Mary Borden

Mary Borden (1886–1968) was an early 20th-century, Anglo-American novelist.

Life

Mary Borden - known as May by her friends and family - was born into a wealthy Chicago family. She attended Vassar College, graduating with a B.A. in 1907. On a tour of the Far East she met and married Scottish missionary George Douglas Turner, with whom she had three daughters; Joyce (born 1909), Comfort (born 1910) and Mary (born 1914).

In 1913 she and Turner moved to England where Borden joined the joined the Suffragette movement. She was arrested during a demonstration in Parliament Square for throwing a stone through the window of Her Majesty's Treasury. She spent five days in police cells until bailed by her husband.

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 she used her own considerable money to equip and staff a field hospital for French soldiers close to the Front in which she herself served as a nurse from 1915 until the end of the war. It was there she met Brigadier General Edward Louis Spears, who became her second husband, in 1918, following the dissolution of her first marriage. She and Spears carried out an affair at the Front which was discovered by her husband, who separated from her and took custody of their children.