1. Charlotte Despard was an Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Fein activist, and novelist.
43 Facts About Charlotte Despard
1. 2.
Charlotte Despard was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, the 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, Humanitarian League, Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
3.
Charlotte Despard French was born on 15 June 1844 in Edinburgh and lived as a child in Edinburgh and Campbeltown in Scotland and from around 1850 in England at Ripple, Kent, her father was Irish Captain John Tracy William French of the Royal Navy and her mother Margaret French, nee Eccles.
4.
Charlotte Despard was educated by a series of governesses and intermittently at private school, but complained in later life that her schooling was 'slipshod' and 'inferior'.
5.
Charlotte Despard was always dubious of authority and ran away from home at the age of 10 getting a train to London "to become a servant".
6.
Charlotte Despard had five sisters; one, Katherine Harley, a suffragist, served in the Scottish Women's Hospital during the World War I in France.
7.
Charlotte Despard regretted her lack of education, although she did attend a finishing school in London.
8.
Charlotte Despard died at sea in 1890; they had no children.
9.
Charlotte Despard wore black for most of the rest of her days.
10.
Charlotte Despard was shocked and radicalised by the levels of poverty in London and devoted her time and money to helping poor people in Battersea, including a health clinic, soup kitchen for the unemployed, and youth and working men's clubs in this slum area.
11.
Charlotte Despard lived above one of her welfare shops in one of the poorest areas of Nine Elms during the week.
12.
Charlotte Despard became good friends with Eleanor Marx and was a delegate to the Second International, including to the fourth congress in London in 1896.
13.
Charlotte Despard campaigned against the Boer War as a "wicked war of this Capitalistic government" and she toured the United Kingdom speaking against the use of conscription in the First World War, forming a pacifist organisation called the Women's Peace Crusade to oppose all war.
14.
Charlotte Despard was a vocal supporter of the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party.
15.
Charlotte Despard had become frustrated with the lack of progress from NUWSS and she joined the more radical Women's Social and Political Union.
16.
Charlotte Despard became one of their recognised orators and described as a 'tireless and popular leader.
17.
Charlotte Despard was an active Catholic and on Ash Wednesday in 1907, she went with others to the House of Commons and got arrested.
18.
In establishing WFL, Charlotte Despard was joined by Teresa Billington-Greig, Bessie Drysdale, Edith How-Martyn, Alice Abadam, Marion Coates-Hansen, among others, as signatories to a letter to Emmeline Pankhurst explaining their disquiet on 14 September 1907.
19.
In 1911, when first imprisoned with Nina Boyle, Charlotte Despard was furious when someone paid the fines, allowing them to be released right away; Boyle remarked upon her 'complete and absolute fearlessness'.
20.
Charlotte Despard was one of the imprisoned women who had a tree planted in the 'suffragettes' rest' of the Blathwayts in Batheaston, Eagle House.
21.
Charlotte Despard was closely identified with new passive resistance strategies including women chaining themselves to the gate of the Ladies' Gallery in the Palace of Westminster; and was one of those leading a "no taxation without representation" campaign, during which her household furniture was repeatedly seized in lieu of fines, along with Virginia Crawford, as she realised that the women's movement groups had to work together at times as well.
22.
Charlotte Despard led the delegation at the Women's Coronation Procession.
23.
Charlotte Despard is pictured next to Helen Crawfurd from Glasgow.
24.
Charlotte Despard kept in communication with other suffragists, such as Daisy Solomon.
25.
In 1928, Charlotte Despard was one of the suffrage movement leaders at the celebratory breakfast for the passing of the Equal Franchise Bill.
26.
Charlotte Despard wrote in her diary re Kate Harvey that "the anniversary of our love" began on 12 January 1912, though it remains unclear the extent of what she meant by the words.
27.
Unlike other suffragists, Charlotte Despard refused as a pacifist to become involved in the British Army's recruitment campaign during World War I, a stance different from that of her family: her brother, Field Marshal John French, was Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the British Army and commander of the British Expeditionary Force sent to Europe in August 1914, and their sister Katherine Harley served in the Scottish Women's Hospital in France.
28.
Charlotte Despard was an active member of the Battersea Labour Party during the early decades of the 20th century.
29.
Charlotte Despard was selected as the Labour candidate for Battersea North in the 1918 General Election when then aged 74; however, her anti-war views were unpopular with the public and she was defeated.
30.
Charlotte Despard was associated with London Vegetarian Society, becoming president in 1918 and vice-president in 1931, Charlotte Despard supported the Save the Children charity and Indian independence movement.
31.
Charlotte Despard was a board member of the World Congress of Faiths in the 1930s.
32.
In 1908 Charlotte Despard joined Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Margaret Cousins and other feminists to form the Irish Women's Franchise League.
33.
Charlotte Despard urged members to boycott the 1911 Census and withhold taxes and provided financial support to workers during the 1913 Dublin lock-out.
34.
Charlotte Despard settled in Dublin after World War I and was a supporter of Eamon de Valera, remaining bitterly critical of her brother, now Field Marshal the Earl of Ypres, but they were later reconciled.
35.
Charlotte Despard was classed as a dangerous subversive under the 1927 Public Safety Act by the Irish Free State government for her opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and her house was occasionally raided by the authorities.
36.
In 1930, Charlotte Despard toured the Soviet Union to look at workers' conditions there.
37.
Charlotte Despard met and was photographed with the Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose when he visited Ireland in 1936.
38.
Charlotte Despard remained actively political well into her 80s and 90s, giving anti-fascist speeches in the likes of Trafalgar Square in the 1930s.
39.
Charlotte Despard was guest of honour at the Reading branch of the Women's Freedom League, of which she had been the first president, celebrating her 89th birthday, held in Anna Munro's garden at Venturefair, Aldermaston It was reported that 'Mrs Despard had lost but little of her youthful vigour, clarity of speech and clearness of vision'.
40.
Charlotte Despard urged women to act to help 'realise the worth of the human being, take life out of bondage all over the world.
41.
Charlotte Despard died, aged 95, after a fall at her new house, Nead-na-Gaoithe, Whitehead, County Antrim, near Belfast in November 1939.
42.
Charlotte Despard was buried in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
43.
Sylvia Pankhurst remembered her "fine spirit" and said of Charlotte Despard "She was one of our most courageous and devoted social workers".