Later Life
In 1903, Sheppard stepped down from her positions at the National Council of Women due to ill health. Later that year, she and her recently retired husband moved to England, intending to retire there. She briefly stopped in Canada and the United States, meeting American suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt. In London, she was active in promoting women's suffrage in Britain, but was soon unable to continue her work due to her deteriorating health.
In 1904 Sheppard returned to New Zealand. She remained relatively inactive in political circles, but continued to write. While she did not recover her former energy, her health was no longer declining, and she continued to influence the New Zealand women's movement to a great extent. In 1916, Sheppard and a group of other prominent suffragettes were able to revitalise the National Council of Women, which had gone into recess.
In 1925, Sheppard married William Sidney Lovell-Smith, her first husband having died in 1915 in England. Lovell-Smith died only four years later. Sheppard herself died in Christchurch on 13 July 1934. She is buried at Addington Cemetery in a family grave.
Read more about this topic: Kate Sheppard
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great passion in a man’s life may not be for women or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life for the sake of that masculinity. He may keep this passion secret from women, and he may even deny it to himself, but the other boys know it about themselves and the wiser ones know it about the rest of us as well.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)