Kathleen de Vere Taylor (c. 1873 — November 4, 1949) was an American stockbroker and suffrage activist. She was a member of the
Heterodoxy Club.Partner Frances Maule
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Kathleen de Vere Taylor (c. 1873 — November 4, 1949) was an American stockbroker and suffrage activist. She was a member of the
Heterodoxy Club.
Kathleen de Vere Taylor was born in New York City. She studied in Germany as a young woman, and taught music, German, and French upon her return to New York.
Taylor was a member of several suffrage organizations, and of Heterodoxy, a feminist club based in Greenwich Village that met at Polly's. She was also on the executive committee of the National Birth Control League. She was among the group of Women's Political Union members who staged a 24-hour suffrage lecture marathon in New York City in October 1913. In 1916 she spoke at a suffrage luncheon in Washington, went to Kansas with other suffrage leaders, and helped work at Chicago polls handing out suffrage and anti-Wilson literature that year. Taylor made a public statement against the re-election of James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr. to the Senate in 1920, announcing in an open letter that "I shall use all the power I can command to oppose the re-election of any candidate...who has stood against the will of our state and party on the question of woman suffrage."
As a stockbroker, Taylor worked for the Charles Edey brokerage beginning in 1914, and moved to Fenner & Beane and other firms. She became manager of a branch office of Harris, Irby & Vose in 1928, and is said to have been the first woman to manage a brokerage office in New York City. Her office employed only women, and managed only women's accounts. She was in that position during the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and declared herself proud of the women in her office during that devastation: "Not one tear did I see during all the time the market was at its worst," she later recalled. "No crowd of men under pressure ever could show up as better sports." In 1931 she moved to Greer, Crane & Webb, and then in 1941 to Carey, Joost & Patrick. She retired from this last firm in 1947.
In 1901 Kathleen de Vere Taylor's engagement to S. Carroll Chancellor (1860-1905) of Leesburg, Virginia, mayor of Leesburg from 1899 to 1900 and from 1903 to 1905, was announced, but the marriage never took place.
Before and especially after her divorce, Frances Maule increasingly turned to her suffrage chosen family for support. She moved into an apartment building in Greenwich Village with other suffragists. Maule forged intimate relationships with radical women who embraced a diverse set of political and social beliefs, from anarchy and socialism to birth control and free love. Queer relationships were also common among this group of Village suffragists. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Maule and fellow suffragist Kathleen De Vere Taylor eventually became lovers. The 1930 and 1940 censuses show Maule and Taylor living together until Taylor passed away in 1949.
Taylor died in 1949, aged 76, after a heart attack at her home in Woodstock, New York.
References:
 Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse |
Other references:
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