WSPU china – ‘Angel of Freedom’ design, 1909

A week of posts on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ cannot end without looking at the tea rooms that the suffragette societies themselves ran – in their shops and at their fund-raising bazaars – and the china they commissioned in which to serve that tea .

The best known of the fund-raising events is probably the WSPU exhibition held at the Prince’s Skating Rink at Knightsbridge in May 1909. There the tea room was run by Mrs Henrietta Lowy, with help from her four daughters and another young upper-class suffragette, Una Dugdale. In the spirit of exuberance and professionalism that marked this the first of the WSPU’s fund-raising bazaars, a decision was taken – presumably reasonably well in advance of the Exhibition – to commission a Staffordshire pottery – H.M. Williamson of Longton – to make the china from which the tea would be served in the Exhibition’s Tea Room.

The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines, rimmed in dark green and with angular green handles. The shape is, I am sure, a Williamson standard – but how very different the WSPU pieces look from, say, Williamson’s Rosary design–in which pink and grey ribbons and roses are applied to the same shape and every edge is gilded. In contrast, the WSPU china design is pared back, almost stark.

It is more than likely that, from the range offered by Williamson, Sylvia Pankhurst chose this shape, keeping the design simple so that the ‘angel of freedom’ motif that she had designed specifically for the Exhibition should be shown to best effect. Each piece of the tea service carries this motif; behind the angel and accompanying banner and trumpet, are the initials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by thistle, shamrock, rose – and dangling chains. At the end of the Exhibition, the china – tea pots, cups, saucers, tea plates,  sugar bowls etc – was offered for sale, made up into sets of 22 pieces. Many years ago, early in my ephemera-dealing days I bought – and, of course, immediately sold – a comprehensive service. Although I have subsequently sold individual pieces of the china, I have never again seen such a complete set. Ah well.

Pieces of this design are held in archives such as the Museum of London and the Women’s Library – but one variation design is not, as far as I know, represented in any public collection.

This cup – its design based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘portcullis’ motif which, used on the WSPU’s ‘Holloway brooch’, can be dated to the spring of 1909 – came from a collection that also contained items of the ‘angel of freedom’ china. I bought this wonderful haul some years ago at auction and, although the provenance was not divulged by the auctioneer, I am pretty sure that the china had once been belonged to Mrs Rose Lamartine Yates who held fund-raising teas for the Wimbledon WSPU on the lawn of Dorset Hall, her 18^th-century Merton house. This  ‘portcullis’ cup does not carry any maker’s mark but, as the shape is identical to the Williamson pieces, I think we can be pretty certain that they probably also made this. As, in the early 19th-century, when women set their tea trays with ‘anti-slavery’ china, so in  the early 20th, suffragettes who bought these tea services  could – like Mrs Lamartine Yates – use them as propaganda tools -promoting the movement, most elegantly, in a bid to convert their ‘anti’ neighbours.

 I have only ever had in stock – and that only fleetingly – this cup and saucer (see left), part of the third identifiable range of WSPU-commissioned china. I believe, however, that the People’s Palace in Glasgow holds a similar two pieces . They formed part of the Scottish version of the Prince’s Rink tea service, commissioned from the Diamond China Co, another Longton pottery, for use at the refreshment stall at the Scottish WSPU Exhibition held in Glasgow at the end of April 1910. Here the ‘angel of freedom’ is allied, on white china, with the Scottish thistle, handpainted, in purple and green, inside transfer outlines. After the exhibition this china, too, was sold  – Votes for Women, 18 May 1910, noting that ‘a breakfast set for two, 11s; small tea set 15s , whole tea set £2, or pieces may be had singly’. It will hardly surprise readers to learn that WSPU china – now so very rare – commands a very high price.  But what a wonderful addition a piece would make to any suffrage collection.

Although the china they used was probably more basic, some of the shops and offices run by both suffragette and suffragist societies offered their members – and the general public – a tea room. For instance, the Birmingham NUWSS office at 10 Easy Row included a shop at which tea could be taken and suffrage papers read. And the Glasgow WFL shop, at 302 Sauchiehall Street, as befitting the city  in which Miss Cranston perfected the art of the tea room, served tea in its ‘artistic hall’, decorated in the WFL colours. (By the way, when in Glasgow do not fail to visit the De Luxe Room in The Willow Tea Rooms, also on Sauchiehall Street, originally designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Miss Cranston  – it may be a reconstruction, but it’s lovely).

As a final thought, the WSPU not only sold their own china, but also their own tea – much advertised in Votes for Women. Unfortunately, the only reference I have ever come across to anyone buying the tea was an aside by Mary Blathwayt, who noted in her diary that she had had to return a bag that was ‘off’ to the Bath WSPU shop. But I am sure that merely reflects the fact that the hundreds of satisfied customers had no need to comment and I will end this sequence of posts by conjuring up the image of a WSPU tea party, cucumber sandwiches sitting delicately on the elegant  WSPU plates, as the assembled company receive WSPU tea into their WSPU cups from the WSPU pot. How, then, could the ensuing conversation be of anything other than ‘Votes for Women’?

Last week’s posts on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ were based on the research I had done for the item that aired on Woman’s Hour on 4 September. The posts gave details of a few of the London tea rooms and restaurants – – some of them vegetarian – that we know were favoured by suffragettes. I had been curious to know more about the reality – the geographical position and the look of the interiors – of the cafes whose names are scattered through the columns of the suffragette newspapers. I had wondered ‘Why were suffragettes attracted to one place rather than another?’ ‘Whose businesses were they?’ – and hope that in last week’s posts I have, at least partially, answered these questions. In the absence of any other information, I was pleasantly surprised by how much detail could be gleaned from such superficially dull sources as rate books and the files of liquidated companies. I now have a much clearer image in my mind – as I walk around London – of the places in which militant activity was discussed – and indeed practised – by suffragettes a hundred years ago.

For political movements need sheltering spaces – of all sizes – in which those involved can exchange views. In the 19^th century women could attend the hundreds of formal suffrage meetings and conscious-raising talks that were held in Britain’s town halls and assembly halls – or, if suitably couth,  the ‘drawing-room’ meetings held in the houses of the better-off. But until the late 1880s there were very few places outside the home in which respectable women could congregate – for refreshment  – to meet their friends – or to discuss politics. The coffee houses, chop houses, ale houses and public houses that had for centuries enabled men to congregate, do business and eat and drink – had been socially barred to respectable women. It was only towards the end of the century that middle-class women were able to move independently– without any vestige of social censure – out of the home and around the streets of the metropolis.  One practical element lining the path to freedom was a new type of business – the café, tea room or restaurant designed with women in mind. These were places that women could visit – either alone or in company – where their presence was not seen as an invitation to molestation –  where they could eat and drink – and, most importantly, use the lavatory –  without breaking any social taboos.

That there were indeed still taboos around the presence of a woman in some places of public refreshment, even as late as 1911, is evident in one of the entries from Kate Frye’s diary. (My edition of her suffrage diary, Campaigning for the Vote, will be published in the autuimn). She is staying in a hotel in a small Norfolk market town, while organising meetings for a suffrage society. :

22 March 1911 ‘Came in, had my lunch [in the hotel dining room] in company with four motorists. It is funny the way men come in here and, seeing me, shoot out again and I hear whispered conversations outside on the landing with the waitress. Then they come in very subdued and make conversation one to another and try not to look at me. Awfully funny – they might never have seen a woman before – but I suppose it does seem a strange place to find one.’

For, by the 1900s, the situation in larger towns and cities had changed. When not out organising meetings in the provinces, Kate lived and worked in London and there she paid daily visits to cafes, restaurants and tea rooms where she never felt out of place. Aimed particularly at the woman shopper – or woman clerical worker – here she could feel comfortable – both physically and mentally. Some of the cafes were part of chains – such as the ABC, founded in the 1880s, and Lyons in 1894. For a rare photograph of a Lyons interior – dating from the 1920s -see here.  These chains catered for upper-working-class and lower- middle-class women who could enter their premises with equanimity and sit in sheltered anonymity at separate tables – and be served, not by waiters, but by waitresses. Kate Frye, belonging to a slightly higher strata of society, favoured rather smarter chain restaurants – such as Slaters’ – or tea rooms such as Fullers’. However it was in a Lyons tea room close to Parliament Square that she sat on the evening of 21 November 1911 with a group of suffragettes who were poised to embark on the smashing of the windows of government offices.

And quite apart from the chains, the first decade of the 20^thcentury saw a proliferation of small refreshment rooms – ‘Tea Rooms’ – that were even more closely aimed at a female clientele. These were likely to be run  – as were Alan’s Tea Rooms and the Tea

Cup Inn – by a woman or a couple of women friends – and allowed women, who may have had no training in anything other than ‘home responsibilities’, the possibility of running a business, while at the same time allowing other women the ability to enjoy the freedom of moving around the city – or town – by providing a space in which they could pause for refreshment. 

As we have seen, a few London tea rooms and restaurants were particularly favoured by suffragettes – as, similarly, were they in provincial towns. In Newcastle, Fenwick’s cafe was the venue of choice of the group of women, including Dr Ethel Bentham and Lisbeth Simm, set up the ‘Drawing-Room Cafe’ meetings where women could meet to discuss discuss politics. In Nottingham  the WSPU held meetings at Morley’s Cafe, a teetotal establishment, originally opened to provide an alternative to the pub. In Edinburgh the Cafe Vegetaria was particularly favoured by the local Women’s Freedom League society – and it was on its premises on the night of 2 April 1911 that suffragettes gathered – as they did at the vegetarian Gardenia in London – to evade the census enumerator

A year later, however, although so popular with women, tea rooms were not immune from the effects of the 1 March 1912 WSPU window-smashing campaign. Two ABC shops were attacked – one in The Strand and one in Bond Street – here is the photographic evidence.  

When, from the end of 1913, the WSPU campaign became ever more desperate, the tea rooms and restaurants that women had made their own themselves became sites of protest. On December 20^th a suffragette dining at the vegetarian, suffrage-sympathising,  Eustace Miles restaurant was able to make a long speech castigating the government’s treatment of suffragette prisoners – and was, so The Suffragette reported,  listened to with eager attention, while her companion distributed leaflets. And althougb the management did eventually ask the speaker to stop she was allowed to continue with her ‘meeting’ and, afterwards, to remain in the restaurant. However, most cafes were not so amenable. When, on the same day, at Fullers’ in Regent Street, a woman began to address the crowded restaurant from the gallery and her two companions showered down leaflets, they were very quickly asked to leave. The newspaper report reveals that the subject of the woman’s address was a comparison of the treatment by the government of Sir Edward Carson and Ulster rebels with that meted on suffragettes. A few days later, when another interruption took place at Fullers’, the management had their answering tactic in place; the orchestra immediately struck up to drown out the speaker.

Soon after, The Suffragette reported an incident at a Lyons Corner House when a woman rose and spoke for a few moments – amid both applause and criticism. When two uniformed Lyons men tried to drag her roughly from the building they met with determined opposition and she finally left, the paper reported, with quiet dignity- escorted to the exit –to murmurs of  ‘Isn’t she plucky’.

These protests carried on all through the spring and summer of 1914. Although similar interruptions were made in churches and theatres, it is singularly apposite that customers in tea rooms and restaurants, as they ate their lunch or tea, should have had their attention drawn to the forcible feeding of suffragette prisoners. In fact one of the very last militant action came at the end of July 1914 when women interrupted lunch at the Criterion Restaurant, imploring customers to attend a meeting to be held by Mrs Pankhurst in Holland Park. That, I think, was the final WSPU rally, before the outbreak of war in early August put an end to militancy.

Even as restaurants came under attack there were still some establishments that felt it worthwhile to advertise in The Suffragette.  One such was one I had not come across before – Molinari’s Restaurant at 25 Frith Street in Soho., which advertised (January 1914) that they would ‘donate 5 % of their takings to the Cause for suffragists who wear the badge.’  Molinari’s was still advertising in suffrage papers in 1915 and I was amused to discover that in the 1920s the Home Office reported that its proprietor, Angelo Molinari, was the proprietor of ‘doubtful’ restaurants – suspected of running brothels in upstairs rooms.  Thus, although the credentials of such suffrage-sympathising refreshment rooms as Alan’s Tea Rooms, the Eustace Miles and the Gardenia are beyond reproach, there were always those commercial operators prepared to take advantage of trusting suffragettes. I suspect, though, that the atmosphere of Molinari’s was not that of Alan’s Tea Rooms Angelo Molinari was not often called to donate any percentage of their profits to the Cause.

.Here is link to Woman’s Hour ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ item aired on 4 September. It begins at c 27 mins – and is available for 2 more days only.

 

The Gardenia Restaurant, subject of yesterday’s post, was by no means the only vegetarian restaurant favoured by suffragettes. Close by, at 40-42 Chandos Place, at the western end of Covent Garden, was the rather more famous – and successful – Eustace Miles Restaurant.

Eustace Miles was a Cambridge-educated health guru – a real tennis player – prolific author – and vegetarian. He opened the restaurant, with his wife, Hallie, – as a ‘Food Reform’ restaurant – in May 1906, a few months after their marriage. Among the restaurant’s  shareholders were his close friend, the writer E.F. Benson, the headmaster of Eton, Bernard Shaw and his wife, Dr Helen Wilson, a Sheffield-based doctor and suffragist, and Mrs Ennis Richmond, a suffragette who ran West Heath, a progressive school in Hampstead.

Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edith Craig, who lived nearby in Bedford Street, sold Votes for Women from a pitch outside the Eustace Miles. It was a sensible spot to choose; vegetariansm and suffragism went hand in hand for those whom H.G. Wells characterized – caricatured – in Ann Veronica  as ‘a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light’, for whom ‘ everything…was  “working up”.. “coming on” – ‘the Higher Thought, the Simple Life, Socialism, Humanitarianism’.

Opening just as the WSPU arrived in London, the Eustace Miles grew up alongside the suffragette movement. In March 1907 the WSPU chose it as the venue for a breakfast celebrating the release from Holloway of the prisoners who had been arrested when taking part in the deputation from the first Women’s Parliament. Similar breakfasts were also held there– including, a year later, one for women who had taken part in the pantechnicon raid on Parliament. (another suffragette episode hijacked by Wells for use in Ann Veronica – see my article, ‘The Woman’s Bond of Freedom’: H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica and the suffragettes, published in the 2011 edition of The Wellsian, the journal of the H.G. Wells Society.)

As with Alan’s Tea Rooms and the Gardenia, so the Eustace Miles had a space to rent – an offer taken up, on occasion, by those giving women-related talks. The Eustace Miles, however, went one better than the other two, offering their ‘Simple Life’ audiences ‘ozonized air’ to breathe as they listened to, for example in 1912, Miss Hoskyns-Abrahall lecture on ‘The Religion of the Great Mother’, to the accompaniment of a lantern show operated by Vera Holme. In January 1910 the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement held its inaugural meeting at the Eustace Miles – the owner surely being a member of the MPU –  and in October 1914 it was the venue for committee meetings of the  United Suffragists.

The Eustace Miles was by all accounts an attractive place in which to lunch or dine; Kate Frye – by no stretch of the imagination a vegetarian – often ate there – as readers of my Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary  will discover. The restaurant did very well during the First World War – when meatless cookery was more or less a necessity – staying in business for over 30 years.

Alas, Hallie Miles’ Untold Tales of Wartime London, the source of the words spoken by Alison Steadman in The Great War: The People’s Story, is out-of-print.  But for much more about the life and times of Kate Frye do read  Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette. In this I tell the whole story of Kate – and of John Collins, her soldier husband. For details see here. I hope you will find it a Good Read.

 

Teacup Inn

While not specifically a vegetarian café, the Teacup Inn, much frequented by suffragettes, made sure that its vegetarian credentials were mentioned in its advertisements in the WSPU paper, Votes for Women –  ‘Dainty luncheons and Afternoon teas at moderate charges. Home cookery. Vegeterian dishes and sandwiches. Entirely staffed and managed by women.’ The café was opened in January 1910 in Bank Buildings, Portugal Street, just off Kingsway, in a new building in area that was, as I have stressed in recent posts, still under development

The Tea Cup Inn occupied a ground-floor shop and basement in the building – then, as it name suggests – mainly given over to a bank – and now occupied by the Chaplaincy of LSE. In this photograph, taken c 1915, I am sure, after peering at it with a magnifying glass, that a sign ‘Tea Cup Inn’ is visible,  hanging just above the smart open-topped car.

When it opened its owners were Mrs Alice Mary Hansell (c 1859-1923) and Miss Marion Shallard. However Miss Shallard quickly disappears and the rate books from then on show Mrs Hansell as sole proprietor. She had been born in Yorkshire, was about 52, and long a childless widow when she opened the café. Her husband, a traveller for a coal factor, had died in 1897, leaving only £87. I do not know what Mrs Hansell was doing  in the intervening years – the 1901 shows her a visitor, with ‘no occupation, in a household in the Lake District..

Once the cafe was opened – certainly by April 1910- Mrs Hansell lost no time in advertising the Tea Cup Inn in Votes for Women – taking care to mention its proximity to the WSPU office in Clement’s Inn. In 1912 the WSPU  moved to Lincoln’s Inn House in Kingsway, making the Teacup Inn probably the nearest place of refreshment. I am pretty certain that Mrs Hansell was a member of the WSPU; in 1909 someone of that name advertised in Votes for Women a cottage to let in Henley, but I have not been able to find conclusive evidence. Unfortunately I cannot trace her on the 1911 census – perhaps this is an indication that she was taking part in the boycott, but it may just be that her name has been mistranscribed. After the 1912 Peth-Pank split, the Teacup Inn advertised at least once in the Pankhurst paper, The Suffragette – in June 1914 – stressing: ‘Kitchens open for inspection’.

Across Portugal Street, the Tea Cup Inn faced the London Opera House (now the site of the Peacock Theatre).  This theatre had opened in November 1911 and, again, handily situated for the WSPU office, was the scene of many suffrage meetings. One can imagine that the Tea Cup Inn may well have benefited from the thirsts engendered by a rousing rally.

Mrs Hansell continued running the Tea Cup Inn until her death in 1923. Her estate amounted to £2098 – which might suggest that, as her husband had left so little, she had made some money from her business. It would be good to think so.

More ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ posts to come….

Here is the link to Woman’s Hour (4 Sept) podcast that includes the item on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ (starts c 27 mins).

The Gardenia Restaurant, at 6 Catherine Street, Covent Garden – off the north-western curve of the Aldwych – was, between c 1908 and 1913, a vegetarian cafe much frequented by suffragettes. Unlike Alan’s Tea Rooms – in Oxford Street – and the Criterion – at Piccadilly Circus – the Gardenia was situated in the heart of militant suffrage territory. The Women’s Freedom League headquarters lay just south of the Strand in Robert Street and those of the WSPU just to the east of Aldwych in Clement’s Inn.

The Gardenia was opened c 1908 by Thomas Smith, a young man from Morpeth, who lived with his wife and two children in rooms above the restaurant. By early 1910 it would seem that the Gardenia was in some financial difficulty because it was then formed into a limited company with three additional directors. Two of these were from the Newcastle area – and were presumably known to Smith. One was Herbert Joseph Armstrong – a chartered accountant. The other, the major shareholder, was Godfrey Hastings, a photographer from Tynemouth, a member of a Quaker family, educated at Ackworth, the Quaker boarding school in Yorkshire. The third director was Richard James, who published – and sold – temperance and vegetarian books from the Central Temperance Rooms in Paternoster Row. It would, therefore, seem safe to deduce that those running the Gardenia were advocates of vegetarianism and temperance in particular –   and of social reform in general.

As I emphasise in my post on the part played by the Aldwych Skating Rink in the 1911 census boycott, this area of London was undergoing extensive redevelopment at the beginning of the 20^th century.  No 6 Catherine Street, a tall, rather dramatic, building, had been erected in 1905 and it is likely that the Gardenia was one of its first tenants. Its frontage of stone-banded red brick echoes that used in the construction of no 2 – which was designed in 1902 by the editor of the Builder, as offices for the journal. By now this corner of Covent Garden was taking on a rather Arts and Craftsy look – making it just the place for a vegetarian restuarant.

Unlike the Criterion – or even Alan’s Tea Rooms – I have been unable to find any image to tell us what the interior of the Gardenia looked like. However the file in the National Archives giving details of  the 1913 winding up of the company does contain a list of the company’s assets – including the restaurant’s fittings. From this I think it would be safe to say that the general impression of the interior was of mahogany and mirrors. – long mahogany serving counters and quantities of  mirrors. The rooms were lit with electroliers – some four-branched and others three. Customers sat at tables, marble-topped on metal stands – rather like those used today by Pizza Express.

Having noted that the Gardenia’s financial situation was somewhat precarious, one imagines that the company’s directors would have been keen to develop a niche clientele to boost passing trade. And so it was; the company accounts reveal  that they hired out upper rooms in the building to societies whoe interests would seem to coincide with their own – for instance, to the Syndicalists, to a Vegetarian Club, to the National Union of Shop Assistants, and to the University Fabian Society.

The militant suffrage societies also figure regularly in the Gardenia’s accounts as customers for the hired rooms. In her autobiography, My Own Story, Mrs Pankhurst refers to the Gardenia as a place where many WSPU breakfasts and teas were held – and the accounts show specific hirings of rooms by the WFL (for instance,7 March 1912, 5 guineas). In fact the Gardenia seems to have been a particular favourite with the WFL, which did its best to advertise the delights of the restaurant. The Gardenia was included in The Vote Directory –the WFL newspaper’s list of recommended retailers – and was written up in the 6 May 1911 issue when – in the course of a suffragists’ shopping day – the author has tea at the Gardenia – ’a fragrant cup of tea and some cress sandwiches made with Hovis bread’ – [Hovis was also advertised in The Vote]’ –reporting that ‘she would eat no other.’In 1912 the WFL rented a room in the Gardenia in which to hold its weekly discussions – on such subjects as ‘Jane Eyre and its relation to the Woman’s Movement’ and Mrs Brownlow on ‘Local Government’ and on 17 February 1912 three of the Gardenia’s floors were hired by the WFL for a fundraising sit-down supper, with dancing and performances by the Actresses’ Franchise League.

It was doubtless no hardship for suffragettes to attend such suppers; a vegetarian restaurant would have been particularly popular with suffragettes – many of whom had embraced this cause – and the associated anti-vivesectionist campaign – along with that of women’s rights. For Leah Leneman’s excellent article on the subject –  ‘The Awakened Instinct; vegetarianism and the women’s suffrage movement in Britain’ – see here.

For its part the Gardenia management was clearly committed to the suffragette cause over and above its use as a source of income. The directors were prepared on occasion, to turn a blind eye to the use to which the WSPU put its rooms.  Thus, on 2 April 1911 –  census night – the Gardenia’s management allowed the restaurant to be used by suffragettes attempting to evade the enumerator. One census schedule for 6 Catherine Street shows Thomas Smith, the manager, in his flat there that night with his wife and two children, together with the restaurant manageress, two waitresses, a male chef, female cook, a male baker and a kitchen maid. But a separate Gardenia schedule, completed by the Census Office from information supplied by the police,  shows that the restaurant was packed with 200 women and 30 men. These defiant evaders had moved to the Gardenia at c 3.30 am for breakfast, having spent the earlier part of the night in the Aldwych Skating Rink.

A year later the Gardenia again played its part in a dramatic WSPU publicity campaign when, on the night of 4 March 1912, women taking part in a WSPU-organinised window-smashing campaign gathered there. In her autobiography Mrs Pankhurst notes that the police thought that about 150 women went to the Gardenia that evening, arriving in twos and threes from a large meeting at the London Pavilion at Piccadilly Circus. They were followed to the restaurant by a number of detectives who then waited around outside in Catherine Street And what was it that the women were doing in the Gardenia?

At the ensuing trial Miss Jessie McPherson, a still-room maid, testifed that on the following day, 5 March, she found a dozen on so stones – on one of which was written ‘Votes for Women’ – lying in a grate in a big room on the second-floor. Godfrey Hastings, the Gardenia’s major shareholder, gave evidence that the room had been engaged by the WSPU for the afternoon and evening of 29 February and 1 and 4 March – at a charge of 45 shillings on each occasion.

The evidence pointed to the Gardenia as the WSPU’s ammunition arming station.  Once they had received their supply of stones, the suffragettes led the police a merry dance.

One policeman testified that he followed Miss Wolff van Sandau and Miss Katie Mills as they left the Gardenia, went to an ironmonger’ shop in Covent Garden and then walked to Westminster, along Victoria Street to the Howick Street Post Office, where the former broke a window with a hammer and the latter with stones. It transpired in court that it was at the Covent Garden ironmongers, with the policeman in tow, that they had bought the hammer.

Another policeman reported that on 4 March he waited outside the Gardenia Restaurant for three women [Nellie Crocker, Miss Roberts and Miss Taylor]. When they emerged he followed along the Strand, to Charing Cross and then on District Line to Royal Court Theatre. A few minutes after the performance began they left and went along to 9 King’s Road – a post office – where they smashed the plate glass windows with three hammers.

Another policeman followed Elizabeth Thompson and another woman from the Gardenia to Parliament Square,where Miss Thompson threw a stone at a window of Home Office.

There does not appear to have been any legal repercussions for the Gardenia but, sadly,  despite support from the suffrage movement, the business could not be made to pay and the restaurant closed in March 1913.

However 6 Catherine Street today still has a primary connection to the food trade – as the home of the Food and Drink Federation. The FDF were very generous in allowing access to their building in order to record a section of the Woman’s Hour item on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ in the rooms where the WSPU plotted their militancy over tea and brown rice.

See also here, here, here, and here

The glamorous Criterion Restaurant lies at the heart of theatreland, facing onto Piccadilly Circus. Owned by Spiers and Pond, it had been built, together with the adjoining theatre, in 1874 and during the last century and a quarter has undergone many changes – although now restored to glory. Before the First World War Spiers and Pond’s empire encompassed railway refreshment rooms as well as other large London restaurants, such as the Holborn, at the north end of Kingsway, the setting for many breakfasts held by the WSPU to celebrate the release of their prisoners from Holloway.

Although the Criterion has now only one restaurant – on the ground floor – in its Edwardian heyday it offered many more spaces – not only in which to dine – but also for hire; the Victoria Hall and the Grand Hall, on the first floor, were two such spaces. The Grand Hall, magnificently decorated, ran across the front of the building, overlooking Piccadilly Circus. The lavish interiors were very much a hallmark of the Spiers and Pond establishments –  renowned especially for the high standard of their ladies’ cloakrooms – a point, I would imagine, our suffagists and suffragettes would have appreciated.

The Actresses’ Franchise League was founded at the end of 1908 and by the spring of 1909 began to hold its meetings at the Criterion, which was conveniently placed so as to allow its members to spend the afternoon listening to rousing speeches and yet be close at hand to give their own performances in the evening. By all accounts the meetings were extremely well attended, the AFL having no trouble in filling either of the two main halls.

Kate Frye (whose post-1911 suffrage diary, Campaigning for the Vote, is published by Francis Boutle ), was a proud member of the AFL, having spent two or three years treading the boards of provincial theatres. Her diary entries allow us to eavesdrop on some of those Criterion meetings.

‘Friday April 2^nd 1909

Out at 2 o’clock – bus to Piccadilly Cicus and to the Actresses’ Franchise League meeting at the Criterion Restaurant. Miss Eva Moore was receiving and gave me a gracious handshake and Ada Moore was there. Also Eve, Mr Stanger [a sympathetic Liberal MP] and Miss [Frances] Sterling I heard speak. Lady Strachey was in the Chair and Lady Grove had spoken. I also heard Miss [Lillah] McCarthy, the Treasurer, speak and Miss Adeline Bourne, the Secretary, and I went up and spoke to Mr Stanger after the meeting.. His wife was also there. It was a huge meeting – no end of the profession there and they seemed enthusiastic but I have never got much faith in them. …

Friday February 4^th 1910

Started off about 1.45 for the Victoria Hall Criterion Restaurant – went by bus. We went early as we wanted a good seat to see Miss  Pankhurst. The place was packed before they began at 3 o’clock. Miss Granville took the chair and Miss Adeline Bourne as Secretary and Miss Maud Hoffman as Treasurer spoke in a more or less business-like fashion and Lt Col Sir something Turner spoke – an old dodderer. I could hardly keep my face straight he looked in such a loving fashion at the ladies but of course the thing of the afternoon was Christabel Pankhurst. She is a little wonder. So young and girlish looking – I suppose she is only 22 or 23 with such a charming way with her. She spoke very nicely too. It was not a brilliant speech but she was suiting herself to her audience I have no doubt – but it was so sincere and so fair. I have only heard her once before – at the Albert Hall – and one cannot judge like that – so I am glad to have been at such close quarters with her. She is not really pretty – has a crooked mouth and bad chin but her eyes are nice and she has a pretty forehead. Her hair was very untidy and I think would suit her so much better done low than on top in an ugly little knob. But though so faulty her face lights up so when she speaks and she has such a charming way with her that is very superior to mere prettiness….

Friday November 4^th 1910

A bitterly cold day –had lunch then left at 1.15 – took a bus to Oxford Circus and went to steward at The Actresses’ Franchise League meeting at The Grand Hall Criterion. It was great fun.. A Mrs Fagan was in the Chair, Lady Constance Lytton, Mrs Pertwee , Mr Cecil Chapman and Mr M Campbell-Johnston were the speakers.. Then, amongst the audience, Hilda Fletcher – an old Ben Greet companion – the girl who helped me with the Banner at the second march and I chatted to lots of people – made 17/6 and had great fun. Two old gentlemen who were very taken with the Actresses and attending their first Suffrage meeting were most amusing.

Friday December 16^th 1910

Changed my dress – at 2.15 bus to Oxford Circus and walked to the Criterion – to the Birthday Tea of the Actresses’ Franchise League. It was packed – a huge success. Eva Moore recited, Bertha Moore and daughter sang.’

The Criterion was used by women’s societies other than those campaigning for suffrage. Here is a photograph of a Women Writers’ Dinner held in the Grand Hall in 1900.  Of the suffrage societies, it would seem that the AFL was the most regular user of the Criterion, although in April 1909 the WSPU held a breakfast there for released prisoners and in February 1910 and June 1911 the Women Writers’ Suffrage League held meetings in the Victoria Hall.  It is interesting to note that on 26 October 1911, when the International Women’s Franchise Club held a dinner at the Criterion, a vegetarian option was chosen by a fairly high proportion of the guests –  25 out of the 130 who attended.

Although the suffrage sympathisers who attended such meetings  were overwhelmingly middle class, one would like to  imagine  (as one can in a blog) that, through their association with, perhaps, the AFL, less well-off women would have had the opportunity to luxuriate in the splendid surroundings of the Criterion, enjoy a wash and brush up in the opulent Ladies’, and fill up on the tea that brought the afternoon to a close.

Based on her  diary, I published Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary. This is now out of print. The complete collection of Kate’s diaries is now held by Royal Holloway College Archive.

 ‘Is it not possible for ladies to possess a Club which will not afford too striking a contrast with the splendours of St James?’ So wrote Frances Power Cobbe in the early 1870s. She continued,  ‘Are not the female members of the families of those who frequent those palaces never to have a place of resort, where the rooms and appointments shall be at least as airy and handsome as those of their own homes, and where it may be a healthful and pleasant change for them to pass now and then a few hours of leisure?’ She then commented that whenever the idea was mooted ‘the poverty of women, as regards ability to incur any unusual expense, become curiously revealed..’ – that is, women who appeared wealthy, ‘lapped in excessive luxury, provided for them by the affection of husbands and fathers’ actually had no money of their own to expend on such a project and the affectionate husbands and fathers would not, she assumes, be prepared to give their money towards providing a club for their wives and daughters.

We have seen in previous posts how, after 1870, clubs for women had, indeed, been opened. Although many of these, like the Somerville, University or Writers’, were particularly aimed at working middle-class women.  What Frances Power Cobbe was envisaging was the opening of clubs on a par of grandeur with the gentleman’s clubs, such as the Athenaeum or Carlton.  Within 20 years her plea had, to some extent, been answered.  Such clubs did open: their  existence may owe something to the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act, which gave women greater control over their own funds.

However opulent the late-19th-century ladies’ clubs they never competed for territory with the gentlemen. Ladies’ clubs tended to group to the north of Piccadilly, close to the shopping areas of Oxford, Bond and Regent streets, leaving the southern side to the men.

The first of these ‘ladies’ clubs’ was the Alexandra, which opened in Grosvenor Street in 1884, its membership restricted to those eligible to attend Court, a not so subtle indication that divorcées were unwelcome. Adopting for its name that of the Princess of Wales ensured its eminent respectability; there was no hint of the blue-stocking here. Men were not allowed to enter, even as visitors. a rule that Amy Levy regretted in her article, ‘Women and Club Life’, published in Woman’s World, 1888. The club was large and extremely comfortable, residential for short visits only, but with accommodation for accompanying ladies’ maids.

The Empress Club, founded in Dover Street in 1897, named for the Queen-Empress herself, was even grander than the Alexandra, boasting two drawing room -offering a choice between the Louis Quinze or the Venetian style -, a dining room, a lounge, a smoking gallery and a smoking room, a library, a writing room, a tape machine for news, a telephone, and a staircase decorated with stained glass windows depicting Shakespeare’s heroines.

On the night of the 1901 census Otho Oliver, the owner and club secretary, was living on the premises, together with a female manager and a large domestic staff, comprising around 40 female and 12 male servants (including an engineer). There were around 30 women guests staying at the club, as well as several family groups, including husbands.

At one time the Empress had 70 bedrooms available to its  2700 members. However,  on the night of the 1911 census  the number of live-in staff had shrunk to 25 and only 14 guests – all women – were registered as staying the night.

Otho Oliver (1868-?), the owner of the Empress, was the younger brother of Gilbert Oliver (1867-?) In 1891  Gilbert had been a ‘perfume manufacturer’,  but in 1894 founded the ‘Ladies’ Tea and Shopping Club’,’to provide for ladies of social position the comforts and convenience that men have found in their clubs for years past.’ I am not sure that the Oliver brothers would themselves have been eligible to join a gentleman’s club, but they clearly knew what the ladies wanted. In 1899 the Tea and Shopping Club had transformed itself into the rather more imposingly named ‘New County Club’,  with premises at both 21 Hanover Square – with 30 rooms – and 84 Grosvenor Street.

Next door to the Empress, at 34 Dover Street, women were able to make use of the facilities of the Bath Club, which had been founded in 1894. However, they were not allowed to use the Dover Street entrance but had to access the club through a ‘ladies’ entrance’ in Berkeley Street. The club’s main emphasis was on sport particularly, as it name suggests, swimming.

Dover Street was favoured for clubs. At no 31 Mrs Jennie Cornwallis-West (aka the mother of Winston Churchill) founded the Ladies’ Athenaeum for ladies interested in politics, arts, literature and music and a little earlier the Ladies’ Imperial – for women members of the Conservative and Unionist parties – had opened at nos 17 and 18.

A little to the north the Alexandra Club (no 12) was later joined on Grosvenor Street by the Ladies’ Empire Club at no 69.  The Ladies’ Automobile Club, which had been founded in 1903 when the Automobile Club (later the RAC) refused to admit women, eventually moved to Brook Street. It drew its members from the class that could not only afford to motor but  were sufficiently daring to do so.

And it is clubs for the more socially and politically daring that the next ‘Rooms of their Own’ post will discuss.

A corner of Alan’s Tea Rooms, as illustrated in ‘The Idler’, 1910.

One of the London tearooms most popular with suffragettes and suffragists was Alan’s Tea rooms at 263 Oxford Street. In my Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide,I suggested that the owner, ‘Mr Alan Liddle’, while not charging the rent of the room for such meetings, doubtless made his profit from the sale of the accompanying tea and buns, conjuring up the image in my mind of a suave male entrepreneur cashing in on the need of campaigners for a safe haven in which to meet in Central London. How mistaken I was.

What I did not then realize, and my researches have only recently revealed, was that the owner was not ‘Mr Alan Liddle’, but ‘Miss Marguerite Alan Liddle’ (1873-1946), the daughter of a Shropshire solicitor. It would seem that she chose to be known by her second, presumably a family, name, signing her will, for example, as ‘M. Alan Liddle’.  She does not seem to have taken a direct part in the suffrage movement, but certainly did lend her support, first advertising in the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, in, I think, the issue of 31 December 1908.. However, a little research has revealed that she was the sister of Helen Gordon Liddle (note, again, the use of a family name, in this case their mother’s maiden name) who was an active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union. Helen was the author of The Prisoner, one of the more sought-after suffragette memoirs, describing the month she spent in Strangeways prison, Manchester, in October and November 1909.

Although her sister, Alan, already knew of the WSPU and Votes for Women, Helen writes that she herself only became aware of the WSPU in February 1909 when she read about a deputation to Parliament led by Mrs Pethick-Lawrence. In June 1909 she was a member of one of the deputations sent to the Prime Minister and was arrested – but not prosecuted. She wrote ‘my time was not my own to give absolutely to the WSPU’ –she was a teacher of music and singing – but she did spend three weeks in Edinburgh in September helping to prepare for grand demonstration there. In October she protested at a Cabinet Minister’s meeting in Manchester and was ejected. The next night, 20 October, women were excluded from the meeting – so she broke a post office window in protest, for which she was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour in the third division. Her companion in this was Emily Wilding Davison, whose will she had witnessed earlier that day. In her book she states that she wanted to describe the atmosphere of prison and its effect upon a prisoner who is forcibly fed. So, while Alan Liddle was advertising her luncheons etc in Votes for Women her sister was on hunger strike in Strangeways.

Alan Liddle had opened the Tea Room in November 1907 in a building on the south side of Oxford Street, very slightly to the west of  Oxford Circus, and, as was mentioned in advertisements, ‘three doors away from Jays’. This was a large fashion store on the south-western quadrant of Oxford Circus, the site now occupied by a Benetton store. So, as a business, it was certainly very centrally placed, its only drawback being that it was not on street level but on the first floor. Presumably customers entered through a door to one side of the shop front (which was the dry cleaners Achille Serre) and went up a staircase – which might be thought of as something of a deterrent as there was a wealth of competition from other cafes, tea rooms and restaurants around.

For instance, there was a Liptons refreshment room at no 265-7, another restaurant at 269, a Lyons tea room at nos 277-81 and an ABC at no 283. So I am imagining that Alan Liddle felt the necessity to carve out a niche market – to attract customers through the door and up the stairs – over and above any passing trade – who might find it easier to enter one of the larger, ground-floor cafes close by. And I imagine that the niche market she aimed at was ‘the suffragette’.

I don’t know what Marguerite Liddle did before setting up the teashop – when she was 34 – or who was in her friendship circles.  In 1911, unlike her sister, Helen, she did complete a census return. This shows her, a ‘proprietoress of tea rooms’, living at 8a Holland St, Kensington as a lodger in the apartment of Miss Emilie Chapman, a nurse. She ran the tearooms until about 1916.

Besides suffragettes, she also sought to attract women out clothes shopping in the West End – the obvious clientele. In 1910 the ‘Vanity Pages’ of The Idler, a popular magazine, edited by Jerome K. Jerome, Mrs Edward Talbot, while discussing clothes shopping in Conduit St and New Bond St , wrote ‘We then had the nicest little luncheon, with the comforting knowledge that everything was homemade, at Alan’s Tea Rooms (263 Oxford St) for the modest sum of 1/6.We send you a sketch and a menu, so you can see for yourself. The rooms are charmingly decorated; one is set apart for smoking, while another, which is large and sunny, can be hired for At Homes and meetings. You can lunch, also, for a shilling, and for afternoon tea Alan’s popularity is undoubted.’

I was curious to know what Alan’s Tea Room looked like and managed to find a photograph of that block of Oxford Street -now redeveloped -that revealed that the red brick building was probably built in the 1860s. The first-floor room looking over Oxford Street had a semi-circular arcaded window – rather Venetian in style. It was an amazing piece of luck that Mrs Talbot accompanied her piece in The Idler with a small line drawing of a corner of Alan’s Tea Rooms. So we can see that the room had a ceiling cornice above a frieze of garlands. The walls were probably papered with a small-patterned wallpaper. There was a plain, early-19thc-style fireplace and panelling under the window. The windows were draped with two sets of curtains. One was a set of short – to the sill – lightweight material ones – and then, over these, there were heavy drapes – probably velvet- looped back at the sides. There was a vase of flowers on the mantelpiece and a picture over it. The furniture was sort of arts and crafts. The tea table, covered with a table cloth, shown is of the ‘gipsy’type – typically Edwardian – with slightly splayed legs. The chairs were high stick-backs – perhaps with rush seats. The Luncheon menu (for one shilling) was:

Puree aux haricots

Madras Curry

Boiled Chicken and Bacon

Potatoes and Cauliflower

Chocolate Cream

Fruit

Mushroom Toast

Café Noir

Advertisements revealed that luncheons cost 1s or 1s 6d (served between 12 and 2.30) and Teas were set at 4d, 6d and 1s. Mention was made of the food being home-made – so perhaps we can assume that there was a kitchen on the premises – and that Alan employed a cook – as well, probably, as at least one waitress?

In another 1910 issue of The Idler there was another ‘editorial’ piece in The Vanity Pages:

‘Hostess [ie the questioner, who as asked for suggestion of a place in central London to hold an ‘At Home’]. I’m always pleased to be of any help if I can, in your case I know of the very place you want. At Alan’s Tea rooms, 263 Oxford St, there is a nice room available for at Homes. It is large, sunny and charmingly furnished, and can be hired at a moderate figure.’

This would have been the room hired by suffrage societies – for whom, as I have mentioned, it was advertised that no charge was made. And the societies did take advantage of the offer. The Tax Resistance League held its first members’ conference there on 14 November 1910, the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society its inaugural meeting in March 1911, the Forward Cymric Union –a militant Welsh suffrage society– held monthly meetings (c 1912) at Alan’s, attracting 50 to its first meeting. Visits of individual women to the Tea Room are, of course, very much more elusive to pinpoint – though we do know that on 26 July 1913, at the end of the NUWSS Suffrage Pilgrimage, Margory Lees and her companions went there for dinner.

Alan Liddle ran her Tea Rooms for about nine years – probably until 1916 – provinding pleasant surroundings and home-cooked food to members of both wings of the suffrage campaign.

Copyright

Below is an item that I found in a postcard album compiled by Mrs Louisa Thomson Price, one of the leaders of the Women’s Freedom League.

Mrs Thomson Price acquired this sticker at a ‘Anti-Suffrage campaign’ demonstration held on 16 July 1910 in Trafalgar Square  – during which men mingled with the crowd and stickered ‘well-known women suffragists’ with ‘Votes for Women Never’ slogans.  The Daily Telegraph, in describing the demonstration, particularly remarked on ‘the large number of suffragists and supporters of “votes for women” who were in attendance’,  commenting that ‘the militant Suffragists utilized the occasion as a great opportunity for doing propaganda work among the enemy.’

While Mrs Thomson Price declared that this stealthy stickering was ‘typical of the methods of the ‘Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage’, The Daily Telegraph reveals that ‘a most effective ending to the afternoon was the march past of the WSPU Drum and Fife Band playing ‘The Marseilles’. Well, that was certainly a more open spoiler.

This anti-suffrage demonstration was held a few days after the suffrage Conciliation Bill had passed its second reading in the House of Commons and  a week before the WSPU’s massive 23 July rally in Hyde Park.  The suffrage campaigners’ hopes were high -and the anti-suffragists were presumably just a little nervous. They need not have worried – for on the very day of the Hyde Park spectacular the prime minister, Asquith, informed Lord Lytton, chairman of the Conciliation Committee that the Conciliation Bill would progress no further than parliamentary session. It was yet another example of how difficult it was to get the political machine to change gear if those in the engine room were not minded to operate the levers.

