Overview to Catherine Marshall

Dates: 1880-1961

She lived at 2 Linnell Drive ?1924-1960

She was a suffragist (not a suffragette) Involved initially in NUWSS suffrage activities in Cumberland.

From 1911, Catherine Marshall had a full-time role at HQ as Parliamentary Secretary in London. Initially, the NUWSS tried to persuade the Liberal Party to support women’s suffrage, but made little progress.

In 1912 the NUWSS established the Election Fighting Fund (EEF) committee under Catherine Marshall. The committee backed Labour candidates in by-elections due to their support for widening the franchise.

As Parliamentary Secretary, Catherine told cabinet minister John Simon: "[after] I left school I started working for the Liberal Party almost as hard as I am working for women's suffrage now. It has been the greatest disillusionment… to find how little these principles really count with the majority of Liberal men”.

1913–14 the EFF intervened in four by-elections and although Labour won none, the Liberals lost two.

She was a pacifist and left the NUWSS over their support for the war in 1914. As a result, her contribution to the suffrage movement has not been fully recognised, even within the NUWSS archives.

NUWSS was significant in the campaign for female suffrage; Marshall and suffragists like her largely accomplished a one-by-one conversion of the public and of those in power such as MPs and party leaders through a peaceful and law-abiding approach.

Recognition has come now in as far as she is one of the 50 key individuals on the Fawcett statue unveiled in 2018.

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