Annie Wood Besant 1847 – 1933
Annie Wood Besant 1847 – 1933 was a prominent Theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self rule.
The Theosophy Society has supported homeopathy from its inception, and Annie Besant was supported by British homeopaths, and she read The British journal of Homeopathy, which came out to support Charles Bradlaugh.
Annie Besant reported on the activities of homeopaths in her Theosophy reviews as early as 1913, and she publicised homeopathy in her writing, reviewing John Henry Clarke‘s What is Man? in The Theosophist Magazine 1929, homeopathy itself in The Theosophist Magazine 1926, The Theosophist Magazine 1927, The Theosophist Magazine 1928, and The Theosophist Magazine 1930, and Rosa Hobhouse‘s Life of Christian Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homepathy in The Theosophist Magazine 1934.
Annie Besant was a student of Thomas Henry Huxley, and a colleague of Catherine Booth, Charles Robert Drysdale, William Gladstone, Pandit Gurtu, James Hinton, Aldous Huxley, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Frank Podmore, George Bernard Shaw, Rudolf Steiner, Arnold Toynbee, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Oscar Wilde and his wife Constance Wilde, Virginia Woolf,
Annie Besant lost her father William Wood at the age of 5. He was a mathematician, a doctor, and religious skeptic who died as a result of a surgical accident, leaving the family almost destitute. Nevertheless, Annie was one of the first women to attend the London University, where she studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. However, she was refused her BSc due to her athiesim and her defence of woman’s rights and birth control.
In 1879, Annie studied anatomy with Edward Aveling, the some time common law husband of Karl Marx‘s daughter Eleanor. Annie was the secretary of the Malthusian League, a leading member of the National Secular Society, she was involved with the International Labour Union, a founder member of the Fabian Society, and a member of the London School Board when she instituted free school meals, and she was a tireless campaigner against the abuses of child labour.
Annie Besant was a founder with Herbert Burrows of the Matchmaker’s Union, leading the famous strike for better conditions, the London matchgirls strike of 1888, alongside Catherine Booth. Annie would continue to campaign for Irish Home Rule and Indian Home Rule and many other worthy causes for the rest of her life.
In 1904, Rudolf Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Rudolf Steiner’s leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science.
Charles Robert Drysdale was a witness at Annie Besant’s trial, and the Malthusian League originated in July 1877 when Annie Besant suggested the idea to members of the London Dialectical Society and the defense committee organized to defend her and Charles Bradlaugh in the trial for publishing Charles Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy.
However, she was unable to support Annie and persuaded her friend Ellen Marryat to care for her. Ellen Marryat made sure that Annie had a good education. She was given a strong sense of duty to society and an equally strong sense of what independent women could achieve. As a young woman, she was also able to travel widely in Europe. There she acquired a taste for Catholic colour and ceremony that never left her.
In 1867, at age nineteen she married 26 year old clergyman Frank Besant, younger brother of Walter Besant. He was an evangelical Anglican clergyman who seemed to share many of her concerns. Soon Frank became vicar of Sibsey in Lincolnshire. Annie moved to Sibsey with her husband, and within a few years they had two children: Digby and Mabel.
The marriage was, however, a disaster. The first conflict came over money and Annie’s independence. Annie wrote short stories, books for children and articles. As married women did not have the legal right to own property, Frank was able to take all the money she earned. Politics further divided the couple. Annie began to support farm workers who were fighting to unionise and to win better conditions. Frank was a Tory and sided with the landlords and farmers.
The tension came to a head when Annie refused to attend Communion. She left him and returned to London. They were legally separated and Annie took her daughter with her.
Annie began to question her own faith. She turned to leading churchmen for advice. She even went to see Edward Bouverie Pusey, leader of the Catholic wing of the Church of England. He simply told her she had read too many books.
Annie returned to Frank to make one last effort to repair the marriage. It proved useless. She finally left for London. Divorce was unthinkable for Frank, and was not really within the reach of even middle class people. Annie was to remain Mrs Besant for the rest of her life. At first, she was able to keep contact with both children and to have Mabel live with her. She got a small allowance from Frank. Her husband was given sole custody of their two children.
For a time she undertook part time study at the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution, where her religious and political activities were to cause alarm. At one point the Institution’s governors sought to withhold the publication of her exam results.
She fought for the causes she thought were right, starting with freedom of thought, women’s rights, secularism (she was a leading member of the National Secular Society alongside Charles Bradlaugh), birth control, Fabian socialism and workers’ rights.