Mrs Louisa Thomson Price (1864 -1926) was the daughter of a Tory military family but from an early age rebelled against their way of thinking and became a secularist and a Radical. In 1888 she married John Sansom, a member of the executive of the NSS.From c 1886  she worked as a journalist – as a political writer, then a very unusual area for women, and drew cartoons for a radical journal, ‘Political World’. She was a member of the Council of the Society of Women Journalists. After the death of her first husband, in 1907 she married George Thomson Price.

Louisa Thomson Price was an early member of the Women’s Freedom League, became a consultant editor of its paper, The Vote, and was a director of Minerva Publishing, publisher of the paper.  She took part in the WFL picket of the House of Commons and was very much in favour of this type of militancy. In her will she left £250 to the WFL. and £1000 to endow a Louisa Thomson Price bed at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

 

 

 

In January 1910 Kate Frye is paying a short visit to Ditchling in Sussex, staying with her dear cousin, Abbie, and her husband, Basil Hargrave, at their home, Chichester House, 11 High Street, Ditchling. Eric Gill, engraver, calligrapher, printmaker, typeface designer and sculptor had settled in Ditchling in 1907, attracting a community of craftsmen – and women – to the village.

Abbie was a prolific novelist, who wrote under the name of  ‘L. Parry Truscott’.

Here we can see the parish church, St Margaret of Antioch, where Kate endured a ‘long dull sermon’. Abbie and Basil are both buried in the churchyard.

Eric Gill’s house, Sopers, was at 28 High Street. Much later, in 1930, Abbie’s son, Truscott Hargrave (b 1911) was to become secretary to the Saint Dominic’s Press, founded by Gill (who had by then left Ditchling).

Mr Wheelwright, whom Kate found ‘one of the most bitter and arrogant conservatives’, was William Wheelwright, an Australian-born worker in silver and copper. His wife, Helen Maud, was a Gloucestershire-born artist.

Dr Edwin Habberton Lulham, a medical doctor practising in Ditchling and Brighton, was also a poet and lecturer. He appears to have been living away from Ditchling at the time of Kate’s visit, his cottage available for rent. In 1911, when the census was taken, he was living in Margate . See here for more about him

From Kate’s Diary

Saturday 22 January 1910

Abbie busied herself after breakfast and I sat over the fire and read the papers and then wrote a couple of letters before helping Abbie arrange the dining room and drawing room for the afternoon. Then just before 12 o’clock we went out for an hour’s walk towards the Downs. We took the sheepdog, Bay, with us – he is at present the latest addition to the family party at Chichester House. Lunch at 1 o’clock – then we did a few more jobs – and Alice the maid began laying the tea and we put out the cakes and at 3 o’clock we went up and changed our dresses as the party commenced punctually at 4 o’clock.

We were 23 in all. only 3 men. Basil, the Vicar and the man, Mr Gill, who read the paper to start the debate. It was quite a clever paper – but he did not make it interesting really and it was not a popular subject – ‘The arts and crafts in the home’ – very few made any remarks at all and they were very far wide of the mark for the most part – some of them were very amusing. A Mr Davidson was really killing and the Vicar so pious. Basil’s speech was really the best as it did raise some points but no one took them up. It was over and everyone had gone soon after 6 o’clock.

Abbie hastened on the dinner – we changed our things again for walking apparel, had dinner about 7 o’clock – and then went off to a political meeting in the schools – but as a great concession by the Vicar (a rabid Conservative) to the Liberal Candidate, Mr Basil Williams. The place was very full of those who thought otherwise and they were so noisy they were a great trouble to the speaker. There were very few of his supporters there and I should think I was the only Liberal woman in the place. It is a most Tory village.

I much enjoyed the meeting but I must say I did not admire the spirit of some of the ‘hecklers’. One man who I found out was a friend of Abbie’s afterwards – a Mr Wheelwright was a fearful nuisance. There was a very good free-trade speaker first but he rather lost his temper with the folk and absolutely showed his teeth at them. Mr Basil Williams came on later from another meeting. A nice looking man and he spoke quite well. But he does not stand a chance – it is wonderful to get men to contest such seats, I think. A great crowd was waiting to hiss and boo him as he left in his motor car. What an ungrateful lot – to boo one of the party who gave them political emancipation.

Sunday January 23rd 1910

To the Parish Church where they have a pew by right with Chichester House. A bawling choir and a long dull sermon – but a beautiful old building. then for an hour’s walk. The roads very slippery until the rain started which it did just as we neared home. We went over Dr Lulham’s cottage which he has very nicely furnished but rather crowded. I should like to take it one day for a few weeks and stay in Ditchling.

Tidied ourselves and Mr and Mrs Wheelwright came to tea. I found him one of the most bitter and arrogant conservatives and Tariff Reformers I have ever come across and we talked politics all the time nearly and they stayed till quite 7 o’clock. I don’t think I could do with him myself – or with her for that matter. I do hate prejudice to that extent – but they are great friends here.’

See here for details of the published edition of Kate’s diary – Campaigning for the Vote.

The Ditchling Museum of Arts and Crafts has just re-opened after a major refit. See here for new opening hours and here for some of the Museum’s past projects.

For the Eric Gill Society see here.

The photograph above was taken on Monday 18 May 1914 at the sale in Hampstead of goods belonging to Mrs Louisa Thomson Price and others – all of whom had refused to pay their tax. ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ was the motto of the Tax Resistance League.

The Vote  (the paper of the Women’s Freedom League with which Mrs Thomson Price was closely associated) reported (22 May 1914) ‘At Hampstead on May 18 a large group of tax resisters had their goods sold at Fitzjohns Estate Auction Rooms. They were Mrs Thomson Price, Mrs and Miss Hicks, Mrs How Martyn , Mrs Milligan, Mrs Hartley, the Misses Collier, and the Misses Dawes Thompson. A procession with a band marched from Finchley Road station to the auction rooms at Swiss Cottage and after the sale an excellent meeting was held at the corner of the Avenue Road. From a gaily decorated wagonette speeches were made by Mrs Thomson Price, Mrs Nevinson and Mrs Kineton Parkes, explaining the reason of the protest.

Below is the note made by Louisa Thomson Price on the reverse of the photographic postcard.

Mrs Louisa Thomson Price was born Louisa Catherine Sowdon in 1864 and died in 1926. She was the daughter of a Tory military family but from an early age rebelled against their way of thinking and became a secularist and a Radical. She was impressed by Charles Bradlaugh of the National Secular Society. In 1888 she married John Samson, who was a member of the executive of the NSS. She worked as a journalist from c 1886 – as a political writer, then a very unusual area for women, and drew cartoons for a radical journal, ‘Political World’. She was a member of the Council of the Society of Women Journalists. After the death of her first husband, in 1907 she married George Thomson Price. She had no children from either marriage.

Louisa Thomson Price was an early member of the Women’s Freedom League, became a consultant editor of its paper, The Vote, and was a director of Minerva Publishing, publisher of the paper. She contributed a series of cartoons to The Vote, which were then produced as postcards. The ‘Jack Horner’ cartoon was also issued as a poster for, I think, the January 1910 General Election. Louisa Thomson Price took part in the WFL picket of the House of Commons and was very much in favour of this type of militancy. In her will she left £250 to the WFL. and £1000 to endow a Louisa Thomson Price bed at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

I have a very rare suffrage artefact – a Women’s Freedom League postcard album once owned by Mrs Thomson Price -for sale in my catalogue 185.

In ‘The Ladies’ Clubs of London’, an 1899 article, the journalist Dora Jones identified ‘the evolution of the independent professional woman’ as the catalyst in the explosion of women’s clubs, writing:’ The modern professional woman, be she artist, journalist, clerk, doctor, teacher, or nurse, living as she often does in rooms in the suburbs, needs some fairly central haven of refuge where she can drop in, when she has a spare hour, for a rest, a cup of tea, and a glance at the newspapers. She is probably an intelligent woman, with a keen interest in everything that affects the interests of her sex, and she likes to have a place open to her where she may have a chance of meeting those like-minded and of discussing questions of common interest. And, unfortunately, she is very likely to be a lonely woman, and there is no loneliness which presses one more cruelly than the isolation of a great city.’ Dora Jones concentrated her researches on clubs, such as the Somerville, the University Women’s, the Pioneer, and the Writers’, where women such as she described might be found. In the early days the clubs were open during the day and in the evenings but did not offer members residential facilities.

The Somerville Club (named for Mary Somerville) had been founded in 1878 and by 1888 was based in utilitarian premises above an ABC cafeteria in Oxford Street, later moving to Hanover Square. It always hovered on the edge of financial disaster, its membership subscription kept low in order to appeal to the poorer, working, middle-class woman. The Somerville allowed her a respite from cramped lodgings, the prospect of mildly radical lectures and discussions on subjects such as ‘Rousseau ‘and ‘Poets and Poetry as Moral and Spiritual Teachers’.

 The University Women’s Club, or the University Club for Ladies as it was originally termed, aimed  to ‘afford facilities of intercourse for Women educated at the Universities’, its members initially drawn mainly from Girton and Newnham, with some from Oxford and a few from London, particularly from the London School of  Medicine for Women. By late 1886 premises had been opened in New Bond Street, in a setting of Morris wallpapers and Chippendale chairs, and subscriptions taken to various weekly and monthly papers and to a circulating library. By 1896 the club had 270 members.

The minute books of the University Women’s Club (and it is the only club whose committee books are extant) reveal the prosaic details of running such an enterprise. For instance in 1890, when the club had no cooking facilities of its own, relying on meals supplied by an outside restaurant, there were complaints that the tariff was limited and that ‘a chop was not always wanted’. Writing of the club in 1888 Amy Levy (a graduate of Newnham) commented that ‘the mingled sense of independence and esprit de corps which made college life at once so pleasant and so wholesome are not wanting here in the colder, more crowded regions of London club-land’. However, in 1890 when a fortnightly house dinner was instituted, presumably to encourage greater camaraderie, the minutes record that these dinners were not largely attended.

From 1902 gentlemen were welcomed as guests. The resolution allowing this pointed out that ‘it was very inconvenient to members who lived in lodgings, and perhaps had only one room, not to be able to ask a gentleman to their Club’. On the night of the census, at a time when the club was at 4 George Street, Hanover Square, three members were recorded as staying there that night – one was a teacher, one a hospital nurse and the third of ‘private means’.

The minutes emphasise that the club’s purpose was social only. This is the only one of the 19^th-century women’s clubs to survive, although, alongside a programme of social activities, it is nowadays quite happy to host the occasional lecture.

The apotheosis of the clubs associated with the new breed of ‘strong-minded’ women was the Pioneer. This had opened in 1892, by 1894 was ensconced at 22 Bruton Street, the home of Mrs Emily Massingberd, its founder, and had around 400 members, who, in order to eliminate class differences, were, while in the club, identified by their membership number.

Dora Jones commented that ‘Country ladies who have heard it whispered that there is a smoking room at the Pioneers’ still, I believe, mention the place sometimes with bated breath, as the resort of alarming beings with short hair, strident voices, and unbecoming garments of a masculine cut. A visit to the club some afternoon would make short work of these preconceptions. For a woman to succeed in the battle of life at the present time, she must be neither a “frump”, nor a “crank”’.  However, writing in the feminist journal, Shafts, in January 1894 its editor, Mrs Margaret Shurmer Sibthorpe, declared it was her intention to adopt Rational dress and that she meant ‘to go freely to and fro in it wherever my business may call me, to appear in it at my club (the Pioneer), and at many places of public resort.’ Moreover, Viscountess Harberton, a co-founder of the Rational Dress movement was a member of the Pioneer.

That the Pioneers, whether or not ‘alarming beings’, welcomed independence of mind may be seen in the club’s programme of debates, each of which was preceded by a club dinner.

In 1893 the summer session included ‘Why should not women vote?’, ‘Will socialism benefit women’, and ‘Should women marry?’.

Although the Pioneer continued well into the 1920s there seems to have been some doubt in 1897, after the death of Mrs Massingberd, as to whether it would continue, many members leaving to join the Grosvenor Crescent Club (15 Crosvenor Crescent). This also catered for the professional working women, by 1900 boasting not only a telephone, but also an exchange telegraph to provide stock market reports. However, on the night of the 1911 census there were five woman members staying at the club, none of whom claimed to have any paid occupation, looked after by an ample staff.

In London most of the Victorian and Edwardian ladies’ clubs tended to be located in the shopping, feminine area south of Oxford Street, north of Piccadilly and west of Regent Street. Not only were they conveniently situated for shopping and socialising, but the fact that they were in an acceptably feminine area appears successfully to have negated the masculinity inherent in the idea of the club.

However in 1892 the Writers’ Club, founded to provide a social and working centre for women authors and journalists, did open its doors in an essentially masculine area, Norfolk Street, just off the Strand. Based in Hastings House, a building sheltering many small businesses associated with publishing and journalism, the club comprised a reception room (originally decorated with what Dora Jones affectionately terms ‘a greenery-yallery tinge’), a dining room, an occasional room, and a writing room, where silence was enforced in order that members might work and which was well supplied with works of reference. The Writers’ Club held a Friday house tea, which Dora Jones described as having come ‘to rank among the most interesting gatherings of literary London. Some leading light in the women’s world fills the place of hostess, and many of the most distinguished personalities of the day are to be met. A well-known ornament of these gatherings, the author of Joanna Traill [Annie E. Holdsworth], and some other powerful and intensely modern books, has introuduced a description of them into her latest work.’ Philip Gibbs in his novel Intellectual Mansions, 1910, also gives a vibrant description of the Literary Ladies’ Club (which he based in ‘Arundel Street’, clearly a nod to Norfolk Street), clearly based on his experience of the Writers’ Club house teas.

However the food provided by the Writers’ Club was indifferent, the surroundings rather shabby and in 1904 a group with higher aspirations broke away to form the Lyceum Club. This was the first woman’s club to brave the male club land of Piccadilly, initially taking over premises that had formerly housed the Imperial Services Club. Its founder, Constance Smedley, recorded that the Lyceum was intended for ladies engaged with literature, journalism, art, science and medicine, who required ‘a substantial and dignified milieu where [they] could meet editors and other employers and discuss matters as men did in professional clubs: above all in surroundings that did not suggest poverty’. The Lyceum had a library, an art gallery in which the work of members was displayed, 35 bedrooms and employed hairdressers and sewing maids. The club had international aspirations and branches were soon formed in Berlin, Paris, Rome and Florence – and is still in existence – the International Association of Lyceum Clubs.

These were all clubs that aspired to cater for the professional working woman or the woman interested in social and political affairs. However, once the tacit barrier against women forming clubs was broken, another style of club, more akin to that of the men, made its appearance. I shall discuss these in a future post.

Copyright All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere and are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement.

Rooms of Their Own:Victorian and Edwardian Women’s Clubs

‘The multiplying of women’s clubs, and the accompanying facilities for social intercourse, is distinctly a latter-day feature of London society. Twenty years ago they were practically unknown: today they are to be met with on all sides. They are a sign of the times; women have awakened to the fact that they want something outside their domestic and home duties’. Thus observed a Lady’s Realm journalist in 1898. One might, indeed, go further and state that, 20 years earlier, not only were clubs for women practically unknown, but that the concept was all but inconceivable.

During the first three-quarters of the 19th century economic and social regulation had kept the majority of middle-class women in a family home, either that of their birth, that of a relative or that of their marriage. For those who had neither such support nor the wealth to maintain their own house-hold, the alternative was a life spent in rented rooms. Such lodgings controlled a woman’s social life just as strictly as any family. Under this regime there was little opportunity for women whose interests did not coincide with those of their family to make contact with one another. What were required were places in which women could relax in company, but yet be beyond society’s reproach.

In the mid-19^th century the idea of ‘the club’ was synonymous with ‘a man’s club’, a development of the 18^th-century coffee house where men gathered to discuss the news of the day. By the mid-19^th century the number of clubs, their popularity and comforts had increased apace. Club culture was firmly established among the middle and upper classes, but was absolutely a male culture. The story of how women managed to create a parallel tradition is yet another strand in the history of women’s emancipation.

The idea had first been mooted in 1857 when Bessie Parkes and Barbara Bodichon thought of opening a club room on the same premises as that of the feminist journal they planned to publish. Initially their aim was very modest, merely to provide a room in which to make available the magazines and papers they knew women of cultivation but limited means would like to read but could not otherwise afford.

The club room did materialise, by 1860 known as the Ladies’ Institute. It was housed in premises in Langham Place, just north of Oxford Street, comprising a Reading Room, open from 11 in the morning to 10 at night, a Luncheon Room and a room for the reception of parcels. The latter was a boon for women travelling into central London to shop at the new department stores. Thus the club provided rest and recreation not only for London’s many middle-class working women, such as daily governesses, who were likely to be living alone in lodgings, but also for her like-minded, but more leisured, sister.

Needless to say the club room’s opening did not pass without criticism. The Saturday Review commented, ‘If all that is meant is a lounge for the unprotected female, in which she can daily meet her like-minded and strong-minded sisterhood to discuss the Divorce court till half-past one, and then console the inner woman with sandwiches and sherry, we can only hint to the ladies that this may be a mistake.’ However, despite this reprimand, the Ladies’ Institute proved popular for the seven years of its existence. The general subscription was one guinea a year, but for the category described as ‘professional ladies’ – such as daily governesses – it was reduced by half.

The Ladies’ Institute closed in 1867 but its spirit continued in the Berners Club, which opened in Berners Street, again just north of Oxford Street, and continued in existence until almost the end of the century. In the 1870s it shared premises and personnel with the leading London suffrage society. It followed the pattern set by the Ladies’ Institute, was principally aimed at working, middle-class women, had a reading room, a drawing room and a dining room and was open until 10.30 each evening.

From the 1880s, once the idea had been shattered that clubs were only for men, women’s clubs multiplied, two distinct types emerging. There were those that followed the tradition set by the Ladies’ Institute and the Berners, appealing to independent-minded working women, and those that provided ‘tea and shopping facilities’, social in their aims and fashionable in their membership.

I will consider both types of clubs in future posts.

If you are interested in taking either a real or a virtual London ‘Suffragette Walk’, particularly around the Holborn/Strand area, you might find the following posts of interest.

Where And What Was Clement’s Inn?

The St Clement’s Press

The Suffragette 1911 Census Boycott: Where And What Was The Aldwych Skating Rink?

Where And What Was The ‘Votes For Women Fellowship’?

The London Opera House, Kingsway

Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Gardenia Restaurant

Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Eustace Miles Restaurant And The Tea Cup Inn

The Raid On WSPU Headquarters, 1913

The International Suffrage Shop

What Would Bring Campaigning Women to Buckingham Street, Strand?

Mrs Ayres Purdie, Kingsway And (Alas) Covent Garden Tube Station

Millicent Fawcett and Queen Elizabeth I

The Suffragette Fellowship Memorial, Westminster

The Actresses’ Franchise League – And Kate Frye

Anne Cobden Sanderson And 15 Upper Mall, Hammersmith

Elena Shayne in her dancing years, With her husband, Paul Barel (image courtesy of Louise Baghurst)

Even though ‘lockdown’ has officially been eased, my physical freedom is not as it was but, as compensation, and fuelled by an insatiable curiosity and the wonders of the internet, I’ve had no shortage of time and opportunity to wander through time and space in pursuit of  various chimera.

One such is a young woman known as ‘Elena Shayne’, author of a single published work, a roman à clef entitled Everyday (Jonathan Cape,1935). As she explained at the outset, ‘Elena’ planned to write about ‘the things that happen to me for a year’. And that, simply, is what she did. Everyday is the book of that year.

(image courtesy of Scott Thompson)

But, to begin at the beginning, I knew nothing of Everyday when I first encountered it, described in a post on the ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ website. I am not sure what exactly caught my attention, probably the author’s rather unusual name for I began idly to research Elena Shayne on Ancestry.com and quickly realised that she had a rather slippery attitude to names. This was rather intriguing. The name she had used as an author she had also used in Real Life, but it was not the name with which she had been born, and was by no means the only one she was to adopt during her lifetime.

I was sufficiently amused by my genealogical research to pass on an outline to Scott, the owner of the ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ website, and was delighted when he offered to send me a scan of Everyday.  It was only then, on reading the novel, that my research took wings, transporting me back to 1931-1932, and embedding me in the life of a north Devon village.

‘Elena Shayne’ was born Louise Crawshay Parker in September 1909 in Plymouth, Devon. Her mother was Mrs Gertrude Hermione Thomas (née Crawshay), who had been separated from her husband, William Morlais Thomas, a civil engineer, since c 1901. They had married in 1892 and a daughter, Grace Morlais Thomas, had been born in 1893. Gertrude’s father, a member of the Crawshay family of wealthy Welsh ironmasters, had not approved of her marriage and had lived just long enough to see it fail.

At some point Mrs Thomas met, and then lived in Plymouth with, John Thomas Parker, the father of Louise. The family story is that they met on Plymouth Hoe, while each speaking for their Cause – he for Socialism and she for Suffrage. Gertrude Thomas died in January 1911 and when the census was taken three months later baby Louise was living in Plymouth with John Parker, his elderly mother, his sister, and his brother, a house decorator. Parker was described as a ‘commission agent’, but at the age of 13 in 1881 had worked as a box maker. The Parkers clearly belonged to a class very different from that of the Crawshays.

The 1911 census shows that Louise’s half-sister, Grace Thomas, was then living with Gertrude Thomas’ sister, Louise Crawshay, at Batheaston Cottage, Batheaston (on the outskirts of Bath). Poor Grace died in June 1911, aged 18, a couple of months after the census. At this time Grace’s father, William Morlais Thomas, was living in the seaside town of Paignton, Devon, attended by a nurse. He died there in 1914. I have not ordered death certificates for the sad trio (Mr and Mrs Thomas and Grace) but curiosity might yet get the better of me. I’m pretty certain, though, that TB was the culprit.

These are all facts I established in the course of my genealogical research and I was then delighted to find the details vindicated in Everyday where, in a few paragraphs, Elena Shayne relates much of the story of her birth and parentage, telling how she was rescued from the backstreets of ‘Rymouth’, as she calls Plymouth, by her great-aunt Louise, and taken to live with her at ‘Westwater’ (Batheaston).

Elena was five years old, when, after the death of William Morlais Thomas, a court case established that, although she was now known as ‘Louise Crawshay Thomas’, she was not, in fact, his daughter, but that of John Parker. The court case, at the root of which lay a dispute over an inheritance, was widely reported and my supposition that her illegitimacy – or, at least, the widespread knowledge of it – shaped Elena’s life has been borne out in conversation with her daughter. In Everyday Elena certainly blames it for the ostracization she believed she experienced from some sections of ‘society’.

Although she did not inherit from William Thomas’ estate, Elena was subsequently left money by a Crawshay uncle and her aunt Louise, on her death in 1943, left Elena her entire estate, which amounted to something over £4000. So, she was not, I think, without means in her younger years. I only mention finances because in Everyday Elena evinces a delightfully vagabond spirit, something we all know is only possible if the basics of life are covered.

Other than a mention in the press that Elena Shayne had attended school in Bristol, I don’t know anything of her life between the ages of 5 and 22 when, in December 1931, described as ‘Writer’ and with her aunt Louise, she sailed, second-class, to Marseilles. It was the information in the Ranpura’s manifest that was the key to unravelling the roman à clef – for the address supplied by the two women was ‘Lundy House, Croyde Bay, north Devon’. This was the lightbulb moment (to mix the metaphors) which unlocked Everyday, for the address of the author – and central character – as it appears on the opening page of Everyday, accompanying the date of her first diary entry, 23 June 1931, is ‘Hartland House’, Grebe Bay, North Devon’.

I had now anchored Everyday in time and place. For ‘Grebe’ read ‘Croyde’. Lundy is an island in the Bristol Channel; Hartland Point is a rocky outcrop sticking out into the Channel, some miles south of Croyde. By studying online maps and photographs I have become closely acquainted with this north Devon coastal village as it developed through the course of the 20^th century, and, with Google Earth, have explored the neighbourhood as it is today. In Everyday the local towns and villages are given pseudonyms, thus, for example, ‘Barum’ is Barnstaple, ‘Barnham’ is ‘Georgeham’, ‘Brandon’ is Braunton, ‘Sandon’ is ‘Saunton, and ‘Hutley’ is ‘Putsborough. Moreover, judicious study of the 1939 Register (a census taken in England at the outbreak of the Second World War) has enabled me to identify many of the people whom Elena encounters. She uses pseudonyms, but her code is easily broken.

Why had Aunt Louise and ‘Elena’ chosen to move from Batheaston to Croyde? In Everyday the move appears permanent, but was not so in Real Life, for Aunt Louise retained Batheaston Cottage and left it to Elena on her death. In Everyday Elena implies that the move had been made because knowledge of her illegitimacy was causing her harm in Batheaston – ‘at last I could hardly bear to go out because of the slights and insults I received’.  Croyde was familiar territory to Aunt Louise Crawshay, whose maternal grandfather and an uncle had, in succession during the second half of the 19^th century, been rectors of Georgeham, the adjacent village. This family association, it was hoped, would provide protective cachet.

Lundy House 2020

Lundy House, where Elena and Aunt Louise were living, is situated on Moor Lane, a minor road running north out of Croyde and was rented from a farmer who lived in an adjacent house. In Everyday the farmer was ‘James Fisher’, in reality, George Bertram Fowler, who lived there with his aged mother and ran the farm with help from one of his sisters, Mrs Ivy Reed (aka ‘Mrs Rush’ in Everyday). Elena describes the Fisher/Fowler family and its history in some detail, all borne out by my research in genealogical records and newspaper reports. She even mentions that ‘James’ was unlikely to marry while his mother was alive and, sure enough, I see that it was only in 1937, a few months after her death, that he made it to the altar. Remember that Everyday was written some years earlier; Elena could read a situation. Moreover, George Fowler lost no time in selling his farm. His mother died on 30 January 1937 and the 27 March 1937 issue of the North Devon Journal carried an advertisement for the sale of all the livestock and agricultural implements of Lundy House Farm on the instructions of Mr George Fowler (‘giving up farming’).

Looking out of her ‘abode-in-attic’ window in Lundy House, Elena describes her uninterrupted view over bracken and stream to the bay, rejoicing in her solitude. The sea is still there and Lundy House still stands, but over the past 90 years Elena’s world has vanished. The house, available to rent, is now at the centre of Ruda Holiday Park, a sprawling collection of chalets, caravans, and camping pitches, where holiday makers are serviced by all the entertainments thought necessary in the 21^st century. Where there was farmyard there is now the Cascades Tropical Adventure Pool, complete with flumes.  Everyday describes a landscape and a society on the cusp of change.

In the early 1930s Croyde was already attracting holidaymakers. Elena refers to the ‘Season’, noting that cottagers were keen to let rooms to summer visitors. When describing the great flood that engulfed Georgeham and Croyde in June 1931 she mentions that the damage done was of real consequence to cottagers hoping to profit by the ‘Season’. She, naturally, found the drama of the situation irresistible. Somewhere a postcard may exist of Elena, her dress rolled to her waist, wading, with a friend, through the waters. She describes how ‘some thirty or forty people on the far side of the bridge greeted us with cameras and cheers, and picture-postcards of us were on sale in Grebe and Barum soon afterwards’. I think the postcards were published by Arthur Gammon, who ran the Croyde post office. Wouldn’t it be a coup to unearth this image?

At the time that Elena was writing, Croyde had just, in 1930, become the site of a permanent holiday camp run for its members by NALGO (National Association of Local Government Officers). This was an indication of how holidaying would transform the village after the Second World War. But in 1931 there were only two shops in Croyde (‘three if you count the butcher’s hut’), the local economy was based around farming, and the ‘Devon bus’ ran from Barnstable ‘four times a day in winter and four or five times an hour in the “Season”’.

Croyde Village in the Interwar Years

St Mary’s Road, the main street through Croyde, did not yet have a name; Elena merely refers to ‘the village’. Several of the farms she mentions fronted onto this street. Many of them, still there, retain their original names but have turned themselves into B & Bs, their back lands now filled with holiday lodges. I was amused to note that the carpenter, ‘Mr Flower’,  whom Aunt Louise employed to do work in ‘Hartland House’ was undoubtedly William Budd, after whom a restaurant, ‘Billy Budd’s’ (formerly the Carpenter’s Arms), is now named. This seemed a very satisfying conjunction of local history, fact and fiction.

Croyde Village – a postcard posted in 1933

Everyday is packed with details of the lives of both local cottagers and farmers and of those who felt themselves to inhabit a higher echelon. I have deduced that ‘Miss Hunter’, prominent in local society, was Miss Constance Hyde, who lived with her brother and sister in a large Victorian house (‘Mole Manor’, notable for its ‘crude colours’) on the cliff north of Lundy House. ‘Miss Hunter’ comes in for some particularly scathing comment, Elena recounting that she was one of those who ‘would not recognize me’. If she had lived to have known it, I think Elena might have taken some satisfaction in the fact that the Hydes’ ancestral home, built a couple of generations back by the founder of the Birmingham Post, has been swept away, demolished to make way for ‘Baggy Point’, one of the more remarkable of Britain’s modernist houses.

Among others who attract her ire are ‘Cuthbert Fitz-Potter’, in Real Life George Pitts-Tucker, a retired businessman and general manager of the Saunton Golf Club. He organised the Ladies’ Championship, held at Saunton in 1932 and mentioned in Everyday. Elena makes clear she thinks that Pitts-Tuckers, who lived a little further up Moor Lane in Middleborough House, with three unmarried Pitts-Tucker sisters living opposite in Middleborough Cottage, had forgotten that it was only two generations back that, as leather drapers, they were mere Tuckers.

Elena was well-acquainted with Saunton and its golf links, for in a house opposite the entrance to the club lived her dearest friend, ‘Lilian’. In Everyday the Saunton house is ‘Inverary’, in Real Life, ’Knockbeg’. ‘Lilian’ was Margaret (Peggy) Lilian Longfield, daughter of an Anglo-Irish family whose home, Kilcolman House in Co Cork, had been burned down in 1921 during the ‘War of Independence’.  Everyday is threaded through with mentions of ‘Lilian’, although we never really get close to her. The two young women seem to have periods of unexplained estrangements, one certainly being when ‘Lilian’ became entangled with a young man, ‘Philip’. But at the close of the book Elena came to the conclusion that ‘…whatever she might do or leave undone, Lilian would always be Lilian to me, to be helped and comforted should she need help and comfort.’ And this turned out to be true, although, from what I have been told, it was ‘Lilian’ who was more often the one who provided the help and comfort.  For I have been in contact with Elena’s daughter and grand-daughter and with Peggy Longfield’s niece, all of whom tell me that the two women remained close friends for the rest of Elena’s life and that, after her death, the relationship was continued by her daughter. Indeed, Elena’s daughter stressed her own love for Peggy, who helped bring her up, working as a secretary to support her and Elena.

Knowing how closely Elena’s account of her life in Devon appears to be related to Real Life it would seem wilful to doubt the accuracy of the middle section of Everyday, describing the holiday she spent with Aunt Louise, voyaging  to Marseilles and then on to Majorca. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, the two can be spotted disembarking from the Ranpura at Marseilles in December 1931. Elena recounts that this was where they transferred for the onward journey to Majorca. Needless to say, on that island and on the return journey by train via Paris she had no end of romantic adventures – adventures that led the Western Press and Bristol Mirror (30 March 1935) to describe her as a ‘modern girl’ [who] ‘obviously knows the art of living as well as the art of writing’. Other reviewers compared her style to that of E.M. Delafield  (‘without the coruscation of arrows’) and  Beverley Nichols (‘without the mawkishness’). A.G. MacDonnel (The Observer, 17 March 1935) acknowledged her charm and sense of humour, and, presumably rather satisfying to a young writer, The Morning Post applauded her ‘aptitude for pithy, picturesque English’. In fact, Everyday was well and quite extensively reviewed, with hope being expressed for future works. Alas, it was not to be. Her daughter has stressed to me how very prolific Elena was as a writer throughout her life, producing vast quantities of poems and novels, including an updated treatment of Pilgrim’s Progress, and was mortified that, despite being on the books of the Hope Leresche Literary Agency, she never again achieved publication. And this leads me to consider how it was that Everyday ever, as it were, saw the light of day.

Well, among the characters Elena encounters in Devon was one Cocbarlie Bilfather who, living in ‘Torr Cottage’ in the neighbouring village of ‘Barnum,’ she describes as ‘our Novelist, who came to Barnham sixteen years ago, penniless, obscure, and twenty-two, and is now perched upon the rail of fame – chiefly by studies of our local ways’. It was instant recognition – ‘Bilfather’ is, of course, Henry Williamson, of Skirr Cottage, Georgeham. I do have a copy of Patriot’s Progress on my bookshelf but have not yet read The Village Book (1930) and The Labouring Life (1932), which tell of Georgeham life. If it had not been for Covid-19 I would most certainly have already hastened to the British Library and devoured them, as well as other local histories of the area, but such a treat has not yet been possible.

In a few paragraphs Elena paints a seductive picture of Williamson, the man of letters, and his sanctuary, ‘a curious room which smelt of musk and mould’. Thus, it is perhaps no coincidence that Everyday was published by Jonathan Cape, publisher of Williamson’s two Georgeham books. Although I have no proof, I would be amazed if, at the very least, Williamson was not prayed in aid when Elena was looking for a publisher.

However, although Elena Shayne had no further success as an author, she did shine in another sphere. For from 1939, having returned with Aunt Louise to Batheaston and after an interlude in London, she became a leading light of the Bath ballroom-dancing scene. A holder of a Gold Medal from the Imperial Society of the Teachers of Dancing, throughout the war she organised a dance club for soldiers on leave in Bath. She married in 1944, soon after Aunt Louise’s death, but the marriage was short-lived (her daughter tells me that the young man in question, to whom she remained close throughout her life, was gay) and then married again in 1947.

Her second husband, a Bristolian, Paul Barel (1917-2007), was a conscientious objector during the Second World War and had transformed himself from costing clerk to dancer. In 1946, at Elena’s insistence, he changed his name by deed poll from William Cyril Barrell. For a few years the couple ran a health club, ‘Rhythm Therapy’, from Batheaston Cottage and in 1948 had a daughter, Pauline Louise Crawshay Barel. The birth notice in a local north Devon paper made special mention of the fact that the baby was a great-niece of ‘the late Miss Louise Crawshay of Batheaston’. Elena had dedicated Everyday to her great-aunt and there is no doubt of the love between them. However, this second marriage, too, did not last; there was a divorce and in 1957 Paul Barel remarried. Elena Shayne Barel died in 1984 and is buried in Georgeham Cemetery on Incledon Hill.

In my pursuit of Elena Shayne I have, as I’ve mentioned, been in contact with two or three people who remember her very well, each having a special name for her to add to all the others she accumulated in her earlier years. All confirm that she was a very interesting woman, by no means easy, but most definitely memorable. Certainly, her joie de vivre  and carefree vagabonding have enlivened my lock-down summer as I accompanied her along country lanes, over the dunes and reefs, up on the cliffs, into dimly lit cottages, on country buses, in tea rooms, on horseback, on ships, in trains, not to mention on a short but lively visit to a Parisian bordello. And for all this entertainment, I offer my appreciative thanks to Furrowed Middlebrow without whom ….

 

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On Sunday 2 November the Radio 3 Sunday Feature told – very briefly – the story of Kitty Marion, music-hall artiste, suffragette, and arsonist.

At the planning stage the producer was kind enough to invite me to contribute to the programme – with the brief to discuss something of Kitty’s suffragette activities. The  most notorious of these – or, at least, the most publicly known – was the burning down of the stadium at the Hurst Park racecourse at Molesey. This she did with the aid of an accomplice, Clara (Betty) Giveen. You can read how and why they acted as they did in –  Suffrage Stories: Kitty Marion, Emily Wilding Davison And Hurst Park

Hurst Park racecourse ran alongside the Thames just across the river from Hampton Court and although much of it was sold for redevelopment in the 1960s, the remaining open space and the layout of roads and fields have changed  little in the past 100 years, making it worthy of a visit for a spot of location radio. It was decided, therefore, that we should retrace the arsonists’ footsteps.

I offered to drive our little party  from central London to Molesey, a journey that I know like the back of my proverbial hand. For the road that leads down to Hampton Court passes the house on Twickenham Green where I grew up and which remained in my family for over 50 years.Moreover, during my schooldays I had made the journey between Twickenham Green and Hampton every day – for the first few years on that now all but forgotten vehicle, the trolley bus.

Now, in September 2014, our destination was Molesey Cricket Club, which lies, as it did in 1913, next to the erstwhile racecourse. In her unpublished autobiography Kitty mentions that, having left the road, she and Betty crossed a cricket field and so, leaving the cricket club car park, we made our way down a ditch (I with much less agility than my younger companions), through brambles and  into the open sunshine of Hurst Park.

 

We looked over towards where the racecourse stadium had once stood and imagined the scene – as shown in this photograph –  revealed by the light of day on Monday 9 June 1913. The fire set by the two women had taken hold very quickly, rather taking them by surprise, and they, with the gas mains exploding, throwing up fountains of fire, they had fled the scene.

I was particularly interested in the next stage of Kitty and Betty’s night excursion. For a long time I had suspected that their journey on foot might have taken them past 15 The Green, Twickenham, but I had never before had occasion to research the matter. That their destination had been a house close to Kew Gardens Station was well known – but what roads had they taken to get there?

In fact the newspaper reports of their trial provide the answer. For they had been spotted at various points on their journey – the sight of two young(ish) women walking unaccompanied through the night had not gone unremarked. The first sighting – by a tramdriver – was at 12.45 am on the road between Hampton Court and Hampton and the second, most importantly, was at Fulwell, which lies between Hampton and Twickenham.

So, there it was – a proof that satisfied me. For from Fulwell the direct route took them right past Twickenham Green – probably along the very pavement you see on the right of the above photograph.

Kitty and Betty continued through Twickenham Junction and East Twickenham, crossed over the river and  were next seen in Richmond at 2.50 am. Alerted to the fire, the police at Hampton Court had sent constables on bicycles to scour the roads. This clearly produced no immediate result but  telegraphic messages had also been sent out to all police stations which may be why, in the early hours of the morning, police in Richmond and Kew were on the look out for likely suffragette suspects.

Making no attempt to keep out of sight, Kitty and Betty were walking along Kew Road when, at the corner of Pagoda Avenue, they attracted the attention of a policeman . He followed them down to Lower Mortlake Road where, as they seemed to be lost, he questioned them. They then wandered through the streets, with the police constable following, until in the end he it was who pointed the way to their destination – West Park Road.

Police in this area may well have been on particular alert because suffragettes had recently damaged plants in the Kew Gardens orchid house  and had set the tea room alight.  A middle-aged, middle-class suffragette, Ella Stevenson, who lived in Cumberland Road, a few streets away from West Park Road, had in March been found guilty of putting phosphorous into the post box at post office in Richmond’s main street, George Street . Edwy Clayton, a scientific chemist whose home, ‘Glengariff’, in Kew Road Kitty and Betty had walked past – was at this very moment on trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of conspiracy connected with the Kew Gardens tea room and other WSPU arson attacks.

Thanks to the producer’s iPhone map, we were better equipped than Kitty and Betty and, weaving our way through the Kew streets, arrived with little difficulty at what had been their ‘safe house’. This in 1913 was the home of Dr Casey and his wife, Isabella, and daughter, Eileen. The two women were dedicated suffragettes and Mrs Casey’s action in allowing a key to her house to be in the possession of Kitty Marion, a woman she did not know, seems to have shocked the court at the subsequent trial even more than the arson itself.

Thanks  to the spontaneous kindness of the present owner we were able to record briefly inside the atmospheric Edwardian villa – noting original interior fittings – such as the fireplace with the overmantle mirror in which Kitty must surely have glanced as she and Betty waited for what they must have expected – the knock of a policeman on the door.

The knock of course did come, Kitty and Betty were tried, found guilty of arson and sentenced. Kitty went on hunger strike and was released under the Cat and Mouse Act on a couple of occasions. On the second she was taken to Nurse Pine’s Nursing Home at 9 Pembridge Gardens in Kensington (she mentions ‘Piney’ in her autobiography) from where, after a decoy was employed, she escaped.

From then until her re-arrest in January 1914 Kitty Marion was on the run, working, as she put it, to ‘communicate with the government’. It was a dangerous time.

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Woman and her Sphere

Catalogue 211

Elizabeth Crawford

elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

See #86

With a lengthy Suffrage section at the beginning of the catalogue, Women in the First World War at the end, and all manner of women in time and space in between.

