[4] Through her membership of the Battersea branch of the SDF she met factory worker and fellow member Shamus (aka James) Sullivan.

[5] In 1895 Lanchester announced that she intended to live with Sullivan, beginning 26 October 1895, an arrangement which in the phraseology of the day was known as "housekeeping".

I was equally justified in signing one when she expressed her determination to commit this social suicide.”[5][7] When Lanchester physically tried to resist and fight back, she was handcuffed by her father.

John Burns, MP for Battersea, intervened, and The New York Times reported that the affair had "rivet[ed] the attention of three kingdoms" and that "no penny paper had printed less than ten columns on this engrossing subject during the week".

[11] Marx's ire was particularly directed towards SDF activist Ernest Bax who had publicly passed bourgeois moralistic judgement on Lanchester.

[12] Marx challenged Bax in a public letter to an open debate on "the woman question", but he declined,[13] citing his rhetorical weaknesses.

[4] Although Edith was closest, in spirit, to the Fabians her own background influenced her choice to campaign and promote the cause of socialism through 'the true working-class'.

[15] During the early years of World War I, Biddy developed a growing interest in the pacifist principles of Quakerism.

[1] Her second child, Elsa Lanchester, became a noted actress with a long career in theatre, film, and television, and the wife of actor/director Charles Laughton.