Once free of Frank Besant and exposed to new currents of thought, Annie began to question not only her long held religious beliefs but also the whole of conventional thinking. She began to write attacks on the churches and the way they controlled people’s lives. In particular she attacked the status of the Church of England as a state sponsored faith.
Soon she was earning a small weekly wage by writing a column for the National Reformer, the newspaper of the National Secular Society. The National Secular Society stood for a secular state: an end to the special status of Christianity. The National Secular Society allowed her to act as one of its public speakers.
Public lectures were very popular entertainment in Victorian times. Annie was a brilliant speaker, and was soon in great demand. Using the railway, she criss crossed the country, speaking on all of the most important issues of the day, always demanding improvement, reform and freedom.
For many years Annie was a friend of the Society’s leader, Charles Bradlaugh. It seems that they were never lovers, but their friendship was very close. Charles Bradlaugh, a former seaman, had long been separated from his wife. Annie lived with Charles Bradlaugh and his daughters, and they worked together on many issues.
Charles Bradlaugh was an atheist and a republican. He was working to get himself elected as MP for Northampton to gain a better platform for his ideas.
Besant and Charles Bradlaugh became household names in 1877 when they published a book by the American birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. It claimed that working class families could never be happy until they were able to decide how many children they wanted. It suggested ways to limit the size of their families. The Knowlton book caused great offence to the Churches, but Annie and Charles Bradlaugh proclaimed in the National Reformer: “We intend to publish nothing we do not think we can morally defend. All that we publish we shall defend.”
The pair were arrested and put on trial for publishing the Knowlton book. They were found guilty, but released pending appeal. As well as great opposition, Annie and Charles Bradlaugh also received a great deal of support in the Liberal press. Arguments raged back and forth in the letters and comment columns as well as in the courtroom. For a time, it looked as though they would be sent to prison. The case was thrown out finally only on a technical point: the charges had not been properly drawn up.
The scandal lost Annie her children. Frank was able to persuade the court that she was unfit to look after them, and they were handed over to him permanently.
Charles Bradlaugh‘s political prospects were not damaged by the Knowlton scandal. He got himself into Parliament at last in 1881. Because of his atheism, he refused to swear the oath of loyalty. Although many Christians were shocked by Charles Bradlaugh, others (like the Liberal leader Gladstone) spoke up for freedom of belief. It took more than six years before the whole issue was sorted out (in Charles Bradlaugh‘s favor) after a series of by elections and court appearances.
Meanwhile Besant built close contacts with the Irish Home Rulers and gave them support in her newspaper columns. These were crucial years, in which the Irish nationalists were forming an alliance with Liberals and Radicals. Annie met the leaders of the movement. In particular, she got to know Michael Davitt, who wanted to mobilise the Irish peasantry through a Land War: a direct struggle against the landowners. She spoke and wrote in favour of Michael Davitt and his Land League many times over the coming decades.
However, Charles Bradlaugh‘s parliamentary work gradually alienated Annie. Women had no part in parliamentary politics. Annie was searching for a real political outlet: politics where her skills as a speaker, writer and organiser could do some real good.
For Annie, politics, friendship and love were always closely intertwined. Her decision in favour of Socialism came about through a close relationship with George Bernard Shaw, a struggling young Irish author living in London, and a leading light of the Fabian Society. Annie was impressed by his work and grew very close to him too in the early 1880s. It was Annie who made the first move, by inviting George Bernard Shaw to live with her. This he refused, but it was George Bernard Shaw who sponsored Annie to join the Fabian Society. In its early days, the Society was a gathering of people exploring spiritual, rather than political, alternatives to the capitalist system.
Annie now began to write for the Fabians. This new commitment – and her relationship with George Bernard Shaw – deepened the split between Annie and Charles Bradlaugh, who was an individualist and opposed to Socialism of any sort. While he would defend free speech at any cost, he was very cautious about encouraging working class militancy.
Unemployment was a central issue of the time, and in 1887 some of the London unemployed started to hold protests in Trafalgar Square. Annie agreed to appear as a speaker at a meeting on 13 November. The police tried to stop the assembly. Fighting broke out, and troops were called. Many were hurt, one man died, and hundreds were arrested. Annie offered herself for arrest, but the police refused to take the bait.
The events created a great sensation, and became known as Bloody Sunday. Annie was widely blamed – or credited – for it. She threw herself into organising legal aid for the jailed workers and support for their families. Charles Bradlaugh finally broke with her because he felt she should have asked his advice before going ahead with the meeting.
