Bessie Drysdale (née Ingram Edwards, 1871–1950) was a British teacher, suffragette activist, birth control campaigner, eugenicist and writer.
[3][4] He was an electrical engineer, fellow eugenicist, and social reformer, and was a founder member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage (MLWS).
[7] During this time she also wrote for the short lived radical feminist magazine The Freewoman (1911-1913), which covered topics including sexuality, women's rights, motherhood and marriage.
[13] Drysdale was one of the most prominent female members of these organisations and often highlighted the erasure of women's bodies and opinions in discourse about reproduction, through her writing and talks.
[7] She also hinted in an article for the Daily Mirror about the possibility of women refusing "en masse" to give up their sons for war and that they could go on "birth strike" if "men would not listen to them.
"[14] Drysdale continued writing after the war, and attacked collectivism and socialism in her 1920 pamphlet "Labour Troubles and Birth Control".
[12] When the post-war Ministry of Health committed £1,100,000 to maternity care and child welfare programmes, Drysdale opposed the measure.
[22] She also worked alongside other activists, such as Marie Stopes, who Drysdale described as "powerful and disagreeable with a catty way of making tremendous publicity.