Died April 1966 | Spouse James Sullivan | |
Children Elsa Lanchester, Waldo Lanchester Similar Elsa Lanchester, Waldo Lanchester, Charles Laughton | ||
Edith 'Biddy' Lanchester (28 July 1871 – 1966) was an English socialist, feminist and suffragette. She garnered notoriety in 1895 when her family had her incarcerated in a lunatic asylum for planning to marry an Irish, working-class labourer. She later became secretary to Eleanor Marx.
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Early life
Lanchester was born in Hove, Sussex on 28 July 1871, the fifth child of a family of eight. Her parents were Henry Jones Lanchester, an established architect, (1834-1914) and Octavia Ward (1834-1916). Following in their father's footsteps of bourgeois success, three of Edith's brothers became successful in the fields of architecture and engineering.
Her eldest brother, Henry Vaughan Lanchester, became a distinguished architect and town planner who was awarded the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1934. Her immediately older brother, Frederick William Lanchester [pseud. Paul Netherton-Herries] (1868–1946) was a car and aircraft designer and engineer who invented the first all-British four-wheel petrol car. Following its success he, along with three other brothers, formed the Lanchester Engine Company
Her younger brother, George, was also successful as an engineer and car designer working alongside his brother Frederick. When Frederick retired from the business George became chief designer. His first post-war car, the Lanchester hp 40 limousine, was considered to be 'the finest car in the world'.
After attending the Birkbeck Institution and the Maria Grey training college, Edith first worked as a teacher and then a clerk-secretary working for a firm in the City of London. By 1895 Edith was a confirmed socialist and member of the Social Democratic Federation.
Politics and notoriety
In 1895 Edith announced that she intended to live with her working-class lover and fellow Battersea SDF member, Shamus (aka James) Sullivan. Their "free love union" was scheduled to begin on 26 October 1895.
Incensed by his daughter's apparent immorality, Lanchester père recruited George Fielding Blandford, who, along with three of Edith's brothers, interrogated Edith at her lodgings on the night before her "marriage". Edith was pronounced mad at the scene and, when she physically tried to resist and fight back, was handcuffed by her father. Blandford justified his action by describing Edith's planned action as an act of 'social suicide.
Edith was dragged off and taken by carriage to a psychiatric asylum, The Priory Hospital, Roehampton. The "Supposed Cause" of Lanchester's insanity was recorded on the certificates as "over-education". This created a national scandal. John Burns, MP for Battersea, intervened, and The New York Times reported that the affair had "rivet the attention of three kingdoms" and that "no penny paper had printed less than ten columns on this engrossing subject during the week". The SDF attempted to release her, and SDF supporters sang The Red Flag from outside the asylum's walls and beneath Edith's barred window.
The Marquess of Queensberry wrote to The Standard offering Lanchester a cheque for £100 as a wedding present if she would go through the legal marriage ceremony but under protest.
During the four days of her incarceration Edith was subject to mental, physical and sexual abuse. Under Section 11 of the 1890 Lunacy Act, Edith could be detained for up to seven days but that further incarceration would require another certificate. Edith was examined by the commissioners of lunacy, and found to be sane. She was released under Section 75 of the Lunacy Act, and set up home with Sullivan; she never saw her father alive again. Lanchester and Sullivan, however, lived together until his death in 1945.
In 1897 Lanchester was taken on as secretary to Eleanor Marx, a feminist and socialist campaigner. Marx had been aware of Lanchester's situation in 1895 and had been disgusted by the misogynistic failure of male socialists to support and defend Edith's position, and more generally their failure to recognise the class dimension of the feminist struggle. Marx's ire was particularly directed towards SDF activist Ernest Bax who had publicly passed bourgeois moralistic judgement on Lanchester. Marx challenged Bax in a public letter to an open debate on "the woman question", but he declined, citing his rhetorical weaknesses. Upon Marx's death, Lanchester received Eleanor's writing pen as a memento.
Although Edith was closest, in spirit, to the Fabians her own background influenced her choice to campaign and promote the cause of socialism through 'the true working-class'. By 1917 Edith identified politically as a communist describing socialists as 'practically Tories' who had let the working-class down.
Personal life
Lanchester's first child, Waldo Lanchester, was born in 1897. It was a difficult pregnancy that was not assisted by the social pressures that her 'love-child' pregnancy attracted. Marx invited Lanchester to recuperate for a few weeks at Marx's home (The Den) in Sydenham where Edith and Waldo were protected and looked after.
During the early years of World War I, Biddy developed a growing interest in the pacifist principles of Quakerism. Her daughter, Elsa, recounts in her biography that Biddy and Sahamus were "violently anti-war" and that pacifism 'roared through' the house. When Biddy's mother, Octavia, died in 1916, Biddy invested her £400 inheritance in the Jordans Quaker community project.
When Waldo was conscripted he registered as a conscientious objector and was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for one year. Upon his release Waldo was supported by his mother to become a puppeteer and weaver.
The couple's second child, Elsa Lanchester, became a noted actress with a long career in theatre, film, and television, and the wife of actor/director Charles Laughton.