31 Facts About Stella Browne

Stella Browne was involved in labour parties, communist parties, as well as a number of women's societies.

Stella Browne did this through attacks in her articles and letters that kept her in the public's eye and added to the debates around many controversial topics surrounding women's rights.

Stella Browne is famous for her lectures and her work with the Abortion Law Reform Association.

Stella Browne was born on 9 May 1880 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Stella Browne was the daughter of Daniel Marshall Browne and his second wife Anna Dulcibella Mary, who went by the name Dulcie.

Daniel Stella Browne worked for the Canadian Department of Marine and Fisheries, after resigning from his post as Navigating Lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

Daniel and Dulcie were married on 23 February 1878, and Stella was born in 1880, followed in 1882 by her younger sister Alice Lemira Sylvia Browne, known as Sylvia.

When Stella Browne was three years old, Daniel, now Superintendent of Lighthouses, was aboard the Dominion steamship Princess Louise, and drowned.

Stella Browne was first educated in, as her mother's sister, Louisa Frances Siemens, had married an electrical-engineer with an extensive kinship network, enabling her to attend school there.

Stella Browne would be recognised for her refined and correct translations of German in her later life.

In 1897, Stella Browne entered the St Felix School for Girls in Southwold, Suffolk.

Stella Browne then attended Somerville, where she graduated with a second-class Honours degree in Modern History in 1902.

Stella Browne then moved back to Germany where she discovered the budding German woman's movement, which Helene Stocker was heading in a fairly radical manner.

Stella Browne then began work for the Victoria County History, writing up parish histories, and learning researching skills that she would use in her later career.

Stella Browne left this job in 1907, moving into the position of Librarian at Morley College in South London.

Stella Browne joined the Women's Social and Political Union in 1908, which marked the beginning of her social activism.

Stella Browne began to develop her belief system while at the college, experimenting with her lover and taking in the lectures of Morley College from her post there.

Stella Browne believed that women should not be confined to marriage to experience and develop the maternal instinct, while at the same time encouraged women to refuse motherhood if they wished to.

Stella Browne strongly believed working women should have the choice to become pregnant, or terminate their pregnancy while they worked in the horrible circumstances surrounding a pregnant woman who was still required to do hard labour during her pregnancy.

Stella Browne would remain loyal to this perspective throughout her life.

Stella Browne wrote a number of reviews, and translations of popular works on the reforms mentioned above as well, which she was often commended for.

Stella Browne began her activism in 1907 when she joined the WSPU for a short time.

Stella Browne left in 1913 however, opposing Christabel Pankhurst's "ignorant and presumptuous dogmatism" and the way that the group's leadership behaved towards women and men of lower class seemed to counter their arguments for feminism and democracy.

Stella Browne was unable to do so as she was forced to leave Chelsea later in 1926, as the Party was no longer recognised as a political Party.

In 1931 Stella Browne began to develop her argument for women's right to decide to have an abortion.

Stella Browne again began touring, giving lectures on abortion and the negative consequences that followed if women were unable to terminate pregnancies of their own choosing such as: suicide, injury, permanent invalidism, madness and blood-poisoning.

Stella Browne continued to be involved with the ALRA until her death, however she was unable to attend most of their meetings due to failing health.

Stella Browne was able to see the time come when medical terminations of pregnancy became more common though, which was a comfort to her.

Stella Browne had a severe heart attack at the beginning of May 1955, and the night before her seventy-fifth birthday she died.

The most common argument then, across the research is that Stella Browne had the most trouble getting her two beliefs to coexist appropriately.

Stella Browne left behind the ALRA upon her death, which gained a flood of new members as women began to recognise the insufficiency of the current contraceptives, and the scandal that came with the effects of thalidomide.