Socialists saw the trade unions as the first real signs of working people’s ability to organise and fight for themselves. Until now, trade unions had been for skilled workers – men with a craft that might take years to acquire and which gave them at least a little security. The Socialists wanted to bring both unskilled men and women into unions to fight for better pay and conditions.
Her most notable victory in this period was perhaps her involvement in the London matchgirls strike of 1888. Annie was drawn into this first really important battle of the “New Unionism” by Herbert Burrows, a young socialist with whom she was for a time in love. He had made contact with workers at Bryant and May‘s match factory in Bow, London, who were mainly young women. They were very poorly paid. They were also prey to horrendous industrial illnesses, like the bone rotting Phossy jaw, which was caused by the chemicals used in match manufacture. Some of the match workers asked for help from Herbert Burrows and Annie in setting up a union.
Annie met the women and set up a committee, which led the women into a strike for better pay and conditions. The action won enormous public support. Annie led demonstrations by “match girls”. They were cheered in the streets, and prominent churchmen wrote in their support. In just over a week they forced the firm to improve pay and conditions. Annie then helped them to set up a proper union and a social centre.
At the time, the matchstick industry was an immensely powerful lobby, since electric light was not yet widely available, and matches were essential for lighting candles, oil lamps, gas lights and so on. (Only a few years earlier in 1872, lobbyists from the match industry had persuaded the British government to change its planned tax policy.) Besant’s campaign was the first time anyone had successfully challenged the match manufacturers on a major issue, and was seen as a landmark victory of the early years of British Socialism.
During 1884, Annie had developed a very close friendship with Edward Aveling, a young socialist teacher, who lived in her house for a time. Edward Aveling was a scholarly figure and it was he who translated the important works of Karl Marx into English for the first time. Annie seems to have fallen in love with Edward Aveling, but it is not clear that he felt the same way. He was certainly a great influence on her thinking, and she was a great support to his work. However, Edward Aveling left Annie to live with Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx.
This led to permanent ill feeling between Annie and Eleanor Marx and probably pushed Annie towards the rival Fabians at that time. Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx joined the Marxist SDF but they distrusted its leader, Henry Hyndman. Soon they left the SDF to join the Socialist League, a small Marxist splinter group which formed around the artist William Morris.
It seems that William Morris played a large part in converting Annie to Marxism, but it was to the SDF, not his Socialist League, that she turned in 1888. She remained a member for a number of years and became one of its best speakers. Strangely, she was still a member of the Fabian Society. Neither she nor anyone else seemed to think the two movements completely incompatible at the time.
Soon after joining the Marxists, Annie stood for election to the London School Board. Because women were not able to take part in parliamentary politics, it is often thought that they did not have the vote until 1918. In fact, women householders had been brought into the local electorate in 1881, and soon began to make a mark in local politics.
Annie drove about with a red ribbon in her hair, speaking at noisy meetings. “No more hungry children,” her manifesto proclaimed. She made clear that her Socialism had a feminist side too: “I ask the electors to vote for me, and the non electors to work for me because women are wanted on the Board and there are too few women candidates.”
Astonishingly, Annie came out on top of the poll in Tower Hamlets, with over 15,000 votes. Annie wrote in the National Reformer: “Ten years ago, under a cruel law, Christian bigotry robbed me of my little child. Now the care of the 763,680 children of London is placed partly in my hands.”
Annie was also closely involved in the struggle for the “Dockers’ Tanner”. The dockers were poorly paid for hard and dangerous work. They were casual labourers, only taken on for one day at a time. Ben Tillett set up a union for dockers. Annie was crucial in this. She helped Ben Tillett to draw up the union’s rules and played an important part in the meetings and agitation which built up the organisation. Ben Tillett led the dockers in a fight for better wages: sixpence (2½p.) an hour.
Annie spoke for the dockers at public meetings and on street corners. Like the match girls, the dockers won a lot of public support for their struggle. Even Cardinal Manning, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, came out on their side. After a bitter strike, the “dockers’ tanner” was won.
Given Annie Besant’s activity in pursuing the rights of women, humanitarian causes, the mysteries and occult teachings, her interest in freemasonry and subsequent leadership and activism comes as no surprise. She pursued freemasonry with equal vigour when it was mentioned to her that there was a masonry that “accepted women as well as men”.
She saw freemasonry, in particular co-freemasonry, as an extension of her interest in the rights of women and the greater brotherhood of man and saw co-freemasonry as a “movement which practised true brotherhood, in which women and men worked side by side for the perfecting of humanity. She immediately wanted to be admitted to this organisation”, known now as The International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain.
