Scientific researcher/ retired MD

37

Married

The Homestall, London Rd, Barley, Herts

NUWSS

Complies

Redcliffe Nathan Salaman (1874-1955) was a medical doctor who gave up his role when he contracted tuberculosis. Redirecting his energies elsewhere, he became a well-known plant scientist who bred disease-resistant potatoes. Redcliffe and his wife ‘Nina’ (née Pauline Ruth Davis, 1877-1925) were advocates of women’s rights. In 1909, the NUWSS newspaper Common Cause reported that Redcliffe spoke in favour of women’s suffrage alongside Mrs E O Fordham at a meeting in Hertfordshire. The following year, Redcliffe and his wife hosted an event for Liberal Party supporters at their home in Barley, Hertfordshire. As the couple lived in a large country house, the grounds provided a perfect location for the event which was attended by more than 450 people. Redcliffe was among the speakers along with the Hon. Mrs Fordham who touched on the case for women’s suffrage. The Salamans were close friends of the suffrage sympathisers, Israel and Edith Zangwill, who campaigned with the MLWS and WSPU. While the Zangwills appear to have evaded the 1911 census, the Salamans complied with it. Redcliffe was described on the census as a retired doctor engaging in scientific research, while Nina, who was a poet and respected Hebrew scholar, was listed as an authoress. Five of their six children were also named along with several servants. In 1912, Redcliffe and Nina were among the founding vice-presidents of a new organisation, the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage (JLWS), which the Zangwills also supported. Welcoming the arrival of the JLWS, the WSPU paper The Suffragette, noted that the JLWS would work along similar lines to church suffrage leagues by emphasising the need for women’s emancipation to improve women’s status and to combat social evils. The JLWS also aimed to “encourage the participation of the Synagogue in social movements of the day.” Although Nina was active in the JLWS along with her sisters-in-law, she is said to have been less politically engaged than her husband and to have opposed the militant tactics of the suffragettes. Nevertheless, she was ground-breaking in her own way. As well as publishing her religious writing and being dedicated to improving girls’ education, she became the first woman to preach in an Orthodox synagogue in Britain in 1919. With the arrival of the First World War, Redcliffe joined the Royal Army Medical Core and served in the Middle East while Nina encouraged people to donate comforts to Jewish soldiers. Redcliffe and Nina became increasingly involved in Zionism, a cause which Redcliffe continued to support after Nina’s untimely death in 1925. The following year, Redcliffe married Gertrude Lowy (1887-1982) who had been a militant suffrage campaigner in her twenties. During the Second World War, Redcliffe acted as Chairman of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad which assisted Jewish people who had been imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. Sources: Common Cause; Suffragette; Herts & Cambs Reporter; The Times; Todd Edelmen, ‘Surreptitious Rebel – Nina Davis Salaman’, Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish History (Oxford: OCHJC, 2013-14); The Jewish Museum www.jewishmuseum.org.uk. Contributed by art historian Diana Wilkins with additional information from Tara Morton.