Rose Witcop
anarchist and birth control activist
Rose Lilian Witcop Aldred (9 April 1890 – 4 July 1932) was an anarchist, journalist and pioneer of birth control and sex education. She was born Rachel Vitkopski in Kiev, Russian Empire to Jewish parents - Simon and Freda (née Grill) - who brought her to London, England when she was five years old.
Life
Witcop was a member of the anarchist Jubilee Street Club - her sister Milly was the partner of Rudolf Rocker - and it was there she met Guy Aldred. In January 1907 they set up home together in Thorpebank Road, Shepherd's Bush, London. Two years later, on 2 May 1909, she gave birth to their son, Annesley.
Witcop worked alongside Aldred and single-handedly ran The Spur during his imprisonment for resisting conscription during the First World War. From 1921 she concentrated her efforts on the issue of birth control and in 1923 she and Aldred were arrested and charged for publishing and distributing Margaret Sanger's Family Limitation. The case drew much press coverage and was supported both morally and financially at appeal by Dora Russell and John Maynard Keynes. Although losing the case, Rose re-published the text in 1925 and, while she avoided prosecution, attracted the attention of the Home Office who threatened to deport her as a Russian (i.e. Soviet) national.
“Rose Witcop” enters the record as anarchist and birth control activist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rose, Witcop and anarchist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rose Witcop” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.