1732) Phyllis Marion Gotch

Phyllis Marian Gotch (1882–1963), also known as Phyllis Maureen Gotch and in later life as Marquise de Verdières. Only child of Newlyn-based artists, Caroline Burland Yates and Thomas Cooper Gotch. She featured in several of her father's paintings, one of the most famous being The Child Enthroned. She later became a singer, a published author and campaigned for community issues in Newlyn. After the death of her first husband in 1918 she married Andre, Marquis de Verdières. Following their divorce in 1935 she married her cousin once removed, Jocelyn Bodilly, who became Chief Justice in the Western Pacific.

From her first husband, Patrick Doherty, she had her only child, Deirdre. 

In the mid 1930s Deirdre had a relationship with Major Robin Thynne who was living in the village of Paul, Cornwall not far from Newlyn. He was involved with several schemes, one of which was trying to launch the Mandrake Press. He became associated with the English occultist and novelist, Aleister Crowley, whom he hoped to publish. He introduced Deirdre Doherty to him and a friendship developed between them. Deirdre eventually had a child with Crowley named Randall Gair, who died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 65.

My Crown and Sceptre

The Child Enthroned

The Heir to All Ages

1731) Thomas Cooper Gotch

Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854–1931). English painter and book illustrator loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement; he was the brother of John Alfred Gotch, the architect.

Gotch studied art in London and Antwerp before he married and studied in Paris with his wife, Caroline, a fellow artist. Returning to Britain, they settled into the Newlyn art colony in Cornwall. He first made paintings of natural, pastoral settings before immersing himself in the romantic, Pre-Raphaelite romantic style for which he is best known. His daughter was often a model for the colourful depictions of young girls.

His works have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal College of Art and the Paris Salon.

Self-portrait

1730) William Peden

William "Torchy" Peden (1906 – 1980). Canadian cyclist. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1955 and the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1966.

After winning five titles at the indoor Canadian championships in Montreal, he turned professional. He discovered and excelled at six-day racing. During the Great Depression, the sport was cheap for spectators and very popular. Beginning in 1929, he won 24 of 48 races over the next four years. In 1932, he set a record that still stands: 10 victories. At times, he teamed up with his younger brother Doug (the sport used two-man teams). Overall, he won 38 of 148, a record unbroken until 1965. In 1931, he set a record; riding behind a car providing a shield against the wind, he achieved a speed of 73.5 miles per hour (118.3 km/h). He also coached the 1932 national cycling team and the 1936 track team.

During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He participated in his last six-day race in 1942 and his last professional cycling race in 1948.

He moved to the United States in the 1950s and opened a sporting goods store.

- "The redhead acquired the nickname "Torchy" when a journalist described him as a "flame-haired youth leading the pack like a torch"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Peden

1729) Charles Cottet

Charles Cottet (1863 – 1925). French painter. A famed Post-Impressionist, Cottet is known for his dark, evocative painting of rural Brittany and seascapes. He led a school of painters known as the Bande noire or "Nubians" group (for the sombre palette they used, in contrast to the brighter Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings), and was friends with such artists as Auguste Rodin.

Self-portrait

Self-portrait

Portrait by Émile-René Ménard 

1728) Margaret Looney

Margaret Ethel Looney (1904 - 1929). Radium dial painter, one of the first victims of radiation poisoning from working at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. She began dial-painting aged 17, in part to help earn money for her family. She never left Radium Dial but worked there until just a week before her death, which came on 14 August 1929.

The so-called Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.

After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, zinc sulfide (a phosphor), gum arabic, and water.

The Radium Girls had lasting effects on the labor laws in the United States and Europe following numerous lawsuits following deaths and illness from ingestion of radium.

- "She had red hair, was slender, had a voice ever soft, gentle and low, and was prone to giggling fits."   https://www.theradiumgirls.com/the-girls

1727) Arabella Huntington

Arabella Duval Huntington (née Yarrington; c. 1850/1851 – 1924). American philanthropist and once known as the richest woman in the country, as a result of inheritances she received upon the deaths of her husbands. She was the force behind the art collection that is housed at the Huntington Library in California.

She was the second wife of Collis P. Huntington, an American railway tycoon and industrialist. After his death, she married his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, also a railway magnate, and founder of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, in San Marino, California.

- "Her thick, wavy auburn hair cascaded down her back when it wasn’t pinned up."   https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a61730267/alva-vanderbilt-arabella-huntington-gilded-age-feud/

- "Arabella had red hair." https://insidethehuntingtonsstory.com/2021/08/31/arabella-huntingtons-portraits-tiaras-and-jewels/

Portrait by Giovanni Boldini

1726) Alva Belmont

Alva Erskine Belmont (née Smith; 1853 – 1933), known as Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896. American multi-millionaire socialite and women's suffrage activist. 

She was married twice, to socially prominent New York City millionaires William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. Alva was known for her many building projects, including the Petit Chateau in New York; the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island; the Belmont House in New York; Brookholt in Long Island; and Beacon Towers in Sands Point, New York.

- "By the 1870s, Alva was a vivacious young woman educated in Paris, fluent in French culture and admired for her dark red hair and poise." https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/gilded-age-new-york-alva-vanderbilt-secrets-to-success/

- "Her vibrant red hair is crowned with a tiara and she wears a thick rope of pearls rumored to have once belonged to Catherine the Great."  https://www.bookmovement.com/bookDetailView/73906/The-Social-Graces-Ren%C3%A9e-Rosen/1