Historical and topographical writer

43

Single

16 Gaveston Road, Leamington

NUWSS

Complies

Mary was a committed suffragist who was active in the Leamington and Warwick branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Like many local campaigners, Mary believed women’s suffrage should be achieved using law abiding, nonviolent methods. She wrote regular letters to the Leamington Spa Courier and helped to arrange numerous conferences and public meetings for the societies Midland’s Federation.

She travelled as a delegate to NUWSS conferences in Birmingham, Manchester and London. In June 1911, she also accompanied other Leamington women and men down to London to take part in the Women’s Coronation Procession. The procession was organised to rival the official Coronation procession of George V from which women were excluded. Approximately 40,000 women from around 30 women’s suffrage societies participated, and the procession was seven miles long.

Mary led a very full and active life and is a well-known figure locally in Leamington. She was a well published writer and historian having left Lady Margaret Hall Oxford in 1888 with a first-class English degree (although degrees for women were not formally acknowledged until 1920). She subsequently became an English teacher and wrote books, plays and lectured at local universities. She records herself on the 1911 census as ‘historical and topographical writer’.

In 1899, Mary became the first woman to present a paper, The Manuscript Record of Coventry, to the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society and was the first woman to address the Leamington Literary Society, founded in 1912. In 1922, she became a member of the Warwick & Leamington Dramatic Study Club, the forerunner of the Loft Theatre of which she was a founder member.

She was continually active in social causes including her role as Vice-President of the Workers’ Education Association and was also a supporter of the local League of Nations Association, the forerunner of the United Nations.

Leamington Literary Society sponsored a Blue Plaque in her memory situated on her house in Gaveston Road. Sadly, Mary was killed in a traffic accident in March 1936. For more on Mary, see Margaret Watkins:
http://www.leamingtonhistory.co.uk/mary-dormer-harris-1867-1936/. Leamington research funded by Warwick University.