Kitty Marion (Katherina Maria Schafer)

Sitter in 5 portraits
Suffragette and birth control activist, Kitty Marion, left Germany as a teenager for the London stage and experienced first hand exploitation that was then endured by actresses. She joined the Actress Franchise League in 1909, often staging pro-suffragette plays and then joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Following her arrest for the arson attack at a racecourse with Clara Giveen, she was force fed a shocking 232 times before being released as part of the Cat and Mouse Act, as it became commonly known. The Act sought to deal with the problem of hunger striking suffragettes by allowing their early release only to then recall them to prison once their health was recovered, where the process would begin again. The onset of World War I forced her to move to America, where she became involved in the family planning movement, establishing America's first birth-control clinic.