Violet Olivia Cressy-Marcks was a British explorer mainly active between the world wars.
Personal life
Violet Cressy-Marcks was born Violet Olivia Rutley on 9 June 1895, in West Wickham, Greater London, the only daughter of Ernest & Olivia Rutley. On 13 October 1917 she married Maurice Cressy-Marcks, a captain in the North Lancashire regiment, with whom she had her first son, William, in 1921. They divorced and she married Francis Edwin Fisher of Watford, a farmer & meat wholesaler on 12 December 1931 with whom she had two more sons, named Ocean and Forest. The family lived at Hazelwood House, now known as Hunton Park. She died at her London home on 10 September 1970 and was buried at Langleybury church, Hertfordshire. Her will included a bequest in her name providing a travelling scholarship for geographical research in the field.
Explorations
Cressy-Marcks was elected to the Royal Geographical Society in 1922, described by her proposer as of independent means, already having "travelled extensively" from Alaska to Java and having made private "explorations in Tibet, Kashmiri etc." Her journeys took her round the world many times. Though twice married, she principally travelled alone. Her extensive interests encompassed archaeology, zoology, ethnology and geography.
1935: she took the first motor transport from Addis Ababa to Nairobi and visited the Ethiopian and Eritrean war fronts taking cine film;
1937-8: she travelled from Mandela to Peking over land; while in North West China she interviewed Mao Zedong for five hours at the remote cave dwellings at Yenning that housed the wartime Communist Headquarters;
Eventually credited with travelling in every country of the world, she was keen to have a scientific grounding to her travels, and was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic and Zoological Societies. She was also a capable cinematographer and photographer, bringing films and photographs from many of her travels including politically sensitive areas. She studied in Arabia and undertook widespread archaeological studies including Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Persia, Java, China, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and the Khmer, Inca, Aztec, and Mesopotamian peoples. Although she was regarded primarily as an archaeologist, part of her remit was to collect contemporary ethnological data on ethnic groups little known in the West. In her will she requested that a copy of her biography be shown to the chief of MI5 "for his appreciation", as well as entrusting that biography to Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, who had spent three years in intelligence in Constantinople, suggesting sponsorship from the secret service for some of her many travels. These coincided with periods of international political sensitivity on a number of occasions. She often achieved largely unfettered travel, as in the case of Russia where she availed herself of permission to travel wherever she wanted and visited most of the Foreign Office officials.
