Kitty Marion

With the outbreak of World War I German-born Kitty Marion suspected of being a German spy and placed under surveillance sailed from Liverpool for New York. She left a dramatic and colourful life behind: a hectic and fascinating 20-year career as a performer crisscrossing Britain first as a singer dancer and actress on the musical comedy and pantomime stage and then in music hall as a 'refined comedienne'. She campaigned against the sexual abuses rife in the theatre of the day which led her eventually into the suffragette movement where she became a 'notorious' militant responsible for numerous acts of arson. She was imprisoned went on hunger-strike and was force-fed more than 300-times. In America she became a celebrated 'foot-soldier' in Margaret Sanger's birth control movement. Her autobiography written in the 1930s is published here for the first time.