Index to Catalogue

Suffrage Non-fiction: Items 1-13

Suffrage Biography: Items 14-20

Suffrage Fiction: Items 21-22

Suffrage Ephemera: Items 23-100

Suffrage Postcards: Real Photographic: Items 101-140

Suffrage Artists’ Card: Item 141

Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic: Item 142

General Non-fiction: Items 143-284

General Biography: Items 285-363

General Ephemera: Items 364-401

General Postcards: Items 402-409

General (Cross=Dressing) Vaudeville Sheet Music: Items 410-417

General Fiction: 418-439

Women and the First World War: Non-fiction: Items 440-449

Women and the First World War: Biography & Autobiography 450-463

Women and the First World War: Fiction 464-468

Women and the First World War: Ephemera 469-471

Suffrage Non-fiction

1.         ATKINSON, Diane Funny Girls: cartooning for equality  Penguin 1997

With a foreword by Betty Boothroyd. Packed with illustrations, covering the 130 years before publication. Soft covers – very good

[15444]                                                                                                                          £6

2.         BRISTOL BROADSIDES (CO-OP) Bristol’s Other History   Bristol Broadsides 1984 (r/p)

Includes ‘Bristol Women in Action (1839-1919)’ by Ellen Malos and ‘People’s Housing in Bristol (1870-1939)’ by Madge Dresser. Soft covers – good/fair (one 4-pp section is present, but loose)

[15447]                                                                                                                          £4

3.         CRAWFORD, Elizabeth Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists  Francis Boutle 2018

Discusses the lives and work of over 100 artists, each of whom made a positive contribution to the women’s suffrage campaign. Most, but not all, the artists were women, many belonging to the two suffrage artists’ societies – the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier. Working in a variety of media – producing cartoons, posters, banners, postcards, china, and jewellery – the artists promoted the suffrage message in such a way as to make the campaign the most visual of all those conducted by contemporary pressure groups. Mint – NEW

[15466]                                                                                                                        £20

4.         KENT, Susan Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914   Princeton University Press 1987

Fine in d/w (which has one slight nick)

[1361]                                                                                                                         £20

5.         MACKENZIE, Midge Shoulder to Shoulder   Alfred A. Knopf 1975

The book of the acclaimed TV series. Large format, many illustrations. Good

[15426]                                                                                                                        £10

6.         NOTTINGHAM WOMEN’S HISTORY GROUP No Surrender! Women’s Suffrage in Nottingham  Smallprint 2016

A local history of the women’s suffrage campaign, edited by Rowena Edlin-White. Card covers – 80pp – very good

[15465]                                                                                                                        £10

7.         PHILLIPS, Dr Marion (ed) Women and the Labour Party by Various Women Writers   Headley Bros, no date (1918)

Published immediately after women (some women) had won the right to the parliamentary vote. In the foreword Arthur Henderson writes ‘What practical use women will make of the political and industrial freedom they have gained this book is in part an attempt to show.’ Contributors include Mrs Sidney Webb, Margaret Llewellyn Davies, Mrs Bruce Glasier, Margaret Bondfield, Mary Macarthur, Margaret McMillan, Susan Lawrence and Rebecca West. With an introduction by Marion Phillips, Soft covers – good- with a few marginal pencil lines denoting a special interest in the paragraph

[15482]                                                                                                                        £75

8.         RAMELSON, Marian The Petticoat Rebellion: a century of struggle for women’s rights  Lawrence & Wishart 1972

An interesting history of the women’s movement, written from a left-wing angle.  Paper covers – ex-university library

[1592]                                                                                                                           £3

9.         REID, Marion A Plea for Woman   Polygon 1988

First published in 1843. Paper covers – fine

[4001]                                                                                                                           £8

10.       ROVER,  Constance Love, Morals and the Feminists   Routledge 1970

Good in d/w – though ex-library

[4552]                                                                                                                           £5

11.       STRACHEY, Ray Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Service: the history of the London & National Society for Women’s Suffrage  London & National Society for Women’s Suffrage 1927

A very useful history of the society that was at the core of the constitutional suffrage movement.With 10 interesting photographs – I particularly like the one of the Library at Women’s Service House. 38pp. Original pictorial cover -38pp – in fine condition

[15527]                                                                                                                        SOLD

12.       SWANWICK, H.M. The Future of the Women’s Movement   G. Bell 1913

Helena Swanwick (1864-1939) was educated at Girton and became a lecturer in psychology at Westfield College, University of London. After her marriage and move to Manchester she wrote for the ‘Manchester Guardian’ and eventually became editor of the newly-Lauched NUWSS paper, ‘The Common Cause’. With a foreword by Millicent Fawcett. Good – cover rubbed.. Scarce

[15505]                                                                                                                        £95

13.       WATKINS, Cliff Votes for Women: the struggle for women’s suffrage nationally and in and around Beckenham 1867-1929  Beckenham Suffragette Centenary Group 2003

Soft covers – 28pp – many illustrations – fine – scarce

[15446]                                                                                                                        £10

Suffrage Biography

14.       (BECKER) Audrey Kelly Lydia Becker and The Cause   Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster 1992

A brief study of Lydia Becker, leading 19th-c Manchester suffragist. Soft covers – mint  – scarce

[15443]                                                                                                                        £12

15.       (BENETT) Iain Gordon Rebel With a Cause: The life and times of Sarah Benett (1850-1924), social reformer and suffragette  Pen and Sword 2018

A biography drawing on Benett’s private papers and prison memoir to recount the life of a social reformer who, middle-aged, was a militant activist member of the WSPU. Mint in d/w

[15424]                                                                                                                        £12

16.       (COOPER) Jill Liddington The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1864-1936   Virago 1984

Paper covers – very good

[1153]                                                                                                                         £10

17.       (DUNIWAY) Ruth Barnes Moynihan Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway  Yale University Press 1983

Abigal Scott Duniway (1834-1915), American suffragist, journalist, and national leader.  Fine in d/w

[1205]                                                                                                                           £5

18.       (MILL) John Stuart Mill Autobiography   Longmans, Green 1873

First edition in original green cloth. Internally very good – a little wear at top and bottom of spine

[14974]                                                                                                                        £75

19.       (PANKHURST) David Mitchell Queen Christabel: biography of Christabel Pankhurst   MacDonald and Jane’s 1977

Good in d/w – ex-library, free front end paper removed

[11623]                                                                                                                          £6

20.       (WEBB) Richard Harrison Richard Davis Webb: Dublin Quaker Printer (805-72)   Red Barn Publishing 1993

Webb was a committed anti-slavery campaigner, whose family were very involved in the Irish women’s suffrage campaign. A brief biography. Soft covers – very good condition

[15066]                                                                                                                          £8

Suffrage Fiction

21.       GRAY, LESLEY The King’s Jockey   Solis Press 2013

A novel centring on the life of the jockey who was riding the King’s Horse at the 1913 Derby, colliding with Emily Wilding Davison. Soft covers – fine condition

[15065]                                                                                                                          £5

22.       LUCAS, E.V. Mr Ingleside   Methuen, 15th ed, no date 1910/1912?)

A novel with suffrage scenes.  Only a reading copy – cloth worn – backstrip loose

[14132]                                                                                                                          £4

Suffrage Ephemera

23.       [1909 29 JUNE] WSPU A DEPUTATION OF WOMEN WILL GO TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON TUESDAY, JUNE 29TH AT 8 O’CLOCK TO SEE THE PRIME MINISTER    WSPU 1909

and lay before him their demand for the Vote. The right to do this is secured to them by the Bill of Rights….’ In the event many women were arrested, although most of them had their cases adjourned ‘sine die’. Some, charged with stone throwing, were imprisoned and were some of the first women to go on hunger strike in Holloway. The case of Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Evelina Haverfield, judged to be the leaders of the protest and who pleaded their protest was within the terms of the Bill of Rights, was adjourned until the end of the year. Flyer, printed by St Clement’s Press, Portugal Street, in black on white paper. In fine condition – extremely scarce

[15494]                                                                                                                      £350

24.       ARE WOMEN CITIZENS?    NUWSS no date [1909/1910]

Double-sided leaflet published by the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The answer to the question ‘The law says Yes! when they are required to pay the taxes. The law says No! when they ask to vote.’ etc. Included in the leaflet was in invitation to join the NUWSS. As the society declared ‘Its weapon is public opinion.’ Good – a little browning around the edges -slight nick at edge where it was once folded – Scarce

[15540]                                                                                                                        £65

25.       BAKER, Hatty Women in the Ministry   C.W. Daniel 1911

She was hon sec of the Free Church League for Women’s Suffrage and here ‘examines the prejudice which excludes women from the ministry of the Nonconformist or Free Churches, and claims this sphere of labour as a legitimate extension of the already enlarged field of woman’s activity’.  The Free Church League for Women’s Suffrage was founded in 1909 with the aim of securing both the female vote and the admittance of women into the clergy.Paper covers – 60pp of text plus 16 pp of publisher’s advertisements. In generally good condition – back cover fragile at spine – but still attached. Very scarce

[15532]                                                                                                                        £85

26.       BALFOUR, THE RT HON A.J., M.P. Speech in the House of Commons on Women’s Suffrage 1892   London Society for Women’s Suffrage 

The speech closed the debate of the Second Reading of Sir Albert Rollit’s private member’s franchise bill, which narrowly failed to pass. The speech was originally printed by the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage, so this is a later printing with the society now renamed the LSWS. As the address for the LSWS is given as 58 Victoria Street, this would indicate that it was issued in 1910 or after. Interesting that the speech still had resonance nearly 20 years after it was given. In fact, the pamphlet bears the stamp of the Women’s Freedom League – and, faintly in pencil, is marked ‘To be kept’. Paper covers – 8pp –  – the leaves are separate, as the holding staple has failed.

[15526]                                                                                                                        £55

27.       BRAILSFORD, H.N. The Conciliation Bill: and explanation and defence  The Woman’s Press probably 1910

Brailsford, journalist and active suffrage supporter, explains the Conciliation Bill – and which women it would enfranchise. Paper covers are fragile, internally good – 15pp – scarce

[15535]                                                                                                                        £65

28.       CAZALET, Thelma Mrs Pankhurst    

An article about Mrs Pankhurst by Thelma Cazalet (MP for Islington East) in ‘The Listener’ (6 Nov 1935) in a series ironically titled ‘I Knew A Man’. See also item ??. A 4-pp article – including photographs. The late-lamented ‘The Listener’ was a substantial journal in those days – this issue is 55 pages – in goodish condition – the front page is present but detached.

[14454]                                                                                                                        £20

29.       CAZALET-KEIR, Thelma I Knew Mrs Pankhurst   Suffragette Fellowship c 1935

Pamphlet published by the Suffragette Fellowship, reproduced from an article the author had written for the ‘Listener’ (6 Nov 1935). 8-pp pamphlet – very good condition

[15496]                                                                                                                        £95

30.       CLAYTON, Joseph Militant Methods in History   The Woman’s Press no date [1911]

With an introduction by H.W. Nevinson. The British Library catalogue dates this WSPU pamphlet to 1913, but my research shows it was first published in March 1911, having first appeared as a series of articles in ‘Votes for Women’. Paper covers – 36pp -in  very good condition internally, the front cover marked (a splash of tea?). The free front endpaper bears the handwritten message ‘To Mrs Rose with kind regards from Joseph Clayton’

[15486]                                                                                                                        £90

31.       DESPARD, Charlotte Woman’s Franchise and Industry   Women’s Freedom League no date [1910]

‘The Political Emancipation of WOmen as it will affect Industry – is of the most far-reaching importance.’ Paper covers, with photograph of Mrs Despard – 12pp – very good – scarce

[15542]                                                                                                                        £85

32.       FAIRFIELD, Zoe The Woman’s Movement   Student Christian Movement 1913

Zoe Fairfield (1878-1936), a cousin of Rebecca West, was for 20 years from 1909 assistant general secretary of the Student Christian Movement. She was a suffrage supporter and this item reprints four articles on the subject of the women’s movement, discussing women’s work (and wages), public morality, women and Christianity, and female missionary work that first appeared in ‘The Student Movement’ magazine in early 1913. Soft covers -36pp – good – scarce

[15546]                                                                                                                        £75

33.       FEMINIST ART NEWS vol 2 number 1 Women in the Arts in Britain 1900-1910   FAN Business Collective 1988?

FAN was led by Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry, who contribute an article on Art, Class and Gender 1900-1910 to this issue. Other articles are by Lisa Tickner on ‘images of femininity in the Edwardian women’s suffrage campaign’, Ziggi Alexander on ‘Black Entertainers 1900-1910’. Cheryl Buckly on ‘Women in the Edwardian Pottery Industry’, Sarah Harvey on Caroline Townshend and  Magdalen Evans on Mariaanne Stokes. Soft covers – very good – withdrawn from London Guildhall University Library – scarce

[15463]                                                                                                                        £12

34.       FLAPPERS: Casual Letters vol IV   James Dunning & Co Ltd May 1928

Published in an idiosyncratic series of ‘Casual Letters’, these are the thoughts of  a City gentleman, perhaps James Dunning himself. A ‘sometimes flippant’ look at the forthcoming change in the Franchise. It’s always worth investigating popular attitudes to ‘Women’. Good –  paper covers – 26pp – decidedly uncommon

[15521]                                                                                                                        £10

35.       HARDIE, J. Keir The Citizenship of Women: a plea for woman’s suffrage. With an appendix by Miss Clara Collet  Women’s Freedom League [1908?]

Hardie’s essay was first published in 1905; this is a reissue by the Women’s Freedom League, the suffrage society most supportive of  the Independent Labour Party. It is a little difficult to decide exactly when it was issued by the WFL but it bears the 1, Robert Street address suggesting it was no earlier than 1908. Paper covers marked- 12pp – good internally

[15537]                                                                                                                        £65

36.       HARRISON, Ethel B. The Freedom of Women: an argument against the proposed extension of the suffrage to women  Watts & Co 1908

Ethel Harrison (1851-1916) was the wife of Frederic Harrison,  lawyer, political Radical, and supporter of trade unionism. She was a member of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League and this polemic is interesting, putting forward in an unhysterical way the arguments of those women who did not wish to be enfranchised.  Paper covers – 60pp – good – scarce

[15533]                                                                                                                        £85

37.       INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE CONGRESS      

Budapest June 15-20 1913. This is a small advertising paper label/stamp (it has a sticky back) for the Congress – showing two graceful women stretching their arms, to hold hands across the globe. The type-face is very 1913. A pretty and interesting memento of the last pre-war international women’s gathering. Fine -amazingly ephemeral – and  unusual. With the background printed in blue

[14505]                                                                                                                        £85

38.       JOHNSTON, Thomas The Case for Woman’s Suffrage and Objections Answered   Forward Printing and Publishing Co (Glasgow) no date [1907]

Johnston founded ‘The Forward’, a socialist newspaper, in 1906 – and on the back page of his pamphlet claimed ‘Forward’ is the only paper in Scotland wholeheartedly supporting the Women’s Movement’. Johnston was a Fabian and a member of the Independent Labour Party. Paper covers – 16pp – marked in ink on the cover ‘For Review’. Very good – scarce

[15543]                                                                                                                        £85

39.       L’UNION FRANCAISE POUR LE SUFFRAGE DES FEMMES La Charte de la Femme    1910

par Jean Finot suivie d’une Enquete sur le Vote Politique des Femmes en France. 60 pp – fair – paper covers present but detached

[13192]                                                                                                                          £8

40.       LYTTON, Lady Constance ‘No Votes for Women’: A Reply to Some Recent Anti-Suffrage Publications  A.C. Fifield March 1909 (reprint)

She uses wry humour to demolish the various tropes about women that were being propounded by the Anti-Suffrage League, founded in mid-1908. The pamphlet was first issued on 12 February 1909 and proved so popular that it was reprinted on 10 March 1909. Paper covers carry listings of other suffrage works available and note the societies and bookshops at which the pamphlet was sold. Front cover has pencilled references and other marks- and damage to lower edge -36pp – internally very good. Scarce

[15538]                                                                                                                        SOLD

41.       MCLAREN, Lady ‘Better and Happier’: An Answer from the Ladies’ Gallery to the Speeches in Opposition to the Women’s Suffrage Bill, February 28th, 1908  T. Fisher Unwin 1908

I have always been rather an admirer of Laura McLaren and her straight-forward prose. 46-pp – paper covers a little marked – but good and tight. Scarce

[15492]                                                                                                                      £120

42.       MAXSE, THE HON MRS IVOR ‘Votes for Women’   The ‘National Review’ Office 1908

[Suffrage activists] ‘have shown by their agitation that they do not understand the reason for which the vote has been given to men, or the true nature of that vote, or, lastly, the effect of this great extension of the franchise on the country and the Empire generally; She was Mary Maxse (1870-1944), niece of Lord Rosebery, wife of a general – and, as you can tell, an Anti. Paper covers – 16 pp – very good – scarce. This copy bears the stamp of the International Suffrage Shop, 15 Adam Street, Strand, W.C.’

[15530]                                                                                                                        £65

43.       MEN’S LEAGUE FOR OPPOSING WOMAN SUFFRAGE Speeches by Lord James of Hereford and Lord Curzon of Kedleston at a Dinner of the Council on Tuesday, the 18th of May, 1909   MLOWS 1909

Interestingly, this copy bears the rubber stamp of ‘The International Suffrage Shop, 15 Adam Street, Strand, W.C.’ -showing that the shop did not only stock pro-suffrage material.   James was a lawyer and politician who, incidentally, had in 1886 represented Dilke in the Crawford divorce case, giving, according to Roy Jenkins, ‘some of the worst professional advice that a man can ever have received’. Curzon, former viceroy of India, in 1912 became president of the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage (which had been formed in 1910 as a result of the amalgamation of MLOWS with the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League). 12pp – good condition – scarce

[15528]                                                                                                                        £75

44.       MINUTE BOOK OF THE PORTISHEAD SOCIETY OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES      

This Somerset society was founded at a meeting held at Clarence House, home of Mrs Hall, the society’s president, on 16 December 1913. It was a member of the West of England Federation of the NUWSS. The society is particularly interesting as it continued in existence throughout the First World War, the Minute Book revealing not only local activities, but also the society’s reaction to the actions of Headquarters. For instance, we can follow the discussions that led to the society declining to support NUWSS representation at the Women’s Peace Conference held at The Hague and those that surrounded the machinations around the proposal to extend the franchise. Besides reports of meetings, the Minute Book lists the names of Portishead members, with their addresses. It also lists details of the parliamentary candidates, the halls that can be hired, printers that can be used (with their prices) – plus the political affiliations of numerous local residents, together with the names and addresses of other ‘People to Call On’. In May 1918 the members of the society appear to have created a Women’s Citizen Association, and then, in Jan 1919, after some debate, decided to stay in existence as an NUWSS society. The exact course of events at this rather febrile time might take some unravelling..

Presumably it was the secretary, Miss Butterworth, who selected a school exercise book to use as a Minute Book, strengthening one cover with board. Very few such Minute Books, so ephemeral in appearance, survive. And yet this Minute Book is an excellent primary source, containing a wealth of information, throwing light on the activities and opinions of a section of the female population in the years 1913-1919. As such it is of national as well as local importance. In good condition, with a number of cyclostyled letters and resolutions laid in. Unique                                                                 

[15524]                                                                                                                    SOLD               

45.       MISS ALICE SCHOFIELD (Organiser) Women’s Freedom League    WFL 

An early WFL card – the address printed on the card is 18 Buckingham Street, Strand (ie before the move to 1 Robert St in 1908). Alice Schofield, influenced by Teresa Billington, had been a very early member of the WSPU, but with Teresa left the WSPU in 1907 and by 1908 was a paid WFL organizer.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. A scarce card – in fine unposted condition

[14554]                                                                                                                      £120

46.       MISS EMILY FAITHFULL      

studio photograph by W & D Downey, 57 & 61 Ebury Street, London, together with a printed brief biography.

[14029]                                                                                                                        £40

47.       MISS MORGAN, OF BRECON The Duties of Citizenship   Women’s Local Government Society c 1912

Extracts reprinted from a paper read at the Annual Conference of the National Union of Women Workers, Manchester, October 27th 1896. By the time this leafet was issued Miss Morgan had been Mayor of Brecon, 1911-12. 4-pp – good – withdrawn from the Women’s Library

[13833]                                                                                                                          £5

48.       MRS DESPARD      

portrait photograph by Lena Connell, 50 Grove End Road, NW – mounted on stiff brown card – published by The Suffrage Shop, the card embossed with the shop’s monogram. This once belonged to Joan Wickham. Fine

[15159]                                                                                                                      £120

Item # 49

49.       MRS PANKHURST’S STATUE -CARTOON BY ‘CUMMINGS’ 1955      

Artwork for an original ink cartoon by the cartoonist ‘Cummings’, showing Mrs Pankhurst’s statue, her face notably outraged, being manhandled by Nigel Birch, who in 1955 was the Minister of Works in the Conservative Government.

The cartoon alludes to the plan by the Ministry of Works to move Mrs Pankhurst’s statue in Victoria Tower Gardens (adjacent to Parliament) from its original site, where with great ceremony it had been unveiled on 6 March 1930. During a debate in the House of Commons on 28 June 1955 Nigel Birch, as Minister of Works, revealed that he had met with members of the Suffragette Fellowship, who objected fiercely to the proposed new site, demanding that if the statue were to be moved it should only be to a position even closer to Parliament. The Suffragette Fellowship kept up their campaign, lobbying and writing letters to the press (eg The Times,30 Aug 1955), until their wish was granted – and Mrs Pankhurst’s statue was moved to its current site and re-dedicated at a ceremony held on 14 July 1956. The Minister of Works was present on that occasion, but by then was no longer Nigel Birch, who in December 1955 had moved to the Ministry of Air, as Secretary of State. My belief is that the cartoon dates from the period June-December 1955 when Birch was still at the Ministry of Works.

‘Cummings’, the celebrated cartoonist, was Michael Cummings (1919-1997), who in the 1955 was working for the ‘Daily Express’ newspaper and for the ‘Essence of Parliament’ column in ‘Punch’. From the style of the ‘Statue’ cartoon I would think it might have been offered to ‘Punch’, rather than to the ‘Daily Express’. ‘Punch”s ‘Essence of Parliament’ column did indeed, in the autumn of 1955, refer to the controversy over the proposed moving of the statue in the autumn, but the short article was not illustrated with a cartoon. The explanation for the fact that the cartoon is available – ie not included in a newspaper/journal archive (such as that of ‘Punch’) – as it probably would be if it had been published- may be that it was not used by the journal to which it was offered. It is recorded that Cummings would later offer the ‘Sunday Express’  as many as five or six ideas for a -cartoon when only one was required.

The cartoon is a delightful comment on an event that those with an appreciation of suffrage history will relish – commemorating as it does the dedication of surviving friends and supporters of Mrs Pankhurst who, as Mrs Jean Mann, MP for Coatbridge stated in a further House of Commons debate. 15 Nov 1955, ‘do not like the idea of this noble lady being pushed around…’This cartoon is the only visual comment I have ever seen of the 1955 contretemps. 

There was, of course, another attempt to remove Mrs Pankhurst’s statue in 2018. Parliament commissioned a very detailed report – https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/works-of-art/Reports-and-associated-documents/Donald-Insall-Planning-Report-on-Memorial-to-Emmeline-and-Christabel-Pankhurst-2018.pdf  – and not only was permission to remove it refused, but it acquired enhanced protection – with a Grade 2* listing.

[15472]                                                                                                                      £500

50.       NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES Why We Are In A Hurry   NUWSS no date [probably c 1912]

Sets out reasons why ‘votes for women’ is required asap. ‘Many of the workers in the suffrage movement are eager to work for other objects such as Temperance, Better Housing, The Reform of the Poor Law, The Abolition of Sweating, and the White Slave Trade etc etc, but they believe that until they get the vote they have not the necessary weapon with which to strike at the root of social evils.’ After describing more improvements that would follow the granting of the vote to women, the leaflet reminds the reader that ‘The Reputation of Great Britain is at Stake.’The leaflet was printed by The Templar Printing Works, Birmingham. A single sheet -in good condition. Scarce

[15495]                                                                                                                      £120

51.       NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES CROYDON BRANCH      

Small collection of leaflets issued by the Croydon NUWSS. 1) ‘Voters Sign the Petition’ – dramatic red, white and green leaflet asking (male) voters to ‘Come at once and Sign at 100, George Street’.  The petition reads ‘That we the undersigned urgently beg that your Honourable House will without delay pass into law a measure for the enfranchisement of Women by granting to them the Parliamentary Vote on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men’. This dates from early 1910, in the aftermath of the general election, as a way of holding an unoffical referendum on women’s suffrage. Advertising leaflet mounted on card. 2) ‘An Appeal to Voters’. this leaflet, which gives the names of the Election Sub-Committee of the Croydon Branch, explains and amplifies the reasoning behind the Jan 1910 petition. Leaflet mounted on card 3) Prelimanary notice of NUWSS ‘Great Demonstration in support of the Conciliation Committee’s women’s Suffrage Bill, Trafalgar Square, July 9th [1910] – with a ‘Message from Mrs Fawcett’. Together with a special Croydon Branch leaflet advertising the 9 July demonstration ‘Come Yourself and Bring Two Friends’, noting charabancs will leave Pembroke Hall at 12.30pm. ‘If eeryone will do their best, this Demonstration will be a triumphant success’. Two leaflets mounted together on one board.

All 4 items  are in very good condition – together

[15550]                                                                                                                      £250

52.       NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES CROYDON BRANCH Annual Report    1910

A report on the year’s work of the Croydon branch, 1909-10. Includes the names of the committee members and a financial balance sheet (including 6 shillings raised by the sale of cakes at an ‘At Home’,) Very good – very scarce

[15475]                                                                                                                      £200

53.       NATIONAL WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION Australia’s Advice: The Debate in the Australian Senate on the Votes for Women Resolution, November 17th 1910, abridged from the official report  The Woman’s Press no date [c1911]

At a time when the Conciliation Bill was before the Imperial Parliament Australia advised that ‘the extension of the suffrage to the women of Australia for States and Commonwealth Parliaments, on the same terms as to men, has had the most beneficial results’. Advice not heeded. Very good-tho’ the staples are missing – 24pp – in original paper wrappers with a little foxing- the inside front cover giving details of the WSPU and its personnel and the inside back cover a list of the Woman’s Press titles available. Scarce

[15487]                                                                                                                      £150

54.       NEVINSON, Margaret Wynne Ancient Suffragettes   Women’s Freedom League c 1909

Mrs Nevinson had been giving talks on this subject as early as 1908 and it must have been particularly galling to see that the WFL’s own paper, ‘The Vote’ (18 Nov 1909), credited this pamphlet, ‘containing delightful little sketches of Hebrew and Grecian rebels’ to her husband, ‘Mr H.W. Nevinson’. Just a typo, I suppose. Paper covers – 12pp – in good-ish condition – rubbed, frayed and marked.  On the cover is written ‘To be kept. Only copy – and it is indeed very scarce. I don’t think I have ever had it for sale before.

[15541]£85

Inside page of #55

55.       NEW VAGABOND CLUB 19 February 1910 Guest of the evening: Miss Christabel Pankhurst, LL.B    

A guest list/seating plan for a dinner held by the New Vagabond Club at the Hotel Cecil on 19 February 1910. The New Vagabond was a dining club, run by men but to which women were admitted as guests. It was noteworthy that Christabel Pankhurst, as a woman, was invited as a guest speaker – and on the occasion did, of course, speak of the suffrage campaign. There were many known suffrage sympathisers in attendance that evening – including Carl Hentschel, the Club’s deputy chairman, and his wife and Cecil Chapman and his wife. In fact, Mrs Hentschel and Mrs Chapman had been founding members the previous month of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s suffrage. Among he many others present I note Yoshio Markino, the artist, who depicted life inside the WSPU office and two Mr Mappins (Sidney Mappin of the jewellery firm was an active supporter of the WSPU). The 4 folds of the accordion-type leaflet folds out to disclose the full seating plan for the dinner so that one can see who was sitting near to whom, while, on the reverse, two of the folds present an index of those in attendance. I love items such as this – ones that allow you to visualise the room, its setting, and likely conversations. In fine condition – very scarce

[15503]                                                                                                                      £600

56.       PANKO      

A suffragette card game, first mentioned in ‘Votes for Women’ in December 1909. The advertisement claimed ‘Not only is each picture in itself an interesting memento, but the game produces intense excitement without the slightest taint of bitterness’.The illustrations on the cards are by E.T. Reed, a ‘Punch’ cartoonist and the manufacturer was Messrs Peter Gurney Ltd. The cards in this set have clearly given hours of fun, being slightly worn – two are missing corners (a testament, perhaps, to the promised ‘intense excitement’). As is common with sets of Panko, the box is well worn although, unusually, the sheet of printed rules is present (it is often missing), although lavishly taped. So, here is a well-played card game that has survived c 114 years – an excellent example of the merchandise generated by the suffragette movement

[15412]                                                                                                                   SOLD

57.       PETHICK-LAWRENCE, F.W. The Bye-Election Policy of the Women’s Social and Political Union   The Woman’s Press 2nd ed [no date, 1909]

A crucial element in WSPU stragegy. ‘At every bye-election where a Liberal candidate is in the field members of the Women’s Social and Politial Union are present to urge the electors to vote against him. They take this course, not because they are opposed to Liberalism, but because the present Government are hostile to Woman Suffrage.’ Pethick-Lawrence elaborates on the policy and sets out details of the bye-elections at which it had been utilised, including many newspaper quotes. The last one considered was that at Chelmsford, where polling day was 1 Dec 1908. Paper covers – 20pp – very scarce

[15497]                                                                                                                      £200

58.       PETHICK-LAWRENCE MEMORIAL COMMITTEE Memories of Fred and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence   Pethick-Lawrence Memorial Committee 1963

Reminiscences by those who knew them. – with a list of contributors to the Memorial Fund. 16-pp in card covers (which is decorated with a purple, white and green stripe). Fine

[15459]                                                                                                                        £35

59.       PHOTOGRAPH OF ENID GOULDEN BACH AND HER BROTHER, EDWARD      

taken at the 1931 London County Council election. The photograph (20cm x 16cm), mounted on a sheet of sugar paper, is very spotted. I know that it was once part of a collection of material that belonged to Stella Newsome of the Suffragette Fellowship and was likely to have been displayed at the original Suffragette Fellowship Museum in Kensington. I recognise Enid and assume, from another source, that the man is her brother Edward. They were the children of Mrs Pankhurst’s sister, Ada Goulden Bach; Enid was the last chairman of the Suffragette Fellowship. Fair

[15467]   

                                                                                                                     £12

This is what a Suffragist looks like

#60

60.       PORTRAIT SKETCH BY KATHLEEN TEMPLE BIRD OF MISS MARGARET BIDWELL      

Mrs Kathleen Temple Bird (1879-1962) has an entry in my Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists. Trained at the Slade and then in Florence, she was an active member of the Chelsea branch of the WSPU, speaking at meetings and putting her artistic skill to the service of the Cause by executing quick portrait sketches at the December 1911 WSPU Christmas Fair and at the 1913 WSPU Summer Fair. My belief is that this portrait sketch was made on one of these occasions – probably, from the style of Miss Bidwell’s hat, in 1913.

Margaret Evelyn Bidwell (1881-1985) was born in east Twickenham, the daughter of Edward Bidwell and Catherine (née Cotman). Her mother was the grand daughter of the artist John Sell Cotman. Margaret Bidwell trained as a teacher at Bedford College and was an assistant mistress at Edgehill School, Sydenham (1904-5), Highbury High School (1906-10), and Enfield County School from 1910 until at least 1939.

She was a member of the Kensington branch of the WSPU by February 1908 when ‘Votes for Women’ noted that she was intending to take part in ‘Self-Denial Week’ by organising a money collection, as a High School teacher, at a railway station, and took an active part in organising that branch’s contribution to the 21 June WSPU procession. Having moved to north London, she became a member of the Hornsey WSPU, making her first speech as the chairman of a meeting in March 1909 and in April travelled to East Edinburgh to assist at a bye-election. She was a banner captain for a group of women graduates in the 23 July 1910 procession and a regular speaker for the WSPU. Throughout the campaign she was a generous donor to WSPU funds.

Provenance: The portrait, signed by the artist, was acquired at a sale of the Cotman family’s picture collection, the sitter’s name identified on a slip attached to the reverse.

Framed and glazed. Charcoal and chalk. 27.5cm x 21cm. A very scarce survivor of ‘sketching for the Cause’

[15409]                                                                                                                   £1,200

#61

61.       PROGRAMME FOR THE UNVEILING OF MRS PANKHURST’S STATUE, 1930      

Programmes produced for the unveiling of Mrs Pankhurst’s statue in Victoria Tower Gardens on 6 March 1930. I do not remember seeing a copy of this programme before – and am intrigued by the choice of music. Not only did Ethel Smyth’s wonderfully dramatic overture to ‘The Wreckers’ accompany the moment of unveiling – but also included in the musical programme were the gently romantic  ‘Indian Love Lyrics’. I wonder if these had been a favourite of Mrs Pankhurst’  The 4-pp programme is in good condition – surely owned by someone who was present on the day and who then kept it carefully.

[15473]                                                                                                                      £350

62.       PUNCH CARTOON      

21 January 1912 – full page – ‘The Suffrage Split’. Sir George Askwith (the charismatic industrial conciliator), as ‘Fairy Peacemaker’, has tamed the dragon of the Cotton Strike – and Asquith, wrestling to keep a seat on the Cabinet horse turns to him ‘Now that you’ve charmed yon dragon I shall need ye to stop the strike inside this fractious gee-gee.’

[14323]                                                                                                                        £12

63.       PUNCH CARTOON      

30 Nov 1910, scene is a suffragette demonstration, ‘Votes for Women’ flags flying. Two young street urchins observe and comment.  Caption is ‘Man of the World (lighting up), “Well ‘ave to give it ’em, I expect, Chorlie”‘. Half-page illustration

[14324]                                                                                                                        £12

64.       PUNCH CARTOON      

18 April 1906. ‘A Temporary Entaglement’ – a scene from ‘Vanity Fair’. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman as Josh Sedley holds the wool as The Suffragette (aka Becky Sharp) winds it into a ball. The allusion is to the news that ‘The Prime Minister has promised to receive a deputation on the subject of Female Suffrage after Easter’. Full-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge

[14333]                                                                                                                        £12

65.       PUNCH CARTOON      

5 October 1927. As a young woman takes her gun from the ghillie an elderly gentleman (the Conservative Party) looks concerned and remarks ‘I hope she’s got enough ‘intuition’ not to let it off in my direction’. The remark is explained: ‘The question of extended suffrage for women [ie for those between 21 and 30] [in whose ‘intuition’ Mr Baldwin reposes so much confidence will be raised in the approaching Conference of the Conservative Party]. Full page

[14334]                                                                                                                        £12

66.       PUNCH CARTOON      

23 May 1928. A gentleman identified as Lord Banbury kneels in a ring (it’s an allusion to the Royal Tournament which was doubtless on at the time) and opens his umbrella to defend himself against the horde of cloche-hatted women who are rushing towards him carrying their flag for the ‘Equal Franchise Bill’. In the debate on the Representation of the People Act on 21 May 1928 Lord Banbury had attempted to move its rejection. Full-page cartoon – good – one corner creased

[14335]                                                                                                                        £12

67.       PUNCH CARTOON      

26 March 1913. ‘Burglary Up-To-Date’. Burglar has taken his swag from a safe and now writes ‘Votes for Women’ across the jemmied door. Half-page cartoon – good condition

[14343]                                                                                                                        £10

68.       PUNCH CARTOON      

19 March 1913. At a railway wayside halt the stationmaster asks the signalman to keep an eye on ‘the ole gal on the platform’ while he has his dinner. The signalman doesn’t think she’ll come to any harm but the stationmaster explains ‘I’m not thinkin’ of ‘er ‘ealth. I’m thinkin’ about my station. She might want to burn it down.’ Half-page cartoon – very good

[14344]                                                                                                                        £10

69.       PUNCH CARTOON      

5 March 1913. ‘The child is daughter to the woman’ is the caption. Suffragette mother returns after a strenuous day and is expecting some important correspondence. Her daughter, however, reveals she has torn up the letters to provide a paperchase for her dolls. Mother expostulates: ‘..Haven’t I often told you that letters are sacred things?’ A comment on suffragette attacks on post-boxes. A half-page cartoon – very good

[14345]                                                                                                                        £10

70.       PUNCH CARTOON      

5 February 1913. ‘How Militant Suffragettes Are Made’. A cheeky caddie explains to a visiting golfer that the old green they are passsing gets flooded and ‘so they’ve give it up to the lydies.’ A half-page cartoon – very good

[14347]                                                                                                                        £10

71.       PUNCH CARTOON      

29 January 1913. ‘Rag-Time in the House’ is the caption. Members of the government are enjoying the ‘Suffrage Free & Easy Go As You Please’ dance.  Asquith, with an ‘Anti’ label, is keeping an eye on Lloyd George (wearing a ‘Pro’ armband) jitterbugs with Sir Edward. The sub-text is ‘Sir Edward Grey’s Woman Suffrage Amendment produces some curious partnerships’. Full-page cartoon – very good

[14349]                                                                                                                        £12

72.       PUNCH CARTOON      

23 June 1912. ‘Votes for Men and Women’ is the caption. John Bull is sitting comfortably and turns round as Nurse Asquith enters carrying a baby labelled ‘Franchise Bill’. In answer to JB’s query ‘she’ replies: ‘Well, Sir, it’s certainly not a girl, and I very much doubt if it’s a boy’. The government’s Franchise and Registration bill was given its first Reading on 18 June 1912. Full-page cartoon – very good

[14350]                                                                                                                        £12

73.       PUNCH CARTOON      

27 March 1912. A young suffragette is standing on a table addressing a crowd: ‘I defy anyone to name a field of endeavour in which men do not receive more consideration than women!’ A Voice from the Crowd retorts: ‘What about the bally ballet!’  A half-page cartoon – very good

[14351]                                                                                                                        £10

74.       PUNCH CARTOON      

7 December 1910. ‘Voter’s Vertigo’ is the caption. It is the second general election of 1910 and the voter is all in a tizz..muddling up all the campaign slogans..(e’g. ‘don’t tax the poor man’s dreadnought’ and ‘home rule for suffragettes’). A quarter of a page cartoon – very good

[14352]                                                                                                                          £8

75.       PUNCH CARTOON      

24 December 1908. Two male Anti-suffragists, perhaps lounging at the Club, are talking about the suffrage campaign. One says ‘The idea of their wantin’ to be like us!’ while the other agrees ‘Yes, makin’ themselves utterly ridiculous’. Half-page cartoon – very good

[14354]                                                                                                                        £10

76.       QUESTIONS TO LLOYD GEORGE ASKED BY THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION      

11 questions concerning his behaviour re introducing a Government measure for Manhood Suffrage in 1913…Among the many other pertinent questions ‘Why do you expect us to accept your personal and unofficial advocacy of Woman Suffrage as a substitute for united and offiicial action on the part of the Government as a whole? In good condition – some creasing. 2-sided leaflet, printed in purple

[15006]                                                                                                                      £100

77.       RE-BARTLETT, Lucy The Woman of To-Morrow in Religion   Aberdeen University Press 1918

Lucy Re-Bartlett (1876-1922) was a member of the WSPU before moving to Italy in 1910. She had been born in Edinburgh, was university-educated, and described by her obituarist in ‘The Common Cause’ as ‘a writer of notable intellectual power, a phlosopher whose restrained outlook on social questions gave value to all her judgments’. This is the published version of one of 4 speeches she gave in the summer of 1918, addressing ‘The Woman of To-Morrow’. They were sponsored by ‘The New Thought Alliance’. Paper covers -24pp – with an ink inscription on the cover ‘With Mrs Re-Bartlett’s compliments…’ Very scarce

[15529]                                                                                                                        £65

78.       REPORT OF A MEETING OF THE BIRMINGHAM WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETY 26 JAN 1883 Also copies of letters received from members of Parliament and other friends   T.A. Larkin Printer Birmingham for the BWSS 1883

The meeting was held in Birmingham Town Hall. The lengthy verbatim report includes the speeches of, among others, Mrs Eliza Ashford (poor law guardian). Mr Mundella, Dr Crosskey, Charles McLaren, Mrs Osler, C. E. Matthews, Miss E.M. Sturge (the BWSS secretary), and Helena Downing-Shearer, who was an organiser/speaker for the National Society. The report also prints letters from luminaries, such as Millicent Fawcett, William Woodall, and Joseph Chamberlain, who had been invited to the meeting.

Disbound, with the stamps of  both Bristol University Library and the National Liberal Club Library. In good condition – 25 pp – very scarce

[15477]                                                                                                                      £150

79.       REPRODUCTION OF A PHOTOGRAPH OF A SCENE FROM THE ‘PRISON TO CITIZENSHIP’ PROCESSION, 18 JUNE 1910      

The image shows Laurence Housman’s ‘Prison to Citizenship’ banner carried aloft by women in white, each holding a stave headed by a prisoner’s arrow. The single sheet is captioned ‘The Women’s Procession’ and may have been laid in as a supplement to a contemporary publication – ie it  has not been disbound from a book. The image appears in ‘Votes for Women’, 24 June 1910, the photographer credited as ‘World’s Graphic Press’ and with thanks to the ‘Daily Telegraph’ for the loan of the block. So, the source is a bit of a mystery – but it is a good, large, clear image. It is accompanied by another sheet, captioned ‘The Women’s Franchise Demonstration’, which gives some details about the procession and was evidently written no earlier than 1911. 2 sheets – very good – with one nick to the blank surround to the photograph, not affecting the image.

[15336]                                                                                                                        £10

80.       ROBINS, Elizabeth Why?   Women Writers’ Suffrage League 1910

An actress, from 1908 Elizabeth Robins was also president of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League. In this little book she answers such questions as ‘Why are women of all classes in England banding themselves together to work for political Enfranchisement? Why have women subscribed in a little oer a year, to one society alone (the Women’s Social and Political Union) £50,000 to the cause?’ etc etc. The essay was later reprinted in ‘Way Stations’. Soft covers – 80pp – small format – printed by the Women’s Printing Society – reading copy – rubbed and worn and taped at spine. But very scarce

[15547]                                                                                                                        £75

81.       SIMON, MRS E.M. Women’s Suffrage: Some Sociological Reasons for Opposing the Movement  Cornish Bros Ltd (Birmingham) 1907

Emily Maud Simon (1861-1947) – later Lady Simons – was the wife of a Birmingham doctor and a dedicated anti-suffragist. – and a supporter of animal welfare This pamphlet contains not only the essay of the title but also another she wrote on ‘Women’s Suffrage’, reprinted from the ‘Monthly Review’. Paper covers – very good

[15525]                                                                                                                        £85

82.       SOUVENIR WOMEN’S THEATRE INAUGURAL WEEK      

The week ran from 8-13 December 1913 at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill Gate. See Naomi Paxton’s blog – http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/blog/a-theatre-of-their-own-bbc-radio-3  to read/listen to more about this idea for a ‘Women’s Theatre’. The 32-pp Souvenir Brochure includes details of the General Committee for the Woman’s Theatre – and its aims, together with articles by Bernard Shaw, Cicely Hamilton, William Archer, and Flora Steele.  Numerous, lovely advertisements for the various suffrage societies – and the businesses of their supporters – including The Children’s Theatre, directors Mrs Percy Dearmer and Miss Netta Syrett  The Souvenir includes many photographs of actors and actresses and  the back cover sports the device of the Actresses’ Franchise League. In very good condition – very scarce

[15531]                                                                                                                      £230

83.       SPEECH OF MRS HELEN BRIGHT CLARK AT A WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE CONGRESS HELD IN BRISTOL, 23RD JANUARY 1879     1879

The meeting, held in the Victoria Rooms, was convened by the Bristol and West of England Branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. Helen Clark was the main female speaker, supported by Lydia Becker (Manchster), Isabella Tod  (Belfast), Lilias Ashworth Hallett (Bath) and Miss Sturge (Birmingham). The platform was packed with male supporters, MPs, clergymen etc. I am not sure whether this 4-pp speech was issued with covers; it is not obviously disbound but carries no imprint of printer or publisher so may well be. In good condition – scarce

[15545]                                                                                                                        £85

84.       STOPES, Mrs Charlotte Carmichael The Sphere of ‘Man’ in relation to ‘Woman’ in the Constitution   T. Fisher Unwin 1907

‘There lacks a word to distinguish between “man” in the general, and “man” with a sex-distinction. The lawyers of the 19th century have decided for us that the word “man” always includes “woman” when there is a penalty to be incurred, and never include “woman” when there is a privilege to be conferred. But it was not always thus.’ Covers the past status of women in social and trade gilds as well as in Scotland and in Ireland. That last section may have had a particular resonance for the original owner of the book, for written on the cover is ‘please return to H.S. Skeffington’ – that is Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, nationalist and suffragist. The year after the publication of this book Sheehy Skeffington was one of the group that founded the Irish Franchise League. Soft covers – 68pp – in good condition

[15488]                                                                                                                      £150

#85

85.       SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN      

Saucer (12.25cm) made by Williamsons of Longton for the WSPU in 1909, initially for use in the refreshment room of the Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition and then sold in aid of funds. The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines and is rimmed in dark green. Each piece carries the motif, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, of the ‘angel of freedom’ blowing her trumpet and flying the banner of ‘Freedom. In the background are the intitials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by the thistle, shamrock and rose, and dangling chains. For more information on the WSPU china see my website – http://tinyurl.com/o4whadq. This piece originally belonged to a well-known suffragette Mrs Rose Lamartine Yates. In fine condition, although without the maker’s mark

[15058]                                                                                                                      £450

86.       TAX RESISTANCE LEAGUE SILVER BASKET ENGRAVED ‘SOLD FOR KING’S TAXES 1912 WOMAN SUFFRAGE L.E. RURQUAND 1913’      

This silver basket was in its day the focus of much suffrage attention. It belonged to Miss Lizzie Emma Turquand (1857-1943), daughter of a nonconformist clergyman. In 1910 she was the founder of the Free Church League for Women’s Suffrage and was, first, the  League’s press secretary and then editor of its newspaper, ‘The Coming Day’. For 6 years from 1907 she was a Croydon Poor Law Guardian, had served as secretary of her local Liberal Association, and was at one time the headmistress of a Croydon primary school. She was an early member of the WSPU and then of the WFL.

