Henrietta Schutze

Henrietta Leslie was born (Gladys) Henrietta Raphael she became Gladys Henrietta Mendl and Gladys Henrietta Schütze (6 July 1884 – 19 July 1946) was a British suffragette, writer and pacifist.

Early life Schutze was born in London, England, in 1884 into an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, Arthur Lewis Raphael, was an addicted gambler and he died when she was a child. Her father had been excluded from the lucrative family business, but after his death the larger family cared for her and her widowed mother Marianna Floretta (born Moses ). Gladys was largely left her to the care of governesses. While she has a child she had an injury to her hip which troubled her throughout her life. and The Straight Road were published in the following year.

In 1913 she married again to Harrie Leslie Hugo Schütze. He was a bacteriologist and a fellow supporter of women's suffrage. She did not like demonstrations but she obliged herself to go. She was nearly arrested but her husband rescued her. They were close to Emmeline Pankhurst who once addressed a crowd from the balcony of their house while the police hovered below and they looked after her twenty strong entourage. She would carry consealed messages for the suffragettes. The injury revived the childhood damage to her hip. She was taken to sisters Georgie (Georgiana) and Helen MacRae's "Comforts Cottage" in Edenbridge, Kent where they allowed fellow suffragettes to recover and recuperate. Schutze suffered a lot of discrimination because of her pacifism and her German name. The story is based on her own experiences during the first war when she was treated unkindly because of her heritage and beliefs. As the second world war approached she returned from the USA to take in Jewish refugees. Schutze died in Bern, Switzerland, in 1946 three weeks before her husband. Henrietta Lesile used the pseudonym when she was writing as such Henrietta Leslie was not her real name.