Dora Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell


Anna Dora Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell was a British Labour Party politician and wife of Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party 1955-63.

Early life

She was born near Riga, Latvia, then part of Russia, the eldest of four sisters and a brother. Her father, Leon Creditor was a Hebrew scholar and writer. They emigrated to Britain in 1903 or soon after, arriving in Stepney, London. She was educated at Coborn High School for Girls in Bow, east London. She abandoned a career in medicine to marry Isaac Frost, a lecturer in physiology, on 15 March 1921. They had a son, Raymond, in 1925. They divorced in 1937.

Political career

She had joined the Labour Party at the age of 16. She met Hugh Gaitskell in Fitzrovia, London. Gaitskell had taken a teaching post at University College, London. They married at Hampstead town hall on 9 April 1937. They had two daughters Julia, 1939, and Cressida, 1942.
She was a delegate at the UN General Assembly and member of the All Party Committee for Human Rights from 1977 to 1989. She was also Trustee of the Anglo-German Federation. She remained loyal to the Labour Party when most of her husband's supporters left to form the Social Democratic Party.
On 23 January 1964, she was made a life peer with the title Baroness Gaitskell, of Egremont in the County of Cumberland. Two years later she received an honorary degree as Doctor of Law from the University of Leeds.
She outlived Hugh Gaitskell by 26 years after his death in January 1963, living until July 1989 and the age of 88. She died at the Gaitskell home, 18 Frognal Gardens, Hampstead.