She was also a member of the Tax Resistance League and in May 1912 refused to pay House Duty Tax. As a result, the silver cake basket was seized (in a friendly fashion, we are assured) by a bailiff, in lieu of the 10s owed. It was reported that ‘the silver basket [was] a household treasure, with tender memories to Mis Turquand it being her mother’s.’ The TRL made much of the subsequent Sydenham auction, organising a poster and banner parade – with a pitch in Kirkdale at which lengthy speeches were delivered. All were reported, together with a photograph of Miss Turquand, in the Norwood News, 18 May 1912, p 5. The parade then continued to the Auction Rooms where Miss Turquand ‘amidst renewed cheering’ addressed the auctioneer and assembled company. The silver cake basket was sold to Mrs Beaumont Thomas, a Clapham member of the TRL.

I think it must have been returned to Miss Turquand because it was sold again in lieu of tax the following year, this time at Richardson’s Auction Rooms, Upper Norwood, an occasion on which she again gave a consciousness-raising speech (see Norwood News, 3 May 1913, p. 5). The basket was doubtless again returned to her, because a handwritten note, probably written by a later family member and affixed to its base, describes it as ‘Turquand Family. Henry Wilkinson. Sheffield 1852 Sterling Silver.’

It is uncommon now to discover such a well-documented item representing the efforts made by a member of the Tax Resistance League to publicise the mantra ‘No Taxation Without Representation’. In very good condition. For photograph see first page of this catalogue.

[15518]                                                                                                                   £1,500

# 87

87.       THE ACTRESSES FRANCHISE LEAGUE AND THE WOMEN WRITERS’ SUFFRAGE LEAGUE Entertainment and Pageant of Famous Men and Women – B.C. 7000 – A.D. 2914    

Arranged by the Joint Committee of the AFL and the WWSL – held on 29 June 1914 at The Hotel Cecil, London W.C.  A spectacular ‘Costume Dinner’ held at the glorious Hotel Cecil, one of the very last grand occasions before the outbreak of war. The dinner was preceded by a Pageant, arranged by Ethel Craig. I remember writing in my biographical entry on Mrs Margaret Nevinson in my ‘Reference Guide’ that she attended this event in the guise of ‘The Mother of the Futurists’, which I thought very clever – as her son, C.R.W. Nevinson, was indeed a Futurist, But I now see that the final element of the Pageant, which began with figures from Ancient Egypt, was named ‘Futurist’, presumably representing the denizens of A.D. 2914, as mentioned in the title. The Programme lists all those taking part in the Pageant – for instance, Mrs Pethick Lawrence and Flora Annie Steel were in the Asia Section (and Mrs Archibald Little, who wrote about China, was there as a Chinese empress), in the Italy section, H.W. Nevinson was Garibaldi (and a tiny pencilled note beside his name reads ‘red shirt’ – so presumably he had acquired the correct costume. The list is fascinating – I counted 77 participants – most of them well-known to those interested in the suffrage campaign. It must have been a wonderful sight – and rather poignant when one thinks of the cataclysm that was about to occur. I have never seen this programme before – so deem it very scarce. In very good condition – 4pp

[15500]                                                                                                                      £600

88.       THE CONCILIATION BILL EXPLAINED      

Leaflet headed ‘Votes for Women’, probably dating from 1910. settng out the contents of the Conciliation Bill, which had passed its Second Reading in July 1910, and explaining details,such as which groups of women would be enfranchised under tis terms. Printed by Baines and Scarsbrook, 75 Fairfax Road, South Hampstead and with the rubber stamp of the WFL [Women’s Freedom League] 1 Robert St, Adelphi. In pristine condition, having been found laid betwen the pages of a book.

[15036]                                                                                                                      £120

89.       THE FIGHTING SEX      

This issue of the part-work ‘History of the 20th Century’ includes a section on the suffrage campaign – written by Trevor Lloyd (author of ‘Suffragettes International’). Paper covers – large format

[14074]                                                                                                                          £5

90.       ‘THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN’      

supplement to ‘The Graphic’, 1885, heralding the supplements to be issued in Nov and Dec 1885 on ‘Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days’. As its advertisement for the series The Graphic has chosen to use George Cruickshank’s ”The Rights of Women; or a view of the hustings with female suffrage, 1853.’ We see on the hustings the two candidates –  ‘The Ladies’ Candidate’- Mr Darling’ and ‘The Gentleman’s Candidate – Mr Screwdriver – the great political economist’. Elegant Mr Darling is surrounded by ladies in bonnets and crinolines – Mr Screwdriver by ill-tempered-looking boors. The audience contains many women accompanied, presumably, by their husbands who are holding aloft a ‘Husband and Wife Voters’ banner. Another banner proclaims the existence of ‘Sweetheart Voters’ and riding in their midst is a knight in armour holding a ‘Vote for the Ladies’ Champion’ pennant. There do not appear to be many supporters of the opposition.

Single sheet 28 cm x 20.5 cm – a little foxed around the edges of the paper but barely afffecting the good, clear image of Crucikshank’s cartoon.

[13690]                                                                                                                      £160

91.       THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT      

A 4-page leaflet produced by the Friends’ Committee on Women Suffrage (Members of Essex and Suffolk Quarterly Meeting) setting out the Quakers’ stance on the suffrage movement. Scarce – but reading copy only – much underlining as a reader has taken its substance to heart.

[15534]                                                                                                                        £50

Inside # 92

92.       THE VOTE Vol 1: the organ of The Women’s Freedom League   Minerva Publishing 1909-1910

The first bound volume of the WFL’s weekly paper, 26 issues covering 30 October 1909 to 23 April 1910. In the WFL’s gold and green binding, very good internally – binding fraying at top and bottom of spine, with horizontal split to spine cloth, bumped and worn at corners. I think the volume may have had a Welsh provenance because laid in is a sheet of music (a Welsh song -not suffrage!), the reverse of which has been used to jot notes – ‘Mrs Murphy and Mrs Thomas to attend police courts to ask for 1 hours extension. Mrs Ross instructied to Management Committee.’ Also laid in is a lengthy newspaper cutting (26 Dec 1936) reporting the death of Mrs Emma Sproson, who had been a very active member of the WFL in the West Midlands.

Bound volumes of The Vote are very scarce

[15517]                                                                                                                      £950

93.       THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION – VOTES FOR WOMEN – ALL WOMEN ARE INVITED TO BE PRESENT AT THE PARLIAMENT OF WOMEN      

to be held in the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on February 11, 12 and 13. Session each afternoon, 3-6. Evening meeting, 8-10. Chairman: Mrs Pankhurst.’ The year is 1908. The single-sheet leaflet, issued by the WSPU and printed by Geo. Barber, The Furnival Press, then sets out arrangements for other meetings to be given in the forthcoming weeks. In goodish condition – a little loss to paper on one side, with no loss of text

[15325]                                                                                                                      £350

# 93A

93A.    US POLITICAL EQUALITY ASSOCIATION ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ CHINA

Mrs Alva Belmont, Newport socialite and mother of Consuelo Vanderbilt, sometime duchess of Marlborough, commissioned white china dinnerware, decorated with the legend ‘Votes for Women’ printed in blue, from the English pottery firm, John Maddox and Sons of Burslem. The china was probably made for the Council of Great Women Conference that took place in 1913 in conjunction with the opening of a new Chinese Tea House on Belmont’s estate at Marble House. This is a 16cm plate from the service – in fine condition.

[15513]                                                                                                            £550                                                                                                                                                                                   

94.       VERBATIM REPORT OF DEBATE ON DEC 3RD 1907 Sex Equality (Teresa Billington-Greig) Versus Adult Suffrage (Margaret Bondfield)   printed in Manchester, probably for the Adult Suffrage Society 1908

Margaret Bondfield was chair of the Adult Suffrage Society, which had backed a 1906 Bill proposing adult suffrage. Teresa Billington-Greig was a founder of the Women’s Freedom League which had, in 1907, broken away from Mrs Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union. The debate was chaired by Isabella Ford. Women’s suffrage societies thought that their cause could only be harmed by any call for all men and women to be granted the vote, without any property qualifications. Margaret Bondfield was to be the first woman Labour cabinet minister. Paper covers, carrying photos of both Billington-Greig and Bondfield. The inside cover carries details of the Adult Suffrage Society, then based at 122 Gower Street. The British Library catalogue only lists a version published by the WFL, but there is no indication on this item that the WFL was the publisher. 34pp – very good, with a little spotting on the top right corner of the cover – scarce

[15539]                                                                                                                        £95

95.       VOTES FOR WOMEN – A DEPUTATION OF WOMEN WILL PROCEED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS      

to interview Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George, on Tuesday, Nov 21st at 8 o’clock, to protest against a Bill to give votes to all men being introduced by a Government that excludes all women from the vote’. The year is 1911. Set out in the leaflet is a invitation by Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who was to lead the deputation, to members of the public to come along to Parliament Square ‘to see fair play’ and to ‘protect women from being brutally vitimized by police in uniform and in plain clothes as they were on Black Friday (November 18th 1910)’. The leaflet was issued by the WSPU and printed in green, on white paper, by Geo Barber, The Furnival Press. In very good condition

[15329]                                                                                                                   SOLD

96.       VOTES FOR WOMEN – THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION – A WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION IN THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, ON SATURDAY, JUNE 15TH, 1912 AT 8PM      

Mabel Tuke is in the chair (in the enforced absences of Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick-Lawrence) and the speakers were T.M. Healy, the barrister and MP who had defended Mrs Pethick-Lawrence at her trial for conspiracy in March, Elizabeth Robins, Annie Kenney and Mrs Mansell-Moullin. Newspaper reports show that there was a febrile atmosphere at this demonstration, with messages read out from prisoners who were being held, on hunger strike. This 4-pp card contains a long list of  the ‘Suffragist Prisoners Still Under Sentence’, with the date of their arrest, the length of their sentence and the prison in which they were held. The back cover consists of a form on which a promise of a donation to the WSPU could be made. Very good – most unusual. I don’t remember having seeing an item such as this previously.

[15330]                                                                                                                      £600

97.       WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION  – VOTES FOR WOMEN – A DEPUTATION OF WOMEN WILL GO TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON TUESDAY, JUNE 29TH AT 8 O’CLOCK TO SEE THE PRIME MINISTER      

and lay before him their demand for the Vote. The right to do this is secured to them by the Bill of Rights….’ In the event many women were arrested, although most of them had their cases adjourned ‘sine die’. Some, charged with stone throwing, were imprisoned and were some of the first women to go on hunger strike in Holloway. The case of Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Evelina Haverfield, judged to be the leaders of the protest and who pleaded their protest was within the terms of the Bill of Rights, was adjourned until the end of the year. Flyer, issued by the WSPU and printed in black on white paper by the St Clements Press, Portugal Street. In good condition – the year ‘1909’ has been added in pencil after ‘June 29th’ – extremely scarce

[15321]                                                                                                                      £400

98.       WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ LEAFLET NO. 61      

This double-sided leaflet is devoted to publishing Laurence Housman’s ditty ‘Woman This, and Woman That’, an ‘Echo of a ‘Barrack-room Ballad, with acknowledgments to Mr Rudyard Kipling’. It begins ‘We went up to Saint Stephens, with petitions year by year;/’Get out!’ the politicians cried, ‘we want no women here!’/ and was avery popular party-piece at WSPU gatherings. Perhaps its most famous rendition was by actress Decima Moore on the night of the 1911 census, when her audience comprised c 500 suffragettes evading the enumerator in the Aldwych Skating Rink.  This leaflet is headed with full details of the WSPU office and leading personnel and was printed by the St Clement’s Press, Portugal Street (now the site of the LSE Library). Like many such ephemeral pieces, it has been folded – presumably in use at a WSPU gathering – with a slight split along a fold – but no loss of text. Although fragile, it is actually in quite good condition, considering its age and purpose

[15317]                                                                                                                      £150

99.       ZANGWILL, Israel One And One Are Two   NWSPU no date [early 1908?]

‘being a verbatim report of the speech delivered at Exeter Hall, on Feb 9th 1907, at the Demonstration of Women’s Suffrage Societies’. This ‘Demonstration’ is better known to us now as the ‘Mud March’, the first of the suffrage processions organised by the NUWSS. It is, therefore, interesting that the WSPU chose to publish it. From the print material that they list for sale on the inside front cover, I deduce that the pamphlet was published between Nov 1907 and April 1908. 8-pp pamphlet – foxed.  Very scarce

[15491]                                                                                                                         £80

100.     ZANGWILL, Israel The Hithertos   The Woman’s Press 1912

The text of a speech delivered by Israel Zangwill at the WSPU demonstration in the Royal Albert Hall on 28 March 1912 (the meeting for which the card listed as # ? was issued). 24-pp, with paper covers which carry various advertisements for the WSPU. His speech begins ‘I have never valued the honour of addressing your Union so much as now, when it stands criminally indicted, despised, and rejected of men.’ In good condition – the cover is slightly marked and bears, in faded ink, the legend ‘Only copy, to be kept’. But, by whom, I cannot tell.

[15405]                                                                                                                        £90

Suffrage Real Photographic Postcards

101.     ANNIE KENNEY      

– an early postcard, I think, No photographer or publisher is credited. She is wearing a blouse with elaborate lace yoke and deep lace cuffs – and is standing behind a chair. She looks very youthful. It was probably the original owner, Miss Chapman, who wrote on the reverse ‘Miss Annie Kenney’. Very good – on good, thick card – unposted

[15109]                                                                                                                      £120

102.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

photographed by Lambert Weston and Son, 27 New Bond St. I think the card dates from c 1907/8. Fine – unposted

[13616]                                                                                                                        £45

103.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

black and white photograph of the portrait of Christabel by Ethel Wright, with Christabel’s printed signature along the bottom of the card. The card will date from c 1909, when the portrait was first exhibited. Having been owned by the family of Una Dugdale since that time, the portrait was bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery in 2011 and is on permanent display. This postcard is in fair condition (it has a diagonal crease across the centre) and is unposted. It represents one of the WSPU’s ingenious methods of fund-raising.

[15111]                                                                                                                        £20

104.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

photographed probably post-First World War – I have seen an image on Google images that may be from the same sitting and is dated to 1926.. She is shown in profile, wearing a blouse with a wide collar. The image is set in an oval, on stiff brown card – rather like that used by Lena Connell, but no photographer is noted. The card was once owned by Joan Wickham, Mrs Pankhurst’s secretary. An unusual image. Fine – unposted

[15153]                                                                                                                      £120

105.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

Head and shoulders photographic portrait – wearing a square-necked dress and with her hair up in her characteristic knot. Captioned ‘Miss Christabel Pankhurst. The National Women’s Social and Political Union. 4 Clement’s Inn, WC’. Published by Sandle Bros. Fine – unposted

[15175]                                                                                                                        £25

106.     DR THEKLA HULTIN      

Portrait photograph, published by the Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert St, Adelphi, and headed ‘Votes for Women’. The portrait is captioned ‘Dr Thekla Hultin, Member of the Finnish Diet’. Thekla Hultin was the first elected woman member of Parliament to speak at a suffrage meeting in Britain.  Fine – unposted

[15123]                                                                                                                      £120

107.     EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE      

Captioned ‘Mrs Pethick Lawrence. The National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clements Inn, WC’ – she is wearing a coat with a heavy fur collar and lapels and is standing with her hands in her pockets. Published by Sandle Bros. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. In fine condition – unposted

[14571]                                                                                                                        £25

108.     EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE      

The photo is captioned ‘Mrs Pethick Lawrence Joint Editor of ‘Votes for Women’, Honorary Treasurer, National Women’s Social and Political Union. 4 Clement’s Inn.’ The photographer, F. Kehrhahn, has an entry in my ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’. Fine – unposted

[14574]                                                                                                                        £25

109.     LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON      

real photographic postcard- issued by the ‘Women’s Social and Political Union’. She is sitting at her desk looking at a book.  Glossy photograph by Lafayette.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14603]                                                                                                                        SOLD

110.     MISS CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, LLB      

Captioned ‘National Union of Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, WC’. She is wearing a brooch that may have been designed by   C.R. Ashbee.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14599]                                                                                                                        £25

111.     MISS CICELY HAMILTON      

‘Member of the Executive Committee of the Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert St, Adelphi, London WC’. The photograph is by Elliot and Fry – published by the London Council of the Women’s Freedom League.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14600]                                                                                                                        £65

112.     MISS CICELY HAMILTON      

member of the National Executive Committee, WFL. office 18 Buckingham Street, Strand, London. 30 Gordon Street, Glasgow.’ An early card – published by the Women’s Freedom League not long after their break with the WSPU and before they moved into their Robert Street office. Cicely Hamilton faces straight on to the camera.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. Fine – unposted – scarce

[14633]                                                                                                                        £45

113.     MISS GLADICE KEEVIL      

Portrait photograph of Gladys Keevil ‘National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, WC’. The photographer was Lena Connell, who, in an interview in the Women’s Freedom League paper, ‘The Vote’, dated her involvement with the suffrage movement to this commission – photographing Gladice Keevil soon after her release from prison in 1908. Gladice was considered one of the prettiest of the WSPU organisers. You can read about her in my ‘Reference Guide’.  In fine conition – unposted. Unusual

[14918]                                                                                                                      £120

114.     MISS MARGUERITE SIDLEY      

Photograph by Foulsham and Banfield, headed ‘Votes for Women’ and captioned ‘Women’s Freedom League’ 1 Robert St, Adelphi, London W.C.,’ She wears, I think, the WFL ‘Holloway’ badge at ther throat and, certainly, a WFL flag brooch on her bosom. She had joined the WSPU in London in 1907, working for some time in the London office and then as a peripatetic organizer  before leaving the WSPU to do the same kind of work for the Women’s Freedom League.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – scarce – unposted

[14643]                                                                                                                        £65

115.     MISS SARAH BENETT      

photographed by Lena Connell. In this studio photograph Sarah Benett is wearing her WFL Holloway brooch; she was for a time the WFL treasurer. She was also a member of the WSPU and of the Tax Resistance League. The card was published by the WFL and is from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.

[14631]                                                                                                                        £65

116.     MRS AMY SANDERSON      

Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London WC. She had been a member of the WSPU, and, as such had endured one term of :imprisonment, before helping to found the WFL in 1907. She is, I think, wearing her  WFL Holloway brooch in the photograph. Card, published by WFL, is from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson..Fine – unusual – unposted

[14636]                                                                                                                        £65

117.     MRS BORRMANN WELLS    WFL 

Headed ‘Votes for Women’ and captioned ‘Women’s Freedom League. Offices: 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London WC’. Bettina Borrmann Wells was born in Bavaria c 1875 and in 1900 married an Englishman, Clement Wells. She joined the WSPU in 1906- but by 1908 had left to join the WFL. She was imprisoned for 3 weeks in Oct 1908 after demonstrating at Westminster.  The Hodgson Collection contains a (different) postcard from Bettina Borrmann Wells to ‘Miss Hodgson’ asking for help with ‘special work’, which may be the picketing  She later spent much of her life in the US. A striking photo- she’s rather magnificently dressed.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. In fine condition -unusual –  unposted

[15004]                                                                                                                      £120

118.     MRS BORRMANN WELLS    WFL 

Headed ‘Votes for Women’ and captioned ‘Women’s Freedom League. Offices: 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London WC’. Bettina Borrmann Wells was born in Bavaria c 1875 and in 1900 married an Englishman, Clement Wells. She joined the WSPU in 1906- but by 1908 had left to join the WFL. She was imprisoned for 3 weeks in Oct 1908 after demonstrating at Westminster.  The Hodgson Collection contains a (different) postcard from Bettina Borrmann Wells to ‘Miss Hodgson’ asking for help with ‘special work’, which may be the picketing  She later spent much of her life in the US. A striking photo- she’s rather magnificently dressed.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. In fine condition -unusual –  unposted

[15005]                                                                                                                      £120

119.     MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD      

photographed in profile  -seated. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by WFL members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14580]                                                                                                                        £25

120.     MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD      

studio photograph. She is seated and facing the camera, looking wry. No photographer, publisher or suffrage affiliation given. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14591]                                                                                                                        £25

121.     MRS COBDEN SANDERSON    WFL 

Mrs Cobden Sanderson is shown, head and shoulders, in profile on this most unusual card. The photo is by Max Parker and the caption is: ‘Mrs Cobden Sanderson. Women’s Freedom League’. I would imagine that this is quite an early card -c 1908. Fine – unposted

[14942]                                                                                                                      £120

122.     MRS COBDEN SANDERSON    WFL 

Mrs Cobden Sanderson is shown, head and shoulders, in profile on this most unusual card. The photo is by Max Parker and the caption is: ‘Mrs Cobden Sanderson. Women’s Freedom League’. I would imagine that this is quite an early card -c 1908. Fine – unposted

[14965]                                                                                                                      £120

123.     MRS DESPARD      

Photograph of her in profile.  The card is headed ‘Votes for Women’ and underneath her name is the caption ‘Hon. Treas. Women’s Freedom League Offices: 18 Buckingham St., Strand. 20 Gordon St, Glasgow’ The card dates from after 1910, when she took over the treasureship of the WFL. Very good – unposted

[14569]                                                                                                                        £25

124.     MRS DESPARD      

photographed by Alice Barker of Kentish Town Road and published by the Women’s Freedom League. A head and shoulders portrait in profile. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14592]                                                                                                                        £25

125.     MRS DESPARD      

photographed by M.P. Co (Merchant’s Portrait Co). ‘President, The Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London W.C.). She is sitting in an armless chair – with her left arm leaning on a table.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14616]                                                                                                                        £25

126.     MRS E. HOW-MARTYN      

photographed by M.P.Co (Merchant’s Portrait Co) as ‘Hon. Sec Women’s Freedom League’. It seems to me that for this photograph she wearing the ‘Holloway’ badges issued to erstwhile prisoners by both the WSPU and the WFL.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14609]                                                                                                                        £65

127.     MRS EDITH HOW-MARTYN      

Hon Sec Women’s Freedom League, ARCS, BSc – photographic postcard headed ‘Votes for Women’. Photographed by Ridsdale Cleare of Lower Clapton Road. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14594]                                                                                                                        £65

128.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

photograph by F. Kehrhahn & Co, Bexleyheath. She is wearing one of the WSPU shield-shaped badges – and looks very beautiful. The sitter isn’t identified, but Mrs Pankhurst is unmistakable.  The photograph had been taken at the same time – or had been cropped from and reproduced as a separate image – as a full length portrait (#14536). The card was published by Kehrhahn – about whom you can find out more here https://wp.me/p2AEiO-ge. Unusual – probably dates from c 1909. In fine condition

[14534]                                                                                                                      £100

129.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

no photographer or publisher given. She sites in a high-backed chair wearing a dress with heavily embroidered sleeves and bodice. Her right hand rests on her cheek.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted

[14640]                                                                                                                        £45

130.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

studio portrait photograph by F. Kehrhahn, Bexleyheath, possibly dating from c. 1912-1914. A head-and shoulders image – she is wearing an evening-style dress, a rather magnificent necklace, and a decorative band across her hair. It is an unusual image of her, taken by a photographer who often photographed WSPU occasions (or a post about Kehrhahn on my website see https://wp.me/p2AEiO-ge). Interestingly, although so recognisable, the card doesn’t carry her name – or any link to the WSPU. On the reverse of the card is written ‘Mrs Pankhurst’. It was once owned by Joan Wickham, Mrs Pankhurst’s secretary. Fine – unposted

[15152]                                                                                                                      £120

131.     MRS HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D.      

photographed by Elliott and Fry in c 1909. She is sitting, full length, seen in profile. Although the image is familiar I do not appear to have had a copy of this postcard in stock previously. The NUWSS issued far fewer postcards than did the WSPU so are relatively scarce – and this card doesn’t even mention her association with the NUWSS. Very good – unposted

[15127]                                                                                                                        £60

132.     MRS LILIAN M. HICKS      

– photographed by Lena Connell – an official Women’s Freedom League photographic postcard. Mrs Hicks had been an early member of the WSPU, but left to join the WFL in the 1907 split, returning in 1910 to the WSPU. Fine – unposted

[14533]                                                                                                                        £35

133.     MRS MASSY      

photographic portrait, taken by Rita Martin and captioned ‘Mrs Massy. National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4, Clements Inn, W.C.’. Mrs Rosamund Massy (1870-1947) probably joined the WSPU in 1908 and in Nov 1909 was imprisoned for the first time, In Nov 1910 she served a month in Holloway after breaking a window during the ‘Black Friday’ debacle. When, in 1928, Mrs Pankhurst stood for election in Whitechapel Mrs Massy, although not a Conservative, gave her every support and it was Mrs Massy’s hunger strike medal and Holloway badge that it was, it is believed, placed in a casket in the plinth of Mrs Pankhurst’s statue when it was first erected in Victoria Tower Gardens. Fine – unposted – unusual

[15189]                                                                                                                      £140

134.     MRS PANKHURST      

Full-lenth portrait by F. Kehrhahn of Bexleyheath.- captioned ‘Mrs Pankhurst’ She is wearing a WSPU badge and holds a dangling lorngnette in one hand while the other rests on an open book, is wearing a WSPU badge. Very good – unposted

[14536]                                                                                                                        £40

135.     MRS PANKHURST      

photographed sitting, turning towards the camera with an open book in her hand. A long, pale stole is draped over her shoulders. A studio portrait, though no photographer is noted. ‘Votes for Women’ is the heading and the caption is ‘Mrs Pankhurst, The Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand, WC’. This card dates from the early days of the WSPU in London, c 1907. Very good – unposted

[15138]                                                                                                                        £55

136.     MRS PANKHURST      

arrested in Victoria Street, 13 February 1908. She is on her way from the WSPU ‘Women’s Parliament’ in Caxton Hall – a policeman holds her left hand – she carries her ‘Parliament’s’ resolution in the other. Published by Photochrome Ltd. On the reverse, a rather complicated message to unravel. The card was posted from South Kensington to ‘Mrs Dixon, 66 Ceylon Place, Eastbourne’ in March 1908, I can’t make out the day on the postmark. I think it was a joint effort – the first sender, signing for ‘A & F (?), ‘writes this in the Hall – do so wish you here with us’, and a second  (‘L’) continues ‘C. Pankhurst is speaking as I write. Mrs P. has been released today instead of tomorrow so will occupy the chair – I wish you were herre – must listen’. The meeting the writers of the postcard were attending was that held in the Albert Hall on 19 March 1908, at which Mrs Pankhurst, newly released from Holloway, did arrive to take the chair. Her sentence had followed her arrest, as pictured on the reverse.There is another layer, as it were, on the card. In what I think is another, firmer, hand (perhaps that of Mrs Dixon, the recipient), has been written ‘19.3.08 self denial £258 2. 11. 7!!’ This refers to the amount of the money raised in ‘Self Denial Week’ of £258 2s 11d. The figure 7 and the exclamation marks could be interpreted as referring to the £7000, the sum raised in cash, goods and promises by the end of the meeting. I have been unable to identify ‘Mrs Dixon’, who was no longer living at 66 Ceylon Place (a boarding house) in 1911, but perhaps someone with an interest in suffrage activity in Eastbourne will be able to. The card, with its interesting on-the-spot message, has been through the Edwardian post and has a crease across one corner, but is in generally good condition

[15346]                                                                                                                      £180

137.     MRS T BILLINGTON-GREIG    WFL 

A lovely photographic head and shoulders portrait of her – captioned ‘Mrs T Billington-Greig Hon Organising Sec Women’s Freedom League 1 Robert St, London WC’. The photo is by Brinkley and Son, Glasgow. Fine – unposted – unusual

[14573]                                                                                                                        £65

138.     MRS WOLSTENHOLME ELMY      

real photographic postcard of one of the suffrage campaigns most earnest workers and one of the WSPU’s earliest supporters. The photograph was taken in May 1907 when the WSPU-nominated photographer called at her home. Fine – unposted – scarce

[14283]                                                                                                                      £100

139.     REV R.J CAMPBELL      

published in Rotary Photographic Series. A rather angelic-looking muscular Christian – and fervent supporter of women’s suffrage. He spoke out against the White Slave Trade.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. Fine – unposted

[14652]                                                                                                                        £65

140.     WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE MRS DESPARD AND MRS COBDEN SANDERSON WAITING FOR MR ASQUITH   WFL 

‘Arrested August 19th, 1909’ They are shown wating outside 10 Downing Street as part of the campaign to picket the Prime Minister in a vain attempt to force him to accept a petition. Fine condition – scarce – unposted

[15354]                                                                                                                         £65

Suffrage Artist Postcard

141.     ‘THE RIGHT DISHONOURABLE DOUBLE-FACE ASQUITH’    WSPU 

The cartoon by ‘A Patriot’ appeared on the cover of the 19 Nov 1909 edition of ‘Votes for Women’. With one of his faces ‘Citizen Asquith’ is addressing a Peer of the Realm with ‘Down with privilege of birth – up with Democratic rule!’ and with the other he turns to a woman in prison clothes who is holding out her petition for Liberty and Equality and remonstrates ‘The rights of government belong to the aristocrats by birth – men. No liberty or equality for women!’ This image was also produced as a poster and resonated strongly among WSPU supporters. You can read about the artist – Alfred  Pearse in my ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’. The card was published by the WSPU. From Miss Chapman’s collection. In very good – unposted – condition

[15150]                                                                                                                      £150

Suffrage Postcard: Commercial Comic

142.     THEM PESKY SUFFRAGETTES WANTS EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES      

says old man confronted with a door labelled ‘For Ladies Only’. Rather topical, again. A US postcard. Fine – unposted

[14000]                                                                                                                        £20

General Non-Fiction

143.     AARON, Jane And WALBY, Sylvia Out of the Margins: women’s studies in the Nineties  Falmer Press 1991

Women’s Studies was then a rapidly expanding area in teaching and research. The collection of essays derive from a conference organized by the then new Women’s Studies Network held in July 1990 and provide a guide to the rapid institutional growth of Women’s Studies and feminist teaching practice and to intellectual developments on race and ethnicity, sexuality and lesbianism. Soft covers – very good

[8230]                                                                                                                           £8

144.     ADELMAN, Jeanne And ENGUIDANOS, Gloria (eds) Racism in the Lives of Women: testimony, theory and guides to antiracist practice  Harrington Park Press 1995

Paper covers – mint

[5226]                                                                                                                           £5

145.     AHMED, Leila Women and Gender in Islam   Yale University Press 1992

Fine in d/w

[10512]                                                                                                                        £15

146.     ALBERMAN, Eva And DENNIS, K.J. Late Abortions in England and Wales   Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 1984

A report of a national confidential survey by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Soft covers – good – ex-library

[9010]                                                                                                                           £8

147.     ALLEN, Jennifer (ed) Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures   State University of New York Press 1990

Paper covers – very good

[5164]                                                                                                                           £5

148.     ALLSOPP, Anne The Education and Employment of Girls in Luton, 1874-1924: widening opportunities and lost freedoms  Boydell Press/Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 2005

Examines the education of Luton girls and its relationship with employment opportunities. Mint in d/w

[10963]                                                                                                                        £20

149.     ASHTON-WARNER, Sylvia Teacher: the testament of an inspired teacher  Virago 1980

With new introduction by Dora Russell. Soft covers – fine – signed by Carmen Callil on free front endpaper.

[9504]                                                                                                                           £9

150.     BACK, Lee And SOLOMOS, John Theories of Race and Racism: a reader  Routledge 2000

Soft covers – fine. Heavy

[9986]                                                                                                                         £12

151.     BASCH, Françoise Relative Creatures: Victorian women in society and the novel  Schocken Books 1974

Very good

[13467]                                                                                                                          £4

152.     BEACHY, Robert Et Al (eds) Women, Business and Finance in 19th-century Europe: rethinking separate spheres  Berg 2006

Fine

[9208]                                                                                                                         £12

153.     BEARE, Geraldine and WHITE, Cynthia L. Moira House: portrait of a progressive school 1875-2000  Moira House Ltd 2000

A thorough history of this independent girls’ school, based for many years in Eastbourne. With over 90 illustrations. Fine in fine d/w – signed by Cynthia White

[15454]                                                                                                                        £12

154.     BEER, Janet Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: studies in short fiction  Palgrave 1997 r/p

Focusses on a wide range of short fiction by these three women writers. Hardovers – fine

[11769]                                                                                                                        £12

155.     BENJAMIN, Marina (ed) Science and Sensibility: gender and scientific enquiry 1780-1945  Basil Blackwell 1994

An interesting collection of essays, Soft covers – mint

[11668]                                                                                                                        £18

156.     BERRY, Mrs Edward And MICHAELIS, Madame (eds) 135 Kindergarten Songs and Games   Charles and Dible, no date [1881]

‘These songs are printed to supply a want in English Kindergartens’ – the music is, of course, included – as are movement instructions. Mme Michaelis ran the Croydon Kindergarten. Very good

[9035]                                                                                                                         £48

157.     BLAIR, Karen The Clubwoman as Feminist: true womanhood redefined, 1868-1914  Holmes and Meier 1980

A study of the US women’s club movement – particularly the literary clubs – which offered an opportunity for domestic-oriented middle-class women to expand their intersts and activities beyond the home and into cultural and civic realms. Soft covers – fine

[15418]                                                                                                                          £8

158.     BLAIR, Kirstie Form & Faith in Victorian Poetry & Religion   OUP 2012

By assessing the discourses of church architecture and liturgy the author demonstrates that Victorian poets both reflected on and affected ecclesiastical practices – and then focuses on particular poems to show how High Anglican debates over formal worship were dealt with by Dissenting, Broad Church, and Roman Catholic poets and other writers. Features major poets such as the Browning, Tennyson, Hopkins, Rossetti and Hardy – as well as many minor writers. Mint in d/w (pub price £62)

[13693]                                                                                                                        £35

159.     BLAKE, Trevor (ed) The Gospel of Power: ‘Egoist’ essays by Dora Marsden   Union of Egoists (Baltimore) 2021

Essays by Dora Marsden (1882-1960), sometime member of the WSPU, published in ‘The Egoist’. Soft covers – mint

[15213]                                                                                                                          £8

160.     BLAKELEY, Georgina and BRYSON, Valerie (eds) The Impact of Feminism on Political Concepts and Debates   Manchester University Press 2007

Soft covers – mint

[11549]                                                                                                                        £10

161.     BOASE, Tessa Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather: fashion, fury and feminism – women’s fight for change  Aurum Press 2018

In fact, Mrs Pankhurst is rather a red herring, as it were, for this is really the story of the founding of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds by Mrs Etta Lemon and her campaign to halt the plumage trade that, in decorating hats, destroyed birds. Very good in slightly torn d.w

[15423]                                                                                                                          £8

162.     Boucé, Paul-Gabriel (ed) Sexuality in 18th-century Britain   Manchester University Press 1982

Includes essays by Roy Porter, Ruth Perry and Pat Rogers – among others. Very good in d/w

[11034]                                                                                                                        £24

163.     BOXER, Marilyn And QUATAERT, Jean H. Connecting Spheres: European women in a globalizing world, 1500 to the present  OUP 2000

Soft covers – mint

[9353]                                                                                                                         £12

164.     BOYD, Kenneth Scottish Church Attitudes to Sex, Marriage and the Family 1850-1914   John Donald 1980

Fine in d/w

[9679]                                                                                                                         £18

165.     BURSTALL, Sara A. The Story of the Manchester High School for Girls 1871-1911   Manchester University Press 1911

Very good internally – slightly marked cover

[9606]                                                                                                                         £15

166.     CADBURY, Edward, MATHESON, M. Cecile and SHANN, George Women’s Work and Wages: a phase of life in an industrial city  University of Chicago Press 1907

US edition of this study of women’s work in Birmingham. Good – inner hinge a little loose

[8076]                                                                                                                         £50

167.     CALLEN, Anthea Angel in the Studio: women in the arts and crafts movement 1870-1914  Astragal Books 1979

Widely researched and beautifully illustrated. Fine in d/w

[14420]                                                                                                                        £55

168.     CAVENDISH, Ruth Women on the Line   Routledge 1982

Explores the relationship between sex, class and imperialism as reflected in the lives of women working on the assembly line of a large factory.  The author worked on an assembly line alongside women who had settled in England from Ireland, the Caribbean or the Indian subcontinent. Paper covers – fine

[10001]                                                                                                                        £10

169.     CHARLES, Nickie And HUGHES-FREELAND, Felicia (eds) Practising Feminism: identity, difference, power  Routledge 1996

Soft covers – mint

[8707]                                                                                                                           £8

170.     CHECKLAND, Olive Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland: social welfare and the voluntary principle  John Donald Ltd 1980

Fine in fine d/w

[9241]                                                                                                                         £20

171.     CLARK, Margaret Homecraft: a guide to the modern home and family  Routledge, 3rd ed 1978 (r/p)

The author was senior adviser for Home Economics for Derbyshire. The book was a textbook, suitable for school Home Economics courses. First published in 1966. Soft covers – very good

[10288]                                                                                                                          £6

172.     CLARKE, Norma Dr Johnson’s Women   Hambledon and London 2000

investigates lives of Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney – exploring their relationship with Dr Johnson, with each other and with the world of letters. Excellent reading. Mint in d/w

[9736]                                                                                                                           £8

173.     CLARKE, Patricia The Governesses: letters from the colonies 1862-1882  Hutchinson 1985

Fine in fine d/w

[12463]                                                                                                                          £7

174.     COHEN, Monica Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: women, work and home  CUP 1998

Offers new readings of narratives by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, George Eliot, Emily Eden etc to show how domestic work, the most feminine of all activities, gained much of its social credibility by positioning itself in relation to the emergent professions. Soft cover – fine

[12419]                                                                                                                        £25

175.     COLBY, Vineta The Singular Anomaly: women novelists of the 19th century  New York University Press 1970

Soft covers – good internally – covers rubbed and bumped

[8311]                                                                                                                         £12

176.     CRAWFORD, Elizabeth Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle  Francis Boutle 2009 (r/p)

Pioneering access to education at all levels for women, including training for the professions, the women of the Garrett circle opened the way for women to gain employment in medicine, teaching, horticulture and interiior design – and were also deeply involved in the campaign for women’s suffrage. Includes studies of the work of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Davies, Millicent Fawcett, Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, Fanny Wilkinson, Annie Swynnerton – and many women of their day. Soft covers, large format, over 70 illustrations. Mint

[15386]                                                                                                                        £25

177.     CUNNINGTON, C. Willett Feminine Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century   William Heinemann 1935

Good

[2558]                                                                                                                         £15

178.     CURTHOYS, Jean Feminist Amnesia: the wake of women’s liberation  Routledge 1997

Soft covers – fine

[8704]                                                                                                                           £8

179.     DAVIS, Gwen and JOYCE, Beverly Poetry by Women to 1900: a bibliography of American and British Writers  Mansell 1991

An exhaustive listing. Hard covers – 340, double-columned, pages -fine

[15440]                                                                                                                        £10

180.     DEAN-JONES, Lesley Ann Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science   OUP 1996

Soft covers – fine

[11865]                                                                                                                        £15

181.     DEMOOR, Marysa Their Fair Share: women, power and criticism in the ‘Athenaeum’, from Millicent Garrett Fawcett to Katherine Mansfield, 1870-1920  Ashgate 2000

Mint

[11667]                                                                                                                        £25

182.     DON VANN, J. and VANARSDEL, Rosemary T. (eds) Periodicals of Queen Victoria’s Empire: an exploration  University of Toronto Press 1996

Fine in fine d/w

[9600]                                                                                                                         £18

183.     DOODY, Margaret Anne The True Story of the Novel   Fontana 1998

Aims to prove that the novel is an ancient form – with a continuous history of 2000 years. Soft covers – very good

[10562]                                                                                                                          £5

184.     DURHAM, Edith High Albania   Virago 1985

First published in 1909. Soft covers – very good

[10802]                                                                                                                          £8

185.     DYHOUSE, Carol Girl Trouble: panic and progress in the history of young women  Zed Books 2013

Paper covers – mint

[15209]                                                                                                                          £8

186.     ELLIS, Mrs Sarah Stickney The Select Works   Henry G. Langley (New York) 1844

Includes ‘The Poetry of Life’, ‘Pictures of Private Life’, ‘A Voice From the Vintage, on the force of example addressed to those who think and feel’

Good in original decorative cloth

[11234]                                                                                                                        £48

187.     FADERMAN, Lillian Surpassing the Love of Men: romantic friendship and love between women from the Renaissance to the present  The Women’s Press 1991 (r/p)

Paper covers – fine

[15049]                                                                                                                          £8

188.     FINDLAY, J.J. (ed) The Young Wage-Earner and the Problem of His Education: essays and reports  Sigwick and Jackson 1918

For ‘His Education’ read also ‘Hers’. The essays include: ‘From Home Life to Industrial Life: with special reference to adolescent girls, by James Shelley, prof of education, University College, Southampton; ‘The Young Factory Girl’ by Emily Matthias, superintendent of women employees, the Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Co, Bradford and the reports include: ‘Working Girls and Trade Schools (London)’ by Theodora Pugh and ‘The Sons and Daughters of Farming Folk’ by J.J. Findlay. Very good

[8026]                                                                                                                         £25

189.     FRANCOME, Colin Abortion Freedom: a worldwide movement  Allen & Unwin 1984

Very good in d/w

[9006]                                                                                                                           £5

190.     FRYE, Susan And ROBERTSON, Karen (Eds) Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: women’s alliances in early modern England  OUP 1999

A collection of essays exploring how early modern women associated with other women in a variety of roles, from alewives to midwives, prostitutes to pleasure seekers, slaves to queens, serving maids to ladies in waiting…’. Fine

[7435]                                                                                                                         £28

191.     FULLER, Margaret ‘These Sad But Glorious Days’: dispatches from Europe, 1846-1850  Yale University Press 1991

Fine in d/w

[8887]                                                                                                                         £18

192.     FURLONG, Monica Visions and Longings: medieval women mystics  Mowbray 1996

Writings by and about eleven women Christian mystics who lived and worked between the 11th and 14th centuries. Fine in fine d/w

[9391]                                                                                                                         £12

193.     GACEMI, Baya I, Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist   University of Nebraska Press 2006

The ‘autobiography’ of a young Algerian woman. Translated by Paul Cote and Constantina Mitchell.

