This biography, written by Dr Mari Takayanagi, has been republished with permission from the Dangerous Women Project, created by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Born: 1874, United Kingdom
Died: 1969
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Catherine Wilson, May or Mary Stewart
By the late 19th century, some middle-class women chose to adopt more masculine forms of dress for a variety of reasons, including assertion of feminism or economic independence. Satirical images of suffragettes sometimes portrayed them in masculine clothes by way of mocking them and hinting at lesbianism, as in this postcard from the Museum of London. This also played into fears that if women had the vote, they might assume male roles – such as becoming an MP, that there could even be a ‘Mrs Speaker’. If Catherine Wilson could walk into Central Lobby by dressing as a man, who was to say what else she could get away with?
So who was Catherine Wilson?
Well, she was so dangerous she used aliases – unknown to the Parliamentary police, her real name was Clara Lambert and she also called herself Mary Stewart. Under these various guises she took part in many militant suffragette protests for the Women’s Social & Political Union. This included damaging exhibits in the British Museum with a meat chopper, which caused the Criminal Record Office at New Scotland Yard to issue a memorandum with her picture. She was imprisoned, went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed. Twice she refused to return to prison having been temporarily released under the ‘Cat & Mouse Act’, and continued to evade arrest.
So up until 1914 she was about as dangerous as a woman could be – and yet, with great irony, in 1915 with the First World War underway and women taking on many jobs previously only held by men, ‘Catherine Wilson’ became one of the first women police! The Women’s Police Service was set up by Nina Boyle, another former suffragette, to work among women such as prostitutes and female munitions workers. The case of ‘Catherine Wilson’ shows a remarkably fast transformation from enemy of the state to pillar of the state: one year she was the subject of a police report, a year later she was writing them. It demonstrates how quickly things can change, especially in a time of war; how even the most dangerous of women could be ‘rehabilitated’ if circumstances demanded.
After the war, Clara Lambert and her friend Violet Croxford went on to set up a women’s refuge and enjoy a long and peaceful retirement in Surrey.