Gabrielle Violet Jeffery (1886–1940)[1] was a British suffragist and one of the founders of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society (1911–1923), predecessor of the St Joan's International Alliance.
[4] On 8 December 1910, coincidentally the date of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Jeffery was waiting outside Holloway Prison to welcome the release of imprisoned suffragettes.
Whilst waiting, Jeffery met Mary Kendall and they discussed the idea of creating a Roman Catholic women's suffrage organization to bring together Catholics, both male and female, to work towards women's suffrage.
[6] Jeffery and Kendall founded the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society (CWSS) in 1911.
It was the only organized group of Roman Catholics in England established to actively and publicly participate in the campaign for women's enfranchisement,[7] and the founders hoped that the organisation would give Catholic women a respectable way of becoming active in the movement.