Mary Crudelius

Mary Crudelius (née Maclean) (23 February 1839 – 24 July 1877) was a British campaigner for women's education who lived in Leith, Edinburgh in the 1860s and 1870s, and was a supporter of women's suffrage.

She was born in Bury, Lancashire on 23 February 1839 to Scottish parents, and went to a small Edinburgh boarding school in the 1850s. While staying with friends she met her husband Rudolph Crudelius, a German wool merchant, in Leith while studying, and married him in 1861. He travelled a great deal on business and his wife wrote him frequent long letters, including discussion of ideas as well as personal matters. Later she would use her fluency as a correspondent to pursue her social and political causes.

In 1866 Mary Crudelius put her name to one of the earliest petitions to Parliament about votes for women. She went on to commit herself to the cause of education for women, starting in 1867 when she spoke out at a ladies' discussion group called the Edinburgh Essay Society. Not long afterwards some of these women, including Crudelius, Madeline Daniell and Sarah Mair, set up the Edinburgh Ladies' Educational Association (ELEA) with the aim of ensuring equal educational opportunities for women.

Crudelius did not want a separate women's college but the admission of women to universities. Nevertheless, she opposed the idea of co-educational classes and went to some trouble to arrange things so as not to attract criticism. Although Sophia Jex-Blake was campaigning during these years for women's medical education alongside men's, the ELEA tried to stay distant, even gaining the support of some of Jex-Blake's enemies. As the group's first secretary, Crudelius was a respected leader and helped steer the association through a few internal disputes and one dispute with the university about details of the plan to offer a university certificate to women passing examinations after attending ELEA lectures.

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