Isabel Giberne Sieveking


Isabel Giberne Sieveking was a British suffragette, historian and writer.

Early life

Sieveking was born in 1857 in Epsom, Surrey, and was raised as a devout Catholic. She was the youngest of the four children born to George Sieveking and Maria Sieveking Giberne. Her first cousin was the poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Marriage

When she was 33 years old, Sieveking married 25 year old timber-merchant Edward Gustavus Sieveking on 25 April 1891. She referred to him as "dear Ted". They lived in Harrow and Hastings.
They had four children:
Sieveking's public views on marriage were radical and she wrote to the Hastings and St. Leonard's Observer on 3 December 1910 that "The highest ideal was not marriage. It could not be when sex was purely temporal." In the 12 July 1913 issue of the suffragette magazine The Awakener, Sieveking argued that marriage cannot satisfy women's desires for close companionship in an article titled "The Celibate Englishwoman."

Activism

Sieveking was a suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union. She participated in the 1911 census boycott, with the enumerator writing on her return: "Husband had left the town when I called and the wife, who is a suffragette, refused to sign as correct". She also wrote to local newspapers and got caught up in the 1913 Hastings riots when antisuffragists attacked a group of suffrage campaigners on the seafront.
When Levetleigh House in St. Leonards-on-Sea was burned down by suffragettes, Sieveking was not involved, but did support the act.
She was the secretary of the local branch of the Parents' National Educational Union.

Works

Sieveking was also a historian and writer who published works concerning historic individuals and the Indian Rebellion of 1857:Memoirs and Letters of Francis W. Newman, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. A Turning Point in the Indian Mutiny, dedicated to Thomas Gisborne GordonAutumn Impressions of the Gironde , London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co The Great Postponement
She also published in academic journals such as The Antiquary.

Death

Sieveking died on 30 March 1936 at Queen’s Gate, Kensington, London, England.