The life and mysterious death of Karl Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor are explored in a new play at the Sydenham Centre,in south east London, near where she lived and died.
Eleanor Marx was an actor, translator (of her father's works as well as Flaubert and Ibsen), a political campaigner, social activist and very much a woman ahead of her time.
In 1896 she moved to 7, Jews Walk, Sydenham styling herself 'The Jewess of Jews Walk' - with her common law 'husband' Edward Aveling, and died there two years later. What happened there remains a mystery, though the coroner ruled that she died of self-administered prussic acid poisoning in 1898. But was it suicide or murder?
The play, by Lucy Kaufman, confronts themes of love and betrayal, domestic abuse and the role of women in Victorian society. .
