Twenty-First Issue: Lesbian Suffragettes

 
This week I am writing about women who were lesbians who helped out in Europe during World War I! I’ve been reading a book about Joe Carstairs who I mentioned in a previous issue, but I found two more World War I ambulance drivers and nurses, one of whom had a girlfriend and the other who lived with two other women in a ménage a trois as Wikipedia puts it.

First up is Evelina Haverfield. She was involved in Emmeline Pankhurt’s “militant women’s suffrage organization” and worked as a nurse in Serbia during the war. She was born in Scotland to a Scottish rich father and a rich American mother. She went to school in Germany, and married a man named Henry Wykeham Brooke Tunstall Haverfield when she was nineteen. They had two sons, but her husband, twenty years older than her, died eight years later. Here's a picture of Evelina.

 

 

Evelina liked to ride her bicycle, which she called Pegasus! She married John Henry Balguy, who was a friend of her first husband, and went to South Africa for two years to assist her husband who was stationed there. She learned to shoot a rifle and started a retirement camp for horses. She came back to London and joined the suffragette movement, participating in protests and getting arrested. She once was arrested for assaulting a police officer, and said, “[I didn’t hit him] hard enough. Next time I will bring a revolver.” Anyway, she met another suffragette named Vera “Jack” Holme around this time and dated her until Evelina died.

During World War I, Evelina started the Women’s Emergency Corps, and she also went abroad with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, working in Serbia as a nurse. After the war, with Jack’s help, she built a children’s health center. She died of pneumonia in 1920, and left fifty pounds a year for life to Jack. Jack was now set and didn’t have to work, so she hung out mostly with that menage a trois I mentioned earlier, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, and Radclyffe Hall.
 
Vera Holme went by Jack. She was an actress and worked with the Women’s Social and Political Union. One of the things she did was hide in the organ of a public hall overnight and at a political address the next day shouted VOTES FOR WOMEN! She also threw stones and was imprisoned. She became the Pankhursts’ chauffeur. During the war as I mentioned above, Jack joined Eveline Haverfield’s transport unit and became her girlfriend. She was a prisoner of war for a few months in Austria. The two of them were companions for nine years. Even though she had an affair with Dorothy Johnstone she stayed with Eveline until she passed away. Jack was known for dressing as a man and acting like one too. She died in 1969. Below is a picture of Jack.

 

 

 
Christabel Marshall also worked for women’s suffrage. She lived in a menage a trois with Clare Atwood and Edith Craig from 1916 to 1947. She was the youngest of nine children and grew up in a well to do family. She got a BA in history and became a secretary to the mother of Winston Churchill and sometimes her son too. Christabel wanted to be an actress, so she learned stagecraft and lived with Edith Craig. Their relationship became problematic when Edith received and accepted a marriage proposal from a man named Martin Shaw in 1903 and Christabel tried to kill herself. In 1916, Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood joined them and the three lived together until Edith died in 1947. Christabel wrote a book and joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, working for the suffrage movement.  Christabel continued to act and write plays and novels for several years. She along with her two girlfriends were friends with lots of lesbians and artists and writers. She wrote an autobiographical novel called Hungerheart under the name Christopher St. John. Christabel ended up dying from pneumonia and heart disease in 1960. She and her two girlfriends are buried side by side. Here is a picture of all three of them.



Clare ‘Tony’ Atwood was a British painter. She was one of Christabel’s two girlfriends. She was the daughter of an architect, and was born Clara, but then went to use Clare or Tony. She studied at famous art schools, and had many exhibitions of her art, commissioned to paint war scenes for the Canadian government during World War I. She also painted several pieces showing the activities of the Women’s Voluntary Service.
She lived with Edith and Christabel, helping out with their plays by performing and creating props and such. She died in a nursing home from heart failure in 1962. Her paintings are still kept in many art collections and galleries across the UK.

Edith Craig was the other third of the menage a trois. She was the daughter of an actress named Ellen Terry, and her father was an architect. Her mother was still married to her first husband when she eloped with her father, so technically Edith was illegitimate as was her brother.

Edith went to Mrs. Cole’s School and the Royal Academy of Music. She was a pianist too. She was a costume designer and actress. She was friends with George Bernard Shaw, who wrote some roles just for her. She became a dressmaker in Covent Garden at the beginning of the 20^th century. She founded a theater society called the Pioneer Players who produced banned plays and plays about humanism and feminism. Her mother was president of the society. She produced 150 plays and increased women’s opportunities in theater. She even converted a barn into a theater and produced Shakespeare every year after her mother died to commemorate her death. She was even in some silent films.

Edith was very involved in suffrage groups and sold newspapers for them. She directed many feminist plays. When Martin Shaw proposed to Edith and she accepted, both her mother Ellen Terry and Christabel Marshall prevented it from happening. The three of them (Tony as I mentioned earlier was the third) lived together and Edith’s mom looked down on their lesbian lifestyle and said that she hated men because she hated her father. She wrote some books with George Bernard Shaw about her mother, and her brother was pissed at her about it because he didn’t want his family’s business out there but they made up later on. When her mother died, Edith spent her time preserving her mother’s legacy. Edith died in 1947 and was buried with her two girlfriends. She dictated her memoirs to her friend Jack (mentioned above) and she wrote a book for her that resurfaced in 1978.
 
As mentioned earlier, I am always accepting suggestions for what to write about next!