33 Facts About Kitty Marion

Kitty Marion began her advocacy by selling copies of the Votes for Women newspaper, then progressed to militant protests, vandalism, and riots.

Kitty Marion was one of several suffragettes that conducted bombing and arson attacks throughout Britain.

Kitty Marion was convicted and jailed several times for arson and bombing, and was subject to over two hundred force-feedings while on hunger strike in prison.

Kitty Marion joined the birth control movement, and spent 13 years campaigning on street corners, selling Margaret Sanger's monthly magazine Birth Control Review.

Kitty Marion relied on her personality and loud voice to engage passers-by, and became a well-known figure in New York City.

Kitty Marion was arrested several times for distributing birth control information in violation of anti-obscenity laws.

Kitty Marion's mother died of tuberculosis when Katherina was two, leaving her with her father; four years later, her stepmother died of the same illness.

Kitty Marion adopted the stage name Kitty Marion, which she would later take as her legal name when she became a United States citizen in 1922.

Over time, Kitty Marion earned a reputation within the acting community as a vocal advocate for actresses.

Kitty Marion joined two suffrage organizations: the Women's Social and Political Union in 1908, and the Actresses Franchise League in 1909.

In 1908, Kitty Marion joined a large group of WSPU activists who invaded the House of Commons, resulting in a violent riot involving 5,000 police officers.

Later violent acts committed by Kitty Marion included smashing windows of Sainsbury's on Regent Street in London; throwing bricks through windows of post offices; and hurling a package of suffragette literature through a window of the Home Office.

One of the first arson attacks perpetrated by Kitty Marion occurred in April 1913, when she set fire to a home of Arthur du Cros, a Member of Parliament who had consistently voted against the enfranchisement of women.

Kitty Marion was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime.

Kitty Marion engaged in hunger strikes and the consequent force feedings during several imprisonments between 1909 and 1915.

Kitty Marion remembered it to be "hellish torture", but the experience only increased her motivation.

In 1909, Kitty Marion received the Hunger Strike Medal from the WSPU, awarded to suffragettes who went on a hunger strikes while in prison.

Britain was at war with Germany, and under the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914 Kitty Marion was considered to be an enemy alien, which meant the UK government would almost certainly deport her.

Kitty Marion was forced to make a choice between returning to Germany, or immigrating to America.

When Kitty Marion arrived in the US, she was not entirely unknown: US newspapers had mentioned her by name during the years 1912 to 1914 when reporting on the UK suffrage movement.

Kitty Marion spent her first two years in New York unable to find work as an actress, because US talent agents were aware of her reputation for controversy in the UK.

In January 1917, Kitty Marion noticed an advertisement for an upcoming birth control rally at Carnegie Hall, organized by Margaret Sanger's organization, the American Birth Control League.

Kitty Marion contacted the ABCL and was surprised to discover that they were aware of Marion's activities in the suffrage movement.

Kitty Marion accepted a job offer from the ABCL, selling copies of Sanger's monthly magazine, the Birth Control Review.

Kitty Marion continued to be occasionally mentioned in the New York press: in March 1917, she was described as an "English militant suffragette" in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Kitty Marion was not present in the UK when the suffrage movement finally achieved its goal with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave British women the right to vote; but she was able to reunite with many of her former suffrage colleagues in March 1930, when she briefly returned to England to see the unveiling of a statue of suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

The ABCL threw a luncheon for Kitty Marion, and gave her a severance payment of $500 to thank her for selling 100,000 copies of the magazine.

Kitty Marion died in poverty at the Sanger Nursing Home in New York City on 9 October 1944.

Kitty Marion's will specified that she should be cremated, and that there should be no funeral or religious services.

Several newspapers printed Kitty Marion's obituary, including the New York Herald Tribune; and tributes were sent from acquaintances in the UK, Australia, Jamaica, and across America.

Kitty Marion earned her own living from the age of seventeen, and she never married.

Feminist scholar Fern Riddell used the manuscript as source when writing the first full biography of Kitty Marion, published in 2018.

Kitty Marion's autobiography was finally published in 2019, annotated by academics Viv Gardner and Diane Atkinson.