[9974]                                                                                                                           £6

194.     (GARDINER), Sarah Gardiner (ed) Leaves from a Young Girl’s Diary: the journal of Margaret Gardiner 1840-41  Tuttle, Moorhouse & Taylor Co (NY) 1927

The journal kept by Margaret Gardiner who, with her father, a NY State Senator, her mother and her sister (who was to become the wife of a US President), sailed across the Atlantic to Europe. They landed at Liverpool and then proceeded to ‘do’ Europe. Delightful. Very good – scarce

[13478]                                                                                                                        £45

195.     GARRETT, Stephanie Gender   Tavistock 1987

In ‘Society Now’ series. Soft covers – very good

[8759]                                                                                                                           £3

196.     GILBERT, V.E. And TATLA, D.S. Women’s Studies: a bibliography of dissertations 1870-1982  Blackwell 1985

496 double-columned pages. A few pencilled comments on the free front endpaper, otherwise fine in d/w

[2779]                                                                                                                         £10

197.     GLUCK, Sherna Berger and PATAI, Daphne (eds) Women’s Words: the practice of oral history  Routledge 1991

Explores the theoretical, methodological, and practical problems that arise when women utilize oral history as a tool of feminist scholarship. Hardback – fine in d/w

[11532]                                                                                                                        £15

198.     GOOD HOUSEKEEPING’S HOME ENCYCLOPAEDIA    Ebury Press 1968 (r/p)

Packed with information and illustrations. How very retro. Large format – very good in rubbed d/w – heavy

[10297]                                                                                                                        £10

199.     GOODENOUGH, Simon Jam and Jerusalem: a pictorial history of the Women’s Institute   Collins 1977

Very good in d/w

[15434]                                                                                                                          £5

200.     GREGORY, Abigail And WINDEBANK, Jan Women’s Work in Britain and France: practice, theory and policy  Macmillan 2000

Reveals profound structural changes in the British and French economies which will make it necessary to revalue caring and other unpaid work and to change men’s work patterns towards those conventionally associated with women, rather than calling on women to adapt to structures created for and by men. Soft covers – mint

[8709]                                                                                                                         £10

201.     HARTLEY, Jenny (ed) Hearts Undefeated: women’s writing of the Second World War  Virago 1994

Soft covers – very good

[9135]                                                                                                                         £10

202.     HASTE, Cate Rules of Desire: sex in Britain: World War 1 to the present  Pimlico 1992

Soft covers – very good

[10519]                                                                                                                          £8

203.     HESSELGRAVE, Ruth Avaline Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle   Yale University Press 1927

An 18th-century Bath literary salon. Lady Miller was the first English woman to describe her travels in Italy. Fine

[3020]                                                                                                                         £30

204.     HOBMAN, D.L. Go Spin, You Jade: studies in the emancipation of woman  Watts 1957

Traces women’s changing status from the Renaissance to the mid-20th century. Very good in slightly chipped d/w

[1311]                                                                                                                           £5

205.     HOLT, Anne A Ministry To The Poor: being a history of the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society, 1836-1936  Henry Young (Liverpool) 1936

Very good – scarce

[9243]                                                                                                                         £45

206.     HORSFIELD, Margaret Biting the Dust: the joys of housework  Fourth Estate 1997

Mint in d/w

[10183]                                                                                                                          £5

207.     HUFTON, Olwen The Prospect Before Her: a history of women in western Europe: vol 1 1500-1800  HarperCollins 1995

Considers the situation of all kinds of women in all aspects of their lives across the whole of western Europe. With 46 illustrations. Fine in fine d/w – 654 pp.

[15456]                                                                                                                          £8

208.     HUGHES, Linda K. And LUND, Michal Victorian Publishing and Mrs Gaskell’s Work   University Press of Virginia 1999

Fine in fine d/w

[9537]                                                                                                                         £15

209.     (HUTCHINSON) Kathleen Coburn (ed) The Letters of Sara Hutchinson from 1800 to 1835   Routledge 1954

Friend of Mary and William Wordsworth – loved by Coleridge. Good

[9604]                                                                                                                         £18

210.     JOHN, Angela (ed) Unequal Opportunities: women’s employment in England 1800-1918  Blackwell 1986

Essays, among others, on the Leicester hosiery industry, Leeds and London tailoring trade, the London bookbinding and printing trade, domestic service, clerical work, and on women and trade unionism. Soft covers – fine

[15455]                                                                                                                          £8

211.     KEDDIE, Nikki And BARON, Beth (eds) Women in Middle Eastern History: shifting boundaries in sex and gender  Yale University Press 1991

The first study of gender relations in the Middle East from the earliest Islamic period to the present. Fine in d/w

[10511]                                                                                                                        £15

212.     KENEALY, Arabella Feminism and Sex-Extinction   E.P. Dutton & Co (NY) 1920

Anti-feminist eugenicist polemic. US edition is scarce. Very good internally – cloth cover a little bumped and rubbed

[12107]                                                                                                                        £25

213.     KERTZER, David and BARBAGLIO, Marzio (eds) Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1789-1913   Yale University Press 2002

A collection of essays under the headings: Economy and Family Organization: State, Religion, Law and the Family; Demographic Forces; Family Relations. 420pp Heavy. Mint in d/w

[11037]                                                                                                                        £18

214.     KIDD, Alan and NICHOLLS, David (eds) Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: middle-class identity in Britain 1800-1940  Manchester University Press 1999

Soft covers – very good

[11759]                                                                                                                        £12

215.     KING, Brenda Silk and Empire   Manchester University Press 

A study of the Anglo-Indian silk trade, challenging the notion that Britain always exploited its empire. Mint in d/w (pub price £55)

[9845]                                                                                                                         £25

216.     KIRBY, Joan (ed) The Plumpton Letters and Papers   CUP for the Royal Historical Society 1996

Letters addressed mainly to Sir William Plumpton (1404-80) and his son, Sir Robert (1453-1525). Good in marked d/w- but has perhaps been exposed to damp at some point

[10954]                                                                                                                        £10

217.     LEE, Julia Sun-Joo The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel   OUP 2010

Investigates the shaping influence of the American slave narrative on the Victorian novel in the years between the British Abolition Act and the American Emancipation Proclamation – and argues that Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thackeray and Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative. Mint in d/w (pub price £40)

[13436]                                                                                                                        £15

218.     LEGGET, Jane Local Heroines: a women’s history gazetteer to England, Scotland and Wales  Pandora 1988

Tracking women from Aberdeen to Zennor. With maps and a biographical index. Such a good idea. Mint in d/w

[7441]                                                                                                                         £10

219.     LEWIS, Jane Women in England 1870-1950: sexual divisions and social change  Wheatsheaf Books 1986 (r/p)

An interpretive account of the role of women in English society. Soft covers –  good – some marginal pencilled lines

[10872]                                                                                                                          £6

220.     LITOFF, Judy Barrett And SMITH, David C. We’re In This War, Too: World War II Letters from American Women in Uniform  OUP 1994

Fine in d/w

[8310]                                                                                                                         £16

221.     LOANE, M. The Queen’s Poor: life as they find it in town and country  Edward Arnold (new and cheaper edition0 1906

Martha Loane, a Queen’s Nurse in Portsmouth, wrote as a social investigator among the ‘respectable poor’. This was her first study. Good in decorative boards

[7995]                                                                                                                         £35

222.     LYNN, Susan Progressive Women in Conservative Times: racial justice, peace, and feminism, 1945 to the 1960s  Rutgers University Press 1992

Paper covers – mint

[5219]                                                                                                                          £10

223.     MACKIE, Vera Creating Socialist Women in Japan: gender, labour and activism, 1900-1937  CUP 1997

Mint in d/w

[14429]                                                                                                                        £18

224.     MCINTYRE, Neil How British Women Became Doctors: the story of the Royal Free Hospital and its Medical School  Wenrowave Press 2014

A very thorough history of the Royal Free and the London School of Medicine for Women- written by an eminent doctor – a charming man. Soft covers – 580 pages – fine

[15450]                                                                                                                        £20

225.     MALOS, Ellen (ed) The Politics of Housework   Allison & Busby 1980

Fine in d/w

[1819]                                                                                                                           £4

226.     MARKS, Lara Metropolitan Maternity maternity and infant welfare services in early 20th century London  Rodopi 1996

Soft covers – fine

[11624]                                                                                                                        £22

227.     MARTIN, Jane Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England   Leicester University Press 1999

Mint (pub price £65)

[10781]                                                                                                                        £15

228.     MASON, Michael The Making of Victorian Sexuality   OUP 1994

Fine in d/w

[10599]                                                                                                                        £14

229.     METROPOLITAN BOROUGH OF HACKNEY Catalogue of Books in the Public Libraries   Public Libraries Committee, Hackney no date [1911?]

A listing of all the books held in Hackney Public Libraries c 1910. Each book’s listing gives the name of author, title and date of publication. Very interesting

[13479]                                                                                                                        £25

230.     MEWS, Hazel Frail Vessels: woman’s role in women’s novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot  Athlone Press 1969

Very good in d/w

[3801]                                                                                                                         £12

231.     MILLER, Lucasta The Bronte Myth   Cape 2001

Hardcover – fine –  in very good d/w

[15216]                                                                                                                          £8

232.     MINKIN, Mary Jane And WRIGHT, Carol What Every Woman Needs to Know About Menopause: the years before, during, and after  Yale University Press 1996

Mint in d/w – heavy

[9987]                                                                                                                         £12

233.     MUMM, Susan (ed) All Saints Sisters of the Poor: an Anglican Sisterhood in the 19th century  Boydel Press/Church of England Record Society 2001

A history of the Sisterhood that was founded by Harriet Brownlow Byron in 1850 to work in the slums of Marylebone – but then spread its net much wider. This volume comprises material drawn from the Sisterhood’s archives. V. interesting. Mint

[10964]                                                                                                                        £15

234.     NASH, David Secularism, Art and Freedom   Leicester Unviersity Press 1992

A study of the Secular movement in Victorian England. Fine

[7447]                                                                                                                         £18

235.     NATIONAL LESBIAN AND GAY SURVEY What a Lesbian Looks Like: writings by lesbians on their lives and lifestyles  Rooutledge 1992

Paper covers – mint

[5281]                                                                                                                         £10

236.     NORWICH HIGH SCHOOL 1875-1950    privately printed, no date [1950]

A GPDST school. Very good internally – green cloth covers sunned – ex-university library

[9612]                                                                                                                         £15

237.     ORAM, Alison And TURNBULL, Annmarie The Lesbian History Sourcebook: love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970  Routledge 2001

Soft covers – fine

[9092]                                                                                                                         £12

238.     OTTER, Samuel Philadelphia Stories: America’s literature of race and freedom  OUP 2010

An account of Philadelphia’s literary history. Hardback – mint in d/w

[13423]                                                                                                                        £12

239.     PALMER, Beth Women’s Authorship and Editorship in Victorian Culture   OUP 2011

Draws on extensive periodical and archival material to bring new perspectives to the study of sensation fiction in the Victorian period. Mint in d/w (pub price £60)

[13432]                                                                                                                        £20

240.     PEACH, Linden Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction: gender, desire and power  University of Wales Press 2008

The first comparative study of fiction by late 20th and 21st-century women writers from England, Southern Ireland and Wales. Soft covers – mint

[11572]                                                                                                                        £15

241.     PEEL, John And POTTS, Malcolm Textbook of Contraceptive Practice   CUP 1969

Soft covers – very good

[9021]                                                                                                                           £6

242.     PERKIN, Joan Victorian Women   John Murray 

Women discussing their lives in their own words – through letters, memoirs etc – during the long 19thc. Fine in fine d/w – illustrated

[4254]                                                                                                                           £8

243.     PHILLIPS, Margaret Mann Willingly to School: memories of York College for Girls 1919-1924  Highgate Publications 1989

Good in card covers – though ex-library

[13124]                                                                                                                        £10

244.     PICHLER, Pia Talking Young Femininities   Palgrave 2009

Explores the spontaneous talk of adolescent British girls from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Hardovers – mint ( pub price £50)

[11525]                                                                                                                        £10

245.     PINES, Davida The Marriage Paradox: modernist novels and the cultural imperative to marry  University Press of Florida 2006

Mint

[10188]                                                                                                                        £18

246.     PORTER, Elisabeth Peacebuilding: women in international perspective  Routledge 2007

Hardcovers – mint

[15176]                                                                                                                        £20

247.     POTTS, Malcolm, DIGGORY, Peter And PEEL, John Abortion   CUP 1977

Soft covers – very good – 575pp

[9007]                                                                                                                           £8

248.     PURKISS, Diane The Witch in History: early modern and 20th century representations  Routledge 1996

Soft covers – mint

[9395]                                                                                                                         £12

249.     RAPPOPORT, Jill Giving Women: alliance and exchange in Victorian culture  OUP 2012

examines the literary expression and cultural consequences of English women’s giving from the 1820s to the First World War – in the work of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell and Christina Rossetti – as well as in literary annuals and political pamphlets. Through giving, women redefined the primary allegiances of teh everyday lives, forged public coalitions, and advanced campaigns for abolition, slum reform, eugenics, and suffrage. Mint in d/w (pub price £45.99)

[13413]                                                                                                                        £32

250.     RICHARDSON, Anna Steese A Manual for Club Women   L.C. Smith & Corona Typewriters Inc (New York) 1919

A handbook telling women ‘How to run a club’ – with all the attendant considerations. Such as, ‘How to conduct a meeting’, ‘Minutes and how to keep them’, ‘Club finances and how to handle them’, ‘Publicity and how to get it’ etc. The author was ‘Director, Good Citizenship Bureau of the Women’s Home Companion’. The title page bears the rubber stamp of ‘Springfield Typewriter Exchange, 353 Bridge street, Springfield, Mass’ and laid in is the 8-page ‘Constitution and By-Laws of the Somers Women’s Club’. Good

[15419]                                                                                                                        £12

251.     RIOJA, Isabel Ramos The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life   Spinifex 1998

A photographic study of female circumcision. Soft covers – large format – mint

[7577]                                                                                                                           £8

252.     ROBERTS, Alison Hathor Rising: the serpent power in ancient Egypt  Northgate 1995

Soft covers – fine

[11866]                                                                                                                          £8

253.     ROBERTS, Robert The Classic Slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century  Penguin 1980 (r/p)

The ‘century’ is, of course, the 20th – an interesting study of life in the area of Manchester in which the Pankhursts had lived – and in which the WSPU was founded. Paper covers – good

[15451]                                                                                                                          £3

254.     ROBINSON, Annabel, PURKIS, John, MASSING, Ann A Florentine Procession: a painting by Jane Benham Hay at Homerton College, Cambridge  Homestead Press (Cambridge) 1997

A study of the Pre-raphaelite style painting and its artist – who was a friend of Bessie Rayner Parkes. With colour reproduction of the large painting. Paper covers – mint

[2465]                                                                                                                           £8

255.     ROWBOTHAM, Sheila Women, Resistance and Revolution   Allen Lane 1972

Very good in chipped d/w

[1834]                                                                                                                         £10

256.     ROYLE, Edward Victorian Infidels: the origins of the British secularist movement, 1791-1866  Manchester University Press 1974

Very good in d/w

[15431]                                                                                                                        £12

257.     SANCHEZ, Regina Morantz- Conduct Unbecoming a Woman: medicine on trial in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn  OUP 2000

Soft covers – very good

[15212]                                                                                                                          £4

258.     SEAGER, Joni Earth Follies: feminism, politics and the environment  Earthscan 1993

Soft covers – fine

[8708]                                                                                                                           £8

259.     SEARLE, Arthur (ed) Barrington Family Letters 1628-1632   Royal Historical Society 1983

In the main letters to Lady Joan Barrington, the focal point of the extended family, the dowager and respected matriarch on a recognisable early 17th-century pattern. Very good

[10955]                                                                                                                        £12

260.     SEIDLER, Victor The Achilles Heel Reader: men, sexual politics and socialism  Routledge 1991

Paper covers – mint

[5302]                                                                                                                           £5

261.     SHATTOCK, Joanne And WOLFF, Michael (eds) The Victorian Periodical Press: samplings and soundings  Leicester University Press 1992

A collection of essays. Fine in d/w

[3501]                                                                                                                         £28

262.     (SHELLEY) Miranda Seymour Mary Shelley   John Murray 2000

A 655-pp well-written biography. Mint in dustwrapper

[8588]                                                                                                                         £18

263.     SHUTTLE, Penelope And REDGROVE, Peter Alchemy for Women: personal transformation through dreams and the female cycle  Rider 1995

Soft covers – very good

[9430]                                                                                                                           £5

264.     SIMETI, Mary Taylor Travels with a Medieval Queen   Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2002

Retracing the footsteps of a 12th-century princess, Constance of Hauteville, through Germany and Italy. Mint in d/w

[9327]                                                                                                                         £12

265.     SIRAJ-BLATCHFORD, Iram (ed) ‘Race’, Gender and the Education of Teachers   Open University Press 1993

Soft covers – mint

[8711]                                                                                                                           £4

266.     SLATER, Michael The Great Dickens Scandal   Yale University Press 2012

How Dickens sought to cover up his relationship with Ellen Ternan. Mint in d/w (pub price £20)

[13420]                                                                                                                          £8

267.     SMITH, Joan Misogynies   Faber 1990

Reprint, paper covers – mint

[15064]                                                                                                                          £4

268.     SONBOL, Amira El Azhary (ed) Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History   Syracuse University Press 1996

18 essays covering a wide range of material. Soft covers – fine

[10484]                                                                                                                        £12

269.     SOUHAMI, Diana No Modernism Without Lesbians   Head of Zeus 2021

Paper covers – fine

[15210]                                                                                                                          £5

270.     SPENDER, Dale Invisible Women: the schooling scandal  Women’s Press 1989

Pioneering research on sexism in education.  Paper covers – mint

[1667]                                                                                                                           £2

271.     STONE, Dorothy The National: the story of a pioneer college  Robert Hale 1976

History of the pioneering domestic economy training college – The National Training College of Domestic Subjects. Fine in d/w

[8231]                                                                                                                         £12

272.     STOPES, Marie Birth Control Today   Hogarth Press, 12th ed 1957

Very good in d/w

[9003]                                                                                                                           £5

273.     SUTHERLAND, J.A. Victorian Novelists and Publishers   University of Chicago Press 1978

A study of the relationship in the mid 19thc between publishers and authors such as Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Reade, and Bulwer-Lytton. Soft covers – fine

[15432]                                                                                                                          £5

274.     TAYLOR, Jane Contributions of Q.Q.   Jackson & Walford 5th ed, 1855

The majority of these essays were first published in the ‘Youth’s Magazine’, between 1816 and 1822.  Good in original cloth

[1699]                                                                                                                         £15

275.     THE LONDON JOURNAL: a review of Metropolitan Society Past and Present    Summer 1985

Vol 11, no 1 – contains, among other articles, Elizabeth Williams on ‘The Foundation of Royal Holloway College, Egham, 1874-1887

[15457]                                                                                                                          £3

276.     THOMPSON, Dorothy Outsiders: Class, Gender and Nation  Verso 1993

Includes the essay ‘Women and 19th-century Radical Politics: a lost dimension’. Soft covers – mint

[8090]                                                                                                                         £11

277.     TINDALL, Gillian Three Houses, Many Lives: the story of a Cotswold vicarage, a Surrey boarding school and a London home  Vintage 2013

Once again Gillian Tindall works her magic. I loved it (I bought my own copy!)

[13417]                                                                                                                          £5

278.     VANITA, Ruth Sappho and the Virgin Mary: same-sex love and the English literary imagination  Columbia University Press 1996

Soft covers – very good

[11223]                                                                                                                          £8

279.     VICINUS, Martha (ed) Suffer and Be Still: women in the Victorian age  Methuen 1972

An excellent collection of essays. Paper covers – fine – scarce

[2388]                                                                                                                         £25

280.     WANDOR, Michelene Post-War British Drama: looking back in gender  Routledge, revised edition 2001

Soft covers – mint

[5897]                                                                                                                         £12

281.     WILSON, Philip K (ed) Childbirth: Vol 3: Methods and Folklore  Garland Publishing 1996

An anthology of key primary sources centring on methods of childbirth -covering ‘Painless Childbirth’ from the 18th century onwards; ”Caesarian Sections’ and ’20th Century Natural Childbirth’ and ‘Oral Traditions and Folklore of Pregnancy and Childbirth’  A single volume from a 5-voume series. Fine – 433pp

[11065]                                                                                                                        £25

282.     WOLFE, Susan J. And PENELOPE, Julia (eds) Sexual Practice/Textual Theory: lesbian cultural criticism  Blackwell 1993

Paper covers – mint

[5276]                                                                                                                           £5

283.     WOOD, Ethel M. The Pilgrimage of Perseverance   National Council of Social Service 1949

A rather negelected but I think rather good short history of feminist campaigns. Good – though ex-library

[2312]                                                                                                                           £0

284.     ZIMMERMAN, Jan Once Upon the Future: a woman’s guide to tomorrow’s technology  Pandora 1986

Paper covers – very good

[14940]                                                                                                                          £4

General Biography

285.     (ALDRICH-BLAKE) Lord Riddell Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake   Hodder & Stoughton, no date (1920s)

Biography of Louisa Aldrich-Blake, surgeon at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s New Hospital for Women. You can see her portrait bust in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury. Presentation copy from the author, Lord Riddell.

[15283]                                                                                                                        £15

286.     (ALLEN) John C. Hirsh Hope Emily Allen: medieval scholarship and feminism  Pilgrim Books (Oklahoma) 1988

Biography of an American medieval scholar, born in 1883 – who spent time at Newnham. Fine

[11995]                                                                                                                        £15

287.     (AMBERLEY) Bertrand and Patricia Russell (eds) The Amberley Papers: the letters and diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley   Hogarth Press 1937

The epitome of radical liberalism in the mid-19th-century. Both died tragically young. Good

[11044]                                                                                                                        £45

288.     ANON WOMEN’S WHO’S WHO, 1934-5   Shaw Publishing Co 1935

‘An Annual Record of the Careers and Activities of the Leading Women of the Day.’  A mine of information.  Very good

[15290]                                                                                                                        £38

289.     ANON (Agnes Maud Davies) A Book with Seven Seals   Cayme Press 1928

First edition of a classic of Victorian childhood – I think perhaps it is a ‘faction’ – am not sure that it is actually a memoir. If I said that it strikes me as having a hint of Rachel Ferguson about it, those that are familiar with her work will know what I mean. The author’s name was withheld for this first edition. An elegant book – cover a little blotched

[8552]                                                                                                                         £15

290.     (ARNOLD-FOSTER) T.W. Moody and R.A.J. Hawkins (eds) Florence Arnold-Foster’s Irish Journal   OUP 1988

She was the niece and adopted daughter of W.E. Foster.  The journals covers the years 1880-1882 when he was chief secretary for Ireland.  Fine in slightly rubbed d/w

[1043]                                                                                                                         £10

291.     (ASHBURTON) Virginia Surtees The Ludovisi Goddess: the life of Louisa Lady Ashburton  Michael Russell 1984

She was possibly proposed to by Browning – and was the patroness (and perhaps lover) of Harriet Hosmer. Fine in d/w

[8886]                                                                                                                         £18

292.     (BAIRD) Elizabeth Nussbaum Dear Miss Baird: a portrait of a 19th-century family  Longstone Books 2008

Traces the fortunes of a 19th-century family over 60 years, shedding light on issues such as the status of women, education and changing attitudes to religion, love and death. Some pencil lines in margins. Young Gertrude Baird was a talented artist, who died too young. Soft covers -some pencil lines in margins – otherwise fine

[15068]                                                                                                                          £3

293.     (BEALE) Elizabeth Raikes Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham   Constable 1908

Good

[11045]                                                                                                                        £15

294.     (BEETON) Kathryn Hughes The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton   Harper 2006

Excellent biography. Soft covers – fine

[10918]                                                                                                                          £6

295.     BELL, Alan (ed and with an introduction by) Sir Leslie Stephen’s ‘Mausoleum Book’   OUP 1977

Intimate autobiography written for Stephen’s immediate family after the death of his wife, Julia, the mother of Vanessa and Virginia. Very good in d/w

[13199]                                                                                                                        £12

296.     (BOTTLE) Dorothy Bottle Reminiscences of a Queen’s Army Schoolmistress   Arthur Stockwell no date [1936]

Dorothy Bottle (c.1886-1973) taught at schools for the children of the military –  in Ireland, Jamaica, Egypt and Britain and relates her experiences from c 1904-1935. She was an astute and sympathetic observer. Very good – with photographs – very scarce

[15257]                                                                                                                        £55

297.     (BURNEY) Joyce Hemlow (ed) Fanny Burney: selected letters and journals  OUP 1986

Follows her career from her romantic marriage to the impoverished French émigré General d’Arblay to her death 46 years later. Fine in fine d/w

[12030]                                                                                                                        £12

298.     (CAMERON) Victoria Olsen From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian photography  Aurum Press 2003

Fine in d/w

[9345]                                                                                                                         £15

299.     CLAYTON, Ellen English Female Artists   Tinsley Brothers 1876

Biographical essays on English women artists – from the 16th century until 1876. Particularly interesting for the information on 19th-century artists. Two volumes – bumped, rubbed and back board of vol 2 detached, but present. Scarce

[15078]                                                                                                                        £50

300.     (CLEARY) Susanne George Kate M. Cleary: a literary biography with selected works  University of Nebraska Press 1997

Study of woman who wrote stories, poems and articles about life in the American west. Mint in d/w

[5413]                                                                                                                           £5

301.     CRAWFORD, Anne et al (eds) Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women: over 1000 notable women from Britain’s Past  Europa 1983

Soft covers – 536pp – fine

[12408]                                                                                                                        £10

302.     (DE STAEL/CONSTANT) Renee Winegarten Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: a dual biography  Yale University Press 2008

Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w

[11963]                                                                                                                        £12

303.     (DICKINSON) Lyndall Gordon Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her family’s feuds  Virago 2010

Biography of Emily Dickinson. Hardcover in fine condition – in fine d/w

[15207]                                                                                                                          £8

304.     (EDEN) Violet Dickinson (Ed) Miss Eden’s Letters   Macmillan 1919

Born, a Whig, in 1797. Her letters are full of social detail. In 1835 she went to India with her brother when he became governor-general. Very good

[9339]                                                                                                                         £28

305.     (ELIZABETH) Philip Yorke (ed)  Letters of Princess Elizabeth of England, daughter of King George III, and Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg written for the most part to Miss Louisa Swinburne  T. Fisher Unwin 1898

Full of social details – letters written both from England and Germany. Good

[8520]                                                                                                                         £38

306.     EWAN, Elizabeth, PIPES, Rosie etc (eds ) The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women   Edinburgh University Press 2018

Soft covers – 496pp – mint

[15072]                                                                                                                        £16

307.     (GAUTIER) Joanna Richardson Judith Gautier: a biography  Quartet 1986

Biography of French woman of letters – and muse. Soft covers – fine

[12432]                                                                                                                          £6

308.     (GLADSTONE) Lucy Masterman (ed) Mary Gladstone (Mrs Drew): her diaries and letters  Methuen 1930

Daughter of Gladstone, born in 1847, excellent diary and letters, 1858-to her death (1927). Very good in d/w

[8409]                                                                                                                         £18

309.     (GOODINGS) Lennie Goodings A Bite of the Apple: a life with books, writers and Virago  OUP 2020

Autobiography of Lennie Goodings, one of the founders of Virago. Mint in mint d/w

[15091]                                                                                                                          £6

310.     (HALDANE) Elizabeth Haldane From One Century to Another   Alexander Maclehose 1937

She was born in 1862, into an eminent Scottish Liberal family – an interesting autobiography by one who was at the heart of things. Good – cover marked – remains of Boots Library label

[15266]                                                                                                                        £12

311.     (HAMMOND) Mrs John Hays Hammond A Woman’s Part in a Revolution   Longmans, Green 1987

The ‘Revolution’ was the Boer War – her husband was imprisoned by the Boers. Good

[6083]                                                                                                                         £30

312.     (HARRISON) Amy Greener A Lover of Books: the life and literary papers of Lucy Harrison  J.M. Dent 1916

Lucy Harrison (a niece of Mary Howitt) studied at Bedford College, then taught for 20 years at a school in Gower St (Charlotte Mew was a pupil at the school and v. attached to Miss Harrison) and then became headmistress of the Mount School, York. Good – pasted onto the free front end paper is a presentation slip from the editor, Amy Greener, to Mary Cotterell

[11054]                                                                                                                        £18

313.     HAYS, Frances Women of the Day: a biographical dictionary of notable contemporaries  J.B. Lipincott (Philadelphia) 1885

A superb biographical source on interesting British women. Good in original binding – with library shelf mark in ink on spine- scarce

[12594]                                                                                                                        £75

314.     (HOLTBY) Alice Holtby and Jean McWilliam (eds) Winifred Holtby: Letters to a Friend  Collins 1937

Excellent, chatty, letters, dating from 1920-1935, written to her friend, Jean McWilliam, whom she had first met in 1918 while serving with the WAAC in France.  First edition, hard covers, in very good condition

[15253]                                                                                                                        £20

315.     (HOLTBY) Evelyne White Winifred Holtby as I Knew Her: a study of the author and her works  Collins 1938

Very good in d/w

[15252]                                                                                                                        £15

316.     (HOWE) Valarie Ziegler Diva Julia: the public romance and private agony of Julia Ward Howe  Trinity Press International 2003

Hardcover – fine in fine d/w

[11892]                                                                                                                        £10

317.     (JAMESON) Clara Thomas Love and Work Enough: the life of Anna Jameson  Macdonald 1967

Good

[12070]                                                                                                                        £10

318.     (JAMESON) G.H. Needler (ed) Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe   OUP 1939

Very good internally – cover marked

[12451]                                                                                                                        £20

319.     (JEBB)  Alice Salomon Eglantyne Jebb   Union Internationale de Secours Aux Enfants 1936

Short study in French. Paper covers – 53pp – very good

[13170]                                                                                                                          £5

320.     (LEIGH) Michael and Melissa Bakewell Augusta Leigh: Byron’s half-sister – a biography  Chatto & Windus 2000

Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w

[12012]                                                                                                                          £8

321.     (LEVY) Christine Pullen The Woman Who Dared: a biography of Amy Levy  Kingston University Press 2010

An excellent study of a bold spirit. Soft covers -signed by the author – fine – and scarce

[15452]                                                                                                                        £30

322.     (LIDDELL) Simon Winchester The Alice Behind Wonderland   OUP 2011

‘Using Charles Dodgson’s published writings, private diaries, and of course his photographic portraits, Winchester gently exposes the development of Lewis Carroll and the making of his Alice.’ Mint in d/w

[15413]                                                                                                                          £6

323.     MARTINDALE, Hilda Some Victorian Portraits and Others   Allen & Unwin 1948

Biographical essays of members of her circle – including Adelaide Anderson, factory inspector. Very good in d/w

[6071]                                                                                                                         £18

324.     (MARTYN) Christopher Hodgson (compiler) Carrie: Lincoln’s Lost Heroine   privately published 2010

A biographical anthology of works relating to Caroline Eliza Derecourt Martyn, socialist. Soft covers – fine

[14222]                                                                                                                        £10

325.     (MAYNARD) Catherine B. Firth Constance Louisa Maynard: mistress of Westfield College  Allen & Unwin 1949

Very good  – scarce

[11033]                                                                                                                        £15

326.     (MONTAGU) Iris Barry Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu   Ernest Benn 1928

Biography of the intrepid Lady Mary. Good

[8548]                                                                                                                           £9

327.     (MONTGOMERY) Mary Rubio and Elizbeth Waterston (eds) The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: vol 1 1889-1910  OUP 1985

Fine in very good d/w -424pp – heavy

[12426]                                                                                                                        £15

328.     (MORGAN) Sydney Lady Morgan Passage From My Autobiography   Richard Bentley 1859

‘The following pages are the simple records of a transition existence, socially enjoyed, and pelasantly and profitably occupied, during a journey of a few months from Ireland to Italy.’ Good – in original decorative mauve cloth

[13675]                                                                                                                        £18

329.     (NIGHTINGALE) Lynn McDonald (ed) Florence Nightingale’s European Travels   Wilfrid Laurier Press 2004

Her correspondence, and a few short published articles, from her youthful European travels. She is an excellent observer and reporter. Fine in d/w – 802pp

[11112]                                                                                                                        £45

330.     (NORTON) Jane Gray Perkins The Life of Mrs Norton   John Murray 1910

Very good

[3537]                                                                                                                           £8

331.     (ORR) Deborah Orr Motherwell: a girlhood   Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2021

A sharp memoir. Paperback – fine

[15208]                                                                                                                          £3

332.     PARRY, Melanie (ed) Chambers Biographical Dictionary of Women   Chambers 1996

Soft covers – fine – 741pp – heavy

[12421]                                                                                                                        £10

333.     (PASTON) Helen Castor Blood and Roses   Faber 2004

A family biography tracing the Pastons’ story across three generations. Mint in mint d/w

[11981]                                                                                                                          £8

334.     (PINZER) Ruth Rosen & Sue Davidson The Maimie Papers   Virago 1979

Correspondence, beginning in 1910, between Fanny Quincy Howe, a distinguished Bostonian, and Mainie Pinzer, a Jewish prostitute. Fascinating. Paper covers – very good

[5444]                                                                                                                           £5

335.     (PLATH/HUGHES) Diane Middlebrook Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: a marriage  Little,Brown 2004

Fine in fine d/w

[12020]                                                                                                                          £8

336.     (PUREFOY) G. Eland (ed) Purefoy Letters 1735-1753   Sidgwick & Jackson 1931

The letters of Elizabeth Purefoy (1672-1765), whose husband died in 1704, and her son, Henry Purefoy.  Elizabeth Purefoy was, as her epitaph recorded, ‘a woman of excellent understanding, prudent and frugal’ and her letters are full of domestic detail.  Very good – two volumes

[9338]                                                                                                                         £40

337.     ROSE, Phyllis Parallel Lives: five Victorian marriages  Vintage 1984

Studies of the marriages of the Carlyles, Effie Gray & John Ruskin, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill, Catherine Hogarth and Dickens, and George Eliot and George Lewes. Soft covers – good

[15433]                                                                                                                          £5

338.     (RUSKIN) Mary Lutyens (ed) Young Mrs Ruskin in Venice: the picture of society and life with John Ruskin 1849-1852  Vanguard Press (NY) 1965

Very good in d/w

[13200]                                                                                                                        £12

339.     (SEEBOHM) Victoria Glendinning A Suppressed Cry: life and death of a Quaker daughter  Routledge 1969

The short, sad life of Winnie Seebohm, smothered by her loving family. She enjoyed a month at Newnham in 1885, before returning home and dying. Good in d/w – though ex-library

[4276]                                                                                                                           £4

340.     (SEWELL) Mrs Bayly The Life and Letters of Mrs Sewell   James Nisbet, 3rd ed 1889

Memoir of the Quaker writer of moral didactics for children; she was mother of Anna Sewell. Good

[2667]                                                                                                                         £12

341.     (SMITH) Dodie Smith Look Back With Astonishment   W.H. Allen 1979

A volume of autobiography – from the early 1930s and the beginning of her success as a playwright. Good reading copy – ex-public library

[10642]                                                                                                                          £3

342.     (SMITH) Dodie Smith Look Back With Gratitude   Muller, Blond & White 1985

Follows on from ‘Look Back With Atonishment’. Reading copy – ex-public library

[10643]                                                                                                                          £3

343.     (SOYER) Ruth Cowen Relish: the extraordinary life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian celebrity chef  Weidenfeld 2006

Chef and kitchen designer to the Reform Club and reformer of army catering. Mint in d/w

[9824]                                                                                                                           £8

344.     (SPENCE) Susan Magarey etc (eds) Every Yours, C.H. Spence   Wakefield Press 2005

Catherine Helen Spence was an Australian novelist, journalist and campaigner. This is her Autobiography (1825-1910), Diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894-1910). Fine in fine d/w

[15071]                                                                                                                        £12

345.     (SPRING RICE) Lucy Pollard Margery Spring Rice: pioneer of women’s health in the early 20th century  Open Book 2020

Excellent biography of yet another enterprising member of the Garrett family, author of ‘Working Class Wives’. Soft covers – mint

[15074]                                                                                                                        £12

346.     (ST TERESA OF AVILA) St Teresa of Avila by Herself   Penguin Classics 1957 (r/p)

Soft covers – fine

[11950]                                                                                                                          £6

347.     (STEAD) Chris Williams Christina Stead: a life of letters  Virago 1989

Soft covers – fine

[11891]                                                                                                                          £8

348.     (STOWE) Joan Hedrick Harriet Beecher Stowe   OUP 1994

Soft covers – fine

[11991]                                                                                                                          £9

349.     (STUART) Hon. James A. Home (ed) Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart to Miss Louisa Clinton   David Douglas (Edinburgh) 1901 & 1903

Two volumes – complete set. The first volume covers the period 1817 to 1825 and the second volume (called ‘Second Series’) that from1826 to 1834. Society observed. Very good – two volumes together

[13335]                                                                                                                        £38

350.     (TAYLOR) Nicola Beauman The Other Elizabeth Taylor   Persephone 2009

Biography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15089]                                                                                                                          £8

351.     (TENNYSON) James O. Hoge Lady Tennyson’s Journal   University Press of Virginia 1981

Fine in d/w

[9675]                                                                                                                         £18

352.     (TERNAN) Claire Tomalin The Invisible Woman: the story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens  Viking 1990

Actress and Dickens’ ‘intimate companion’. Hardcovers – very good in rubbed d/w

[15414]                                                                                                                          £5

353.     (TREMAIN) Rose Tremain Rosie: scenes from a vanished life   Vintage 2018

Autobiography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15093]                                                                                                                          £4

354.     (TROUBRIDGE) Jaqueline Hope-Nicholson (ed) Life Amongst the Troubridges: journals of a young Victorian 1873-1884 by Laura Troubridge  John Murray 1966

Very good in rubbed d/w

[9324]                                                                                                                         £10

355.     (TUCKER) Agnes Giberne A Lady of England: the life and letters of Charlotte Maria Tucker  Hodder & Stoughton 1895

The standard biography of a popular children’s and religious writer – who spent the later years of her life as a missionary in India.  Good – though ex-university library

[9599]                                                                                                                         £28

356.     (TUDOR) Maria Perry Sisters to the King   deutsch 2002

Lives of the sisters of Henry VIII – Queen Margaret of Scotland and Queen Mary of France. Soft covers – fine

[12024]                                                                                                                          £4

357.     (VICTORIA) Agatha Ramm (ed) Beloved and Darling Child: last letters between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter 1886-1901  Alan Sutton 1990

Mint in d/w

[6509]                                                                                                                         £10

358.     (VICTORIA) Dorothy Marshall The Life and Times of Victoria   Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1992 (r/p)

Lavishly illustrated. Mint in d/w

[6510]                                                                                                                         £10

359.     (WARWICK) Charlotte Fell-Smith Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick (1625-1678), her family and friends   Longmans, Green 1901

Very good

[1754]                                                                                                                         £15

360.     (WORTH) Edith Saunders The Age of Worth: courtier to the Empress Eugenie  Longmans 1954

Interesting social history. Good – though ex-Boots library, with label pasted on to front cover.

[4013]                                                                                                                           £5

361.     (WRIGHT) Margaret Lane Frances Wright and the ‘Great Experiment’   Manchester University Press 1972

An Owenite – the ‘Great Experiment’ was Nashoba, a utopian community in America. Very good

[6081]                                                                                                                         £18

362.     (WYNNE) Anne Fremantle (ed) The Wynne Diaries Vol II (1794-1798)   OUP 1937

I’ve loved Betsey and Eugenia Wynne ever since I encountered them about 50 years ago in the condensed, one volume, Oxford Classics edition of the Wynne diaries – and then followed them through the three full published volumes. They are rattling around Europe, on land and sea, during the war with France. Very good in very good d/w

[9609]                                                                                                                         £35

363.     (WYNNE) Anne Fremantle (ed) The Wynne Diaries Vol III (1798-1820)   OUP 1940

I’ve loved Betsey and Eugenia Wynne ever since I encountered them about 50 years ago in the condensed, one volume, Oxford Classics edition of the Wynne diaries – and then followed them through the three full published volumes. In this vol Betsey is married to Capt Fremantle, who becomes an admiral in the course of fighting Napoleon at sea. Betsey is at home in England and the letters and diary give a wonderful picture of civilian life at all levels of society. Very good in very good d/w

[15077]                                                                                                                        £35

General Ephemera

364.     The Home Friend (New Series)   SPCK 1854

4 vols of miscellany of fact and fiction. Very good in embossed decorative original cloth – together

[8313]                                                                                                                         £45

365.     VICTORIA LEAGUE – BATH BRANCH – AWARD OF MERIT    

The Victoria League was founded by women in 1901 to promote greater understanding between all parts of the British Empire – concentrating on hospitality and education. This certificate – Award of Merit – was awarded to Francis A. Bodger – for  ‘Australia’, presumably an essay. Francis Ainsworth Bodger was born in 1877, in 1911 was a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, and died in Bath in 1940. The certificate gives the name of the Branch President as Leila Cubitt, and she died in Bath in 1951. The decorative certificate has at its centre a black & white illustration by Robert Anning Bell ‘What is the Flag of England Winds of the World Declare’. Good

[13771]                                                                                                                        £12

366.     ASSOCIATION OF ASSISTANT MISTRESSES Education Policy; with special reference to Secondary Education   no date (early 20th c)

4-pp leaflet – good – ex-Board of Education library

[14163]                                                                                                                          £5

367.     AUTOGRAPHS – THE GUILDHOUSE      

The Guildhouse was an ecumenical place of worship and cultural centre founded in 1921 by Maude Royden. On 4 sheets of paper are fixed 25 cut-out signatures, including those of Maude Royden, Hudson Shaw, Daisy Dobson (Maude Royden’s secretary), Zoe Procter (former WSPU activist), and Katherine Courtney (of the NUWSS). Together

[13061]                                                                                                                        £45

368.     BINFIELD, Clyde Belmont’s Portias: Victorian nonconformists and middle-class education for girls  Dr Williams’ Trust 1981

The 35th Friends of Dr Williams’s Library Lecture. Paper covers – 35pp – good – scarce

[9158]                                                                                                                         £18

369.     BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION      

Memorandum of the Articles of Association, and by-laws of the British Medical Association, together with a few other items sent with a letter, dated 17 July 1922, welcoming Dr Gladys Stableforth, Moorfields, Fenham, Northumberland as a member of the BMA.

[8762]                                                                                                                           £3

370.     BURTON, Elaine Domestic Work: Britain’s largest industry  Muller 1944

A discusssion of whether housewives should be paid for their house work. Elaine Burton (1904-1991), later Baroness Burton of Coventry, was a Labour MP, 1950-1959. Paper covers – 20pp very good

[15519]                                                                                                                          £5

371.     CHARITY ORGANISATION REVIEW Vol X (New Series) July To Dec 1901    Longmans, Green 1902

half-yearly bound volume of the COS’s own magazine. Very good

[9244]                                                                                                                         £28

372.     CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY H. Holman A Restatement of the First Principles of Charity Organisation Work   COS 1912

Paper read on 21 May 1912 at the 21st Annual National Conference of Charity Organisation Societies, Manchester. Paper covers – 24pp – good – unusual

[14100]                                                                                                                        £14

373.     CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY J.W. Pennyman The Cost of Good Work   COS 1895

A Paper read at the Cheltenham Charity Organisation Conference. ‘How shall we estimate the cost of good work? To do this we shall have to realise what is meant by good work, and to consider the special needs of our locality.’ A discussion of the financial costs of local charity. COS Occasional Paper No 57. 6-pp – unusual

[14099]                                                                                                                        £12

374.     CHATTERJEE, GLADYS Subjects Relating to the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce   Moore and Tomlinson Ltd 1953

A bibliography of works consulted by the Royal Commission – with an introduction by Gladys Chatterjee of Lincoln’s Inn

[14993]                                                                                                                          £4

375.     CITIZEN HOUSE, CHANDOS BUILDINGS, BATH      

First Report on the running of Citizen House, which opened in Sept 1913 as an educational and social centre. The Report, dated March 1915, gives details of the societies, such as the National Union of Women Workers, the Workers Educational Association, Girl Guides – and, since the beginning of the war, the Committee of Women Patrols and the Aid  Coordination Committee. The Wardens were Helen Hope and Mary de Reyes. Packed full of information about the good works being done in Bath. In very good condition – 16pp – card covers

[14978]                                                                                                                        £18

376.     DAVIES, Dilys The Problem of Girls’ Education in Wales   Association for Promoting the Education of Girls in Wales 1887

‘An Address delivered before the Welsh National Society of Liverpool, on January 13th 1887’. ‘The need of education is never felt more keenly than by the woman whose faculiteis have been undeveloped by wise guidance in childhood, and who is thrown unexpectedly on her own resources to fend for herself, and earn an honest living’. Very sensible. 14-pp pamphlet – very good – but with foxing

[14524]                                                                                                                        £18

377.     DEMONSTRATION IN CAMBRIDGE AGAINST THE PROPOSAL TO AWARD WOMEN DEGREES – 20 OCTOBER 1921     1921

Photograph showing the demonstration passing along Sidney Street (identified by the presence of Rexall Pharmacy’) Members of the University were voting in Senate House when, in the middle of the day, as the ‘Daily News’ reported (21 )ct 1921) ‘groups of undergraduates began to assemble in the vicinity, and the rumour gained ground that there was to be a big demonstration. At 12.30 the sound of bag-pipes was heard in the distance, and the vanguard of a long procession, two undergraduates made up as Scotch pipers, with red beards and kilts came marching along the King’s Parage. They were followed by a motley crowd of men dressed as girl graduates, in short skirts and football jerseys, caps, gowns, and silk hats…The centre-piece of the procession was an imitation funeral hearse with a small black-draped coffin of the ‘Last Cambridge undergraduate.’ These are the characters that can be seen in the photograph – the pipers leading the procession, followed by an exceptionally  tall chap in a skirt and mortar board  and others in top hats…participants pack the entire length of the narrow street, accompanied, of course, by the usual contingent of interested youngsters. The ‘funeral hearse’ is, I think, in the foreground. The result of the main vote was that women were once again denied (limited) membership of the University, by a resounding majority of 214. After the result was announced ‘a swarm of men in caps and gowns marched off along King’s Parade, towards Newnham College. When I reached the spot half-a-dozen undergraduates were battering down the gates with a hand truck in which was a weight’. The lovely bronze gates, a memorial to Annie Clough, Newnham’s first principal, were badly damaged, for which act of vandalism six of the ringleaders of the ‘Rag’, as it was described, were ‘sent down’.

