Artist

55

Single

27 Warwick Chambers, Pater Street, Kensington

WSPU

Resists

Born in 1856 in Hertfordshire Mary was one of at least 6 children of Thomas Postlethwaite, a farmer and later slate merchant, and his wife also named Mary. Both Mary and her sisters set their mind to becoming artists and in 1880, Mary became a student at Derby School of Art (Derby was her mother’s hometown). By 1886, the sisters moved to London with their now retired parents and in 1890, Mary attended the Royal Academy Schools where she won first prize for her painting of a draped figure. She is known for her still life paintings, but these are very rarely found, and none appear to hang in any public collection. Her pathway into the women’s suffrage movement is unclear, but by 1908 she was helping to organise the artists section of the WSPU Women’s Sunday Procession to Hyde Park on the 21st of June 1908 and was a member of the WSPU Kensington branch. She was selected as part of a deputation to take a resolution to the House of Commons demanding an immediate measure to grant votes for women. In the ensuing scuffles, she was arrested with 29 other women, charged with obstruction, and sentenced to four weeks imprisonment. In 1911, she followed the census boycott as a member of the WSPU, writing on her census form ‘Didn’t count at the general election, so won’t be counted now’. There is no direct mention that she was involved in sewing banners or painting them for the cause, but it seems highly likely she did given the hub of artists at work in Kensington, many linked with the WSPU branch there. By 1913, she was Honorary Secretary of the Kensington branch and its was that year that her only known artistic contribution was made when she chalked pictures on pavements to raise funds for self-denial week. She resigned her position with the branch in 1913 when ruptures began to appear over the Kensington branch work with Sylvia Pankhurst in the East End of London, possibly because of the East End branch connections to socialist organisations and the tensions this caused with WSPU headquarters, later leading to Sylvia’s break with her mother and sister. In 1915, Mary became Honorary Secretary of the Kensington branch of the United Suffragists. Source: Elizabeth Crawford, Art and Suffrage: A Biographical Dictionary of Suffrage Artists (London, 2018).