Grace Oakeshott

Grace Oakeshott (born Grace Cash, later Joan Reeve; 1872–1929) was a British activist for women's rights who faked her own death in 1907 and emigrated to New Zealand with her lover, Walter Reeve.

Biography Grace Cash was born in 1872. She married Harold Oakeshott, and both were active in socialist circles. Grace wrote a paper in 1900 on Women in the Cigar Trade in London, published in The Economic Journal. She was involved in the foundation of the first Trade School for Girls in 1904, and in the Women's Industrial Council.

Her life has been extensively researched by British author Jocelyn Robson, who published Radical Reformers and Respectable Rebels: How the Two Lives of Grace Oakeshott Defined an Era (2016, Palgrave Macmillan ).

In December 2025, the podcast "Cautionary Tales" included an episode on Oakeshott, titled "The Disappearance of Grace Oakeshott".