This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Sean Glynn. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Born: 8 January 1939, Ireland
Died: 1982
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Etain Arnholz
Etain Madden (1939–82) studied philosophy at King’s College, London, and was active in a number of political and feminist causes. She was secretary of Fulham CP and active in the anti-Vietnam-war and Irish nationalist organisations; she was associated with Pat Arrowsmith in the Stop the War Committee during the early 1970s and involved in many political demonstrations; she carried a large Irish tricolour in the London March of Protest against Bloody Sunday (1972). Etain later became manager of the Housing Aid Service for Hammersmith and Fulham. She married (18 October 1968) Dr Fritz Arnholz, born 12 October 1897 into a wealthy Austrian Jewish merchant family, who had qualified in medicine in Berlin in 1924 and practised there for fifteen years. Most of his family perished under the Nazi regime, but he escaped to England and worked in military hospitals in the RAMC. In 1949 he joined a medical practice in Fulham which he ran until his death. A few months before his marriage to Etain, he was diagnosed as suffering from terminal cancer; he died 31 December 1968. He was an accomplished pianist and a dedicated and expert collector of prints and engravings. His collection, which especially features Hogarths and Bewicks, was donated by Claire Madden in the early 1980s to the Irish Gallery of Modern Art at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin (where it can be viewed as the Arnholtz-Madden collection). This was arranged by the novelist John Banville, who had been a close friend of Etain.
In April 1979 Etain was told by Sir Roger Bannister, her physician: ‘You have multiple sclerosis and there is nothing I can do about it’. She died in 1982. Claire Madden continued to live at 75 Bedford Road, East Finchley, until her death on 15 October 1998. Her papers, including her correspondence with Shaw, have been presented to the National Library of Women, Old Castle St., London E1, which also holds the records of the Six Point Group, along with a large and unique collection of feminist literature and archives, including the papers of the British suffragette movement. These are housed in a new building in Old Castle St., financed by the Millennium Lottery Fund and London Guildhall University.