Gertrude Eaton

Gertrude Eaton (1861 – 8 March 1939) was a Welsh singer, and co-founder of the Society of Women Musicians. She was also active as a suffragist, and on the issue of prison reform.

Gertrude Eaton
Born1861
Died8 March 1939
NationalityWelsh
Occupationsinger, composer
Known forSociety of Women Musicians

Early life and education

Gertrude Eaton was born in Swansea, the fifth daughter of businessman and magistrate Robert Eaton of Bryn-y-mor, and his wife Helen.[1] The Eatons were a prominent family; the imposing Bryn-y-mor was built by an ancestor in the eighteenth century.[2]

Eaton studied music in Italy, and from 1894 to 1897 at the Royal College of Music.[3]

Career

In 1911 Eaton co-founded the Society of Women Musicians with composers Katharine Emily Eggar and Marion Scott.[4][5] The first meeting was held in October 1911, when Eaton was elected treasurer; she also spoke at that first meeting.[6][7] She served a term as president of the Society from 1916 to 1917.[8]

Gertrude Eaton was also active on the issues of suffrage and prison reform, and served a term as president of the Howard League for Penal Reform.[9] Eaton used her musical training to teach fellow activists to use their voices for confident public speaking.[10] As secretary of the Women's Tax Resistance League, in the summer of 1911, her household silver was seized when she refused to pay taxes as a suffrage protest.[11] She also evaded the census in 1911 as part of an organized suffrage protest.[12] She was said to be "instrumental" in getting penal reform on the agenda of the League of Nations.[13] Eaton was one of the British delegates to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in 1919.[14]

Eaton died in 1939, at Hampstead. Her colleague Margery Fry wrote in an obituary of Eaton, "She would take endless pains to help a cause or an individual when her sympathy was aroused."[15]

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References
  1. Oxford dictionary of national biography. British Academy., Oxford University Press. (Online ed.). Oxford. ISBN 9780198614128. OCLC 56568095.CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. Anne Logan 'The Life of Gertrude Eaton (1864): musician, tax resistor and penal reformer (Women's History: the journal of the Women's History Network Special Issue: 1918-2018, Vol 2, Issue 11 ISSN|2059-0156
  3. Pamela Blevins, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty (Boydell and Brewer Ltd. 2008): 12. ISBN 9781843834212
  4. Anita Mercier, Guilhermina Suggia: A Life (Ashgate Publishing 2008): 32-33. ISBN 9780754661696
  5. Laura Seddon, "Intergenerational Relationships: The Case of the Society of Women Musicians" in Lisa Colton and Catherine Haworth, eds., Gender, Age, and Musical Creativity (Ashgate Publishing 2015): 102. ISBN 9781472430854
  6. "Society of Women Musicians" The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular 52(1 August 1911): 535.
  7. "Organizing a 'Society of Women Musicians' in London" New York Times (22 October 1911): SM9. via Newspapers.com
  8. Catalogue of Papers relating to the Society of Women Musicians held at RCM Library Archives, London: 1.
  9. "Capital Punishment: Women Discuss its Abolition" The West Australian (19 June 1930): 3.
  10. Anita Anand, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Bloomsbury 2015): 292. ISBN 9781632860811
  11. "Tax Resistance" The Vote (5 August 1911); reprinted in Lucy Delap, Maria DiCenzo, and Leila Ryan, eds., Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900-1918 (Taylor and Francis 2006). ISBN 9780415320269
  12. Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship, and the Battle for the Census (Oxford University Press 2014). ISBN 9781847798886
  13. Mrs. D. M. Northcroft, "Women in Prison Administration: An Interesting Appointment" The Glasgow Herald (17 April 1935): 10.
  14. These Dangerous Women: WILPF Women Working in Partnership (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1915): 22.
  15. Margery Fry, "In Memoriam: Gertrude Eaton" Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 5(4)(January 1940): 230. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.1940.tb01053.x

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