Tochatti, Louisa Susan nee Kaufmann (1856- 1927)

Louisa Susan Kaufmann, of German descent, was born in 1856 in London. She married James Tochatti in 1877. Louisa was as active as James within the anarchist movement. She was blessed with a fine singing voice, and was known as the Socialist Songstress, often singing at meetings and benefits.

Louisa sang at a meeting in support of the Thornycroft strikers on Acton Green in October 1889. “Louisa Tochatti opened proceedings with the revolutionary song ‘When the loafers are somewhere down below” (Commonweal, October 1889). She was active in the Hammersmith Socialist Society and in the Socialist League. It was reported in the minutes of the former group for 10th February 1888 that she had sold 24 copies of the Socialist League paper Commonweal at a meeting in Chelsea, and that paper reported on her collecting money for the London dock strikers (7th September 1889).

In October 1889, she and Gertrude Schack travelled up to Great Yarmouth to support the anarchists there, and she sang at several events.

She sang at the memorial meeting for the Chicago Martyrs at South Place, London in November 1891.

When James Tochatti and Louisa Sarah Bevington set up Liberty: A Journal of Anarchist Communism in 1894, she occasionally supplied musical accompaniment at its meetings. She sang All for the Cause, written by William Morris, at the Leicester Secular Hall at a meeting to commemorate the Chicago Martyrs on November 12th, 1894.

She and James did a tour of Scottish anarchist communist groups in October 1894. On October 13th, she sang several socialist and Scottish songs at the new anarchist club set up by the Aberdeen Anarchist Communist Group at 5 Seymour Place. “The proceedings were concluded by Mrs. Tochatti proposing that the club should be named Liberty Hall, winch suggestion met with warm approval at the hands of our Caledonian brothers. Thrеe cheers were then given for the Revolution.” (Liberty, December, 1894).

She sang revolutionary songs at a packed meeting at the Athenaeum Hall in London on May 26th, 1900 in support of the Spanish anarchists held in the Montjuich prison in Barcelona, where they were horrifically tortured. Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Tom Mann, were among the speakers at this meeting.

She continued to sing at meetings, included those held outdoors at the Grove in Hammersmith in the 1900s, according to George Cores.

By 1881, she and James had three children. She and James moved to Dorset to live with her son Moncure. She died in 1927, followed a few months later by James early the next year.

Louisa Tochatti can be seen in a group photo of the Hammersmith Socialist Society taken in 1892. She is on the left in the front row, holding one of her children. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw134108/The-Hammersmith-Socialist-Society

Nick Heath