The link was made in 1902 by Francesca Arundale, who accompanied Annie Besant to Paris, along with six friends. “They were all initiated into the first three degrees and Annie returned to England, bearing a Charter and founded there the first Lodge of International Mixed Masonry, Le Droit Humain.”
“In a very short time, Sister Besant founded new lodges: three in London, three in the south of England, three in the North and North West; she even organised one in Scotland.” Travelling in 1904 with her sisters and brothers she met in Holland, other brethren of a male obedience, who, being interested, collaborated in further expansion of Le Droit Humain. “Annie continued to work with such ardour that soon new lodges were formed Great Britain, South America, Canada, India, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. The lodges in all these countries were united under the name of the British Federation.”
Annie Besant, therefore not only founded the British Federation of Le Droit Humain, of which she was eventually the Most Puissant Grand Commander, she was a major influence in the international growth of the Order – a truly committed freemason and an extraordinary person.
Besant was a prolific writer and a powerful orator. In 1889, she was asked to write a review for the Pall Mall Gazette on The Secret Doctrine, a book by Elena Petrovna Blavatsky. After reading it, she sought an interview with its author, meeting Elena Petrovna Blavatsky in Paris. In this way she was converted to Theosophy. Annie’s intellectual journey had always involved a spiritual dimension, a quest for transformation of the whole person.
As her interest in Theosophy deepened, she allowed her membership of the Fabian Society to lapse (1890) and broke her links with the Marxists. When Elena Petrovna Blavatsky died in 1891, Annie was left as one of the leading figures in Theosophy. Her most important public commitment to the faith came in 1893, when she went to present it at the Chicago World Fair.
Soon after becoming a member of the Theosophical Society she went to India for the first time (in 1893). After a dispute in which William Quan Judge, leader of the American section, was accused of falsifying letters from the Masters, the American section split away. The remainder of the Society was then led by Henry Steel Olcott and Besant and is today based in Chennai, India, and is known as the Theosophical Society Adyar.
Thereafter she devoted much of her energy not only to the Society, but also to India’s freedom and progress. Besant Nagar, a neighborhood near the Theosophical Society in Chennai, is named in her honor.
She first met clairvoyant theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater in London in April 1894. They became close co-workers in the theosophical movement and would remain so for the rest of their lives. Besant became clairvoyant in the following year. In a letter dated August 25, 1895 to Francesca Arundale, Charles Webster Leadbeater narrates how Besant became clairvoyant. Together they would investigate the universe, matter, thought-forms and the history of mankind through clairvoyance, and would co-author several books.
In 1906 Charles Webster Leadbeater confronted Victorian narrowness over his advice to some young boys about masturbation. At the time such advice was highly controversial. He resigned from the Theosophical Society over this in 1906. However, in 1908 he was taken back into the fold through the agency of Besant, who, in 1907, had been elected international president of the Theosophical Society after the death of its first president Henry Steel Olcott.
Up until Besant’s presidency, the society had as one of its foci Theravada Buddhism and the island of Ceylon, where Henry Steel Olcott did the majority of his useful work. Under Besant’s leadership there was a decisive turn away from this and a refocusing of their activities on “The Aryavarta”, as she called central India. Besant actively courted Hindu opinion more than former Theosophical leaders. This was a clear reversal of policy from Elena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott‘s very public conversion to Buddhism in Ceylon, and their promotion of Buddhist revival activities on the subcontinent (see also: Maha Bodhi Society).
Annie set up a new school for boys at Varanasi: the Central Hindu College. Its aim was to build a new leadership for India. The boys lived like monks. They spent 90 minutes a day in prayer and studied the Hindu scriptures, but they also studied modern science. It took 3 years to raise the money for the CHC. Most of the money came from Indian princes.
In April 1911, Annie and Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya met and decided to unite their forces and work for a common Hindu University at Varanasi. Annie and fellow trustees of the Central Hindu College also agreed to Government of India’s precondition that the college should become a part of the new University. The Banaras Hindu University started functioning from 1 October 1917 with the Central Hindu College as its first constituent college.
As early as 1889, Elena Petrovna Blavatsky had told a group of Theosophical students that the real purpose of establishing the Society was to prepare humanity for the reception of the World Teacher when he appeared again on earth. This was repeated again more publicly by Besant in 1896, five years after Elena Petrovna Blavatsky‘s death.
