Charlotte Despard

British suffragist (1844–1939)

Despard was imprisoned four times for her suffragette activism, and she continued campaigning for women's rights, poverty relief and world peace into her 90s. and from around 1850 in England at Ripple, Kent, her father was Irish Captain John Tracy William French of the Royal Navy (who died in 1855) and her mother Margaret French, née Eccles (died suffering from insanity in 1865). She was educated by a series of governesses and intermittently at private school, but complained in later life that her schooling was 'slipshod' and 'inferior'. Despard was always dubious of authority and ran away from home at the age of 10 getting a train to London "to become a servant". He died at sea in 1890; they had no children.

Despard's first novel, Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow was published in 1874. Over the next sixteen years, she wrote ten novels, three of which were never published. Despard lived above one of her welfare shops in one of poorest areas of Nine Elms during the week and she converted to Roman Catholicism.

Despard became good friends with Eleanor Marx and was a delegate to the Second International, including to the fourth congress in London in 1896. She campaigned against the Boer War as a "wicked war of this Capitalistic government" and she toured the United Kingdom speaking against the use of conscription in the First World War, forming a pacifist organisation called the Women's Peace Crusade to oppose all war.

Despard was a vocal supporter of the Social Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party. In 1906 she joined the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and later was imprisoned four times for activism on women's franchise,

She was an active Catholic and on Ash Wednesday in 1907, she went with others to the House of Commons and got arrested. In establishing WFL, Despard was joined by Teresa Billington Greig, Edith How Martyn, Alice Abadam, Marion Coates Hansen, among others, as signatories to a letter to Emmeline Pankhurst explaining their disquiet on 14 September 1907. In 1911, when first imprisoned with Nina Boyle, Despard was furious when someone paid the fines, allowing them to be released right away; Boyle remarked upon her 'complete and absolute fearlessness'. along with Virginia Crawford, as she realised that the women's movement groups had to work together at times as well. She led the delegation at the Women's Coronation Procession (1911). In 1909, she met Mohandas Gandhi in London, in her role in the Women's Freedom League. The following September, she was with Agnes Husband again on the platform at Regent's Park. In 1914, she spoke along with Anna Munro and Georgiana Solomon at the WFL Hampstead branch 'at home', hosted by Myra Sadd Brown, raising funds for the Women's Suffrage National Aid Corps. which Despard had founded. From 1915 onward, she worked with Agnes Harben and others to maintain international women's movements representation in Britain. In 1919, she was one of twenty British delegates to the Women's International League Congress in Zurich (12–17 May). She is pictured next to Helen Crawfurd from Glasgow. She kept in communication with other suffragists, such as Daisy Solomon. In 1928, Despard was one of the suffrage movement leaders at the celebratory breakfast for the passing of the Equal Franchise Bill. Kate Harvey converted her house, Brackenhill, in Highland Road, Bromley, to a thirty one bed hospital, intended for wounded soldiers in World War I. However, refugee women and children were sent there instead. Despard and Harvey bought a 12 acre tract in Upper Hartfield, which they also called 'Brackenhill'. Harvey had become involved in Theosophy, as did Despard and the children from Bromley were transferred to The Cloisters, an open air school dedicated to that cause in Letchworth. The School in Hartfield became an Open Air School, which closed in 1939.

Unlike other suffragists, Despard refused as a pacifist to become involved in the British Army's recruitment campaign during World War I, a stance different from that of her family: her brother, Field Marshal John French, was Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the British Army and commander of the British Expeditionary Force sent to Europe in August 1914, and their sister Katherine Harley served in the Scottish Women's Hospital in France. She was a vegetarian and anti vivisectionist. She was associated with London Vegetarian Society, becoming president in 1918 and vice president in 1931, but they were later reconciled. She was classed as a dangerous subversive under the 1927 Public Safety Act by the Irish Free State government for her opposition to the Anglo Irish Treaty and her house was occasionally raided by the authorities. Impressed with what she saw, she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. She met and was photographed with the Indian independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose when he visited Ireland in 1936. She remained actively political well into her 80s and 90s, giving anti fascist speeches in the likes of Trafalgar Square in the 1930s. She died, aged 95, after a fall at her new house, Nead na Gaoithe, Whitehead, County Antrim, near Belfast in November 1939. She was buried in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

On death, she was described as someone who "brought home to English people an understanding of what womenhood could be capable of when inspired by fiery ardour for what it truly believed to be a great cause for humanity".