Illustration by Mel Elliott

It’s the Wednesday morning following Jack in the Green and everyone is exhausted due to five days without water – and what does any sensible Hastinger drink when there’s no water? Beer!

We peered down the lift shaft from the scafold high up on the Knole Road building facing the sea at Bexhill on Sea. Rust and cobwebs and remnants of a life long since passed.

“Not been used for a century or more”, Dave the builder shone his torch down.

“The motor and lift tackle are still there”

“Why would you build a lift on the side of the building? It has been added on after the building was constructed” he continued.

Mick, a Chartered surveyor, thought carefully and screwed up his eyes and looked out to sea.

“Got to be a Hospital or care home Geo°, the Victorians all came to the sea when they were ill, this shaft is an add-on , big enough to take a bed”

Mick was right. Photographs showed that the shaft had been constructed in 1910 the building much earlier in 1895 .

The lift was purposefully built to serve the residents of 18 Marina Mansions in Knole Road, Bexhill on Sea. So the wonderful story of the life of Clara Evelyn Mordan rose up from the lift shaft that had carried her sick bed down to the garden below to take the sea air. Her lifelong companion Mary Gray Allen accompanied her as she battled the scourge of tuberculosis.

Clara had spent much of her adult life fighting battles waving away the comfort of an easy London socialite lifestyle.

The pivotal day came in 1867 when, with her father Augustus, she listened to a speech by John Stuart Mill, the Victorian philosopher and campaigner for the su°ragette movement and newly elected Member of Parliament.

The Mordans were a wealthy family, Clara’s grandfather had invented the propelling pencil which propelled the family’s fortunes to the extent when her father passed away Clara’s legacy of £ 117,000 (£18 million today) liberated her in many ways. She unlike many women in her day could choose her path

On 14th January 1909 she presented Emmeline Pankhurst with an amethyst, emerald and pearl necklace after the latter was released from prison.

Stuart Mill stirred her very being and she was transfixed by his description of the struggle and injustice for women against those that preserved the status quo. She clung to his words: A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than
himself.

Clara decided to eschew the life of a London socialite, she broke of the engagement and entrapment of marriage. Her father supported her views having no objection to her forming her own household unheard of at the time for a young woman.

Clara joined the Women’s Suffrage Society, became a generous donor and administrator in 1888. She became interested in improving Her activities were curtailed by increasingly advanced TB she became frail and prison would have killed her so she decamped to Bexhill on Sea women’s education, for at this time women
were not able to be awarded university degrees.

Clara funded a scholarship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford still in place today, where Emily Wilding Davison (Epsom Derby suicide 1913) had studied. Her relationship with St Hugh’s continued and she funded a new building in the same year, 1913. The college named their Library Mordan Hall after Clara who took a great interest in her scholarship recipients, following their activities and inviting them to stay with her
in London and joined the marches.

Clara joined the WSPU, inspired by a speech by Annie Kenney she turned to a more militant form of suffragism and became the first donoof the WSPU campaign fund. Clara spoke herself at events ‘with wit and humour’, including in Bristol and Plymouth. 1906, she was part of a delegation that besieged Herbert Asquith the Prime Minister in his home – he had to slip out via the stables.

Her activities were curtailed by increasingly advanced TB, she became frail and prison would have killed her so she decamped to Bexhill.

On 14th January 1909 she presented Emmeline Pankhurst with an amethyst, emerald and pearl necklace after the latter was released from prison.

Tuberculosis never left Clara, Bexhill’s marine ambience became her home as she followed the medical advice of the day to take the sea air as a remedy and the lift was constructed to move her carefully down to take the false remedy,

TB would only be defeated 30 years later as streptomycin was discovered.

Clara never married, she died on 22nd January 1915 at Bexhill on Sea , East Sussex. She left most of her money to the woman with whom she had lived, Mary Gray Allen, her friend and constant companion and support while Clara was bed-ridden. She was described by Clara in a personal letter to Miss Moberly the principal of St Hughs college Oxford , written two months before her death, as ‘my dearest friend, who never leaves me’.
Clara Mordan fought for women. She never went to university and she never voted.

Moves are afoot to install a blue plaque to commemorate the life and work of Clara Mordan who lived and died at 18 Marine Mansions (today 4 Stonehaven Court), the residence of Clara Evelyn Mordan.