Hartley, Mrs Marie

Hartley, Mrs Marie, Ridgeway House, Ottery St Mary

Marie Gabrielle Hartley (1872–1923), née Norsworthy, was the first secretary of the NUWSS branch at Ottery St Mary, which was formed by 1910.[1]  She was no longer in office by 1913, perhaps having resigned in protest at the new national policy decision of the hitherto non party-political NUWSS to support Labour parliamentary candidates in return for the Labour Party’s support of women’s suffrage. Perhaps Marie’s reaction had something to do with the political affiliation she and her husband had with the Conservative party. They were both members of the Primrose League,[2] an organisation for spreading Conservative principles. It is interesting that this League encouraged women’s participation in politics, giving many their first taste of active politics.[3] Perhaps Mrs Hartley’s membership of the League led to her involvement in the suffragist movement. Her husband was active in the Conservative party itself, and appears to have been quite a reformer locally. He is listed as a sub-agent in Rockbeare for the Conservative parliamentary election candidate in 1910,[4] was on the platform at a Unionist and Tariff meeting,[5] and was at a meeting in Ottery St Mary to protest at the proposed disendowment of the Church in Wales (in line with the Conservative Party’s view).[6] And his involvement in local reforms or attempts at reforms included the ending of appropriated seats for the congregation in the parish church,[7] and the introduction of electric lighting in Ottery St Mary.[8]

However, we have little mention of the activities of Ottery St Mary NUWSS, and no mention at all of Marie’s activity therein. There is a newspaper report of the Branch holding a well-attended and successful meeting to promote the cause of women’s suffrage in November 1911.[9] And in May 1912 the Branch hosted a meeting in Ottery St Mary of committees of the NUWSS in the Honiton division to discuss Major Morrison Bell’s repudiation of his pledges on women’s suffrage in the parliamentary election.[10] Otherwise, we hear briefly of a fundraising event and of participation in a joint publicity action in Exeter. Eventually, with the arrival of the First World War, the Branch decided to suspend its campaigning work, and in September 1914 it wrote a letter to the Western Times newspaper announcing this decision and offering the Branch’s services to “all organisations arising out of circumstances attendant on the war”. Ottery Urban District Council responded, recognising the NUWSS as part of the local committee for the Queen’s Work for Women Fund.[11] It is not known if Mrs Hartley was involved in this Fund’s work, but we do know she became active in the Red Cross in the area.[12] This is of a piece with her involvement with other community activities hitherto, such as the Ottery St Mary District Cottage Hospital,[13] the local Nursing Association,[14] church,[15] and school management.[16]

It was not all work for Mrs Hartley, and there are many reports in the local newspapers at the time of what appears to be her considerable acting prowess,[17] and her involvement in the local choir[18] and in local field sports such as the Miniature Rifle Club,[19] and gymkhanas.[20]

She and her husband, Holliday Hartley, were wealthy, prominent members of the local community. Holliday Hartley was a local solicitor, clerk to the local council (and also clerk to other councils, trusts, school governors, and charities),[21] and a horse breeder.[22] They took an active and sometimes leading part in many various community activities whether political, concerned with welfare, sporting, or entertainment.

After some fifteen years in Ottery, the family moved in 1915 to Chaffcombe, near Chard in Somerset.[23] Although this takes Mrs Hartley out of Devon, I am including these last eight years of her life in this account, a life which dramatically came to an end in 1923, when, while the family was staying at the Hotel Regina in Mentonne, France, she committed suicide by shooting herself.[24]

The Hartleys’ only son, William Holliday Hartley, lost his life near the Belgian border with France in 1918, fighting in the First World War. The Roll of Honour website states that his body was not recovered from the field of action, and this is also corroborated in the local newspaper report.[25]

This tragedy occurring so soon after the Hartleys’ departure to new pastures from a very full life in Ottery must have been hard to bear. Ottery was a compact, lively and small river-valley town with a water-mill, surrounded by lovely countryside and small settlements, and within reach of Exeter. The children grew up there until they went away to school. How did Chaffcombe compare for Mrs Hartley at a time of her life when she had become or was becoming menopausal? The move saw the Hartleys apparently going up the social ladder, acquiring a much larger house and land, making them the chief family of the small area in which they now lived, Mr Hartley becoming lord of the manor, a Justice of the Peace, and performing more prestigious roles in the community[26]; but nevertheless they were newcomers to Somerset.

Marie Hartley’s maiden name was Norsworthy, a Devon name, and her mother lived in Devon before her marriage to Marie’s father, who appears to have been a Home Counties gentleman and to have stayed in that area, as Marie was born in Middlesex.[27] Presumably Marie stayed in that part of the country as we find her marrying in Westminster, London.[28] The man she married, Holliday Hartley, was described at the time of the marriage as a gentleman residing in St James’s, Piccadilly, but he was born and came from gentry stock in Lincolnshire, where he eventually returned after Marie’s death.[29]

As for their two surviving children … But let me say first that the impression I have gained while researching Marie Hartley is how much people moved around at this time, and how this family dramatically illustrated this. Mrs Hartley’s suicide was an explosion, in more ways than one, that not only echoed this general contemporary pattern of society in technicolour for the family, but seems to have scattered the remaining members of the family far and wide, the eldest child, Margaret Holliday Hartley, moving to Hastings,[30] the youngest, Mary Elizabeth Holliday Hartley, possibly emigrating to New Zealand,[31] and, as already mentioned, Mr Hartley eventually returning to Lincolnshire.

 

 

Entry created by Diana Jones, December 2018


[1]   Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: a Regional Survey (Routledge, 2006), 147.

[2]   Western Times, 27 Apr 1915.

[3]   M. Pugh, The Tories and the People, 1880–1935 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 43.

[4]   Devon & Exeter Gazette, 17 Dec 1910.

[5]   Devon & Exeter Gazette, 19 Jan 1910.

[6]   Devon & Exeter Gazette, 21 Mar 1912.

[7]   Ottery St Mary Parish Magazine, May 1910; Ottery St Mary Vestry Minute Book, 20 Apr 1908, 12 Apr 1909, 29 Mar and 15 Apr 1910.

[8]   Devon & Exeter Gazette, 7 Oct 1910 and 24 Sep 1912.

[9]   Devon & Exeter Gazette, 17 Nov 1911.

[10] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 10 May 1912.

[11] Western Times, 18 Sep 1914.

[12] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 18 May 1914.

[13] Western Times, 27 Jan 1909.

[14] Western Times, 17 Feb 1914.

[15] Ottery St Mary Parish Magazine, Feb 1902, Jul 1904, Feb 1911, Jun 1913, May 1914; Chard & Ilminster News, 24 and 31 Jul 1915.

[16] Chaffcombe Parish Meeting Minutes, 23 Mar 1915.

[17] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 16 Jan 1909, 14 Feb 1914.

[18] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 1 May 1909.

[19] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 1 Dec 1913.

[20] Western Times, 15 Jul 1905.

[21] Kelly’s Directory of Devonshire, 1902, 1906, 1910.

[22] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 1 Aug 1914.

[23] Chaffcombe Parish Meeting Minutes, 23 Mar 1915.

[24] Western Times, 21 Dec 1923.

[25] Devon & Exeter Gazette, 27 Apr 1918.

[26] Kelly’s Trade Directory for Somerset, 1919

[27] Find My Past

[28] Find My Past

[29] Find My Past

[30] Find My Past

[31] Ancestry Immigration & Travel Records

 

Return to Index