Maude

Last updated 28 March 2020


Maude




Maureen "Maude" Fletcher was an environmental activist in the 2000s. She frequently worked with Ellie Martin to organise protests.

She got her start in activism in Portsmouth advocating against the export of live lambs. She was arrested for poking a police officer with her parasol. When her brother, an accountant, died and left her an inheritance, she devoted herself to activism full-time. She was a firm believer in careful planning and preparation for a protest.

In 2002, Maude and Ellie were planning a protest against Rechauffe in Cloots Coombe, along with two other activists, Jenny and Toby. On the invitation of Ellie, Sarah Jane Smith and Josh Townsend came to join them. When Jenny went missing, Maude was reluctant to contact the police, afraid the protest would be shut down before it began. After Rechauffe's plans in Cloots Coombe failed, it declared bankruptcy, and Maude and Ellie left the village.

She commented on the horrifying actions on Gavin Dexter's home. Two years later, Maude was leading a similar protest against Rechauffe (now renamed Mandrake Corp) at their Pangbourne Scientific Lab in Berkshire, along with her daughter Emily. The group had reason to believe that Mandrake was using animal experimentation in their attempts to perfect a cure for the Marberg virus, and set up camp just outside of the lab's gates. When nothing seemed to progress for a few weeks, Emily and some of the other protesters broke into the lab, looking for evidence. Instead, they were caught and used as human subjects for perfecting a far more virulent strain of the virus. The protesters were released while infected, in the hopes of starting a pandemic that would kill most of Humanity, but Sarah Jane Smith and her friends succeeded in getting the cure to them before it could spread. Maude later recounted on a radio interview that some of the protesters did die from the virus, but her daughter Emily was recovering.