Maude grew up in the family home Frankby Hall in Frankby on the Wirral Peninsula, with her parents and seven siblings. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
In 1905 Maude began parish work in South Luffenham for the Reverend George William Hudson Shaw, who she had met at Oxford. She became friends with him and his second wife Effie.
In 1909, Maude was elected to the Executive Committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. From 1912 to 1914 she edited “The Common Cause”, the Union’s magazine.
The First World War brought a halt to most suffrage activity in England, as it was felt more important to support the British troops. Being a pacifist, however, brought Maude into conflict with a number of her colleagues in the movement. She promoted the idea that the women's movement should stand for peace and refuse to support the war effort. Maude joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women's International League and wrote and spoke on pacifism. Pacifism was not popular during the First World War and Maude found herself alienated and under attack. After an especially ugly incident outside a small town in the Midlands, she changed her focus to one of structuring a peaceful society once the war was over.
Maude had intended to attend the Women's Peace Congress in The Hague in 1915 but was unable to do so when travel via the North Sea was forbidden. When the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom was established, she became their vice-president. Maude continued to campaign for women to be allowed to vote through the National Council for Adult Suffrage and when a limited franchise was granted in 1918, she was asked to address the celebratory meeting organised by the older group at the Queen's Hall.
In 1918 Maude adopted a baby girl (Helen) orphaned by the war, and, as a response to the terrible plight of children during the postwar famine in Europe, she fostered a young Austrian boy, Friedrich Wolfe, for several years.
In 1928, Maude toured Australia, lecturing about religion.
In 1935, Maude was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Liverpool. In 1939, she renounced pacifism believing Nazism to be a greater evil than war.
In 1944, Maude married her recently widowed friend, the Reverend Hudson Shaw.
Maude died at her home in London on 30th July 1956.
A blue plaque was unveiled in June 2019 by the Mayor of Wirral, Councillor Tony Smith, at Maude’s former home in Frankby Hall on the Wirral Peninsular, UK.
Sources:
https://biography.yourdictionary.com/agnes-maude-royden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maude_Royden
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312066635_Religion_for_the_Modern_Girl_Maude_Royden_in_Australia_1928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b6vu29e0Ss
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/e0238de8-da38-432b-812c-97bd81f00951
“Wirral View” newspaper, July 2019
Find my Past and Free BMD