Photograph – in very good condition

[15523]                                                                                                                   SOLD

378.     EMPLOYMENT COMMITTEE OF THE INCORPORATED ASSOCIATION OF HEAD MISTRESSES OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS Annual Report for 1930   HMSO 1931

Withdrawn from the Women’s Library – 16pp – good

[14995]                                                                                                                          £4

379.     EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK    Equal Pay Campaign Committee 1944

‘The question of Equal Pay for Equal Work will shortly come up for discussion in Parliament…’Small 4pp leaflet

[14999]                                                                                                                          £2

380.     EVERYWOMAN      

founded in 1985, a news and current affairs magazine aimed at ‘real women’. Issues:

1991 July/Aug

1992 Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1993;1993, Feb, April, March, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov Dec/Jan 1994; 1994, Feb, March, April, May, June, July, Aug, Sept,  Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1995;1995 Feb, March, April, May, June, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1996;1996 May

In good condition. Each

[14923]                                                                                                                          £8

381.     FAREWELL FROM THE WOMEN’S BRANCH OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY WAR AND RELIEF FUND  1914 1918      

Small metal Vesta case with a map of India shown in relief..to hold a small box of matches. During World War I, Lord Willingdon, the governor of Bombay, created the India War & Relief Fund (Bombay Branch) two which all the native and princely states neighbouring the Bombay Presidency contributed, along with the people of the Bombay Presidency. Lady Willingdon was president of the Women’s Branch. it is thought these little vesta cases were given to soldiers leaving India on their way back to Britain. In good condition – unusual

[14979]                                                                                                                        £25

382.     GIRLS’ FRIENDLY SOCIETY KALENDAR 1908      

To be – and has been – hung on the wall. Each page covers a month – with a scriptural message for each day – brief homilies – and an illustration. An interesting survival. Goodish ccondition.

[15520]                                                                                                                          £5

383.     HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS BOLTON      

Page from ‘The Buiilding News’ (18 March 1892) showing the new building for the school, at Park Road, Bolton, opened by Millicent Fawcett on 8 May 1891. The building, now, I think, demolished was in an ‘olde Englishe’ style, with half-timbering  and an oriel window to the assembly hall. The page includes plans for the Ground and First floors, showing the disposition of classrooms, wcs etc. Very good

[14898]                                                                                                                        £25

384.     KLEIN, Viola Employing Married Women   Institute of Personnel Management 1961

Paper covers – 52pp – good – withdrawn from the Women’s Library

[14996]                                                                                                                          £5

385.     MATERNAL MORTALITY Report of Meeting held at Central Hall, Westminster, on October 30, 1928   Maternal Mortality Committee 1928

Held at a time when there was still one maternal death per 250 births. Withdrawn from the Women’s Library. 30 pp – good, though front cover detached and torn

[14987]                                                                                                                          £8

386.     MELLORS, Robert Evening School in the Villages of Nottinghamshire    1910

‘An appeal to the ladies and gentlemen of every class in the county to aid in the formation and management of evening schools adapted to local industrial conditions.’ Mr Mellors was an alderman on Nottinghamshire County Council. 20-pp pamphlet – good – ex-Board of Education library

[13024]                                                                                                                          £4

387.     MINISTRY OF RECONSTRUCTION Report of the Women’s Advisory Committee on the Domestic Service Problem together with reports by sub-committees on training, Machinery of distribution, organisation and conditions  HMSO 1919

Among those involved in the committee were Margaret Tuke, Winifred Mercier, Clementina Black, Katherine Furse, Mrs C.S. Peel, and the Marchioness of Londonderry. The recommendations cover training, contract of service, scale of wages, employment exchanges and registry offices.  Probably missing blue paper covers, otherwise very good -36pp

[14994]                                                                                                                        £20

388.     NATIONAL BOARD FOR PRICES AND INCOMES The Pay and Conditions of Service of Workers in the Laundry and Dry Cleaning Industry   HMSO 1971

A 100-page report. Good – ex-library

[14424]                                                                                                                          £2

389.     PAOLO AND FRANCESCA      

programme for the production of ‘Paola and Francesca’ by Stephen Phillips staged by George Alexander at the St James’s Theatre in March 1902. The cast included Elizabeth Robins, Henry Ainley, Lilian Braithwaite and Evelyn Millard. The programme conmprises, as well as the cast list, a long history of the story of Paola and Francesca, notes on the costumes, the scenery, and the music. Good condition

[14423]                                                                                                                          £5

390.     PICTURE POST      

Issue for 13 May 1939 -includes 5pp on ‘The Call for Women’ -‘If war should come, the women who live in big cities or in vulnerable districts will be in the first line of defence.’ – full of photographs. Very good

[2325]                                                                                                                           £5

391.     RECHABITES TEMPERANCE FRIENDLY SOCIETY A JUVENILE TEMPERANCE MEETING    

Handbill for ‘A Juvenile Temperance Meeting’ to be held in the Congregational Schoolroom at Little Waltham, Essex, at which ‘Miss Hitch, D.S.J.R. will speak on The Bantam Battalion of the Temperance Army’. The current website for Little Waltham United Reformed Church mentions that there had apparently been a problem with ‘Drink’ in the village in the mid-19th century, which had led to a keen concentration on ‘Temperance’. Miss Hitch was probably Annie Emily Hitch (1881-1957), the elder daughter of George Hicks, a Writtle farmer. Her uncle had, for a time, been a Congregational missionary in Madagascar. Newspaper reports show that she was for many years involved with the youth section of the Rechabites in Essex.and in the 1939 Register was described as ‘Clerk to a Friendly Society’ – presumably the Rechabites. In very good condition – the portal to a vanished world

[15522]                                                                                                                        £20

392.     REFORMATORIES AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (COMMITTALS) Returns showing the comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools   April 1872

‘Shows comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools in 1870, with the number of cases in which the parents have been charged with such payment towards their children’s cost at such schools as may be considered equal to the expense they are saved by so throwing their children on public support, together with a comparative statement of the number of cases in which such charge has been adjudged, with that of the charges actually recovered and regularly paid.’ Raw facts. 4 foolscap pp – disbound

[9150]                                                                                                                         £28

393.     REPORT OF THE STREET OFFENCES COMMITTEE    HMSO 1928

The Committee included Margery Fry. Good – 50pp – withdrawn from the Women’s Library

[14380]                                                                                                                          £5

394.     ROSS, Alan The London Magazine, March 1970    

Special Short Story Issue. Contains essays on short-story writing by Brian Glanville, Elizabeth Taylor and William Trevor. Soft covers – good

[7308]                                                                                                                           £5

395.     SENIOR, Mrs Nassau Pauper Schools   HMSO 1875

‘Copy ”of a Letter addressed to the President of the Local Government Board by Mrs Nassau Senior, lately an Inspector of the Board, being a reply to the observation of Mr Tufnell, also a former inspector upon her report on pauper schools’. This was a follow-up to Mrs Senior’s 1874 report.

24pp – large format – disbound.

[10457]                                                                                                                        £28

396.     SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT LSE Woman, Wife and Worker   HMSO 1960

In the ‘Problems in Industry’ series, no 10, published by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. ‘In recent years the subject of married women’s employment has been the theme of many heated arguments.’ Paper covers – fine

[14425]                                                                                                                          £5

397.     THE SPECTATOR AUGUST 6 1836      

Includes a report of a wife offered for sale at ‘the new Islington cattle market’. She fetched 26s.

[14067]                                                                                                                        £20

398.     THE UPLANDS ASSOCIATION The Uplands Circular    

The Uplands Association was an organisation pledged to reform  school life and teaching. Its first principle was ‘All types of schooling to be pursued as far as climatic conditions will permit in the open air’. They ran a Summer School each year at Glastonbury and issued a newsletter ‘The Uplands Circular’. Issue for Feb 1922. Good – 8pp – ex-Board of Education Library

[13475]                                                                                                                          £3

399.     WARWICK, The Countess Of Unemployment: its causes and consequences  Twentieth Century Press, no date (c 1906)

Pamphlet – 16pp – first published as two articles in the ‘Daily Mail’  in Feb 1906. Good internally. The rather grubby pink paper covers – with a v glamourous photograph of the author – are present  – heavily chipped – but detached. Scarce

[14117]                                                                                                                        £45

400.     A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE Abortion Law Reform Association Why we must fight the Abortion (Amendment) Bill and how to go about it   

20-pp pamphlet giving ‘Some Information about the Abortion (Amendment) Bill’ – and including a ‘List of Members of Parliament who voted AGAINST the Bill’s Second Reading, 7 Feb 1975)

[13197]                                                                                                                          £8

401.     WOMEN: A CULTURAL REVIEW    OUP 

1994 Spring, vol 5, no 1; Autumn vol 5, no 2; Winter vol 5, no 3

1995 Summer vol 6, no1; Autumn vol 6, no 2; Winter, vol 6, no 3

1996  Spring vol 7, issue 1; Autumn vol 7, no 2; Winter vol 7, no 3

1997 Sprng vol 8, no 1; Autumn vol 8. no 3

In very good condition – each

[14929]                                                                                                                          £8

General Postcards

402.     ‘BILLIE BURKE’      

American actress (1884-1970).Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse

[14744]                                                                                                                          £4

403.     CLARK’S COLLEGE, CIVIL SERVICE Preparing for the Lady Clerk’s G.P.O. Exam    

Photographic postcard of the young women preparing for this exam which, if they passed, offered a chance of bettering themselves. Very good – unposted

[9233]                                                                                                                         £12

404.     MAUDE FEALY      

American actress (1883-1971).  Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14746]                                                                                                                          £4

405.     MISS DOROTHEA BAIRD      

English actress (1875-1933). In very good condition – with traces of adhesive on the reverse – once held in a suffragette’s collection.

[14741]                                                                                                                          £4

406.     MISS LILY BRAYTON      

photograph of the actress and singer (1876-1953). Once held in a suffragette’s collection. On the reverse is written in pencil ‘Ophelia’ suggesting the image shows her in ‘Hamlet’ in which she played Ophelia in 1905. In very good condition – with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14743]                                                                                                                          £4

407.     MISS MAXINE ELLIOTT      

American actress (1868-1940).Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14745]                                                                                                                          £4

408.     MYSTERY ‘WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION’ POSTCARD      

I bought this card in 2004, but it was only as a result of Lockdown research that I was available to work out why a large group of women were arrayed in front of a camera in Hull. For details see the piece about it on my website – https://wp.me/p2AEiO-1Br

[8145]                                                                                                                         £20

409.     RUTH VINCENT      

English actress and opera singer (1877-1955) – photograph by Ralph Dunn of 63 Barbican, London EC. Because the word ‘Amasis’ is written in pencil on the reverse of the card, I think it dates from around 1906/7 when Ruth Vincent was appearing in the lead role. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse. In very good condition -once held in a suffragette’s collection.

[14742]                                                                                                                          £4

General (Cross=Dressing) Vaudeville Sheet Music

410.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    B. Feldman 1914

sings ‘Just One Kiss – Just Another One’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. The song was written by William Hargreaves and Dan Lipton. Very god

[10675]                                                                                                                          £7

411.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Campbell, Connelly & Co 1925

sings ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’, written by Irving King, and is photographed as an awkward young man on the cover of the sheet music. Good

[10678]                                                                                                                          £6

412.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Lawrence Wright 1925

sings ‘When the Bloom is On the Heather’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. Very good

[10681]                                                                                                                          £6

413.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Lawrence Wright 1929

sings ‘Home in Maine’ and is photographed in sailor attire on cover of sheet music. Good

[10688]                                                                                                                          £6

414.     MISS HETTY KING    Francis, Day & Hunter 1908

sings ‘I’m Afraid to Come Home in the Dark’ and is photographed on the cover of the sheet music in extravagantly elegant top hat and tails. Very good

[10684]                                                                                                                          £7

415.     MISS NORA DELANEY    Lawrence Wright 1929

sings ‘Glad Rag Doll’ and is photographed in male evening dress on the cover of the sheet music. Good

[10687]                                                                                                                          £5

416.     VESTA TILLEY    Francis, Day & Hunter 1905

sings ‘Who Said, “Girls”?’. Sheet music featuring photograph on cover of Vesta Tilley in smart male attire. The ditty begins: ‘One day on a Western claim/Miners vow’d their lives were tame, For in that lonel spot there seldom girls had been.’ Good

[10670]                                                                                                                          £7

417.     VESTA TILLEY    Francis, Day & Hunter 1896

sings ‘He’s Going In For this Dancing Now’, sheet music, written by E.W. Rogers. Very good – except that the front cover is semi-detached

[10672]                                                                                                                          £5

General Fiction

418.     Anna Wickham   Richards 1936

‘Richards’ Shilling Selections from Edwardian Poets’. Soft covers – fine

[8134]                                                                                                                         £12

419.     AITKEN, David Sleeping with Jane Austen   No Exit Press 2000

Facetious crime novel. Soft covers – very good

[12417]                                                                                                                          £4

420.     ANON ( W.R.H. Trowbridge) The Grandmother’s Advice to Elizabeth   T. Fisher Unwin 1902

‘Suggested by the ‘Visits of Elizabeth’  by Elinor Glyn.’ Paper covers – good

[3078]                                                                                                                           £6

421.     ATWOOD, Margaret Dancing Girls and Other Stories   Virago 1987 (r/p)

Soft covers – very good

[15167]                                                                                                                          £4

422.     ATWOOD, Margaret Life Before Man   Virago 1983 (r/p)

Soft covers – very good

[15166]                                                                                                                          £4

423.     BULKIN, Elly (ed) Lesbian Fiction: an anthology   Persephone Press (Massachusetts) 1981

Soft covers – very good

[15079]                                                                                                                          £8

424.     CLIFT, Charmian Walk to the Paradise Gardens   Harper & Bros (NY) 1960

First US edition of this Australian novel. Very good in very good d/w, which is slightly chipped at top and bottom of spine

[12458]                                                                                                                        £25

425.     DUNANT, Sarah Birth Marks   Michael Joseph 1991

A thriller – ‘as much a study in psychology as a traditional whodunnit’. Very good in very good, unclipped, d.w

[15436]                                                                                                                          £5

426.     EL SAADAWI, Nawal The Circling Song   Zed Books 1989

A novel. Soft covers – fine

[9897]                                                                                                                           £5

427.     FREELY, Maureen Mother’s Helper   Jonathan Cape 1979

Her first novel. First edition, very good in d.w – with the bookshop stamp of ‘Shakespeare & Co, Paris’ on free front end paper

[15430]                                                                                                                        £15

428.     HAWTHORNE, SUSAN (indtroduces) Differences: writing by women   Waterloo Press 1985

An anthology reflecting the diversity of women’s experience – published to mark the Women 150 Writers’ Week in Melbourne, September 1985. Writers include ‘Aboriginal women [that is the term then used in the backjacket text], migrant women from Europe and Asia, those whose works represent class strugges, and lesbian women.’ Audre Lorde and Keri Hulme were among the contributers. Soft covers – very good

[15169]                                                                                                                          £8

429.     HOLTBY, Winifred The Crowded Street   The Bodley Head 1924

Very good in original decorative cloth. The novel is dedicated to Winifred’s friend, Jean McWilliam, to whom she wrote the letters published as ‘Letters to a Friend’ (see item # ?]

[15254]                                                                                                                        £35

430.     KOPPLEMAN, Susan (ed) Old Maids: short stories by 19th-century US women writers  Pandora 1984

Soft covers – very good

[8122]                                                                                                                           £7

431.     LEVERSON, Ada Love’s Shadow   Chapman & Hall 1950

Reprint of the 1908 edition. Good

[3086]                                                                                                                           £4

432.     MARTIN, Valerie The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories   Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2006

Soft covers – fine

[10469]                                                                                                                          £4

433.     ROWLANDS, Betty Exhaustive Enquiries   Hodder & Stoughton 1993

A crime writer detects. Fine in fine d/w

[15437]                                                                                                                          £3

434.     SHEPHERD-ROBINSON, Laura Blood and Sugar   Pan 2019

Crime thriller set in late-18thc Deptford – involving the grim slavery trade. Atmospheric. Soft covers – mint

[15088]                                                                                                                          £3

435.     SIGOURNEY, Mrs (ed. F.W.N. Bailey) The Poetical Works of Mrs L.H. Sigourney   G. Routledge 1857

Neatly rebound in cloth

[2428]                                                                                                                         £10

436.     SOUEIF, Ahdaf In the Eye of the Sun   Bloomsbury 1992

‘The Great English Novel about Egypt’/’The Great Egyptian Novel About England’. Very good in d/w. 791pp – heavy

[9927]                                                                                                                           £8

437.     SPENDER, Dale The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys   Grafton 1991

Elizabeth gives her account of life with Samuel. Soft covers – very good

[11232]                                                                                                                          £8

438.     SWAN, Annie S. The Strait Gate   S.W. Partridge, no date (1890s?)

Good in decorative binding

[9706]                                                                                                                           £8

439.     TAYLOR, Kate Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen   Vintage 2004

Enjoyable novel, Canadian literary researcher in Paris – parallel portraits of old and new worlds. Soft covers – fine

[10470]                                                                                                                          £4

Women and the First World War: Non-fiction

440.     ALDRICH, Mildred On the Edge of the War Zone: from the Battle of the Marne to the entrance of the Stars and Stripes  Constable 1918

Mildred Aldrich had left the USA for France in 1898 and in 1914, when war broke out, was living in La Creste, a country house overlooking the Marne Valley. In this volume she recounts, in letter form, day-to-day life after the Battle of the Marne. The account was intended to influence public opinion, to back the entrance of the US into the war. In 1922 she was duly awarded the Legion d’Honneur. Very good

[15297]                                                                                                                        £45

441.     ANDERSON, Adelaide Women in the Factory: an administrative adventure, 1893 to 1921  John Murray 1922

‘Tells the story of the Woman Inspectorate of Factories and Workshops from its beginning in 1893, until 1921, when 30 Women Inspectors saw the fruits of the work of their branch, not only in greatly developed protection for the woman worker, but also in her own increased capacity to help herself’. Written by one of the leaders of the woman inspectorate movement, who was, incidentally, a niece of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Good, with the bookplate of the Lyceum Club, Melbourne on the free front endpaper – and a few spots on the front cover and spine, whch shows slight cracking. Scarce.

[15225]                                                                                                                        £58

442.     BILLINGTON, Mary Frances The Red Cross in War: woman’s part in the relief of suffering  Hodder & Stoughton 1914

Good

[15273]                                                                                                                        £20

443.     BOWSER, Thekla Britain’s Civilian Volunteers: authorized story of British Voluntary Aid Detachment Work in the Great War  McClelland, Goodchild & Steward (Toronto) 1917

This is the US/Canadian title of ‘The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War’ – the text of both editions is the same. With 18 photographs. Very good – in d.w.

[15269]                                                                                                                        £45

444.     CABLE, Boyd Doing Their Bit: war work at home  Hodder and Stoughton, 2nd imp 1916

Includes a chapter on ‘The Women’. Good

[15232]                                                                                                                        £28

445.     GWYNNE-VAUGHAN, Dame Helen Service With the Army   Hutchinson, no date (1940s)

A history of women’s involvement with the British army in the First and Second world wars – by one who played a key role in both. Good – scarce

[15260]                                                                                                                        £45

446.     HAMILTON, Cicely Senlis   Collins 1917

Her experience in France during the First World War. Good – with 11 photographs – and scarce

[15275]                                                                                                                        £75

447.     LUARD, K.E.  Unknown Warriors: extracts from the letters of K.E. Luard, R.R.C., nursing sister in France 1914-1918   Chatto & Windus 1930

With a preface by Viscount Allenby. For four years Kate Luard ran advanced Casualty Clearing Stations within a few miles of the front line. In the form of letters she gives in this account a detailed picture of nursing through the battles of Arras, Passchendale, and others. Fine – scarce

[15299]                                                                                                                        £95

448.     MARKHAM, Violet R. Watching on the Rhine   George H. Doran (NY) 1921

Violet Markham was a member of the Army of Occupation in Germany immediately after the First World War. Very good. (The English edition was entitled ‘The Watcher on the Rhine’).

[15256]                                                                                                                        £25

449.     THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR VOL XVII    The Times 1918

This large, heavy volume includes a section on ‘Women’s Work: War Service’ that includes numerous photographs. Other sections on, for instance, ‘Medical Science and the Pests of War’, ‘The Conquest of Rumania’, ‘The Arab Uprising’, ‘The Boy Scouts’ etc. Very good – scarce

[15306]                                                                                                                        £65

Women and the First World War: Biography & Autobiography

450.     ANON The Letters of Thomasina Atkins: Private (WAAC) on Active Service   Hodder & Stoughton no date (1918)

With a foreword by Mildred Aldrich. This is one of those books about which it is difficult to be entirely sure – are the letters genuine – or is it fiction? The general consensus – of reviewers in 1918 and of academics in the 21st century – is that they are real letters, written by a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to a woman friend (‘Peachie’). The only clues as to the author’s identity are that she had previously been an actress and that  she was considerably younger than Mildred Aldrich (author of ‘Hilltop on the Marne’ and other accounts of the War), who had known her since she was a child.  Good – with a damp stain along bottom of free front endpapers – ownership inscription (1918) and stamp of the ‘Royal Midland Counties Home for Incurables Castel Froma Lillington Road Leamington Spa’. Very scarce

[15261]                                                                                                                        £45

451.     (ASHWELL) Lena Ashwell Myself a Player    

Autobiography of the actress and manager, in the years before the First World War, of the Kingsway Theatre – where she staged and starred in Cicely Hamilton’s ‘Diana of Dobson’s’.  During the First World War she was a member of the Women’s Corps – and entertained the troops. Very good

[15219]                                                                                                                        £48

452.     (BAGNOLD) Enid Bagnold A Diary Without Dates   Heinemann new impression, March 1918

Diary of her life as a VAD in the First World War. Good internally – split to spine cloth – very scarce

[15300]                                                                                                                        £65

453.     CORBETT, Elsie Red Cross in Serbia: a personal diary of experiences, 1915-1919  Cheney & Sons 1964

Eyewitness account of nursing in the Balkans during the First World War. Very good,although free front end paper removed and cover cloth a little mottled – a  presentation copy to the author

[15244]                                                                                                                        £65

454.     DOUGLAS-PENNANT, Violet Under the Search-Light: the record of a great scandal   Allen & Unwin 1922

In June 1918 Violet Douglas-Pennant was appointed Commandant, Women’s Royal Air Force – only to be dismissed two months later ‘by direction of Lord Weir and Sir Auckland Geddes on the advice of Lady Rhondda, who acted without enquiry on secret information supplied to her, as well as to Mr Tyson Wilson MP, and Miss P. Strachey, by Mrs Beatty and others’. How intriguing. The book takes 463 pp to cover the ‘scandal’. Douglas-Pennant wrote it as her self-justificatory account of events “so that my name & honour may at last be vindicated.” Includes recollections of her ten weeks’ in charge, a Who’s Who of the personalities involved & full details of the House of Lords Inquiry into her dismissal. Good

[14129]                                                                                                                        £85

455.     (FORBES) Lady Angela Forbes Memories and Base Details   George H. Doran (NY) 1922

Born in 1876, she was the half-sister of Daisy, Countess of Warwick, and full sister to Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Much about her aristocratic up-bringing but the other half of the book (well over 100 pages) is devoted to her work during the First World War – organising hospitals in France. Very good -scarce

[15221]                                                                                                                        £48

456.     (HUTTON) Isabel Hutton Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace   Heinemann 1960

Studied medicine at the Women’s Medical School in Edinburgh (not Sophia Jex-Blake’s one) – much about her medical education – then with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in the First World War – and a lifetime’s work after. Very good in d/w

[15245]                                                                                                                        £55

457.     (INGLIS) Lady Frances Balfour Dr Elsie Inglis   Hodder & Stoughton no date (c 1919)

Biography of  Dr Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), Scottish doctor – and suffragist. Founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. In good condition

[15286]                                                                                                                        £35

458.     (JOHNSTON) Agnes Anderson ‘Johnnie’ of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps   Heath Cranton no date (c. 1919)

Elizabeth Johnston joined the WAAC in Dec 1917 and died, bizarrely, on Christmas Day 1918, having fallen from the tower of the church of St Ouen in Rouen.  Her year’s work in France is detailed from the letters she sent home to Fife. Very good -very scarce

[15259]                                                                                                                        £65

459.     (KENNARD) Lady Kennard A Roumanian Diary, 1915, 1916, 1917   William Heinemann 1917

Joins a Red Cross Hospital in Roumania in 1916. With photographs. Good condition -very scarce –

[15238]                                                                                                                        £65

460.     (MCARTHUR) Josephine Kellett That Friend of Mine: a memoir of Marguerite McArthur  The Swarthmore Press 1920

Memoir of a young woman, educated at Newnham, who in 1914 worked for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society and then, after the outbreak of war, first in the War Office and then in France, in Etaples, with the YMCA. She was still working there when she died, of influenza, aged 26 in February 1919. Fine  – presentation copy from her sister

[15277]                                                                                                                        £35

461.     SINCLAIR, May Journal of Impressions in Belgium   Macmillan (NY) 1915

Her description of her journey to the front line with the Motor Ambulance Corps. Very good – extremely scarce

[15248]                                                                                                                        £75

462.     (SQUIRE) Rose Squire Thirty Years in the Public Service: an industrial retrospect  Nisbet 1927

She was one of the first women inspectors of factories – appointed in 1896. Section on work in factories during the First World War. Good -but free frontpaper removed – scarce

[15231]                                                                                                                        £48

463.     (STIMSON) Julia C. Stimson Finding Themselves: the letters of an American Army Chief Nurse in a British Hospital in France  Macmillan (NY) 1927

She arrived in Liverpool in May 1917, moved on to London where she met society women now devoting themselves to running hospitals etc. She was in France, working alongside British nurses, by 11 June and was still there when the book ends, in April 1918. Good condition – very scarce

[15291]                                                                                                                      £120

464.     SUTHERLAND, Millicent, Duchess Of Six Weeks At The War   The Times 1914

She left England on 8 August 1914 to join a branch of the French Red Cross – and then went on to form her own ambulance unit and took it into Belgium.With photographs. Soft covers – good – spine a little nicked

[15239]                                                                                                                        £55

465.     (VIDAL) Lois Vidal Magpie: the autobiography of a nymph errant  Little, Brown 1934

Daughter of the vicarage, she was all for adventure. She worked in the War Office, and then went to France as a war worker in France during the First World War, then was a governess in Corsica, then to Canada – and then back to England. Packed with interesting social comment. Good

[15229]                                                                                                                        £28

Women and the First World War: Fiction

466.     FORBES, R.E.(pseudonym of Ralph Straus) Mrs Holmes, Commandant   Edward Arnold 1918

The printed dedication is: ‘Dedicated with feelings of the profoundest respect to the Detachment’. By which is meant the ‘Voluntary Aid Detachment’, for this is a novel (humourous) about the setting up of a VAD hospital in a small English town. First edition in good condition – and very scarce

[15258]                                                                                                                        £45

467.     MARCHANT, Bessie A Transport Girl in France: a story of the adventures of a W.A.A.C.  Blackie no date [reprint c earl 1930s]

With pictorial cloth cover:  the original design was still in use c 15 years after first publication. Free front endpaper bears a presentation label from Gosport Education Committee showing that the book was awarded to ‘Netta Gladys Smith of St John’s Girls’ School for Good Conduct, Industry and Progress in Standard VIII. Position in Class: 1. 1934.’ The label is annotated in ink: ‘Mayor’s Special Prize’ and signed by the Mayor. Good – with illustrations by Wal Paget. Very scarce.

[15262]                                                                                                                        £75

468.     MARCHANT, Bessie A V.A.D. in Salonika   Blackie, no date c 1917/18

Good – with pictorial cover (she is in uniform, pushing a motor bike, with minarets and domes in the background.) Has an birthday gift inscription on free front endpaper – 15 February 1918

[15242]                                                                                                                        £45

Women and the First World War: Ephemera

469.     ALEC-TWEEDIE, Mrs A Woman on Four Battle-Fronts    1919

‘written May 1919, reprinted August, 1919, by kind permission of the Editor ‘Marshall Syndicate’, USA and the ‘Yorkshire Post’. This records her journey of 991 miles across France and Belgium in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. She had been a very successful fund-raiser for the YMCA during the war, in the course of which one of her sons had been killed. This booklet is double-columned and print is small, so packs a lot in. She reports conversations with the inhabitants of towns and villages and gives her own account of the state of the country over which she is, with some difficulty, travelling. With 2 maps and 7 photographs. Soft covers – 30pp – very good

[15548]                                                                                                                        £55

470.     BIBESCO, Princesse La Revue de Paris extrait du numero du 15 mai 1934: Lettres de Combattants Anglais  Paris 1934

A lengthy review, in French, of ‘War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (Lettres de guerre d’hommes anglais qui sont tombès) compiled by Laurence Housman. She reviews it at length (24pp), quoting from letters of both the well -known (Julian Grenfell, Edward Tennant) and the unknown. The intriguing Princess Bibescco (nèe Elizabeth Asquith, daugher of  H.A. Asquith) was a novelist of some repute,Very good – paper covers – offprint of the journalpaign

[15029]                                                                                                                        £10

471.     A MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL FILLING FACTORY, HAYES, MIDDLESEX TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND    HMSO no date [c 1915]

Come and Enlist in the Munition Army and Help to Win the War.’ A pamphlet, with photographs, encouraging women to come and fill shells – ‘The shell you fill may sink the submarine that sank the “Lusitania”‘. ‘If you cannot fight for your country, work for it.’ Has been folded and is somewhat rubbed – well-studied, perhaps. Scarce

[15507]                                                                                                                        £85

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You can pay me by bank transfer (preferred method), cheque or (if from overseas) at www.Paypal.com, using my email address as the payee account.

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In case you may be interested in books I have published they are ~

NEW-ish

Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings

ed. Melissa Terras & Elizabeth Crawford

Reproduces Fawcett’s essential speeches, pamphlets and newspaper columns to tell the story of her dynamic contribution to public life. Thirty-five texts and 22 images are contextualised and linked to contemporary news coverage as well as to historical and literary references. These speeches, articles, artworks and photographs cover both the advances and the defeats in the campaign for women’s votes. They also demonstrate a variety of the topics and causes Fawcett pursued: the provision of education for women; feminist history; a love of literature (and Fawcett’s own attempt at fiction); purity and temperance; the campaign against employment of children; the British Army’s approach to the South African War; the Unionist cause against Home Rule for Ireland; and the role of suffrage organisations during World War I. Here is a rich, intertextual web of literary works, preferred reading material, organisations, contacts, friends, and sometimes enemies, that reveals Fawcett the individual throughout 61 years of campaigning. The first scholarly appraisal of Fawcett in over 30 years, this is essential reading for those wishing to understand the varied political, social and cultural contributions of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

UCL Press

Available free to access and download. Also to buy in print editions – see https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/161045

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Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists discusses the lives and work of over 100 artists, each of whom made a positive contribution to the women’s suffrage campaign. Most, but not all, the artists were women, many belonging to the two suffrage artists’ societies – the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier. Working in a variety of media –producing cartoons, posters, banners, postcards, china, and jewellery – the artists promoted the suffrage message in such a way as to make the campaign the most visual of all those conducted by contemporary pressure groups.

In the hundred plus years since it was created, the artwork of the suffrage movement has never been so widely disseminated and accessible as it is today, the designs as appealing as they were during the years before the First World War when the suffrage campaign was at its height. Yet hitherto little has been known about most of the artists who produced such popular images. Art and Suffrage remedies this lack and sets their artistic contribution to the suffrage cause within the context of their reanimated lives, giving biographical details, including addresses, together with information on where their work may be seen.

With over 100 illustrations, in black-and-white and in colour.

Published by Francis Boutle     Soft cover                                                £20

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Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette

Published by ITV Ventures as a tie-in with the series: ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’ this e-book tells Kate’s life story from her Victorian childhood to her brave engagement with the Elizabethan New Age. For details see here (and many more posts on my website).

Available to download from iTunes or Amazon

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The Women’s Suffrage Movement 1866-1928: A reference guide

Elizabeth Crawford

‘It is no exaggeration to describe Elizabeth Crawford’s Guide as a landmark in the history of the women’s movement…’  History Today

Routledge, 2000 785pp paperback £89.99 – Ebook £80.99

The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: a regional survey

Elizabeth Crawford

‘Crawford provides meticulous accounts of the activists, petitions, organisations, and major events pertaining to each county.’ Victorian Studies

Routledge, 2008 320pp paperback £38.99, Ebook £35.09

Enterprising Women: The Garretts and their circle

Elizabeth Crawford

‘Crawford’s scholarship is admirable and Enterprising Women offers increasingly compelling reading’ Journal of William Morris Studies

For further details see here Francis Boutle, 2002 338pp 75 illus paperback £25

Copies of all of these books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.

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Photo courtesy of English Heritage

On 19 September 2023, together with members of the Feminist Society of Ibstock Place School, I unveiled the 1000th English Heritage Blue Plaque. It commemorates the Women’s Freedom League and is mounted on the wall of their sometime headquarters, 1 Robert Street, Strand.

This was 116 years and 5 days after the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) was formed  at a meeting held close by – in the very popular Eustace Miles vegetarian restaurant. Vegetarianism was very much a WFL ‘thing’.

The meeting had been called by some women, erstwhile members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who had protested Mrs Pankhurst’s unilateral action in abolishing the WSPU constitution and cancelling their annual conference. They did not care for the fact that the Pankhursts intended, in effect, to rule the WSPU by dictat.

Mrs Charlotte Despard was voted into the chair and among others present at that first meeting were Teresa Billington (later Billington-Greig) and Edith How-Martyn – all strong individuals –with  strong views – believing particularly in democracy and socialism.

Charlotte Despard, born into an Anglo-Irish family and long a widow, had since the 1890s devoted herself to social work with women and children in an impoverished area of Battersea, hemmed in by the Thames and railways. Most unusually, she chose to live there – at least during the week – only returning to her country home at Esher at the weekend. Teresa Billington-Greig – the WFL’s political theorist – had been a teacher before devoting herself to the WSPU suffrage campaign – while Mrs Edith How-Martyn, a young science graduate – was an effective and practical campaign organiser.

The three leaders were all supporters of the Independent Labour party and had been particularly troubled by the Pankhursts’ decision, announced earlier in 1907, not to support Labour candidates at elections. They were not women who took kindly to autocracy and were all to give a lifetime commitment to the WFL – and to its campaigns for social justice for women.

It took a  little time for matters to resolve themselves, but in November 1907 the new society was given a new name –the Women’s Freedom League – chosen democratically by a referendum to members. The other suggested names were all associated with emancipation and rights – but Women’s Freedom League was good choice. It was not a name tied only to suffrage, but encompassed all kinds of freedom – appropriate to an agenda that changed over time to meet changing conditions. The thread running through the WFL’s long active life was – Equal citizenship, equal pay, equal opportunity, and equality under the law.

 After a year in a temporary office, the WFL moved to 1 Robert Street in September 1908 – into 4 rooms on the first floor – staying  until 1915, when they moved to High Holborn. Their presence there is marked by a plaque, although not the esteemed ‘Blue’ one.

Although considered a militant society, unlike the WSPU the WFL didn’t carry out acts of physical protest. Its members were not arsonists or bombers but, influenced by the teachings of Gandhi, they conducted campaigns of  passive resistance, such as protesting in Police Courts that women were tried by laws made only by men, and in 1909 conducting a 5-month continuous picket of the House of Commons, ‘The Great Watch’.

One WFL tactic was to attempt to present petitions to the King.

It was WFL members, Helen Fox and Australian Muriel Matters, who attracted publicity in 1908 by chaining themselves to the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons – and Muriel Matters, again, who hired an airship from which to drop leaflets over London. It was the WFL who first had the idea of boycotting the 1911 census, and whose members set up the Tax Resistance League, refusing to pay taxes and then creating publicity when their goods were seized and auctioned.  

Local branches were set up throughout the country – the WFL was notably strong in Wales and in Scotland – but at both a local and a national level the WFL always struggled financially. To support their work the WFL relied on generous donors and on their own, time-consuming, fund-raising activities. Seen as of particular importance was raising enough money to ensure the publication of their weekly paper, The Vote, in which they were very successful as it ran from 1909 until 1933 and is an invaluable source of information on the changing nature of feminism in the first three decades of the 20th century. As well as its newspaper, the WFL’s main archive is held just across the Strand from Robert Street in the Women’s Library @LSE.

Women Police Volunteers, December 1914

Although they called a halt to militant protests during the First World War, the WFL continued to campaign for women’s rights –  for instance, its members were associated with the founding of the first women’s police force.

In the early years of the war the WFL ran a toy factory in Hackney, providing work for women, particularly those who had hitherto been employed in the garment trade.

Although most members of the WFL were pacifists the organisation managed to avoid a schism on the subject, such as beset the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Indeed, WFL members were generally adept at putting aside differences –including party differences – and instead concentrating on working for their shared causes.

Mrs Edith How-Martyn

Several members of the WFL were candidates in the  November 1918 general election, the first in which women over 30 could vote and at which women could stand for Parliament  Charlotte Despard, who stood for Labour in Battersea, was one and Edith How-Martyn, who stood as an Independent in Hendon, was another –  but all were unsuccessful. In one way the fact that not all women were granted the vote in 1918 had a positive effect in that it gave a society such as the WFL the impetus to continue the campaign – for an equal franchise was an obvious goal– while also working for gender equality across all aspects of political, educational, work, and social life.

During the interwar years new WFL branches were formed, while old ones maintained a loyal following – many members who had held posts in the pre-war years continuing to do so right through the 1920s. One such was Mrs Sarah Whetton , honorary secretary of the Portsmouth branch, where the WFL was particularly active as a pressure group, influencing local government on housing, education and health – all areas of special concern to women.

The WFL spanned the lifetime of its early members, only dissolving itself in 1961 after the death of its president, Marian Reeves, who had joined the organisation as a young woman in 1909. The WFL had run its course. Back in 1907 the founders had announced ‘we hope to fight to the finish as members of the Women’s Freedom League’ – and we were there in 2023 to vindicate their hope.

With many thanks to English Heritage for arranging such an engaging event – and commiserations to Dr Claire Eustace, who would have been my fellow speaker but who was prevented by illness from attending.

If you have a BBC account already, or sign up to one, you can listen to me speaking, very briefly, about the WFL on the Radio 4 Today programme (at 50 mins in). There was also a well-researched piece on the BBC 1 Local News.

Copyright

All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere and are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement.

Led by Miss Kerr, who is carrying a WSPU flag, suffragettes parade outside the WSPU offices in Clement’s Inn (image courtesy of Women’s Library@LSE)

When I started in business nearly 40 years ago as a dealer in books and ephemera, specialising in the lives of women, there was little need to think twice about the authenticity of any appealing object. I do remember being very careful to check that a signature on, say, a photograph of Mrs Pankhurst was penned rather than printed but, in those days, ‘women’ as a class had not attracted the attention of scammers. How times have changed. And that change is particularly manifest in objects associated with the suffragette movement.

Nowadays I take extreme care, perhaps bordering on paranoia, to check the authenticity and provenance of any object before I add it to stock. For unscrupulous dealers are now ridiculing the suffragette movement by creating and selling objects that claim to be associated with the WSPU. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the NUWSS has not attracted this attention, scammers knowing where lies the popular appeal.

This trade disturbs me on several levels. I am upset to see those with no knowledge or interest in the suffrage movement  traducing the historical record, I am upset to see buyers disappointed when, thinking they have acquired an original object, they discover they have not, and I am particularly worried when, as has happened, a public collection acquires a spurious suffrage artefact.

It may be useful to present the history of one element of suffragette material culture that currently concerns me: the phenomenon of the WSPU flag currently flooding the market.

It was probably three or four years ago that a purple, white, and green flag first appeared on an eBay site. Along the white side selvedge strip was printed the legend ‘WPSU 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand W.C.’. I have not kept a record of the price this object fetched, but it was, if memory serves, several hundred pounds. Another book dealer contacted the seller to point out that this flag was unlikely to be original, as the initials were incorrect – ie ‘WPSU’ rather than ‘WSPU’. He did not receive a reply, but answer was made in kind as another flag then appeared – with the middle two letters cut out – leaving only the ‘W’ and the ‘U’ – and the (correct) address. Laughable, really. In fact, at the moment (June 2023) one of these flags is available for sale on eBay – for £260 – although now the whole of ‘WPSU’ has been raggedly removed, leaving only the address.

Most of the flags now boast a ‘Votes for Women’ slogan across the central white stripe and have a variety of marks on the white webbing at the side. Currently (June 2023) there are 7 WSPU flags for sale on eBay: one is marked with ‘1912’, two with ‘London 1908’, one with ‘London 1910’, and two with ‘1910 WSPU’ (both of these listed by the same dealer). The flags are priced at between £149 and £895.

Between March and June 2023 27 ‘original’ WSPU flags were sold on eBay– their prices ranging from £58 to £310. Again, they are printed on the selvedge with dates and places –  such as ‘Bath 1912’, ‘London 1914’ etc. They variously claim to have been found in ‘a box at an antiques fair’ or from ‘a deceased estate’.

A number of these flags have moved from eBay to terrestrial auctions and, on the whole, auctioneers do remove them from a sale once doubts are expressed as to their originality. I note that one auctioneer who initially refused to withdraw one of the flags from sale – and has since sold several more – does at least now note that their authenticity cannot be guaranteed. The flags have, of course, moved out of salerooms and are now to be found at antiques markets and fairs and I accept that, as they move further from their source, vendors may well not realise that they are selling fakes.

I have not inspected any of these flags in person – my reasons for knowing that they are not ‘right’ is based on my many years of archival research and on my hard-acquired knowledge of the trade in suffrage ephemera.  At the most basic level, if you study the Flickr account of the Women’s Library@LSE, perhaps the most extensive photographic record of the suffrage movement available to view on the internet, you will note that there is no evidence of the WSPU flag as is currently being traded. At the head of this post is one of the few photographs  to show a WSPU flag (we presume it is purple, white, and green but, of course, the photograph is in black and white). However, you will note that the orientation of the stripes is such that one of the colours (purple or green?) lies against the carrying pole,  whereas on that of the fake flag all the colours meet the pole. That is to say, the stripes on the flags currently being sold are lying horizontally, whereas they should  be positioned vertically. In addition, I do not remember seeing a ‘Votes for Women’ slogan imposed on a purple, white and green flag; they are invariably plain. I suspect that any analysis of the material and method of manufacture would indicate a 21^st rather than early-20^th century provenance.

