Mary Rhodes Moorhouse-Pekkala (4 September 1889 – 5 March 1975[1]) was a British-born Finnish patronage and civil rights activist, who was an heiress to a wealthy New Zealand-British family.

[3] Her grandfather was the New Zealand businessman William Barnard Rhodes, and grandmother Otahi, a Māori from the Wellington area.

Mary Rhodes Moorhouse's eldest brother was the Royal Flying Corps lieutenant William Barnard Rhodes-Moorhouse who was killed in the World War I.

[8] In the summer of 1921, Moorhouse had a short relationship with the Finnish poet Elmer Diktonius who visited Britain to see Murrik.

[8] In addition to her political work, she wrote poems which were published in the German magazine Die Rote Fahne and the French L'Humanité.

[11] She funded the author Erkki Vala, who published the magazine Tulenkantajat (″The Flame Bearers″) which had campaigns against the 1935 sterilization law and the capital punishment of Toivo Antikainen.

The organization was financed by her personal properties and fundraising, the Finnish section of the International Red Aid, and the Swedish syndicalist union SAC which raised one-third of the money.

[15] During the World War II, she was a contact person between Hella Wuolijoki and the Soviet secret service NKVD.

[16] According to the documents revealed by the United States National Security Agency, Moorhouse was arrested for suspected espionage in 1942 in Stockholm.