Elizabeth Holloway Marston

Sarah Elizabeth Marston ( Holloway; February 20, 1893 – March 27, 1993) was an American attorney and psychologist. She is credited, with her husband William Moulton Marston, with the development of the systolic blood pressure measurement used to detect deception, the predecessor to the polygraph.

She is also credited as an inspiration for her husband's comic book creation Wonder Woman, along with their polyamorous life partner, Olive Byrne.

Early life Marston was born Sarah Elizabeth Holloway in Sulby, Isle of Man to William George Washington Holloway (died February 13, 1961), an American bank clerk, and his English wife, Daisy ( De Gaunza; died July 19, 1945), who had married in England in 1892. After her family moved to the United States, Sarah was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. Her nickname was "Sadie". She eventually discarded her forename in favor of her middle name, Elizabeth, by which she would become known.

Career and family Marston received her BA in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in 1915

Sometime in the late 1920s, Olive Byrne, a young woman William had met while teaching at Tufts University, joined the household, becoming the third partner in their relationship. Elizabeth Marston had two children, Peter and Olive Ann, while Olive Byrne also gave birth to two of William's children, Byrne and Donn. The Marstons legally adopted Olive's boys, and Olive remained a part of the family, even after William's death in 1947.

Systolic blood-pressure test Marston enrolled in the master's degree program at Radcliffe College of Harvard University while her husband William attended the doctoral program in psychology at Harvard, which at that time enrolled only male students. She worked with William on his thesis, which concerned the correlation between blood pressure levels and deception. He later developed this into the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception that was the predecessor to the polygraph test.

Wonder Woman A 1992 "Our Towns" feature of The New York Times discussed Marston's involvement in the creation of Wonder Woman (although no source is cited in the article for the declaration "this super-hero had better be a woman" that was attributed to Holloway):