Gertrude Eaton
Born1861
Died8 March 1939
NationalityWelsh
Occupation(s)singer, composer
Known forSociety of Women Musicians

Gertrude Eaton (1861 – 8 March 1939) was a Welsh singer, and co-founder of the Society of Women Musicians. She was also active as a suffragist, and on the issue of prison reform.

Early life and education

Gertrude Eaton was born in Swansea, the fifth daughter of businessman and magistrate Robert Eaton of Bryn-y-mor, and his wife Helen.[1] The Eatons were a prominent family; the imposing Bryn-y-mor was built by an ancestor in the eighteenth century.[2]

Eaton studied music in Italy, and from 1894 to 1897 at the Royal College of Music.[3]

Career

In 1911 Eaton co-founded the Society of Women Musicians with composers Katharine Emily Eggar and Marion Scott.[4][5] The first meeting was held in October 1911, when Eaton was elected treasurer; she also spoke at that first meeting.[6][7] She served a term as president of the Society from 1916 to 1917.[8]

Gertrude Eaton was also active on the issues of suffrage and prison reform, and served a term as president of the Howard League for Penal Reform.[9] Eaton used her musical training to teach fellow activists to use their voices for confident public speaking.[10] As secretary of the Women's Tax Resistance League, in the summer of 1911, her household silver was seized when she refused to pay taxes as a suffrage protest.[11] She also evaded the census in 1911 as part of an organized suffrage protest.[12] She was said to be "instrumental" in getting penal reform on the agenda of the League of Nations.[13] Eaton was one of the British delegates to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in 1919.[14]

Eaton died in 1939, at Hampstead. Her colleague Margery Fry wrote in an obituary of Eaton, "She would take endless pains to help a cause or an individual when her sympathy was aroused."[15]

References

  1. ↑ Oxford dictionary of national biography. British Academy., Oxford University Press. (Online ed.). Oxford. ISBN 9780198614128. OCLC 56568095.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ↑ Anne Logan 'The Life of Gertrude Eaton (1864): musician, tax resistor and penal reformer (Women's History: the journal of the Women's History Network Special Issue: 1918-2018, Vol 2, Issue 11 ISSN|2059-0156
  3. ↑ Pamela Blevins, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty (Boydell and Brewer Ltd. 2008): 12. ISBN 9781843834212
  4. ↑ Anita Mercier, Guilhermina Suggia: A Life (Ashgate Publishing 2008): 32-33. ISBN 9780754661696
  5. ↑ Laura Seddon, "Intergenerational Relationships: The Case of the Society of Women Musicians" in Lisa Colton and Catherine Haworth, eds., Gender, Age, and Musical Creativity (Ashgate Publishing 2015): 102. ISBN 9781472430854
  6. ↑ "Society of Women Musicians" The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular 52(1 August 1911): 535.
  7. ↑ "Organizing a 'Society of Women Musicians' in London" New York Times (22 October 1911): SM9. via Newspapers.com Open access icon
  8. ↑ Catalogue of Papers relating to the Society of Women Musicians held at RCM Library Archives, London: 1.
  9. ↑ "Capital Punishment: Women Discuss its Abolition" The West Australian (19 June 1930): 3.
  10. ↑ Anita Anand, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Bloomsbury 2015): 292. ISBN 9781632860811
  11. ↑ "Tax Resistance" The Vote (5 August 1911); reprinted in Lucy Delap, Maria DiCenzo, and Leila Ryan, eds., Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900-1918 (Taylor and Francis 2006). ISBN 9780415320269
  12. ↑ Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship, and the Battle for the Census (Oxford University Press 2014). ISBN 9781847798886
  13. ↑ Mrs. D. M. Northcroft, "Women in Prison Administration: An Interesting Appointment" The Glasgow Herald (17 April 1935): 10.
  14. ↑ These Dangerous Women: WILPF Women Working in Partnership (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1915): 22.
  15. ↑ Margery Fry, "In Memoriam: Gertrude Eaton" Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 5(4)(January 1940): 230. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.1940.tb01053.x

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