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. The Eatons were a prominent family; the imposing Bryn-y-mor was built by an ancestor in the eighteenth century.Anne Logan 'The Life of Gertrude Eaton (1864): musician, tax resistor and penal reformer (Women's History: the journal of the Women's History Network Special Issue: 1918-2018, Vol 2, Issue 11 ISSN|2059-0156
Eaton studied music in Italy, and from 1894 to 1897 at the Royal College of Music.Pamela Blevins, Ivor Gurney and Marion Scott: Song of Pain and Beauty (Boydell and Brewer Ltd. 2008): 12.
Career In 1911, Eaton co-founded the Society of Women Musicians with composers Katharine Emily Eggar and Marion Scott.Anita Mercier, Guilhermina Suggia: A Life (Ashgate Publishing 2008): 32-33. Laura Seddon, "Intergenerational Relationships: The Case of the Society of Women Musicians" in Lisa Colton and Catherine Haworth, eds., Gender, Age, and Musical Creativity (Ashgate Publishing 2015): 102. The first meeting was held in October 1911, when Eaton was elected treasurer; she also spoke at that first meeting."Society of Women Musicians" The Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular 52(1 August 1911): 535."Organizing a 'Society of Women Musicians' in London" New York Times (22 October 1911): SM9. via Newspapers.com She served a term as president of the Society from 1916 to 1917.Catalogue of Papers relating to the Society of Women Musicians held at RCM Library Archives, London : 1.
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."Capital Punishment: Women Discuss its Abolition" The West Australian (19 June 1930): 3. Eaton used her musical training to teach fellow activists to use their voices for confident public speaking.Anita Anand, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Bloomsbury 2015): 292. 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."Tax Resistance" The Vote (5 August 1911); reprinted in Lucy Delap, Maria DiCenzo, and Leila Ryan, eds., Feminism and the Periodical Press, 1900-1918 (Taylor and Francis 2006). She also evaded the census in 1911 as part of an organized suffrage protest.Jill Liddington, Vanishing for the Vote: Suffrage, Citizenship, and the Battle for the Census (Oxford University Press 2014). She was said to be "instrumental" in getting penal reform on the agenda of the League of Nations.Mrs. D. M. Northcroft, "Women in Prison Administration: An Interesting Appointment" The Glasgow Herald (17 April 1935): 10. Eaton was one of the British delegates to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom meeting in Zurich, Switzerland in 1919.These Dangerous Women: WILPF Women Working in Partnership (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1915): 22.
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."Margery Fry, "In Memoriam: Gertrude Eaton" Howard Journal of Crime and Justice 5(4)(January 1940): 230. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.1940.tb01053.x
References
External links "Photograph of Suffragette Gertrude Eaton", Museum of London. "Postcard" featuring another portrait of Gertrude Eaton, Museum of London.