Private Means

47

Married

30 Hyde Park Gate, South Kensington, London SW7 5DJ

NUWSS

Complies

Adela was born in 1863 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She married Dr Stanton Coit, her second husband, in 1898, and they went on to have 3 children. She had 3 children from a previous marriage. She attended the Berlin meeting, which formed the International Women's Suffrage Alliance in 1904, alongside her husband. She became a treasurer for the IWSA in 1908, a role she would continue until 1920. She joined the WSPU in 1907 but afterward transferred to the NUWSS. In 1912 she held a meeting for the Tax Resistance League, having left the WSPU, she was also a member of the first election fighting fund committee of the NUWSS and remained a member through to 1917. She complied with the 1911 census, alongside her husband, Stanton Coit. She was living with 5 of her children and a combination of 8 servants at 30 Hyde Park Gate in London. In 1912, she hosted a meeting on women's suffrage at St Clare's Castle in Ryde. The speakers were her husband and Mrs Archibald Mackirdy. The meeting was attended by prominent Island suffragette Mrs Russell Cooke. This meeting was the catalyst for the formation of the Ryde Branch of the NUWSS, as 30 members joined from the initial September meeting before the branch's first meeting in December of that year. In 1913, she also became a part of the executive committee of the London Society for Women's Suffrage. She was honoured as one of the pioneers of the International Suffrage Alliance at the 1929 jubilee congress. In her obituary in the journal for the IWSA, it was reported that her support remained consistent even during the war, when it was difficult for her as a German-born woman living in England. Adela died in October 1937. Sources: Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 18661928 (London, 1999). Contributed by Becca Aspden, URSS student researcher, History Dept., Warwick University