Marian Reeves

Last updated April 22, 2019

Marian Reeves (19 February 1879 – 30 August 1961) was a British feminist activist.

The British people, or the Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Celtic Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain and Brittany, whose surviving members are the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, and Bretons. It may also refer to citizens of the former British Empire.

Life

Born in Lewisham, then part of Kent, Reeves became interested in women's suffrage, and joined the Women's Freedom League (WFL) in 1909. She gradually came to prominence in the group, and by 1918 was the secretary of its branch in Kensington. By this time, the group had broadened its interests to campaign on a wide range of feminist issues.^[1]

Lewisham is an area of south London, England, 5.9 miles (9.5 km) south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Lewisham had a population of 60,573 in 2011.

Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west. The county also shares borders with Essex along the estuary of the River Thames, and with the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. The county town is Maidstone.

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the late 1800s, women worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reforms, and sought to change voting laws in order to allow them to vote. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts to gain voting rights, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, and also worked for equal civil rights for women.

During the 1920s, Reeves became involved with the WFL's publishing section, the Minerva Publishing Company, and in the middle of the decade she became the manager of the Minerva Club, the WFL's residential club in Brunswick Square.^[1] This suffrage offshoot had been founded by Dr Elizabeth Knight and Alice Green. The club was used for meetings but also acted as a hostel for suffrage activists and fund-raising annual birthday parties were organised^[2] for Charlotte Despard. Despard travelled from Ireland each year to attend.^[1]

Brunswick Square is a 3-acre (1.2 ha) public garden and ancillary streets along two of its sides in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is overlooked by the School of Pharmacy and the Foundling Museum to the north; the Brunswick Centre to the west; and International Hall to the south. East is an enclosed area of playgrounds with further trees, Coram's Fields, associated with charity Coram Family which is just over double its size; next to that area Brunswick Square is mirrored, symmetrically by Mecklenburgh Square, likewise of 3 acres including roads. The squares are named after contemporary Queen consorts.

Elizabeth Knight was a British physician and campaigner for women's suffrage. She was treasurer and a financial supporter of the Women's Freedom League which was a non-violent and anti-war suffrage group.

Charlotte Despard was an Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Féin activist, and novelist. She was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, Women's Peace Crusade, and the Irish Women's Franchise League, and an activist in a wide range of political organizations over the course of her life, including among others the Women's Social and Political Union, Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The club was in the heart of Bloomsbury, and Reeves befriended many of the Bloomsbury Set. She also came to know many other residents of the area, and during World War II she founded the London Emergency Apartment Keepers' Society (LEAKS) to support the many local owners of boarding houses and hotels.^[1]

Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, famed as a fashionable residential area and as the home of numerous prestigious cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. It is bounded by Fitzrovia to the west, Covent Garden to the south, Regent's Park and St. Pancras to the north, and Clerkenwell to the east.

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Reeves served on the national executive of the WFL for many years, and eventually became the organisation's president. She sat on many committees, including those of the Equal Pay Campaign, the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, the Open Door Council, the Nationality Married Women Committee and the Women Peers Committee. She sat on the United Nations Association's women's advisory council, and was a vice-chair of the British Commonwealth League, the Status of Women Committee, and the Suffragette Fellowship.^[1]^[3] She regularly attended congresses of the International Alliance of Women, and it was in 1961, while travelling in Ireland following a congress, that she died.^[1]

The Open Door Council, established in May 1926, was a British organisation pressing for equal economic opportunities for women. It opposed the extension of 'protective legislation' for women, regarding such legislation as 'restrictive' and arguing that it effectively barred women from better-paid jobs such as mining. In 1929 an international version was established, Open Door International, with Chrystal Macmillan serving as president until her death in 1937.

A United Nations Association (UNA) is a non-governmental organization that exist in various countries to enhance the relationship between the people of member states and the United Nations to raise public awareness of the UN and its work, to promote the general goals of the UN.

The International Alliance of Women is an international non-governmental organization that works to promote women's human rights around the world, focusing particularly on empowerment of women and development issues and more broadly on gender equality. The basic principle of the IAW is that the full and equal enjoyment of human rights is due to all women and girls. It is one of the oldest, largest and most influential organizations in its field. The organization was founded as International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1904 in Berlin, Germany, by Marie Stritt, Millicent Fawcett, Carrie Chapman Catt, Susan B. Anthony and other leading feminists from around the world to campaign for women's suffrage. The IWSA was headquartered in London, and it was the preeminent international women's suffrage organization. Its emphasis has since shifted to a broad human rights focus. Today it represents over 50 organizations world-wide comprising several hundred thousand members, and has its seat in Geneva.

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References

1 2 3 4 5 6 "Reeves, Marian". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63885.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
↑ "The Minerva Café". libcom.org. Retrieved 2018-12-26.
↑ Harris, Alana (2015). Love and Romance in Britain, 1918 - 1970. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 185. ISBN 978-1-137-32863-2.

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[odnb-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Reeves, Marian". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63885.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

[hh-2] "The Minerva Café". libcom.org. Retrieved 2018-12-26.

[3] Harris, Alana (2015). Love and Romance in Britain, 1918 - 1970. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 185. ISBN 978-1-137-32863-2.