17 Facts About Ray Strachey

Ray Strachey's father was Irish barrister Benjamin "Frank" Conn Costelloe, and her mother was art historian Mary Berenson.

Ray Strachey was the elder of the two girls in her family.

Ray Strachey was discouraged by her mother Mary Berensen but nevertheless she took an electrical engineering class at Oxford University in 1910 and planned to study electrical engineering at the Technical College of the City and Guilds of London Institute in October 1910.

Ray Strachey wrote to her aunt "I have decided to go to London next winter for my engineering" and that she had been encouraged and helped by Hertha Ayrton.

Ray Strachey abandoned her plan due to marriage, but maintained her involvement with the Society of Women Welders which she had helped to found.

For most of her life, Ray Strachey worked for women's suffrage organisations, starting when she was studying at Cambridge, when she joined what became known as the Mud March in February 1907 and addressing meetings in summer 1907.

Ray Strachey took part in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Caravan tour in July 1908.

Ray Strachey is most often remembered for her book The Cause.

Ray Strachey's papers are held at The Women's Library at the London School of Economics.

Ray Strachey worked closely with Millicent Fawcett, sharing her Liberal feminist values and opposing any attempt to integrate the suffrage movement with the Labour Party.

Ray Strachey took great interest in the employment of women in engineering occupations.

Ray Strachey campaigned on behalf of the Society of Women Welders in 1920 for women to remain in the trade.

Ray Strachey was defeated but she found work for all the women involved.

Ray Strachey rejected the attempt by Eleanor Rathbone to establish a broad-based feminist programme in the 1920s.

In 1931 she became parliamentary secretary to Britain's first woman MP to take her seat, Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, and in 1935 Ray Strachey became the head of the Women's Employment Federation.

Ray Strachey painted her sister-in-law, Pernel Ray Strachey, around the year 1930, and the young Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Dadie Rylands at about the same time.

Ray Strachey died in the Royal Free Hospital in London in her early fifties of heart failure, following an operation to remove a fibroid tumor.