Soon after Besant’s inheritance of the presidency, in 1909, Charles Webster Leadbeater discovered Jiddu Krishnamurti on the private beach that was attached to the society’s headquarters at Adyar. Jiddu Krishnamurti had been living there with his father and brother for a few months prior to this. This discovery started years of upheaval in the Theosophical Society in Adyar, as the boy was proposed as the incarnate vessel for the Christ. Jiddu Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya were brought up by Theosophists from that moment on, with a subsequent lawsuit filed by his father for regaining custody of his children that was denied. Jiddu Krishnamurti and Besant developed a close bond and he thereafter addressed Besant as ‘amma’ or mother.
Eventually, in 1929, Jiddu Krishnamurti ended up disbanding the Order of the Star of the East, which had been founded to support him and of which he had been made the leader. However, she was concerned for his well being and purchased 6 acres (24,000 m2) of land near the Theosophical Society headquarters which later became the headquarters of the Krishnamurti Foundation in India.
Along with her theosophical activities, Annie continued to participate in concrete political struggles. She had joined the Indian National Congress. As the name suggested, this was originally a debating body, which met each year to consider resolutions on political issues. Mostly it demanded more of a say for middle-class Indians in their own government. It had not yet developed into a permanent mass movement with local organisation. About this time she lost her clairvoyance, and co-worker Charles Webster Leadbeater felt called to move to Sydney, Australia.
In 1914 war broke out in Europe. Britain needed the support of its empire in the fight against Germany. Annie said: “England’s need is India’s opportunity,” a clear echo of an Irish nationalist slogan. As editor of a newspaper called New India, she attacked the (British) government of India and called for clear and decisive moves towards self-rule. As with Ireland, the government refused to discuss any changes while the war lasted.
In 1916 Annie launched the Home Rule League, once again modeling demands for India on Irish models. For the first time India had a political party to fight for change. Unlike the Congress itself, the League worked all year round. It built a strong structure of local branches, enabling it to mobilise demonstrations, public meetings and agitations.
In June 1917 Annie was arrested and interned at a hill station. She flew a red and green flag in the garden to show her defiance. Congress and the Muslim League together threatened to launch protests if she were not set free. Annie’s arrest had created a focus for protest, giving those who wanted long term independence for India a chance to work together for a simple, achievable goal.
The government was forced to give way and to make vague but significant concessions. It was announced that the ultimate aim of British rule was Indian self government, and moves in that direction were promised. Annie was freed in September to a tremendous welcome from crowds all over India. In December she took over as President of Congress for a year. It was perhaps the greatest honor she received in her lifetime.
After the war, there could be no going back. A new leadership emerged around Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – one of those who had written to demand Annie’s release. He was a lawyer who had returned from leading Asians in a peaceful struggle against racism in South Africa. Nehru, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi‘s closest collaborator, had been educated by a Theosophist tutor.
The new leadership too was committed to action that was both militant and nonviolent, but there were differences between them and Annie. Despite her past, she was not happy with their socialist leanings. Until the end of her life, however, she continued to campaign for India’s independence, not only in India but also on speaking tours of Britain.
In her own version of Indian dress, Mrs Besant remained a striking presence on speakers’ platforms. She produced a torrent of letters and articles demanding independence. She tried to accommodate Jiddu Krishnamurti‘s views into her life, but never really succeeded. The two remained friends, however, until the end of her life. Annie Besant died in 1933 and was survived by her daughter, Mabel.
After her death, her colleagues, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Guido Ferrando, and Rosalind Rajagopal, built Happy Valley School, now renamed Besant Hill School in her honor. The family history onward from the era in which Annie Besant lived became quite fragmented by the late 1940s.
A number of Annie Besant’s descendants have been traced in detail from her son Arthur Digby‘s side. One of Arthur Digby‘s daughters was Sylvia Besant, who married Commander Clem Lewis in the 1920s. They had a daughter, Mary, born in 1934, who was given away for adoption within three weeks of the birth and had the new name of Lavinia Pollock. Lavinia Pollock married Frank Castle in 1953 and raised a family of five (Besant’s great great grandchildren) – James, Richard, David, Fiona and Andrew Castle – the last and youngest sibling being a former British professional tennis player and now television presenter and personality.
Of interest;
Mabel Besant Scott, daughter of Annie Besant, was one of the founders of the New Rosicrucian Theatre in Christenchurch, Hampshire.
Sue :: Apr.17.2009 :: British History, Indian History, Irish History :: No Comments »