Gertrude Baillie-Weaver

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Gertrude Baillie Weaver
Born
Gertrude Renton

8 June 1855
Kensington
Died26 November 1926 (1926-11-27) (aged 71)
Wimbledon
NationalityUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Occupationwriter and activist
Spouse(s)Henry Arthur Colmore Dunn,

Gertrude Baillie-Weaver born Gertrude Renton published as Gertrude Colmore (8 June 1855 – 26 November 1926) was a writer and suffragist. She co-founded the and wrote in support of animal and human rights. Her books about Suffragette Sally and Emily Wilding Davison were republished in the 1980s.

Life[]

Baillie-Weaver was born in 1855 in Kensington. Her parents were Elizabeth (born Leishman) and John Thomas Renton. Her father was a stockbroker and she had five elder sisters. She married lawyer Henry Arthur Colmore Dunn and after his death and in her forties to the feminist who was a barrister and a theosophist. Her husband was five years younger than her and he was an advocate for human and animal rights.[1]

She was a writer using the nom de plume of Gertrude Colmore. She published poetry and short stories and novels in support of theosophy and women's suffrage and against vivisection and physiology.[1]

In 1907 she published The Angel and the Outcast which was a melodramatic novel in support of improved animal rights and the following year Priests of Progress with the same theme. The second book was particularly successful in putting forward the anti-vivisection idea that physiologists had meetings to decide how they could counter her campaign. She served on the committee[1] that managed Battersea General Hospital which was notably opposed any experimentation using either animals or humans.[2]

Saffrom Waldon suffragist Public-meeting

She supported women's suffrage writing short stories for Votes for Women and The Suffragette and she chaired the suffrage group in Saffron Waldon. She was an early member of the Women's Freedom League and her husband spoke for the Men's League for Women's Suffrage.[3] In 1911 the campaign for women's suffrage was active and the suffragettes were militant. In that year she published "Suffragette Sally" which was fiction but it included references to real people. 1912 saw her calling for animals to be included in the Geneva Convention in a pamphlet she co-wrote for the Humanitarian League.

A statue in Regent's Park dedicated to Baillie-Weaver and her husband

In 1913 Emily Wilding Davison who was a militant suffragette died when she was run over during a protest by the King's racehorse at Epsom. Baillie-Weaver wrote a long obituary. It was later published as "The Life of Emily Davison".[4] The following year her work "Mr Jones and the Governess" was published by the Women's Freedom League.[5]

In 1926 she published A Brother of the Shadow which returned to the themes of The Angel and the Outcast and Priests of Progress. The villain uses mind-control to make people kill themselves. The villain is a Professor of physiology.[1]

After their deaths a statue was installed in St John's Lodge public gardens in Regent's Park. The statue by Charles Leonard Hartwell and it shows a woman "Protecting the Defenceless" and it celebrates their work and the which they founded. It is known as "The Shepheress"[6] or "The Goatherd's Daughter".[7]

Weaver died in Wimbledon.[1]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Kean, Hilda (2004). "Weaver, Gertrude Baillie- [née Gertrude Renton; pseud. Gertrude Colmore] (1855–1926), writer and feminist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55694. Retrieved 2020-11-04. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ "Battersea General Hospital". Lost hospitals of London. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
  3. ^ "Object of the Month – March 2018 |". saffronwaldenmuseum.swmuseumsoc.org.uk. Retrieved 2020-11-04.
  4. ^ Atkinson, Diane (2018). Rise up, women! : the remarkable lives of the suffragettes. London: Bloomsbury. p. 415. ISBN 9781408844045. OCLC 1016848621.
  5. ^ Colmore, Gertrude (1914). Mr. Jones and the Governess. Women's Freedom League.
  6. ^ "Gertrude & Harold Baillie Weaver". London Remembers. Retrieved 2020-11-04.
  7. ^ Banerjee, Jacqueline (2011). "The Goatherd's Daughter, by Charles Leonard Hartwell (1873–1951)". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 4 November 2020.
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