'Kitty' Marion was a prominent Suffragette, actress, and, later in life, a pioneering campaigner for birth control access. Born Katherina Maria Schafer in Germany, Kitty came to England in 1886 at the age of 15. Shortly after she started working for the Variety theatre, touring the country as a vocal comedienne. She found that many of her theatrical employers expected actresses to give sexual favours in exchange for work. She became a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1908, taking part in deputations to the House of Commons and selling the Votes for Women newspaper. From then she combined her music hall career with that of a Suffragette militant.
Kitty was arrested multiple times for militancy, the first in June 1909 for taking part in the WSPU deputation to the House of Commons. She was also sentenced to 5 terms of imprisonment, her first in October 1909 when she and Dorothy Pethick were sent to prison for throwing a stone at a post office window in Newcastle. Whilst in prison Kitty went on hunger strike, was forcibly fed and set fire to her cell. On her release in December she went on to do the Christmas pantomime season. In March 1912 Kitty took part in the window smashing campaign, using a hammer to smash the windows of both the Silversmith’s Association and Sainsbury’s on Regent Street. Because Holloway prison was full she served her 6 month sentence at Winson Green prison in Birmingham.
By 1913 Marion was suspected of committing five acts of arson, including burning down the house of Arthur du Cros, the MP for St. Leonard’s in Sussex. She was arrested only for the fifth - the burning of the Grand Stand at Hurst Park Racecourse. Kitty was found guilty and sentenced, on 3 July 1913, to three years and 21 days of hard labour in Holloway Prison. Like any proud performer, Kitty kept press descriptions of her work: she pasted newspaper clippings reporting militant acts such as arson in a scrapbook, now in the museum collection.
Weakened through hunger-strike, she was twice released under the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge for Ill Health Act (referred to by the suffragettes as the 'Cat and Mouse Act') into a Women's Social and Political Union nursing home. Leaving the home, she would evade the authorities and commit further acts of arson or window-breaking before being captured and re-imprisoned. During Marion's last spell in Holloway, she was forcibly fed 232 times over a period of 14 weeks and two days. On 16 April 1914 she was released again under the Act, having lost 2 stone 8lbs (16kg) in weight.
Faced with deportation to Germany at the start of World War I, Marion eventually negotiated her migration to the USA, where she lived for the remainder of her life, becoming highly involved in the birth control movement. She helped set up the first birth control clinic in the United States, in New York in 1921, and was arrested a further nine times for her campaigning.