1. Alice Abadam was a Welsh suffragist, feminist and public speaker.
19 Facts About Alice Abadam
1. 2.
Alice Abadam was born in London in 1856 to Edward Abadam and his wife, Louisa Abadam.
3.
Alice Abadam's father was the eldest son of Edward Hamlin Adams, a Jamaican-born banker and merchant who made his money overseas before settling in Britain.
4.
Alice Abadam was the youngest of seven children, and saw little of her mother who suffered ill-health brought about by post-natal depression.
5.
Alice Abadam held anti-clerical views, but Abadam converted to Catholicism in 1880 as a result of the Oxford Movement.
6.
In 1905 Alice Abadam joined the Central Society for Women's Suffrage.
7.
Alice Abadam became a well known speaker and she addressed a number of suffrage societies, including a two-week speaking tour around Birmingham in 1908, and other areas in 'the North' often by bicycle and sketching her experiences.
8.
Alice Abadam had subscribed as an 'independent socialist' to the Women's Social and Political Union and Independent Labour Party manifesto in the 1906 elections, and in 1911, the WSPU newspaper Votes for Women called Alice Abadam 'that well known speaker on social issues'.
9.
Alice Abadam attended the Savoy dinner for the release of WSPU prisoners in 1906, but had moved away from the militant movement the following year.
10.
Alice Abadam was one of the signatories to a letter to Emmeline Pankhurst explaining their disquiet on 14 September 1907, and establishing the alternative Women's Freedom League.
11.
Alice Abadam became president first of the Beckenham London Society for Women's Suffrage in 1908, then Norwood and District Women's Suffrage Society in 1913.
12.
Alice Abadam hosted a table including Evelina Haverfield and members of the Actresses' Franchise League and the Women Writer's Suffrage League at the Hotel Cecil costume dinner in 1914.
13.
Alice Abadam was involved in supporting a Breton order of White Sister nuns escape persecution and settle in Wales.
14.
Alice Abadam served on a committee for art at the University of Wales later in her life.
15.
Alice Abadam died there on 31 March 1940 and was described as "a very interesting, talented and remarkable personality" in her obituary in the Carmarthen Journal.
16.
Alice Abadam left her money to her niece, Mary Edith Morris.
17.
Alice Abadam left an education legacy to pay for boarding school for her great niece Margaret Vaughan, who was four years old at her death.
18.
Alice Abadam was recognised by the Women's Archive Wales as a feminist, suffragist, orator and author.
19.
Alice Abadam's papers are held at the Women's Library at the London School of Economics, donated by Vaughan in 2006.