| Biography | Maud Sparagnapane, the elder daughter of Gaudente Sparagnapane, an Italian immigrant wholesale confectioner, and his wife, Aurelia Williams, was born on 4th February 1862. According to Elizabeth Crawford: "Nothing is known of her education. Of striking, dark appearance, she became an actress, using the stage name Mary Kingsley. She played at theatres throughout England and Scotland and, for a year, in Australia."
On 9th July 1898 she married Henry Robert Arncliffe Sennett, who took over the family business in Clerkenwell, Gaudente Sparagnapane and Company, that boasted that it was the country's "Oldest Established Manufacturers of Christmas Crackers and Wedding Cake Ornaments".
In January 1906 Maud Arncliffe Sennett read a letter from Millicent Fawcett about women's suffrage in The Times. As a result she joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage. Soon after she became a member of the Hampstead branch of the Women Social & Political Union (WSPU). According to her biographer "her experience as an actress made her a most effective speaker".
In June 1908 Sennett resigned from the WSPU. She now joined the Women's Freedom League and later became a member of its national executive. In her autobiography she commented on the WFL's two leaders, Teresa Billington-Greig and Charlotte Despard: "Billington-Greig was brilliant, but, I think, weak secretary who held the fort for the absent leader and kept grip of the machine. Mrs Despard, the popular reformer, did not organise; she was president and a sort of flaming torch that toured London and the country." Maud Arncliffe Sennett resigned from the WFL in July 1910.
Sennett was also active in the the Actresses' Franchise League. In her autobiography she claims that "there was more peace and harmony among these gracious women, and more generosity of mind and less jealousy than one had seen in the other groups." She also gave donations to the Men's League For Women's Suffrage. |