Edith Lanchester

Edith 'Biddy' Lanchester (28 July 1871 – 26 March 1966) was an English socialist, feminist and suffragette. She became well known in 1895 when her family had her incarcerated in an asylum for planning to live with her lover, who was an Irish, working-class labourer. Lanchester later became secretary to Eleanor Marx.

Early life Lanchester was born in Hove, Sussex on 28 July 1871, the fifth child of a family of eight. Her parents were Henry Jones Lanchester, an established architect, (1834–1914) and Octavia Ward (1834–1916). Following in their father's footsteps of bourgeois success, three of Edith's brothers became successful in the fields of architecture and engineering.

Work After attending the Birkbeck Institution and the Maria Grey training college, Edith first worked as a teacher and then a clerk-secretary working for a firm in the City of London.

Politics and notoriety Through her membership of the Battersea branch of the SDF she met factory worker and fellow member Shamus (aka James) Sullivan.

In 1895 Lanchester announced that she intended to live with Sullivan, beginning 26 October 1895, an arrangement which in the phraseology of the day was known as "housekeeping". When Lanchester physically tried to resist and fight back, she was handcuffed by her father. One of Lanchester's brothers reportedly assaulted Mrs Gray, Lanchester's landlady.

Lanchester's case created a national scandal. John Burns, MP for Battersea, intervened, and The New York Times reported that the affair had "rivet[ed] the attention of three kingdoms" and that "no penny paper had printed less than ten columns on this engrossing subject during the week".

During the four days of her incarceration Edith was subject to mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Eleanor Marx knew of Lanchester's situation in 1895 and had been disgusted by the misogynistic failure of male socialists to support and defend Edith's position, and more generally their failure to recognise the class dimension of the feminist struggle. Marx's ire was particularly directed towards SDF activist Ernest Bax who had publicly passed bourgeois moralistic judgement on Lanchester. Marx challenged Bax in a public letter to an open debate on "the woman question", but he declined, citing his rhetorical weaknesses.

Personal life Lanchester's first child, Waldo Lanchester, was born in 1897. It was a difficult pregnancy that was not assisted by the social pressures that her 'love-child' pregnancy attracted. Marx invited Lanchester to recuperate for a few weeks at Marx's home (The Den) in Sydenham where Edith and Waldo were protected and looked after.

During the early years of World War I, Biddy developed a growing interest in the pacifist principles of Quakerism. Her daughter, Elsa, recounts in her biography that Biddy and Shamus were "violently anti-war" and that pacifism 'roared through' the house.

When Waldo was conscripted he registered as a conscientious objector and was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for one year. Upon his release Waldo was supported by his mother to become a puppeteer and weaver.