None

39

Divorced

Old Hall, Ashdown Forest, Sussex

NUWSS

Complies

Muriel was a daughter of Liberal politician Thomas Brassey, eldest son of the railway magnate, and his first wife, Annie. After divorcing Gilbert Sackville, Earl de la Warr, in 1902, Muriel took up residence at Old Lodge on Ashdown Forest. In March 1911 she donated to WSPU funds and sent to the Bexhill Chronicle the WSPU’s reply to Winston Churchill’s attack on it, protesting particularly about the force-feeding of men suffrage activists. At this time Muriel was staying with her friend, American heiress Mary Hoadley Dodge, at Warwick House, St James, where she and her maid are listed as visitors in the 1911 Census. In April 1911 Muriel presided, supported by Louisa Martindale, at a Horsted Keynes meeting, attended by a ‘large, fashionable and enthusiastic audience’, and addressed by Lord Robert Cecil. In the Coronation Procession of 17th June she accompanied Millicent Garrett Fawcett and her entourage. In the autumn of 1911 Muriel became President of the East Grinstead Women’s Suffrage Society formed by Marie Corbett. Vice-Presidents included Lady Sybil Brassey, the second wife of Muriel’s father, and Lady Eleanor Cecil. Meanwhile Muriel and Lady Betty Balfour, President of the Conservative Women’s Franchise Association, had been ‘working indefatigably’ to make Emmeline Pankhurst’s tour of the Highlands ‘a great success’. As Betty Balfour said, presiding over Lady Cowdray’s ‘At Home’ at Dunecht House, ‘Now that the Government has promised facilities for the Conciliation Bill, all suffrage societies are working heart and soul together’. In November 1911 Muriel chaired a WSPU meeting in South Kensington, addressed by Elizabeth Robins and Evelyn Sharp. In February 1912 she was on the platform at a NUWSS Albert Hall event presided over by Millicent Garrett Fawcett and addressed by Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Betty Balfour’s brother Lord Lytton, chair of the Conciliation Committee. A meeting chaired by Muriel at Brockenhurst Ladies College, Seaford, resulted in the formation of a NUWSS branch there. In November, now President also of the Rotherfield and Mark Cross Women’s Suffrage Society, Muriel attended another NUWSS public meeting in the Albert Hall where one of the speakers was Lord Robert Cecil. For the Midlothian by-election in September 1912, Muriel, a committee member of the NUWSS Election Fighting Fund, lent at least one car to the suffrage-supporting Labour Party. She similarly supported George Lansbury when, in November 1912, he resigned his seat of Bow and Bromley in order to force a by-election and stood independently as a Socialist Women’s Suffragist. In January 1913 Muriel became President of the new Federated Council of Women’s Suffrage Societies, comprising 18 non-militant suffrage organisations, and run under the auspices of the National Political League. She participated in a National Political League demonstration in March, and conference in April, calling upon the Government to stop this ‘barbarous custom of forcible feeding’. She was a signatory of protests against the Cat and Mouse Act, and in May 1913 was one of the few women to attend the Bow St trial of seven WSPU officials WSPU, including Beatrice Sanders, and two men. Muriel and Mary Dodge were thanked for supplying cars for the NUWSS Pilgrimage in July 1913, and, in September, Muriel’s ‘large and comfortable motor car’ made Lady Frances Balfour and her companions ‘independent of the vagaries of Highland trains’, on their campaigning tour of Scotland. In 1917 Muriel joined the National Council for Adult Suffrage, and in the December 1918 General Election supported Major Graham-Pole, Labour candidate for the East Grinstead Division, whose publicity gave as the ninth of ten reasons for voting for him that ‘he stands for equal rights for men and women’. Sources: WSRO 54752 E Grinstead WSS report; WSRO 54746 Marie Corbett letter; Daily Herald; Manchester Courier; Bexhill Observer; Bexhill Chronicle; Croborough Weekly; Hastings and St Leonards Observer; Kent and Sussex Courier; Mid Sussex Times; Sussex Express; Common Cause; Vote; Votes for Women; Women’s Dreadnought. Contributed by Frances Stenlake, Independent writer & researcher.