Kitty Marion was born in Westphalia, Germany in 1871. After moving to England, she became an actress and took the name Kitty Marion.

Life

Marion took an interest in politics and joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1908. Marion was an activist that supported the women's suffragette movement, and often engaged in protests which sometimes turned violent. Marion was arrested numerous times in England for her activism.

After WW I, Marion migrated to the U.S. In America she worked with Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...

  in publishing the Birth Control Review.Kitty Marion sold the Review at 20 cents per copy in Times Square

Times Square

Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...

, Grand Central Station, and Coney Island

Coney Island

Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....

. Standing on street corners, Marion endured death threats, heckling, spitting, physical abuse, and police harassment. Over the course of ten years, Marion was arrested nine times for her birth control advocacy. In 1921 Marion joined Sanger in establishing America's first birth-control clinic. However, the clinic in Brooklyn was closed by the police.

She died in New York City in 1944.