Gertrude Eaton
British musician and suffragist (1864–1940)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gertrude Eaton (1864 – 8 March 1939) was a Welsh singer, and co-founder of the Society of Women Musicians. She was also active as a suffragist, and on the issue of prison reform.
Early life and education
Gertrude Eaton was born in 1864, in Swansea, the fifth daughter of businessman and magistrate Robert Eaton of Bryn-y-mor, and his wife Helen.[1] The Eatons were a prominent family; the imposing Bryn-y-mor was built by an ancestor in the eighteenth century.[2]
Eaton studied music in Italy, and from 1894 to 1897 at the Royal College of Music.[3]
Career
In 1911, Eaton co-founded the Society of Women Musicians with composers Katharine Emily Eggar and Marion Scott.[4][5] The first meeting was held in October 1911, when Eaton was elected treasurer; she also spoke at that first meeting.[6][7] She served a term as president of the Society from 1916 to 1917.[8]
Gertrude Eaton was also active on the issues of suffrage and prison reform, and served a term as president of the Howard League for Penal Reform.[9] Eaton used her musical training to teach fellow activists to use their voices for confident public speaking.[10] As secretary of the Women's Tax Resistance League, in summer 1911, her household silver was seized when she refused to pay taxes as a suffrage protest.[11] She also evaded the census in 1911 as part of an organized suffrage protest.[12] She was said to be "instrumental" in getting penal reform on the agenda of the League of Nations.[13] Eaton was one of the British delegates to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in 1919.[14]
Eaton died on 8 March 1939, aged 77 or 78, at Hampstead. Her colleague Margery Fry wrote in an obituary of Eaton, "She would take endless pains to help a cause or an individual when her sympathy was aroused."[15]
