Violet Cressy-Marcks

Violet Olivia Cressy-Marcks (1895–1970) was a British explorer mainly active between the world wars.

Personal life Violet Cressy-Marcks was born Violet Olivia Rutley on 9 June 1895, in West Wickham, Greater London, the only daughter of Ernest and Olivia Rutley. On 13 October 1917 she married Maurice Cressy-Marcks, a captain in the North Lancashire regiment, with whom she had her first son, William, in 1921. They divorced and she married Francis Edwin Fisher of Watford, a farmer & meat wholesaler on 12 December 1931 with whom she had two more sons, named Ocean (born 1933) and Forest (born 1934). The family lived at Hazelwood House, now known as Hunton Park.

She died at her London home on 10 September 1970 and was buried at Langleybury church, Hertfordshire. Her will included a bequest in her name providing a travelling scholarship for geographical research in the field.

1925: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town; 1927-28: Albania and the Balkans; 1928: In February 1928 Cressy-Marcks arrived in Jeddah, in the Hejaz. 1928-29: spent the winter north of the Arctic Circle travelling by sledge from Lapland to Baluchistan. part of her remit was to collect contemporary ethnological data on ethnic groups little known in the West.

In her will she requested that a copy of her biography be shown to the chief of MI5 "for his appreciation", as well as entrusting that biography to (the then deceased) Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, who had spent three years in intelligence in Constantinople (as well as editor-in-chief for Reuters), suggesting sponsorship from the secret service for some of her many travels. These coincided with periods of international political sensitivity on a number of occasions. She often achieved largely unfettered travel, as in the case of Russia where she availed herself of permission to travel wherever she wanted and visited most of the Foreign Office officials (as she reported to Mao).

Books

'A snake crawling over one at night is… not a pleasant proposition… The wretched thing had bitten me below the knee…' Having lanced the wound, she found a mirror 'to see if I was going black or grey… I decided on coffee, a walk and sleep, and if I was going to die… I was at peace with the world - so … there was nothing to worry about'.