The Women’s Library photographs do, of course, contain innumerable images of all manner of other banners and it was exactly because I am always so worried about fakery that when, in 2017, I spotted an amazing Manchester banner coming up for sale at a little-known auction house,  I alerted first the Working Class Library and, through their archivist, the People’s History Museum because I thought it essential for a textile expert to inspect it in person in case somebody had taken it upon themselves to fake it. Fortunately, it was ‘right’ and now hangs in pride of place in the PHM. 

The Manchester WSPU banner (image courtesy of the People’s History Museum)

And that is why I hope that no well-meaning donor will think of  presenting their local museum with one of the spurious ‘Votes for Women’ flags for, by allowing the scammers to muscle in on our history, we are demeaning everything that is ‘right’.

Cynic that I am in such matters, I only hope this post does not encourage scammers to create more accurate reproductions.

Copyright

All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement

Excellent News: Millicent Garrett Fawcett has now entered Parliament. A portrait of Millicent Garrett Fawcett by Annie Swynnerton, acquired by The Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, was ‘unveiled’ on 27 March 2023. The event, chaired (vivaciously) by Jess Phillips MP, was notable for talks on the sitter and the artist by Prof. Melissa Terras and Dr Emma Merkling.

UPDATE

I wrote a long post earlier this month – revealing the existence of previously unknown collection of Swynnerton portraits, the existence of which enhances our knowledge of the artist. Since then I have tracked down one further associated portrait. Rather than merely issuing a short post with the new information, I thought it best, for completeness, to update the existing post. The ‘new’ portrait is discussed towards the end of this article, the main body of which has been amended where necessary.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett by Annie Swynnerton (Courtesy of The Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art)

It was in July 2022 that I noticed the portrait had appeared in an art dealer’s listing and immediately alerted Melanie Unwin, who until recently was Deputy Collector of the Palace of Westminster Collection – exclaiming, ‘Now, wouldn’t this be an excellent addition to the Parliamentary Collection?’ And – it has come to pass. Public recognition of Millicent Fawcett is something in which I have taken a personal interest – for ten years ago I posted on this website a plea – ‘Make Millicent Fawcett Visible’. And now, lo – the veil has been lifted – she now has a statue in Westminster Square, her portrait, by Annie Swynnerton, is on show in the Tate,[i] and this other version will now hang in Parliament.

 This version, which presumably was painted around the same time (1910) as that bought for the Tate by the Chantrey Bequest in 1930 (the year after Fawcett’s death), remained, for whatever reason, in Annie Swynnerton’s studio and was sold in the February 1934 posthumous sale of her ‘Artistic Effects’. After that it passed through the auction rooms on several occasions but since the early 1970s has remained out of sight. However, thanks to the fact that the National Portrait Gallery archive holds a black-and-white photograph, Melissa Terras and I were able to include this image in Millicent Fawcett: selected writings.[ii]

In Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle I hazarded a guess that the Tate’s portrait might have been painted in a first-floor back room at Fawcett’s home, 2 Gower Street, Bloomsbury. However, I’ve now discovered, in a recently-digitised newspaper (the wonder of our age), that ‘Mrs Swynnerton told a Daily Herald representative that half of the portrait was painted in the garden of Dame Millicent’s house in Gower Street and the other half at her own home’.[iii]

Which leads me neatly to the bland, but intriguing, observation  that a narrative is shaped by the available information. Thus, in biography, an author takes ‘facts’ about a subject and turns them into a ‘life’. If the ‘facts’ comprise primary sources, such as letters, diaries, newspaper articles, society minutes, oral interviews etc, so much the better  – or, at least, easier. But if the subject has left no written trace, information must be wrung from whatever material comes to hand.

And, thus, I leap to the particular. For, in the case of the artist Annie Swynnerton (née Robinson), although there is very little documented information about her early life, serendipity – in the shape of a previously unrecorded collection of family portraits – has recently allowed me to focus the biographical lens on one connection made at the start of her career, that ran as a thread through its entirety, ensured her a place in the canon, and effected the link between the artist and the sitter of Parliament’s latest acquisition.

We know Annie Louisa Robinson was born in Manchester in 1844, the eldest of seven daughters. Her father, Francis Robinson (1814-89), the son of a Yorkshire carpenter,[iv] had risen from what one assumes were relatively humble beginnings, to become a solicitor, with  a practice in central Manchester. By the mid-1850s he was sufficiently successful to be able to move his growing family from inner Manchester to a newly-built, detached house in leafy Prestwich Park, 5 km north of the city.[v]  In fact Robinson was one of the first house-owners in this development which, guarded by two entrance lodges and with fine views, was intended to appeal to the burgeoning Manchester middle-class.[vi]  For some years Robinson involved himself in Manchester affairs; in 1863 he was vice-president of the Manchester Law Association and from at least 1861 was a councillor for St Ann’s Ward and by 1868 its chairman. However, in 1869 disaster struck; he was declared bankrupt. The effect on the family was momentous. In March the entire contents of the home – from a ‘Splendid Walnutwood Drawing-Room Suite, ‘’a sweet-toned cottage pianoforte’, ‘stuffed Australian birds under glass shade’ to a ‘patent coffee percolator’, ‘large brass preserving pans’, and ‘300 choice greenhouse and other plants’ – were all sold at auction.[vii] Stripped from the walls were oil paintings by, among others, Sam Bough, John Brandon Smith, and David Cox, and, from the bookshelves, about 500 volumes, among which were Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.

In June the house itself, with its drawing-room, two dining rooms, breakfast room, library, nine bedrooms, bathrooms, pantries, sculleries, and about half an acre of land, was sold.[viii] The family was then split up. The 1871 census shows Annie (27, Artist), living with her sisters Emily (26, Artist), Julia (24, Artist), Mary (Scholar 16) and Frances (Scholar, 14) in lodgings at 28 Upper Brook Street, back in central Manchester, while Sarah (22) and Adela (19) were visiting with Mrs Sarah Robinson, an elderly widowed relation, and their aunt Mary on the other side of the same street, at number 13.[ix] There is no trace of the Robinson parents in the census but, wherever they were, on census night at least, they were not living with any of their daughters. We must assume that the older sisters now had responsibility for the younger two, who were still at school.

We have no information as to where or how Annie and her sisters were educated. The 1861 Robinson household census does not include a governess, so we can probably conclude that the girls attended a school.[x] Published 30 years later, a brief biographical article in The Queen gives us a rare insight into the Robinson sisters’ early life.[xi]

‘Curiously enough, whilst neither parent had any taste in that direction, Mrs Swynnerton’s two sisters Emily and Julia, were, like herself, born artists, and are both practising their profession in Manchester. When of the tender age of from eleven to thirteen years, Miss Annie used to delight her playfellows, visitors to the house, and the servants with exhibitions of specimens of her very juvenile skill in the shape of water-colour drawings. These primitive works were produced without the advantage of any instruction, and were simply the spontaneous efforts of an inborn, absorbing love of art.’

The Queen commends Francis Robinson for recognising his eldest daughter’s talent and states that ‘she was early placed in the art school at her native city, Manchester’, making no mention of the family’s financial disaster that probably necessitated, or, at least, precipitated, this development. Bankruptcy was unlikely to have struck suddenly and Annie and her sisters may well have been aware of impending disaster. That may be why, from sometime from 1868, Emily, Annie and Julia  enrolled as students at the Manchester School of Art. Sensible young women knew a training was necessary if a living was to be earned. Certainly by 1870/1871, with the security they had once enjoyed swept away, the three oldest Robinson sisters were all attending classes at Manchester School of Art.[xii] Here Annie excelled and in 1873 was awarded one of the 10 national gold medals and a Princess of Wales scholarship worth £11 for ‘Group in oils’.[xiii] Julia was presented with a bronze medal and Emily a book prize.[xiv]

In tracing Annie’s developing career I will continue with the known facts and return later to suppositions. Thus, the narrative runs that in 1874 Annie Robinson travelled to Rome with her friend Isabel Dacre to study and paint, returning to Manchester in 1876. We do not know exactly when in 1874 they left Manchester, nor exactly when in 1876 they returned. But we do know that Annie exhibited a painting at the Manchester exhibition in March 1877.[xv]

Mrs Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

Annie was again successful the following March (1878) in having another painting selected to hang in the Manchester exhibition. Most importantly, this was the first of her works to which the name of the subject was attached, a name that was then included in the press reports. [xvi] The painting was a full-length portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson and is the first, dated, evidence of Annie’s lifelong friendship with the Wilkinson family, about which I write in Enterprising Women. When researching and writing that book, I guessed that the Wilkinsons, a leading Manchester family, were likely to have been the conduit through whom Annie entered the Garrett Circle, but until recently I had no material proof of when the connection might first have been made.

Revelation struck in June 2022 on a particularly serendipitous occasion, held to mark the installation, on her one-time Bloomsbury apartment, of an English Heritage Blue Plaque to Fanny Wilkinson (1855-1951), Britain’s first professional woman landscape gardener. It was my research on Fanny, published in Enterprising Women, that directed attention to her work, and I was delighted to listen as a descendant of her youngest sister gave a talk about the Wilkinson family – and was astounded when a portrait of Fanny, by none other than Annie Swynnerton, appeared on the accompanying Powerpoint. During the reception that followed I was thrilled to discover that a South African branch of the family held other portraits of family members painted by Annie, both before and after her marriage. This cache of paintings, previously unknown to the art world, presents us with a key to unlock more information about Annie’s career.

 For among these family portraits is the painting of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson (1823-89) that was exhibited in Manchester in 1878. Here she is, fashionably attired  in satin, lace, and jewels, her dress, with its swagging, rosettes, ruches, and train, affording Annie every opportunity of displaying a bravura technique.  The Wilkinsons were wealthy and philanthropic; there is no doubt that Annie would have been well paid for the portrait. In addition, by permitting her portrait to be exhibited and allowing herself to be named, Mrs Wilkinson was furthering Annie’s cause by advertising her skill. To attract clients from Manchester’s prosperous middle-class an artist had to be able to display their work. Were the Wilkinsons Annie Robinson’s first significant clients?

 It may be that Annie received similar portrait commissions at this time but because they were not exhibited by name (or, indeed, have subsequently passed through the auction rooms with no name attached) they are now unknown. The one portrait by Annie that did receive attention in the late 1870s was that of the Rev. W. Gaskell, widower of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, which was commissioned by the Portico Library. It was the Rev. Gaskell himself who in 1879 chose to be painted by Annie, remarking ‘My daughters tell me that she has painted a portrait which they like very much.’[xvii] Could it have been the portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson to which they were referring?[xviii]

For the Gaskells and Wilkinsons must surely have known each other. Dr Matthew Eason Wilkinson (1813-78) was Manchester’s leading doctor and his wife, although born in the US, was descended from a radical Manchester family. The Wilkinsons took an interest in art; Fanny, the eldest, put an artistic ‘eye’ and practical ability to good use in forging a novel career, while both Louisa (1859-1936) and Gladys (1864-1957) studied art in London and had works exhibited.

But, to return to the portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson. To have been exhibited in March 1878, this portrait must have been painted sometime earlier, which places Annie firmly in Manchester for at least some of 1877 and, probably, part of 1876. It so happens that the ‘manly, intellectual head’ of Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, Dr Matthew Eason Wilkinson, was, in the autumn of 1877, on display in the studio exhibition of a sculptor, Joseph Swynnerton.[xix] I think, therefore, we can be certain that, whether or not they had known each other previously (and surely they had), the artist and the sculptor must have encountered each other at this time, as they each immortalised Wilkinson père and mère, a pattern repeated the following year when they both produced portraits of the Rev. Gaskell, one in oils and one in marble.

Louisa Wilkinson – second daughter of the Wilkinson family (credit Kenneth Northover)

It was another eleven years before another Annie Swynnerton portrait of a fully-named member of the Wilkinson family was exhibited – and that is this full-length portrait of Louisa Mary Wilkinson, shown at the New Gallery in April/May 1889 . The change of style is remarkable. Louisa was described in the Pall Mall Gazette as ‘a slim figure with an old-fashioned face out of a Dutch picture standing among bluebells and clasping an illuminated missal,[xx] while the Birmingham Daily Post considered it a ‘very original and unconventional portrait, which we found a great deal more human and interesting than the silk and satin gowns with long trains, the feather-fans ad bric-a-brac, with figure-heads attached’.[xxi]

It is now possible to insert a biographical ‘fact’ that may give a slight narrative depth to this picture. For when it was painted, 1888/9, although renting a studio at 6 The Avenue (76 Fulham Road), Annie and Joseph were actually living in Bedford Park, the ‘Queen Anne’, ‘Sweetness and Light’, suburb so popular with artists, their house, 18 St Anne’s Grove, having a purpose-built studio on the top floor.[xxii]  At the same time, Mrs Louisa Wilkinson was also a resident of Bedford Park. Although Fanny was living in Bloomsbury, it’s likely that Louisa and her younger sisters lived, at least some of the time, with their mother.[xxiii] I don’t think it too fanciful to suggest that the younger Louisa Wilkinson may have been painted in Bedford Park – standing amongst bluebells (the image I reproduce is, perforce, cropped) either in the garden of Annie’s house or that of her mother.

A few years earlier Louisa had been recorded in the 1881 census as an art student, exhibited that year in the Dudley Gallery and in 1882 at the Walker Gallery, and later turned her hand to book binding. Thus, it’s fitting she’s depicted wearing Artistic Dress, her loose linen garment, with tucks, shoulder embroidery and bodice smocking, cinched by an embroidered belt,  hinting at an artist’s smock. She wears no necklace or earrings, the illuminated missal offering sufficient jewelled colours. Perhaps she had bound the missal herself.

In 1894 Annie exhibited the portrait again, including it in a Society of Lady Artists exhibition. Fortunately, the review in The Queen allows us to identify this as the same portrait, by including a description of ‘Portrait of Miss Louisa Wilkinson’: ‘a finely executed picture of a lady facing the spectator, holding, apparently, an illuminated missal in her hands. There is a strong sense of harmony in the scheme of colour, in which a reddish-brown costume plays a not inconspicuous part’. [xxiv] The Manchester Evening News described the portrait as a ‘very “new English” full-length study’.[xxv] Although Annie was not elected a member of the New English Art Club until 1909, she had long been responsive to works by such earlier members as George Clausen.

The two paintings, so different in style – that of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson exhibited in 1878 and her daughter, Louisa, in 1889 – are the only two of Annie’s Wilkinson portraits that were exhibited by name. But they are not the only family portraits by her still held by Wilkinson  descendants. As I’m keen to keep supposition separate from known facts, I’m now discussing these separately, rather than inserting them into the known Annie Robinson/Swynnerton chronology.

Jean (on the left) and Gladys Wilkinson (credit Kenneth Northover)

It is possible that the above portrait could have been the first that the Wilkinson family commissioned from Annie. The biographical article published in The Queen mentions that Annie’s ‘.. first picture was a profile picture of a girl’s head, and this she followed with a group, two half-length portraits, called “Gladys and Jean”, which was in the Manchester exhibition.’ 

Gladys and Jean were the youngest members of the Wilkinson family, born in 1863 and 1876. How old do you think they look in this painting? To me it doesn’t seem possible they could be older than 11 and 7 respectively and that, if so, the double portrait must have been painted no later than 1873/1874, before Annie’s departure abroad.[xxvi] Even in this imperfect photo, we can see that the girls’ satin and lace dresses – and the fashionable Japanese fan held by Gladys – have been lovingly detailed by Annie. It seems plausible that the Wilkinson parents would have commissioned a smaller portrait of their youngest daughters, as a test run, before incurring the expense of a full-length painting of their mother.   If The Queen journalist was correctly informed and the painting was indeed exhibited in Manchester, it could have been included in the 1875 Royal Manchester exhibition, the first for which ‘lady exhibitors’, of whom Annie was one, were eligible.[xxvii] Or could it even have been the ‘group in oils’ (which is an echo of  the term used of ‘Gladys and Jean’ in The Queen)for which Annie won her Princess of Wales scholarship in 1873? But that is probably too fanciful – and an illustration of how dangerous it is to view a ‘biography’ through a single  lens.

Fanny Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

Here, now, is the portrait of a demure Fanny Wilkinson that put me on the trail of the cache of ‘Wilkinson’ paintings. Although it probably does carry a date, that cannot be seen at the moment, and, although it’s possible to gauge the age of young children such as Gladys and Jean, it’s more difficult to do so for a young woman. Although I cannot decide whether it was painted before or after Annie’s stay in Rome (1874-6), I think we can be certain that the portrait was painted before the death of Dr Wilkinson in Autumn 1878 and the family’s consequent move from Manchester to Middlethorpe Hall in Yorkshire.

Fanny is depicted as decidedly ‘Artistic’, the sleeves of her dress bound in a quasi-medieval style, a lace fichu flowing  over the bodice, complementing the frothing cuffs. Although we cannot see the whole shape of her dress, it certainly appears more relaxed than her mother’s ruched and flounced costume.  The peacock feathers were, of course, the height of Aesthetic accessorizing. The accomplished painting of the yellow satin and the lace once again advertised the artist’s skill.  I wonder if the portrait was ever exhibited? I don’t think it can be the  ‘profile picture of a girl’s head’ mentioned in the 1890 Queen article – as it’s so much more than ‘a head’.

Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

This is the last of this particular collection of Wilkinson portraits – a sketch of Louisa in a sun bonnet. It is signed ‘A.L. Swynnerton’ and so can be dated to no earlier than 1883 – and her marriage to Joseph – but could perhaps be any time after 1887 (for in that year she was still signing paintings as ‘Robinson’) but before Louisa’s marriage to George Garrett in 1900 (because the  title on the frame refers to her as ‘Wilkinson’).[xxviii]  

This marriage merely formalised the link between the Garrett and Wilkinson families, the women having already been bound for over two decades in friendship and shared enterprises, with Annie as their preferred portraitist. However, besides the portraits noted above, I knew that Annie Swynnerton had painted another portrait of Louisa Garrett/Wilkinson because I had, very much in passing, seen it when researching Enterprising Women, well over 20 years ago. It was then hanging in a house in Aldeburgh, the home of the widow of a descendant of the wider Garrett family who had inherited ‘Greenheys’ (the Snape home of George and Louisa Garrett). I was there attempting to track down information on the work of Rhoda and Agnes Garret and, although noting the portrait with interest, did not, at the time, record it in any way. But, its existence, if not its form, remained in my memory and in very early 2020, shortly before Covid descended, I set out to try and track it down – and yesterday succeeded.

Louisa Wilkinson (later Mrs George Garrett) by Annie Swynnerton (credit Peter Wood)

The portrait of Louisa Wilkinson is particularly interesting for having Annie Robinson’s monogram prominently displayed in the top left corner. Moreover, I believe it is the painting, catalogued as ‘Louise’, that Swynnerton exhibited at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, in September 1878. The critic in the Liverpool Mercury (23 September 1878) praised it as ‘A very pleasing and clever picture, unassuming in character of both work and individual; no ostentation, no gilding of nothingness, but a really fine painting. A young and thoughtful face, neat costume, chaste subdued colouring, and good workmanship, make it a work of beauty and promise much to be admired.’

I think, too, that this is ‘Portrait of a Lady’ that Swynnerton exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1879. I make this deduction from an intriguing comment made in the course of an article about Swynnerton that appeared in the 1890 Queen article. In it the writer remarks of her work that ‘An excellent picture, “Louise”, was placed on the line at the RA, this being succeeded by “The Tryst”.’  

It is difficult to interpret this remark. Although ‘The Factory Girl’s Tryst’ was shown at the RA in 1881, preceded in 1879 by ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and in 1880 by ‘Portrait of Miss S. Isabel Dacre’, Annie doesn’t appear ever to have exhibited any ‘Louise’ (or ‘Louisa’) at the RA. Unless, of course, the Queen journalist was told that the 1879 ‘Portrait of a Lady’ was that of a particular ‘Louise’ (or ‘Louisa’), in which case it must surely be the portrait exhibited in Liverpool the previous year.

In 1879 The Athenaeum’s reviewer described the RA portrait as of a ‘lady in a grey citron dress, standing against a grey background [which] shows profitable studies of old Italian portraiture with Dutch vraisemblance, and is the first-rate example of the harmonious treatment of low tints and tones in a manner that is not decorative ‘[xxix] What do  you think? Could this accord with what you see in the portrait of Louisa Wilkinson? After Liverpool in 1878, was she re-shown at the RA in 1879? As we can see, from the three known portraits, Louisa Wilkinson/Garrett was one of Swynnerton’s favourite subjects. If this was the first, Louisa would have been c 19 in 1878, an age consonant with the sitter of ‘Louise’, Knowing that Swynnerton had also recently painted her mother and three of her sisters, it seems entirely credible that this portrait of Louisa would have been painted in 1878 and, hence, that it is the portrait exhibited at the Walker Gallery and the Royal Academy.

I also know that, over the years, Swynnerton painted Louisa Garrett Anderson (daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and niece of Millicent Fawcett) and Rhoda Garrett (cousin and partner of Agnes Garrett), although their whereabouts is not now known. However, in the course of researching this article I think I have made one discovery.

Agnes Garrett by Annie Swynnerton (courtesy of Lacy Scott and Knight)

For, on Jonathan Russell’s excellent website, under details of the paintings shown at the 1923 exhibition of Annie’s works,  I came across this – described as ‘Portrait of a lady standing by flowering ivy’. It was sold, unframed, at auction twice, in quick succession, in 2014.[xxx] I am certain that this is the portrait that Annie painted of Agnes Garrett – at Agnes’ holiday home in Rustington, in the summer of 1885. The subject not only looks like Agnes, but I can see Sussex knapped flints in the wall behind her. This painting was included in the 1923 Manchester exhibition of Annie’s works – and I know that Agnes’ portrait was also there, in Room 7, lent by her sister-in-law, Louisa Garrett. This must surely be it.

In Enterprising Women I describe in detail how the Wilkinsons, the Garretts, and other members of their circle did so much – through their ‘matronage’ – to ensure Annie Swynnerton’s presence on art gallery walls. And she, in turn, has ensured that her friends and associates, as they hang on the walls of family homes, are still known to their descendants.

You can find other posts about Annie Swynnerton on this website by putting ‘The Garretts and their Circle’ into the Searchbox.

For International Women’s Day 2023 the Pre-Raphaelite Society invited me to talk about Annie Swynnerton. You can find the resulting 2 podcasts here.

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[i] When, c. 2000, I was researching Enterprising Women:the Garretts and their circle (Francis Boutle, 2002) the I had to visit the Tate storage facility in order to view the Swynnerton portrait of Millicent Fawcett. It was subsequently shown in Wales, at Bodelwydden Castle, but returned to London for the suffrage centenary in 2018.

[ii] M. Terras and E. Crawford (eds), Millicent Garrett Fawcett: selected writings, UCL Press. Free to download https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149793/1/Millicent-Garret-Fawcett.pdf p 315.

[iii] Daily Herald, 7 May 1930, 1. Swynnerton’s home and studio in 1910 was 1a The Avenue, 76 Fulham Road, London W.

[iv] Information from Francis Robinson’s Articles of Clerkship, 1836 via Ancestry.

[v] I note that the two youngest Robinson daughters were both born in Prestwich. The elder, Mary, was baptised at St Mary’s, Prestwich, on 3 March 1856.

[vi] For something on the history of Prestwich Park see https://www.bury.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=5382&p=0. In the advertisement for the sale of the Robinsons’ household goods in the Manchester Courier, 6 March 1869, the house was described as ‘the second house from the Bottom Lodge, Prestwich Park.

[vii] Manchester Courier,6 March 1869.

[viii] Manchester Courier, 5 June 1869.

[ix] C. Allen and P. Morris, Annie Swynnerton: painter and pioneer, Sarsen Press, 2018, identifies the widowed relation as Francis Robinson’s stepmother

[x]  In 1861 Miss Hannah Dickinson’s Ladies’ College opened at Hill-side House, in Prestwich Park, close to the Robinsons’ home. Although Annie would have been then too old, it’s unlikely that even her younger sisters were pupils, as Its fees, even for day girls, were high, 16-20 guineas per annum. Miss Dickinson stressed that she had chosen Prestwich Park for its ‘beautiful scenery, its rural glens, its retired walks, and salubrious breezes – as well as ‘its kind-hearted inhabitants’. Miss Dickinson, Thoughts on Woman and Her Education, Longman Green, 1861, p2

[xi] The Queen, 15 March 1890.

[xii] No firm, primary, evidence has come to light as to when exactly the sisters – either individually or together – enrolled at the School of Art. However, Allen and Morris (p. 19) have established very persuasively that Emily ‘was certainly there from at least autumn 1868’ and that Annie, too, had probably been enrolled in 1868, and Julia certainly by 1869-70.

[xiii] Manchester Evening News, 20 August 1873.

[xiv] Manchester Courier, 13 July 1874.

[xv] It was only in 1875 that  9 ‘Lady exhibitors’ were elected for the first time – among whom were Annie Robinson and Isabel Dacre.

[xvi] ‘Miss Annie L. Robinson has a large full-length portrait of Mrs. Eason Wilkinson … and although defective in some respects, gives promise of better work in the future.’ (The Manchester Courier, and Lancashire General Advertiser, 8 March 1878.)

[xvii] Rev. Gaskell quoted in B. Brill, William Gaskell, 1805-84: a portrait, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Publications, 110-11.

[xviii] The portrait of the Rev. Gaskell now hangs in the Gaskells’ former home – see https://elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk/

[xix] Manchester Times, 6 October 1877. Dr Wilkinson was that year president of the British Medical Association, whose meeting had been held that summer in Manchester. The portrait bust may have been intended to mark this achievement. I have no knowledge of what has become of it. Swynnerton’s studio was at 35 Barton Arcade. In 1880 the address of the Manchester Society for Women Painters was 10 Barton House, Deansgate, which must have been close to the Arcade.

[xx] Pall Mall Gazette, 1 May 1889. At this time both artist and sitter had moved from Manchester; Annie had a London base at the Avenue Studios, 76 Fulham Road, W. and Louisa Wilkinson was living, with her sister Fanny, at 15 Bloomsbury St, WC.

[xxi] Birmingham Daily Post, 18 May 1889.

[xxii] Annie gave th e St Anne’s Grove address when she submitted work in 1888 to the Society of Women Artists and the Swynnertons were still living there in 1891. However, it is only Annie’s name – and that of her Aunt Mary and their one servant – that appears on the census because the previous page, which must include Joseph as the last entry, is missing – or has been missed when scanning. The page reference that shows Annie’s presence at 18 Queen Anne’s Grove is RG12/1038 folio 8 page 33 schedule 193. Information on the Swynnertons’ occupation of these addresses can be found in the London Electoral Register via Ancestry.

[xxiii] Mrs Wilkinson was living in Bedford Park from at least 1886 and died there in 1889. Her house is only referred to as ‘The Chestnuts’ and I have been unable to discover the exact address.

[xxiv] The Queen, 28 April 1894.

[xxv] Manchester Evening News, 21 April 1894.

[xxvi] The double portrait of ‘Gladys and Jean’ may be dated, but at the moment that information is not accessible.

[xxvii] Alas, I have not yet been able to consult the catalogue for this exhibition. If anyone does know if a portrait by Miss Robinson of two young girls was included do, please, let me know.

[xxviii] For information about the change of signature see  https://annielouisaswynnerton.com/ordered-by-date/ .

[xxix] Thanks to Julie Foster for pinpointing the Liverpool Mercury reference. The Atheneum, 5^th and concluding notice of RA Summer Exhibition, 7 June 1879,734.

[xxx] . Unfortunately, neither of the East Anglian auction houses who sold the painting holds records as far back as 2014 and I’ve been unable to discover any more information about the painting, or its current whereabouts.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett by Annie Swynnerton. (Courtesy of The Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art)

Excellent News: Millicent Fawcett is entering Parliament. A portrait of Millicent Garrett Fawcett by Annie Swynnerton has been acquired by The Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art .

Last summer I noticed that this painting had appeared in an art dealer’s listing and immediately alerted Melanie Unwin, who until recently was Deputy Collector of the Palace of Westminster Collection – exclaiming, ‘Now, wouldn’t this be an excellent addition to the Parliamentary Collection?’ And – it has come to pass. The portrait is due to be ‘unveiled’ at the end of this month (March 2023). Public recognition of Millicent Fawcett is something in which I have taken a personal interest – for ten years ago I posted on this website a plea – ‘Make Millicent Fawcett Visible’. And – the veil has been lifted – she now has a statue in Westminster Square, her portrait, by Annie Swynnerton, is on show in the Tate,[i] and this other version will now hang in Parliament.

 This version, which presumably was painted around the same time (1910) as that bought for the Tate by the Chantrey Bequest in 1930 (the year after Fawcett’s death), remained, for whatever reason, in Annie Swynnerton’s studio and was sold in the February 1934 posthumous sale of her ‘Artistic Effects’. After that it passed through the auction rooms on several occasions but since the early 1970s has remained out of sight. However, thanks to the fact that the National Portrait Gallery archive holds a black-and-white photograph, Melissa Terras and I were able to include this image in Millicent Fawcett: selected writings.[ii]

In Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle I hazarded a guess that the Tate’s portrait might have been painted in a first-floor back room at Fawcett’s home, 2 Gower Street, Bloomsbury. However, I’ve now discovered, in a recently-digitised newspaper (the wonder of our age), that ‘Mrs Swynnerton told a Daily Herald representative that half of the portrait was painted in the garden of Dame Millicent’s house in Gower Street and the other half at her own home’.[iii]

Which leads me neatly to the bland, but intriguing, observation  that a narrative is shaped by the available information. Thus, in biography, an author takes ‘facts’ about a subject and turns them into a ‘life’. If the ‘facts’ comprise primary sources, such as letters, diaries, newspaper articles, society minutes, oral interviews etc, so much the better  – or, at least, easier. But if the subject has left no written trace, information must be wrung from whatever material comes to hand.

And, thus, I leap to the particular. For, in the case of the artist Annie Swynnerton (née Robinson), although there is very little documented information about her early life, serendipity – in the shape of a previously unrecorded collection of family portraits – has recently allowed me to focus the biographical lens on one connection made at the start of her career, that ran as a thread through its entirety, ensured her a place in the canon, and effected the link between the artist and the sitter of Parliament’s latest acquisition.

We know Annie Louisa Robinson was born in Manchester in 1844, the eldest of seven daughters. Her father, Francis Robinson (1814-89), the son of a Yorkshire carpenter,[iv] had risen from what one assumes were relatively humble beginnings, to become a solicitor, with  a practice in central Manchester. By the mid-1850s he was sufficiently successful to be able to move his growing family from inner Manchester to a newly-built, detached house in leafy Prestwich Park, 5 km north of the city.[v]  In fact Robinson was one of the first house-owners in this development which, guarded by two entrance lodges and with fine views, was intended to appeal to the burgeoning Manchester middle-class.[vi]  For some years Robinson involved himself in Manchester affairs; in 1863 he was vice-president of the Manchester Law Association and from at least 1861 was a councillor for St Ann’s Ward and by 1868 its chairman. However, in 1869 disaster struck; he was declared bankrupt. The effect on the family was momentous. In March the entire contents of the home – from a ‘Splendid Walnutwood Drawing-Room Suite, ‘’a sweet-toned cottage pianoforte’, ‘stuffed Australian birds under glass shade’ to a ‘patent coffee percolator’, ‘large brass preserving pans’, and ‘300 choice greenhouse and other plants’ – were all sold at auction.[vii] Stripped from the walls were oil paintings by, among others, Sam Bough, John Brandon Smith, and David Cox, and, from the bookshelves, about 500 volumes, among which were Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.

In June 1869 the Robinsons’ house , with its drawing-room, two dining rooms, breakfast room, library, nine bedrooms, bathrooms, pantries, sculleries, and about half an acre of land, was sold.[viii] The family was then split up. The 1871 census shows Annie (27, Artist), living with her sisters Emily (26, Artist), Julia (24, Artist), Mary (Scholar 16) and Frances (Scholar, 14) in lodgings at 28 Upper Brook Street, back in central Manchester, while Sarah (22) and Adela (19) were visiting with Mrs Sarah Robinson, an elderly widowed relation, and their aunt Mary on the other side of the same street, at number 13.[ix] There is no trace of the Robinson parents in the census but, wherever they were, on census night at least, they were not living with any of their daughters. We must assume that the older sisters now had responsibility for the younger two, who were still at school.

We have no information as to where or how Annie and her sisters were educated. The 1861 Robinson household census does not include a governess, so we can probably conclude that the girls attended a school.[x] Published 30 years later, a brief biographical article in The Queen gives us a rare insight into the Robinson sisters’ early life.[xi]

‘Curiously enough, whilst neither parent had any taste in that direction, Mrs Swynnerton’s two sisters Emily and Julia, were, like herself, born artists, and are both practising their profession in Manchester. When of the tender age of from eleven to thirteen years, Miss Annie used to delight her playfellows, visitors to the house, and the servants with exhibitions of specimens of her very juvenile skill in the shape of water-colour drawings. These primitive works were produced without the advantage of any instruction, and were simply the spontaneous efforts of an inborn, absorbing love of art.’

The Queen commends Francis Robinson for recognising his eldest daughter’s talent and states that ‘she was early placed in the art school at her native city, Manchester’, making no mention of the family’s financial disaster that probably necessitated, or, at least, precipitated, this development. Bankruptcy was unlikely to have struck suddenly and Annie and her sisters may well have been aware of impending disaster. That may be why, from sometime from 1868, Emily, Annie and Julia  enrolled as students at the Manchester School of Art. Sensible young women knew a training was necessary if a living was to be earned. Certainly by 1870/1871, with the security they had once enjoyed swept away, the three oldest Robinson sisters were all attending classes at Manchester School of Art.[xii] Here Annie excelled and in 1873 was awarded one of the 10 national gold medals and a Princess of Wales scholarship worth £11 for ‘Group in oils’.[xiii] Julia was presented with a bronze medal and Emily a book prize.[xiv]

In tracing Annie’s developing career I will continue with the known facts and return later to suppositions. Thus, the narrative runs that in 1874 Annie Robinson travelled to Rome with her friend Isabel Dacre to study and paint, returning to Manchester in 1876. We do not know exactly when in 1874 they left Manchester, nor exactly when in 1876 they returned. But we do know that Annie exhibited a painting at the Manchester exhibition in March 1877.[xv]

Mrs Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

Annie was again successful the following March (1878) in having another painting selected to hang in the Manchester exhibition. Most importantly, this was the first of her works to which the name of the subject was attached, a name that was then included in the press reports. [xvi] The painting was a full-length portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson and is the first, dated, evidence of Annie’s lifelong friendship with the Wilkinson family, about which I write in Enterprising Women. When researching and writing that book, I guessed that the Wilkinsons, a leading Manchester family, were likely to have been the conduit through whom Annie entered the Garrett Circle, but until recently I had no material proof of when the connection might first have been made.

Revelation struck in June 2022 on a particularly serendipitous occasion, held to mark the installation, on her one-time Bloomsbury apartment, of an English Heritage Blue Plaque to Fanny Wilkinson (1855-1951), Britain’s first professional woman landscape gardener. It was my research on Fanny, published in Enterprising Women, that directed attention to her work, and I was delighted to listen as a descendant of her youngest sister gave a talk about the Wilkinson family – and was astounded when a portrait of Fanny, by none other than Annie Swynnerton, appeared on the accompanying Powerpoint. During the reception that followed I was thrilled to discover that a South African branch of the family held other portraits of family members painted by Annie, both before and after her marriage. This cache of paintings, previously unknown to the art world, presents us with a key to unlock more information about Annie’s career.

For among these family portraits is the painting of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson (1823-89) that was exhibited in Manchester in 1878. Here she is, fashionably attired  in satin, lace, and jewels, her dress, with its swagging, rosettes, ruches, and train, affording Annie every opportunity of displaying a bravura technique.  The Wilkinsons were wealthy and philanthropic; there is no doubt that Annie would have been well paid for the portrait. In addition, by permitting her portrait to be exhibited and allowing herself to be named, Mrs Wilkinson was furthering Annie’s cause by advertising her skill. To attract clients from Manchester’s prosperous middle-class an artist had to be able to display their work. Were the Wilkinsons Annie Robinson’s first significant clients?

 It may be that Annie received similar portrait commissions at this time but, because they were not exhibited by name (or, indeed, have subsequently passed through the auction rooms with a name attached), they are now unknown. The one portrait by Annie that did receive attention in the late 1870s was that of the Rev. W. Gaskell, widower of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, which was commissioned by the Portico Library. It was the Rev. Gaskell himself who in 1879 chose to be painted by Annie, remarking ‘My daughters tell me that she has painted a portrait which they like very much.’[xvii] Could it have been the portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson to which they were referring?[xviii]

For the Gaskells and Wilkinsons must surely have known each other. Dr Matthew Eason Wilkinson (1813-78) was Manchester’s leading doctor and his wife, although born in the US, was descended from a radical Manchester family. The Wilkinsons took an interest in art; Fanny, the eldest, put an artistic ‘eye’ and practical ability to good use in forging a novel career, while both Louisa (1859-1936) and Gladys (1864-1957) studied art in London and had works exhibited.

But, to return to the portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson. To have been exhibited in March 1878, this portrait must have been painted sometime earlier, which places Annie firmly in Manchester for at least some of 1877 and, probably, part of 1876. It so happens that the ‘manly, intellectual head’ of Mrs Wilkinson’s husband, Dr Matthew Eason Wilkinson, was, in the autumn of 1877, on display in the studio exhibition of a sculptor, Joseph Swynnerton.[xix] I think, therefore, we can be certain that, whether or not they had known each other previously (and surely they had), the artist and the sculptor must have encountered each other at this time, as they each immortalised Wilkinson père and mère, a pattern repeated the following year when they both produced portraits of the Rev. Gaskell, one in oils and one in marble.

As an addendum to the discussion of the portrait of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson, I will just mention here a rather intriguing comment made in the 1890 article about Annie that appeared in The Queen. In it the writer remarks that ‘An excellent picture, “Louise”, was placed on the line at the RA, this being succeeded by ”The Tryst”.’  It is difficult to interpret this remark. Although ‘The Factory Girl’s Tryst’ was shown at the RA in 1881, preceded in 1879 by ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and in 1880 by ‘Portrait of Miss S. Isabel Dacre’, Annie doesn’t appear ever to have exhibited any ‘Louise’ (or ‘Louisa’) at the RA. Unless, of course, the Queen journalist was told that the 1879 ‘Portrait of a Lady’ was that of a particular ‘Louise’ (or ‘Louisa’). In 1879 The Athenaeum’s reviewer described the portrait as of a ‘lady in a grey citron dress, standing against a grey background [which] shows profitable studies of old Italian portraiture with Dutch vraisemblance, and is the first-rate example of the harmonious treatment of low tints and tones in a manner that is not decorative ‘[xx] What do  you think? Could this accord with what you see in Mrs Louisa Wilkinson portrait? After Manchester in 1878, was she re-shown at the RA in 1879? Or was the portrait of another ‘Louise’ entirely?

Louisa Wilkinson – second daughter of the Wilkinson family (credit Kenneth Northover)

It was another eleven years before we can be certain that another portrait by Annie Swynnerton of a member of the Wilkinson family was exhibited – and that is this full-length portrait of Louisa Mary Wilkinson, shown at the New Gallery in April/May 1889. The change of style is remarkable. Louisa was described in the Pall Mall Gazette as ‘a slim figure with an old-fashioned face out of a Dutch picture standing among bluebells and clasping an illuminated missal,[xxi] while the Birmingham Daily Post considered it a ‘very original and unconventional portrait, which we found a great deal more human and interesting than the silk and satin gowns with long trains, the feather-fans ad bric-a-brac, with figure-heads attached’.[xxii]

It is now possible to insert a biographical ‘fact’ that may give a slight narrative depth to this picture. For when it was painted, 1888/9, although renting a studio at 6 The Avenue (76 Fulham Road), Annie and Joseph were actually living in Bedford Park, the ‘Queen Anne’, ‘Sweetness and Light’, suburb so popular with artists, their house, 18 St Anne’s Grove, having a purpose-built studio on the top floor.[xxiii]  At the same time, Mrs Louisa Wilkinson was also a resident of Bedford Park. Although Fanny was living in Bloomsbury, it’s likely and Louisa and her younger sisters lived, at least some of the time, with their mother.[xxiv] I don’t think it too fanciful to suggest that the younger Louisa Wilkinson may have been painted in Bedford Park – standing amongst bluebells (the image I reproduce is, perforce, cropped) either in the garden of Annie’s house or that of her mother.

A few years earlier Louisa had been recorded in the 1881 census as an art student, exhibited that year in the Dudley Gallery and in 1882 at the Walker Gallery, and later turned her hand to book binding. Thus, it’s fitting she’s depicted wearing Artistic Dress, her loose linen garment, with tucks, shoulder embroidery and bodice smocking, cinched by an embroidered belt,  hinting at an artist’s smock. She wears no necklace or earrings, the illuminated missal offering sufficient jewelled colours. Perhaps she had bound the missal herself.

In 1894 Annie exhibited the portrait again, including it in a Society of Lady Artists exhibition. Fortunately, the review in The Queen allows us to identify this as the same portrait, by including a description of ‘Portrait of Miss Louisa Wilkinson’: ‘a finely executed picture of a lady facing the spectator, holding, apparently, an illuminated missal in her hands. There is a strong sense of harmony in the scheme of colour, in which a reddish-brown costume plays a not inconspicuous part’. [xxv] The Manchester Evening News described the portrait as a ‘very “new English” full-length study’.[xxvi] Although Annie was not elected a member of the New English Art Club until 1909, she had long been responsive to works by such earlier members as George Clausen.

The two paintings, so different in style – that of Mrs Louisa Wilkinson exhibited in 1878 and her daughter, Louisa, in 1889 – are the only two of Annie’s Wilkinson portraits that were exhibited by name. But they are not the only family portraits by her still held by Wilkinson  descendants. As I’m keen to keep supposition separate from known facts, I’m now discussing these separately, rather than inserting them into the known Annie Robinson/Swynnerton chronology.

Jean (on the left) and Gladys Wilkinson (credit Kenneth Northover)

It is possible that the above portrait could have been the first that the Wilkinson family commissioned from Annie. The biographical article published in The Queen mentions that Annie’s ‘.. first picture was a profile picture of a girl’s head, and this she followed with a group, two half-length portraits, called “Gladys and Jean”, which was in the Manchester exhibition.’ 

Gladys and Jean were the youngest members of the Wilkinson family, born in 1863 and 1876. How old do you think they look in this painting? To me it doesn’t seem possible they could be older than 11 and 7 respectively and that, if so, the double portrait must have been painted no later than 1873/1874, before Annie’s departure abroad.[xxvii] Even in this imperfect photo, we can see that the girls’ satin and lace dresses – and the fashionable Japanese fan held by Gladys – have been lovingly detailed by Annie. It seems plausible that the Wilkinson parents would have commissioned a smaller portrait of their youngest daughters, as a test run, before incurring the expense of a full-length painting of their mother.   If The Queen journalist was correctly informed and the painting was indeed exhibited in Manchester, it could have been included in the 1875 Royal Manchester exhibition, the first for which ‘lady exhibitors’, of whom Annie was one, were eligible.[xxviii] Or could it even have been the ‘group in oils’ (which is an echo of  the term used of ‘Gladys and Jean’ in The Queen)for which Annie won her Princess of Wales scholarship in 1873? But that is probably too fanciful – and an illustration of how dangerous it is to view a ‘biography’ through a single  lens.

