920 to be let to women smallholders as an experiment in women's farming co-operation that lasted until the early 1930s. [2] She also gave the organisation the freehold of Courtauld House in central London as its headquarters. [1]

When the small holding initiative petered out in the 1930s it was put down to the deaths of Wilkins and Courtauld who had driven the idea along. [4]

Among her many local activities were:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Sheppard</span> New Zealand suffragist (1848–1934)

Katherine Wilson Sheppard was the most prominent member of the women's suffrage movement in New Zealand and the country's most famous suffragist. Born in Liverpool, England, she emigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1868. There she became an active member of various religious and social organisations, including the Women's Christian Temperance Union New Zealand. In 1887 she was appointed the WCTU NZ's National Superintendent for Franchise and Legislation, a position she used to advance the cause of women's suffrage in New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lingfield, Surrey</span> Village, civil parish and post town in Tandridge District, Surrey, South East England

Lingfield is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge district of Surrey, England, approximately 23 miles (37 km) south of London. Several buildings date from the Tudor period and the timber-frame medieval church is Grade I listed. The stone cage or old gaol, constructed in 1773, was last used in 1882 to hold a poacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Halstead</span> Town in the Braintree district of Essex, England

Halstead is a town and civil parish in the Braintree District of Essex, England. Its population of 11,906 in 2011 was estimated to be 12,161 in 2019. The town lies near Colchester and Sudbury, in the Colne Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saffron Walden (UK Parliament constituency)</span> Parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom since 1885

Saffron Walden was a constituency in Essex, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament from 1922 to 2024 by members of the Conservative Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colne Engaine</span> Human settlement in England

Colne Engaine is a village and a civil parish in Essex, England, situated just north of the River Colne and of the larger village of Earls Colne, approximately ten miles northwest of Colchester. The village takes its name from the river, around which it is likely that the earliest settlements were made, and the Engaine family, who were the principal family of the village between 1279 and 1367.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Ashton</span> English suffragist, politician, pacifist and philanthropist

Margaret Ashton was an English suffragist, local politician, pacifist and philanthropist, and the first woman city councillor for Manchester.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Grosvenor</span> English painter

Caroline Susan Theodora Grosvenor CBE was a British novelist, administrator and artist. She founded the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women and led the Women's Farm and Garden Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Mitchell</span> English suffragette and socialist

Hannah Mitchell was an English suffragette and socialist. Born into a poor farming family in Derbyshire, Mitchell left home at a young age to work as a seamstress in Bolton, where she became involved in the socialist movement. She worked for many years in organisations related to socialism, women's suffrage and pacifism. After World War I she was elected to Manchester City Council and worked as a magistrate, before later working for Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie.

George Courtauld was an English cloth manufacturer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1878 to 1885.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Fraser (feminist)</span> Scottish suffragist, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician

Helen Miller Fraser, later Moyes, was a Scottish suffragist, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician who later emigrated to Australia.

Mirabeau. Lamar Looney was the first female member of the Oklahoma Senate. Looney was elected to public office as the registrar of deeds for Harmon County in 1912 and later as Harmon County Clerk in 1916 before women received the right to vote. In 1920, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave all women of the United States voting privileges, the same year that Looney ran for and was elected to the Oklahoma Senate. Looney served from 1920 until 1928, representing District 4. In 1926, she considered running for Lieutenant Governor but abandoned the race knowing that the courts would hold to the Oklahoma constitutional requirement that a man hold the office. Looney then decided to run for a spot in the U.S. Senate but lost her bid and returned to her fourth and final term in the Oklahoma Senate. Looney would remain the only woman in the Oklahoma Senate until 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eunice Murray</span> Murray, Eunice Guthrie (1878–1960), suffragist and author

Eunice Guthrie Murray MBE was a Scottish suffrage campaigner, author and historian. She was a leading figure in the Women's Freedom League in Scotland. Murray was the only Scottish woman in the first UK general election open to women in 1918.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Violet McNaughton (activist)</span> Canadian journalist and feminist

Violet Clara McNaughton was a Canadian journalist and agrarian feminist notable for co-establishing The Western Producer and contributing to its "Mainly for Women" pages from 1925 until her retirement in 1950. A settler and farmer of Harris, Saskatchewan, she was an active member of the Women's Section of the Canadian Council of Agriculture as well as the first president of the Women Grain Growers (WGG), a branch of the Saskatchewan Grain Growers Association (SGGA). McNaughton is considered the leader of women's suffrage in Saskatchewan and is recognized as the most influential Canadian farm woman of the 20th century. McNaughton was a known pacifist and supporter of women's suffrage and anti-war movements in Canada.

Jessie Hannah Craigen (c.1835–5 October 1899), was a working-class suffrage speaker in a movement which was predominantly made up of middle and upper-class activists. She was also a freelance (or 'paid agent') speaker in the campaigns for Irish Home Rule and the cooperative movement and against vivisection, compulsory vaccination, and the Contagious Diseases Acts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johanna Naber</span> Dutch feminist, historian and author

Johanna Wilhelmina Antoinette Naber was a Dutch feminist, historian and author during the first feminist wave. She was one of the three founders of the International Archives for the Women's Movement (1935), now known as Atria Institute on gender equality and women's history, and was herself a prolific author of historical texts about influential women and the women's movement.

Elizabeth Courtauld (1867–1947) was a pioneer British physician and anaesthetist, practising in India. She was a volunteer doctor at a field hospital run by women close to the front line in France during the First World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louisa Wilkins</span> English writer and agricultural administrator

Louisa Wilkins OBE, also known as Mrs Roland Wilkins was a British writer and agricultural administrator. She was involved in the creation and recruitment for the Women's Land Army during World War One. She was an enthusiast for small holdings and after the war she inspired the creation of a small holding co-operative for women who had entered agriculture during the war.

The forerunner of the Working For Gardeners Association was created in 1899. It has had various names including the Women's Farm and Garden Society (WFGS) and the Women's Farm and Garden Union (WFGU). Its original objective was to improve the employment opportunities for women working on the land. During the First World War, it created the Women's National Land Service Corps (WNLSC) in 1916 and recruited 2,000 volunteers. At the WNLSC's suggestion, the government created the Women's Land Army. In 1920, the WFGU was concerned that after the war, women were not being offered the help that men were. It created a cooperative set of small holdings for women in Surrey. During the Second World War, it organised training. The charity organised training courses for both women and men in 2020 under its new working name of the Working For Gardeners Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catharine Dowman</span> Suffragist (1878–1972)

Catharine Dowman was an English philanthropist associated with Women's suffrage and the restoration of the Cutty Sark.

The Essex Women's Commemoration Project (EWCP) is an English scheme to erect memorial plaques to honour notable women residents of places in the county of Essex. By the end of 2023, the project had erected 29 plaques.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Verdon, Nicola (2018). Courtauld, Katherine Mina (1856–1935). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.110128.
  2. 1 2 3 Haines, Catherine MC (2001). International Women in Science. Santa Barbara, California, USA: ABC CLIO Inc. p. 72. ISBN   1576070905.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Katharine Mina Courtauld". Suffrage Pioneers 1918 - 2018. Women's Local Government Society. Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  4. 1 2 Meredith, Anne. "From ideals to reality: The women's smallholding colony at Lingfield, 1920–39" (PDF). Agricultural History Review. 54: 105–121.