Fanny Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

Here, now, is the portrait of a demure Fanny Wilkinson that put me on the trail of the cache of ‘Wilkinson’ paintings. Although it probably does carry a date, that cannot be seen at the moment, and, although it’s possible to gauge the age of young children such as Gladys and Jean, it’s more difficult to do so for a young woman. Although I cannot decide whether it was painted before or after Annie’s stay in Rome (1874-6), I think we can be certain that the portrait was painted before the death of Dr Wilkinson in Autumn 1878 and the family’s consequent move from Manchester to Middlethorpe Hall in Yorkshire.

Fanny is depicted as decidedly ‘Artistic’, the sleeves of her dress bound in a quasi-medieval style, a lace fichu flowing  over the bodice, complementing the frothing cuffs. Although we cannot see the whole shape of her dress, it certainly appears more relaxed than her mother’s ruched and flounced costume.  The peacock feathers were, of course, the height of Aesthetic accessorizing. The accomplished painting of the yellow satin and the lace once again advertised the artist’s skill.  I wonder if the portrait was ever exhibited? I don’t think it can be the  ‘profile picture of a girl’s head’ mentioned in the 1890 Queen article – as it’s so much more than ‘a head’.

Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton (credit Kenneth Northover)

This is the last of this batch of Wilkinson portraits – a sketch of Louisa in a sun bonnet. It is signed ‘A.L. Swynnerton’ and so can be dated to no earlier than 1883 – and her marriage to Joseph – but could perhaps be any time after 1887 (for in that year she was still signing paintings as ‘Robinson’) but before Louisa’s marriage to George Garrett in 1900 (because the  title on the frame refers to her as ‘Wilkinson’).[xxix]  

This marriage merely formalised the link between the Garrett and Wilkinson families, the women having already been bound for over two decades in friendship and shared enterprises, with Annie as their preferred portraitist. Besides the portraits noted above, I know she painted an earlier portrait of Louisa Wilkinson (the younger), probably dating from the late 1870s, but at the moment am unable to contact the owner in order to ask permission to reproduce the image of it that I have.It has even crossed my mind to wonder if this could be the portrait of ‘Louise’ that The Queen journalist was so sure had been exhibited at the RA. I also know Annie painted Louisa Garrett Anderson (daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and niece of Millicent Fawcett) and Rhoda Garrett (cousin and partner of Agnes Garrett), although the whereabouts of these portraits is not now known. However, in the course of researching this article I think I have made one discovery.

Agnes Garrett? by Annie Swynnerton (courtesy of Lacy Scott and Knight)

For, on Jonathan Russell’s excellent ‘Annie Swynnerton’ website, under details of the paintings shown at the 1923 exhibition of Annie’s works,  I came across this painting– described as ‘Portrait of a lady standing by flowering ivy’, which, as I then saw from Saleroom.com, had been sold twice, in quick succession, in 2014. I am certain that this is the portrait that Annie painted of Agnes Garrett – at Agnes’ holiday home in Rustington, in the summer of 1885. The subject not only looks like Agnes (wearing a dress with an apron front fashionable at that date) but I can see Sussex knapped flints in the wall behind her. This painting was included in the 1923 Manchester exhibition of Annie’s works – and I know that Agnes’ portrait was also there, although without her name attached. This must surely be it.

The Wilkinsons’ connection to Annie Swynnerton continued until her death. Louisa Garrett sent a wreath – and her sister, Fanny Wilkinson, was one of the few mourners named as attending her burial.

In Enterprising Women I describe in detail how the Wilkinsons, the Garretts, and other members of their circle did so much – through their ‘matronage’ – to ensure Annie Swynnerton’s presence on art gallery walls. And she, in turn, has ensured that her friends and associates, as they hang on the walls of family homes, are still known to their descendants.

You can find other posts about Annie Swynnerton on this website by putting ‘The Garretts and their Circle’ into the Searchbox.

For International Women’s Day 2023 the Pre-Raphaelite Society invited me to talk about Annie Swynnerton. You can find the resulting 2 podcasts here

Copyright

All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement

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[i] When, c. 2000, I was researching Enterprising Women:the Garretts and their circle (Francis Boutle, 2002) I had to visit the Tate storage facility in order to view the Swynnerton portrait of Millicent Fawcett. It was subsequently shown in Wales, at Bodelwydden Castle, but returned to London for the suffrage centenary in 2018.

[ii] M. Terras and E. Crawford (eds), Millicent Garrett Fawcett: selected writings, UCL Press. Free to download https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10149793/1/Millicent-Garret-Fawcett.pdf p 315.

[iii] Daily Herald, 7 May 1930, 1. Swynnerton’s home and studio in 1910 was 1a The Avenue, 76 Fulham Road, London W.

[iv] Information from Francis Robinson’s Articles of Clerkship, 1836 via Ancestry.

[v] I note that the two youngest Robinson daughters were both born in Prestwich. The elder, Mary, was baptised at St Mary’s, Prestwich, on 3 March 1856.

[vi] For something on the history of Prestwich Park see https://www.bury.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=5382&p=0. In the advertisement for the sale of the Robinsons’ household goods in the Manchester Courier, 6 March 1869, the house was described as ‘the second house from the Bottom Lodge, Prestwich Park.

[vii] Manchester Courier,6 March 1869.

[viii] Manchester Courier, 5 June 1869.

[ix] C. Allen and P. Morris, Annie Swynnerton: painter and pioneer, Sarsen Press, 2018, identifies the widowed relation as Francis Robinson’s stepmother

[x]  In 1861 Miss Hannah Dickinson’s Ladies’ College opened at Hill-side House, in Prestwich Park, close to the Robinsons’ home. Although Annie would have been then too old, it’s unlikely that even her younger sisters were pupils, as Its fees, even for day girls, were high, 16-20 guineas per annum. Miss Dickinson stressed that she had chosen Prestwich Park for its ‘beautiful scenery, its rural glens, its retired walks, and salubrious breezes – as well as ‘its kind-hearted inhabitants’. Miss Dickinson, Thoughts on Woman and Her Education, Longman Green, 1861, p2

[xi] The Queen, 15 March 1890.

[xii] No firm, primary, evidence has come to light as to when exactly the sisters – either individually or together – enrolled at the School of Art. However, Allen and Morris (p. 19) have established very persuasively that Emily ‘was certainly there from at least autumn 1868’ and that Annie, too, had probably been enrolled in 1868, and Julia certainly by 1869-70.

[xiii] Manchester Evening News, 20 August 1873.

[xiv] Manchester Courier, 13 July 1874.

[xv] It was only in 1875 that  9 ‘Lady exhibitors’ were elected for the first time – among whom were Annie Robinson and Isabel Dacre.

[xvi] ‘Miss Annie L. Robinson has a large full-length portrait of Mrs. Eason Wilkinson … and although defective in some respects, gives promise of better work in the future.’ (The Manchester Courier, and Lancashire General Advertiser, 8 March 1878.)

[xvii] Rev. Gaskell quoted in B. Brill, William Gaskell, 1805-84: a portrait, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Publications, 110-11.

[xviii] The portrait of the Rev. Gaskell now hangs in the Gaskells’ former home – see https://elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk/

[xix] Manchester Times, 6 October 1877. Dr Wilkinson was that year president of the British Medical Association, whose meeting had been held that summer in Manchester. The portrait bust may have been intended to mark this achievement. I have no knowledge of what has become of it. Swynnerton’s studio was at 35 Barton Arcade. In 1880 the address of the Manchester Society for Women Painters was 10 Barton House, Deansgate, which must have been close to the Arcade.

[xx]  The Atheneum, 5^th and concluding notice of RA Summer Exhibition, 7 June 1879,734.

[xxi] Pall Mall Gazette, 1 May 1889. At this time both artist and sitter had moved from Manchester; Annie had a London base at the Avenue Studios, 76 Fulham Road, W. and Louisa Wilkinson was living, with her sister Fanny, at 15 Bloomsbury St, WC.

[xxii] Birmingham Daily Post, 18 May 1889.

[xxiii] Annie gave the St Anne’s Grove address when she submitted work in 1888 to the Society of Women Artists and the Swynnertons were still living there in 1891. However, it is only Annie’s name – and that of her Aunt Mary and their one servant – that appears on the census (as shown on Ancestry and Findmypast) because the previous page, which must include Joseph as the last entry, is missing – or has been missed when scanning. The page reference that shows Annie’s presence at 18 Queen Anne’s Grove is RG12/1038 folio 8 page 33 schedule 193. Information on the Swynnertons’ occupation of these addresses can be found in the London Electoral Register via Ancestry.

[xxiv] Mrs Wilkinson was living in Bedford Park from at least 1886 and died there in 1889. Her house is only referred to as ‘The Chestnuts’ and I have been unable to discover the exact address.

[xxv] The Queen, 28 April 1894.

[xxvi] Manchester Evening News, 21 April 1894.

[xxvii] The double portrait of ‘Gladys and Jean’ may be dated, but at the moment that information is not accessible.

[xxviii] Alas, I have not yet been able to consult the catalogue for this exhibition. If anyone does know if a portrait by Miss Robinson of two young girls was included do, please, let me know.

[xxix] For information about the change of signature see https://annielouisaswynnerton.com/ordered-by-date/

[xxx] . Unfortunately, neither of the East Anglian auction houses which sold the painting holds records as far back as 2014 and I’ve been unable to discover any more information about the portrait, or its current whereabouts.

Still Life by M.C. Lloyd (Constance Lloyd). (Private collection, courtesy of Napier Collyns)

Reading Rebecca Birrell’s This Dark Country: women artists, still life and intimacy in the early 20^th c, I had sped through the Introduction and the first three chapters – on [Dora] Carrington, Edna [Waugh], and Ethel [Sands] – when I came to the fourth, titled ‘Mary’. The opening paragraph was intriguing, for it revealed that this artist – ‘Mary’ -was something of a mystery to the author. Birrell writes that:

‘at first she was a confusion of names, an inconsistency that asked to be resolved: she was Constance, and she was Miss Lloyd, and she was Mary, and she was Katherine – shadows with a similar shape, an address in common, a hand worn by the same work. Then she was those four strands of herself combined, she was Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd, a figure with a question hanging over her…Mary became all the small details I gathered from what she allowed me to see.’

This elusive ‘Mary’ attracted my attention. For, while Birrell employs what is known to academics as the ‘emotional’ or ‘affective’ turn to the study of these women artists, I am very much attached to the ‘biographical’ turn.Who was ‘Mary’? Why was there a confusion of names?

Googling ‘Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd’ led me to the ArtUK page for ‘Mary Katharine [sic] Constance Lloyd’, which included birth and death dates and a short biography[i]. It was then only the work of a moment to discover on Ancestry that the woman with the given dates was not a Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd but a Katharine Constance Lloyd. How peculiar, I thought, and  looked again at the ArtUK page. It then seemed obvious that the paintings displayed were unlikely to all be by the same hand. Four, including the one described by Birrell in the chapter on ‘Mary’, might be classed as ‘impressionist’, while the others were formal portraits of worthy 20^th-century gentlemen, attired in various robes of office.

A little more online research established that there was, indeed, another artist with a similar name, Mary Constance Lloyd, and that a succession of art reference works had carelessly blended their two lives together – to create ’Mary Katharine Constance Lloyd’. I suppose it is a measure of how little importance is attached to the lives of such women artists that in 50 years no author had bothered to research either subject ab initio – but, when compiling a new biographical dictionary or making a footnote reference, had merely copied the – incorrect – information.

Anyway, suffice to say, having now resurrected as best I can the long, professionally active lives of both women, the resulting biographies can be found below. The artist to whom Birrell devotes the ‘Mary’ chapter is Mary Constance Lloyd who, while signing her paintings ‘M.C. Lloyd’, was always known as ‘Constance’ rather than ‘Mary’. Katharine Constance Lloyd has yet, I think, to attract any authorial attention.

I must confess that I find myself rushing to Constance Lloyd’s defence, for Birrell, while establishing no firm facts about her life, yet  ‘reads’ one still life to suggest that ‘Mary’s preferences tended towards invisibility, ignored proposals, anonymous works, little self promotion’.[ii]

My research into the life actually led by Constance Lloyd indicates that this was definitely not the case. I do not know what Birrell means by ‘ignored proposals’ (the phrase is not referenced), but Constance Lloyd’s work was not anonymous  and the evidence is that she was not at all averse to self-promotion, taking part in numerous exhibitions, her work cited in reviews, happy to accept the help offered by her old friend Duncan Grant in getting her work shown and, even in old age, keen to engage in interviews with the press. 

On one specific point Birrell is incorrect in stating that ‘she lived in Paris from the turn of the century to the twenties, after that she returned to England, and life was different, quieter. Long walks, rooms lit weakly by the fire, an ache in the hands once her letters were finished, slipping under heavy bedding before it grew dark’.  Birrell gives no reference for the described scenario, but Constance did not, in the 1920s, return to live in England. Indeed, in her will, drawn up in 1958, she specifically states that she had lived in France since 1908. She died in Paris 10 years later.

Finally, Birrell states, ‘What happened to her practice is unclear.’ My short biographical study answers that question. Constance Lloyd was exhibiting in London when she was 79 years old – and continued painting for the rest of her life. Family members fondly remember her as engaging and spiritedly independent, recalling visits to her crowded Parisian flat and to her house at Genainville, their memories ranging from her love of Siamese cats and Black Magic chocolates to her fluent French, spoken with a ‘Churchillian accent.’

Although I do understand that in This Dark Country Birrell is applying ‘a loose and interpretive method’ to her study of her chosen artists, she does not rely solely on the ‘emotional turn’ when discussing artists such as Carrington and Vanessa Bell, but also draws from the wide range of available  biographical detail. It does seem a pity, therefore, that, by resisting any attempt to discover who ‘Mary’ really was,  Birrell allowed her ‘to slip away unnoticed’, suggesting that ‘There was a freedom in existing as she did, as a series of charged impressions, connected only to a handful of letters, sometimes as Mary and sometimes as Constance, no husband or acquired surname to place her firmly within an established familial structure.’ I am not sure that ignorance should be equated with freedom. Great-Aunt Con is still very much a reality to the Lloyd family (a familial structure in which she was firmly established) who would, I am sure, have been as happy to share their knowledge of her life and work with Birrell as they have been with me.

Mary Constance Lloyd

The Lloyd family photographed outside ‘Farm’, c. 1900. Constance is standing 4th from left. (Courtesy of Sampson Lloyd)

Lloyd, Mary Constance (7 October 1873-1 August 1968) was born at the Lloyd family home, ‘Farm’, Sampson Road, Sparkbrook, Warwickshire, the youngest of the twelve children (ten daughters and  two sons) of Samuel (1827-1918) and Jane Lloyd (1839-95). While ‘Mary’ was her first given name – and she signed her paintings as ‘M.C. Lloyd’ – she was always known as ‘Constance’ and, within the family, as ‘Con’.

Constance’s family was wealthy. Her great- great-grandfather had been the founder of Lloyds Bank; her father was a steel maker, an ‘iron master’. Neither she nor her sisters were compelled to earn their own living, although several of them carved out distinctive careers. Adelaide (1861-1937) trained as a nurse, became matron of Stratford-on-Avon Hospital and then, from 1895 for ten years, matron of Birmingham Children’s Hospital. In 1914 she was elected, by an overwhelming majority, a member of Sparkbrook board of guardians.^[iii] [Margaret] Jessie (1865-1952) was in 1911 secretary of Birmingham Infants’ Health Society and treasurer of the Adult School Union.^[iv] Julia (1867-1955) trained as a teacher at the Froebel institutes in Edgbaston and Berlin and was for some time an instructor in a St John’s Wood, London, training school for kindergarten teachers. She then returned to Birmingham, where she set up kindergartens in poor districts and was secretary of the Birmingham People’s Kindergarten Association, which became, in 1917, the Birmingham Nursery Schools Association.^[v] Another sister, Edyth (1860-1936), was also involved in welfare work,  in 1915 working for the Ladies’ Association for the Care of Friendless Girls and, alongside Julia in Birmingham Women’s Settlement.^[vi]  Being independently wealthy the sisters had no need to find financial support through marriage and only one, Caroline (1863-1921), chose to marry. Gwen John exaggerated only slightly when she reported to Rodin that Constance Lloyd had nine sisters, all above the age of 23, none of whom had ever had a lover.^[vii]

Little is known of the sisters’ education, although in 1881 two of Constance’s older sisters, Caroline and Jessie, were pupils at St John’s Ladies’ School in Patcham, Sussex, while in that year Julia began attending Edgbaston High School. It is likely that Constance, who, living at home aged 17, is described as a ‘scholar’ in the 1891 census, was also a pupil at Edgbaston High. In that census two other of her sisters, Edyth and Marian, were noted as being science students and staying with the family on census night was Mildred Pope, later an eminent scholar of Anglo-Norman England, then a student at Somerville College, Oxford.^[viii] Alas, when encountered in the next census, in 1901, Marian had entered Barnwood House, a private Gloucestershire mental hospital, where she was to remain for the rest of her life.^[ix]

From October 1896 until July 1897 Constance was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, studying under sardonic and sarcastic Henry Tonks. Her mother had died in March 1895, which might have been a signal for release from home, or may, of course, have been entirely coincidental. There certainly was no shortage of daughters to fulfil the role of ‘daughter-at-home’. Constance was an assiduous attender at the Slade, signing in most days, alongside such fellow students as Gwen John, Maude [Grilda] Leigh-Boughton, and Edna Waugh. However, she only spent one year at the Slade, apparently disappointed by the experience; Tonks ‘had no conception of her abilities.’^[x]

It is not known whether she continued her studies elsewhere during the following three years before, in 1901, we find her taking lessons from Simon Bussy, who had come from France and rented a Kensington studio.^[xi] Among her fellow pupils was Dorothy Strachey, who married Bussy in 1903. Constance became a ‘lasting friend of the Bussy family’.^[xii] In 1903 she was painting in Venice^[xiii] and by 1904, ‘under the weight of parental disapproval’,^[xiv] was living in Paris, studying at the Académie Colarossi and sharing an apartment at 118 rue d’Assas, a tall building close to the Luxembourg Gardens, with Aline Baylay.^[xv]

Gwen John, with whom Constance had maintained a close  friendship since her Slade days,^[xvi] was a fellow-student at the Colarossi  – and also living in Paris with his family was her brother, Augustus. We catch a glimpse of  Constance – described as ‘nice and awkward and ugly’ – in a letter written to him by his wife, Ida.^[xvii] Family information reveals that Constance was born with a deformity of the foot, which may account for the description of her as awkward. Constance Lloyd may have used Gwen John as a model on a number of occasions. One nude study, now in held by the National Library of Wales, is thought to date from 1905 and it is possible she also painted her in the summer of 1907.^[xviii]

By now Constance was also friendly with Duncan Grant, whose address she had been given by his cousin, Pippa Strachey (sister of Dorothy Bussy), and spent time with him copying in the Louvre.^[xix] Her circle of friendship also included Eileen Gray, Paul Henry, and Stephen Haweis. In the summer of 1908 five of her paintings were included in the Allied Artists’ Association exhibition^[xx] at the Albert Hall in London and in February 1912 her work was shown by the Friday Club at London’s Alpine Club, alongside that of Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and Gwen Raverat.^[xxi]  Of her painting the Times reported, ‘The little landscape and still lives of Miss Constance Lloyd show professional skill, but they have an amateur simplicity and would be charming ornaments to a small room. The same artist shows some cretonnes which carry on the Morris tradition with feminine originality’.^[xxii]

For Constance Lloyd did not confine herself to fine art, but c. 1910 was among the artists commissioned to produce designs for a Parisian company run by Andre Groult. Her designs do not survive, but Groult’s patterns were said to be ‘Modern in spirit, although moderate in tone’,  ranging from stencil-like, flat stylised flower and fruit patterns to Dufyesque narrative toiles.’^[xxiii]  In 1914 Constance designed a night nursery, her furniture design executed by Damon & Bertaux, a very reputable firm of cabinet makers.

After returning to England on the outbreak of the First World War, Constance later went back to France, moving between Paris and the countryside and, in 1918, in a letter home, described the shelling of Paris. By 1919 she was living in a flat in the 4^th arrondissement with a view of the Seine, high above the Boulevard Henri IV.^[xxv] This view was remarked upon by Gwen John who also had returned and who, in 1921 gave Constance, to give to her sisters for Christmas, some sketches she had made of women in the congregation of the church in Meudon.^[xxvi]

Constance Lloyd in her Parisian flat, 1924. (Courtesy Collyns family)

Constance and Gwen continued to live in Paris, in 1930 attending classes given by the influential artist and teacher, André Lhote.,^[xxvii] and remained friends until Gwen’s death in  1939.[xxviii] In the mid-1920s Constance Lloyd was a supporter of Shakespeare & Co, Sylvia Beach’s renowned bookshop, but, alas, no record survives of any book borrowing.^[xxix]

Constance Lloyd at her cottage in Genainville, 1924. (Courtesy Collyns Family)

In the early 1920s she bought a cottage at Genainville, a village 50 km north of Paris, owning it for the rest of her life, beloved by her neighbours and often visited there by members of her family. In 1931 Duncan Grant recommended the cottage to David Garnett who, with his wife Ray and young sons, was proposing to winter in France. In fact, it was almost by accident that the Garnetts did, indeed, end up renting Constance’s house for three months  and, in the event, were less than enamoured with the village – ‘It is very cold and damp – and the sun never shines – and it is much more difficult to get into Paris than I had expected’.^[xxx]

During this period Constance moved to an apartment in 8 avenue de Breteuil^[xxxi] in the 7^th arrondissement, close to Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower, and was in Paris in 1940 when the Germans invaded, writing home a detailed description of life in the city and surrounding countryside.

‘..a large car full of German officers, and a loud speaker, have gone slowly by telling us not to stir out of doors again till seven o’clock tomorrow morning….My studio is lovely in the summer sunshine, and the trees opposite so green and full of shadow – the avenue empty most of the time, such peace and quiet.. ..5 July. I took the metro which is working (there are no buses and no taxis) to the Madeleine, and then sat at a cafe nearly opposite Lloyds Bank, and had some very good strong coffee with 3 lumps of sugar, and a sympathetic waiter. Lloyds Bank, as I could see from where I sat, is open, but has become a German Bank…I saw nothing was possible at the Bank...’^[xxxii]  This letter was posted for her in Lisbon by an American friend, Virginia Hall, who had been an army ambulance driver in France but, after the German invasion, made her way to Spain. She was soon to be recruited by SOE, returning to France as an agent in 1941.

Towards the end of the war Constance was able to return to England for a visit and, interviewed by The Birmingham Mail, recounted how she was arrested by Germans in her Parisian flat on 5 December 1940 and taken to Vauban Barracks, Besancon, where 5000 other women with British passports were housed.

‘They came for me at 7.15 in the morning, and unfortunately did not tell me that I was being taken to an internment camp. Consequently, I had only a rug, a piece of chocolate, and two pairs of spectacles.[We] were quartered in barracks quite suitable for young soldiers, but quite unsuitable for elderly ladies….At first we slept on dirty mattresses on the barrack floor and we had to forage for broken plates and utensils from a scrap heap to use. Many of the internees became ill because of the severe conditions and the bad and meagre food, and between 400 and 500 of them died in a period of six months’.^[xxxiii] Constance was released early in 1941, and allowed to return to her flat in Paris, although relieved of her wireless set and telephone.

In the immediate post-war period Constance’s long-time friendships bore fruit; apparently it was Duncan Grant who was instrumental in organising for her a joint exhibition with Janie Bussy (daughter of Simon and Dorothy Bussy) in 1947 at the Adams Gallery in London.^[xxxiv]  Of Constance’s paintings the Times critic wrote, ‘Her subjects one feels have been chosen with the greatest care and forethought, not only to suit a natural refinement of taste – the taste perhaps of a fastidious Englishwoman who likes everything to look French – but also because they are precisely adapted to the decorous originality of her colour and the sagacious simplicity of her design. …the work of an experienced artist  with a real feeling for quality of paint who has understood and quietly developed her individual sensibility’^[xxxv]

Still life by M.C. Lloyd (Constance Lloyd). (Courtesy Freston Family)

Five years later, in October 1952, now nearly 80 years old, she once again exhibited at the Adams Gallery. The Bloomsbury Group again rallied round; Quentin Bell reviewed the exhibition in  The Listener, remarking ‘her only claim to fame rests upon the fact that she paints exceedingly good pictures. Her great talent lies in finding perfect juxtapositions of colour, of building – with beautiful economy and consummate art – a pattern of closely related tones, so finely balanced that, although her drawing is not remarkable, she creates a completely convincing world of light and space.‘^[xxxvi] Another critic suggested that she ‘belongs, it seems, to the school of painting of Vuillard and Bonnard,’^[xxxvii] while another remarked that the exhibition was ‘notable for paintings done in Paris and Venice, most of them still-life. They are of exceptional merit.’ She told the journalist that she would be leaving London for the sunshine of the West Indies – ‘That’s necessary for me because of my age and my desire to go on painting.’^[xxxviii] In fact she set sail on 29 November to stay in Dominica with Stephen Haweis, another friend from her earliest days in Paris.^[xxxix]

Constance Lloyd photographed with a nephew in her Parisian flat, 1968. (Courtesy of Sampson Lloyd)

Constance Lloyd lived another 16 years, dying in her apartment in Paris. In her will she had instructed that, in this eventuality, she should be cremated, and her ashes deposited at the cemetery at Genainville.

Of her paintings in public collections, one is the nude study of Gwen John mentioned above, one, the still life critiqued by Rebecca Birrell, is held at Charleston House, home of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, apparently given to the Charleston Trust, though I’ve been unable to find out by whom.[xl] The other two, one a landscape and one a still life, both rather indistinct, are held in Chastleton House, now owned by the National Trust but once the home of Alec Clutton-Brock, an art critic. It is likely that the paintings are in the house because Constance knew either him or his father, who had been art critic of the Times and who, in 1909, had given ‘books’ as a wedding present to Aline Baylay and Albert Lloyd. Other of Constance Lloyd’s paintings are held by members of her family.

Katharine Constance Lloyd

Lloyd, Katharine Constance (10 November 1884-18 October 1974) was born at Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, the third child, and eldest daughter, of the eight children (five sons and three daughters)  of Edward Wynell Mayhow Lloyd and his wife Eleanor (née Hastings). Her father, a renowned cricketer, educated at Rugby School and Cambridge University, was, from 1876 until 1910, the owner and headmaster of Hartford House, a boys’ preparatory school in Hartley Wintney. Four of Katharine’s brothers were educated at Rugby, where her uncle (Charles Hastings, her mother’s brother) was a master, but there is no information as to where she and her sisters went to school. Nor is it known if – and, if so, where – she attended an art school, although it is very likely that she did.

After her birth, the first public record found for Katharine Lloyd dates from 1906 when, on 18 August, she set sail for Cape Town, South Africa. She was doubtless journeying to stay with her brother Arthur (1883-1967) who, after graduating from Oxford, had, in 1905, left for South Africa, remaining there for five years while working as a cartoonist for the Rand Mail and Johannesburg Star. In the 1911 census Katharine is living at home in Hartley Wintney with her two younger sister – and five servants – head of the household in her parents’ absence.

Katharine Lloyd next appears in the public records, described as ‘Artist (Painter)’, in the 1921 census, living at 20 St Thomas Mansions, Stangate, Southwark. Her brother Arthur, who had been injured while serving in South Africa during the First World War, was on the census night at the family home in Hartley Wintney but gave his permanent address as that of the Southwark flat. Arthur is described as a ‘Black & White Artist’, working for Bradbury, Agnew & Co, proprietors of Punch. For many years Katharine Lloyd lived at addresses in Redcliffe Road, Fulham.

We first find evidence of Katharine Lloyd’s work as an artist in 1921 when a portrait, after Hoppner, of Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby, an 18^th-c Old Rugbeian, was commissioned from her by Rugby School.^[xli] In fact, her connection to Rugby resulted in a number of similar commissions, including a portrait of  other former pupils; one of Lewis Carroll, copied from the original by Herkomer that hangs in Christ Church, Oxford, ^[xlii] one of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury,^[xliii] one of Hugh Lyon, headmaster of Rugby, 1931-48, and one of Sir Pelham Warner, president of the MCC.^[xliv] The Warner portrait was a copy of one commissioned from Katharine Lloyd  in 1949 by the MCC to hang in the pavilion at Lord’s Cricket Ground. For the pavilion she was also asked to copy the 1768 painting by Francis Cotes of ‘The Young Cricketer: Portrait of Lewis Cage’. This remained at Lord’s until 2008, but, after the MCC was able to purchase the original, in 2020 Katharine Lloyd’s copy was sold at auction, realising £13,000.

It is obvious that Katharine Lloyd’s association with Rugby School was important in effecting commissions, but other family connections also helped to raise her artistic profile. In 1936 the Royal Academy exhibition included her portrait of the ‘Rt Hon and Rt Rev the Lord Bishop of London’ who, as Arthur Winnington-Ingram, had been a pupil at Hartford House School when Katharine’s father was headmaster. The following year, 1937, Katharine Lloyd had another portrait selected for the RA exhibition, that of ‘Anne, daughter of late Major C.L. Compton Smith’.  Anne^[xlv] was Katharine Lloyd’s niece and in the 1930s had lived with her at 64 Redcliffe Road, Kensington. Katharine’s posthumous portrait of Anne’s father, Major Geoffrey Compton-Smith, who was murdered by the IRA in 1921, while serving in Ireland, is held by the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum. The 1943 RA exhibition included another of Katharine’s portraits of a family member – ‘His Hon Lord Gamon’,  her brother-in-law, Hugh R.P. Gamon.^[xlvi]

In 1948 Katharine Lloyd  was commissioned to paint the portrait of Dr J.W. Skinner, retiring headmaster of Culford School, Bury St Edmunds. The fact that he was depicted holding a copy of Punch caused much local merriment. The press report described the artist as ‘a Royal Academy exhibitor’,^[xlvii] which may account for the commission she promptly received from Bury Town Council, who paid her a substantial sum to paint a portrait from photographs of the late Alderman Lake.^[xlviii]

Katharine Lloyd made something of a speciality of posthumous portraits, commissioned as memorials to the recently departed. ArtUk references portraits of Sir William Carey, Bailiff of Guernsey^[xlix] and Jan Hofmeyr, eminent South African politician,^[l] both of which are likely to have been posthumous. Her posthumous portrait of Bishop Mosley, the late bishop of Southwell, was unveiled in 1949, one press report mentioning that, although a local artist would have been preferred, Miss Lloyd had been selected because she lived near to the home in the south of England to which the Bishop had retired. In the event, he died before work could start and she painted the portrait from photographs.^[li]

Two other portraits by Katharine Lloyd listed on the confused ‘Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd’ ArtUK page are of Archibald Harrison and James Ross, both one-time principals of Westminster College. Harrison’s portrait was actually painted posthumously, in 1947, while Ross’s marked his retirement in 1953. In 1956 she painted what may have been her final commission, a portrait of G.H. Ash, headmaster of the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Hartlebury, near Worcester. ^[lii]

Although portraits of (male) worthies probably provided Katharine Lloyd with a bread-and-butter income and she did exhibit with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, she also painted landscapes and still lives. In 1923 she exhibited a view of Niton, Isle of Wight^[liii] with the NEAC and in 1929 a view of Ventnor at the Society of Women Artists .Her RA exhibits included flower paintings, shown in 1944 and 1946.  

In 1934 Katharine Lloyd held a joint exhibition with her brother Albert at the Coolings Gallery. A review in the Times (23 October 1934) mentions that she displayed a ‘wide range of subjects, from crayon portraits to landscapes in water-colours, and throughout her work there is evident a good sense of design. It is most apparent in the water-colours, in which the ‘pattern’ of the landscape is emphasized and supported by well-related tones of colour.’ Among the landscapes were, again, scenes at Niton and at Hartley Wintney.

At this exhibition Katharine Lloyd also showed oil paintings of ‘Carting Turf in West Ireland’ and ‘Keel, Achill Island’. These last two may relate to a commission to illustrate Patricia Lynch’s The King of the Tinkers, published by J.M. Dent in 1938, for which she provided eight full-page colour and numerous smaller black-and-white illustrations. As far as I know she only illustrated one other book, Eleanor Doorly’s Ragamuffin King, Henry IV, King of France, published by Jonathan Cape in 1948.

Katharine Lloyd’s frontispiece for King of the Tinkers

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[i] The ArtUK page notes that the biographical information is sourced from D. Buckman, Artists in Britain since 1945,   Sansom & Co, 2006.

[ii] The ‘Mary’ chapter is the only one in This Dark Country that is not illustrated, but the painting referred to is ‘Still Life with Fan’, held by the Charleston Trust.

[iii] Adelaide. a member of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, was backed in the 1914 election by the Association for the election of women on governing bodies and in 1919 her re-election to the board of guardians was backed by the National Union for Equal Citizenship.

[iv] I think Jessie was a nurse at Westminster Hospital in 1891 and during the First World War, as a trained masseuse, was working with the French Red Cross. However, I have not been able to prove beyond dispute that this Margaret Jessie Lloyd is ‘our’ JML.

[v] For more about Julia Lloyd see  R. Watts, ‘Julia Lloyd’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

[vi] See Birmingham Post, 27 February 1915, 4 and Birmingham Evening Mail, 23 June 1980, 7.

[vii] The story is reported in Roe, Gwen John: a life, Chatto & Windus, 2001, 63

[viii] I do not know where Edyth and Marian were studying, but it was not at Somerville.

[ix] It is to be remarked that Marian’s father, Samuel Lloyd, when completing the 1901 census form, wrote in the column intended for remarks as to whether any of the household were ‘Deaf and Dumb; Blind; Lunatic; Imbecile, feeble-minded’ wrote ‘None of this character in this house. S.L.’

[x] Frances Spalding, Duncan Grant, Chatto & Windus, 1997, 47.

[xi] On the night of the 1901 census Constance was staying in Warwickshire with her brother Albert. She is described as ‘Artist’.

[xii] Spalding, Duncan Grant, 47

[xiii] For instance, her paintings Riva degli Schiavoni and Santa Maria della Salute have sold in recent years. In 1904 she exhibited a painting, ‘Venice’, at the Women’s International Art Club exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. The critic from the Daily Mirror singled it out – ‘It is full of light, air, and breeze, and Miss Lloyd has had the courage to remind us that Venice has factories and chimneys, without detracting from the fresh beauty of her little picture.’ Daily Mirror, 27 Jan 1904, 2.

[xiv] Spalding, Duncan Grant, 47. Presumably if there was any disapproval it came from her father, her mother having, as we have noted, died some years earlier. It is unlikely the mere fact of living abroad caused consternation; her sister, Julia, had studied in Berlin. Perhaps it was the artistic milieu that was suspect.

[xv] In 1909 Caroline Emma Baylay (1878-1962) married Constance Lloyd’s brother, Albert. In the 1901 census Caroline’s occupation was ‘art student’.

[xvi] Roe, 48.

[xvii] Letter from Ida to Augustus John, 10 November 1906, see Roe, 80. Interestingly, Augustus had been a pupil at the Slade at the same time as Constance so presumably knew her by sight.

[xviii] The NLW painting is signed ‘M.C.Lloyd’. The donor, a family member, indicated it was painted in 1905. Roe, 91-2, mentions that Gwen modelled for Constance in 1907.

[xix] In 1909 Col and Mrs Grant gave a wedding present to Aline (Bayley) and Albert Lloyd, suggesting that there may have already been an established family connection to one or the other. Would they have given a present to a couple, one of whom was merely a friend of their son?  Both Col Grant and Charles Bayley, Aline Bayley’s father, had seen service in the army in India; perhaps their paths had crossed there.

[xx] Constance Lloyd’s address is given in the catalogue as 38 rue du Montparnasse.

[xxi] See the Times, 13 February 1912, 11. The Friday Club had been founded by Vanessa Bell in 1905 but in 1913 she, with Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, broke away and established the rival Grafton Group. The first Grafton Group exhibition was held in March 1913, but, as the Times reported (20 March 1913, 4) the works were displayed anonymously, so it is impossible to know if Constance Lloyd was among their number.

[xxii] Times, 13 February 1912, 11.

[xxiii]Lesley Jackson, 20thc Pattern Design: textile and wallpaper pioneers, Mitchell Beazley, 2002, 51.

[xxiv]  The Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art, 1914,145.

[xxv] Roe, 192.

[xxvi] Roe, 210.

[xxvii] Roe, 195.

[xxviii] In 1957 Constance Lloyd gave to the Tate two of Gwen John’s works that she owned – ‘Cat’ (watercolour)  and ‘Annabella’ (charcoal and wash).

[xxix] See https://shakespeareandco.princeton.edu/members/lloyd-mary-constance/

[xxx] From a letter by Ray Garnett, quoted in D. Garnett, The Familiar Faces, Chatto & Windus, 1962, 123.

[xxxi] I think this was a new apartment block, built in 1933.

[xxxii] Letter from Constance Lloyd to her sister Charlotte, 29 June 1940. See https://www.sampsonlloyd.com/#/gallery/great-aunt-cons-letters-from-paris-during-world-war-two/constance-lloyd-letters-box-76116/

[xxxiii] The Birmingham Mail, 22 March 1945, 3.

[xxxiv] Spalding, Duncan Grant, 404.

[xxxv] The Times, 12 July 1947, 6.

[xxxvi] The Listener, 16 October, 1952, 644. One of Constance’s still lives, bearing an Adams Gallery label, passed through Holloway Auctions in 2019, selling for £10.

[xxxvii] Truth 17 October 1952, 405.

[xxxviii] Western Mail, 7 October 1952, 4.

[xxxix] Mentioned in Goff, Eileen Gray: her work and her world.

[xl] The Charleston Trust is unable to disclose acquisition information.

[xli] See  report of Speech Day in Rugby School’s magazine, The Meteor, vol 55, issue 663, 1921.

[xlii] Mention is made of the Lewis Carroll portrait in the report of Speech Day, The Meteor, vol. 69, issue 812, 1935, although it is not clear when the painting was made.

[xliii] Painted posthumously; Temple died in 1944. I think the portrait was presented in 1946; its existence was certainly mentioned in Rugby Advertiser, 16 June 1950.

[xliv] The two last portraits were painted in 1950. See Rugby Advertiser, 20 June 1950, 3.

[xlv] Anne (later Mrs Anne Peploe) was an amateur artist – see Sevenoaks Chronicle, 4 December 1976, 4.

[xlvi] Married Katharine’s sister, Margaret Eleanor Lloyd, in 1914.

[xlvii] Bury Free Press, 9 July 1948, 6. It was intended that the presentation of Skinner’s portrait should have been made by Dr H.B. Workman, who had been the principal of Westminster College before Archibald Harrison. This suggests that Katharine Lloyd may have benefited from some Westminster College networking.

[xlviii] This portrait appears on ArtUK, held by West Suffolk Heritage Service, and dated to 1946. I think this date is incorrect and should be amended to 1950 – the portrait was unveiled in April 1950 – see Bury Free Press, 7 April 1950, 3. In the Bury Free Press (13 August 1948, 1) Katharine Lloyd’s fee is given as 200 guineas, but in a report in the same paper (12 November 1948, 16) it is cited as 100 guineas.

[xlix] He died in 1915. This is the earliest of Katharine Lloyd’s works so far found.

[l] Hofmeyr died in 1948, This commission may well have come through Arthur Lloyd.

[li] Newark Advertiser, 13 April, 1949, 1; Nottingham Evening Post, 8 January 1949, 3.

[lii] Birmingham Post, 23 April 1956, 5

[liii] She exhibited the same, or a similar, view of Niton at the Royal Academy in 1933.

I hope those acquainted with my website will also be aware of the existence of the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester. If so, you will know that the Centre comprises two houses, 60 and 62 Nelson Street, the only buildings from the original early 19^th-century street still standing, surrounded by the ever-expanding complex of Manchester Royal Infirmary. That the adjoining villas, built c 1840, are still there is due only to the fact that it was at number 62 in October 1903 that Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union. The buildings were listed Grade 2* in 1974 to save them from demolition.

Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her children, Christabel, Sylvia, Adela, and Harry moved into 62 Nelson Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, in the autumn of 1898. Her husband, Dr Richard Pankhurst, had died in the summer, on 5 July, leaving very little money, and his family was forced to economise by moving from their home, 4 Buckingham Crescent, Daisy Bank Road, Victoria Park, into a property cheaper to rent.

Mrs Pankhurst could have moved to any area of Manchester, so why was 62 Nelson Street chosen as the new family home?

In 1894 Mrs Pankhurst had been elected to the Chorlton Board of Guardians as a Poor Law Guardian, an unpaid position. Now, in the summer of 1898, she had to earn enough to support herself and her family and so on 30 August she resigned and, instead, accepted the offer made by the Board of Guardians of the post of salaried registrar of births, marriages, and deaths for Chorlton-on-Medlock.

Chorlton had been urbanized in the early 19^th c, when streets of terraced houses were built to house the workers required to operate the large mills newly erected alongside the River Irwell. It was an area very much less salubrious than Victoria Park, but Nelson Street, off Oxford Road, was more refined than most surrounding streets. It was also a street that was well-known to the two eldest Pankhurst daughters.

I have never seen any mention in Pankhurst biographies and autobiographies of this apparent coincidence, but it was at number 60 that Christabel and, I think, Sylvia, had been regular visitors, students at the dancing school run by Mrs W. Webster and her brother. Although the name of the dance teachers does appear in Sylvia Pankhurst’s The Suffragette Movement, she makes no mention of the school’s address. Sylvia wrote:

‘We learned dancing from the Websters, an old dancing family in Manchester, and Christabel, who hitherto had never cared much or long for anything, roused herself to unexpected efforts to excel everyone in the class’. Sylvia suggests that Christabel, whom her mother intended should be a dancer, had taken lessons for several years before becoming ‘suddenly tired of the project’ around the time she was 16, that is in 1896.

In the years between 1890 and 1896 the dancing academy was run by Mrs W. Webster and her brother. Until his early death in 1890 the dancing master had been William Hilton Webster and the school had then been continued by his widow. She was Ellen Marianne Webster (née Goodman), who had been a cousin to her husband. For reasons that are unclear, her brother, Archie, changed his name from Goodman to Webster, perhaps to capitalize on the ‘Webster’ name, which, as Sylvia suggests, had long been synonymous in Manchester with ‘dance’, as William Hilton Webster’s father had been a dance teacher there from the 1870s. William Webster had moved to 60 Nelson Street in 1884, taking over the premises and goodwill of another dancing master, ‘Monsieur Paris’.

Christabel would have been taught by either or both Ellen and Archie Webster. The lessons offered were not for ballet dancing, but general classes for ballroom dancing and private classes for waltz, skirt,and serpentine dancing. Although I have no evidence, it strikes me that it must have been the latter types of semi-burlesque dance that, according to Sylvia, Mrs Pankhurst hoped Christabel would – as’ a professional devotee of Terpsichore’ – perform in the great cities of the world. A studio photograph of Christabel posed, with pointed foot, holding up with both hands material from her long, flowing dress, is exactly illustrative of a skirt dance. It was taken in Geneva in the summer of 1898 and is reproduced in June Purvis’ biography of Christabel.

Widowed Ellen Webster had four young children, two boys and two girls, and in 1893 remarried, her second husband being Charles Joseph Rourke, a cotton waste merchant. It was presumably during the next couple of years or so that Christabel and, perhaps, Sylvia were attending classes. They may still have been doing so when, in October 1895, 60 Nelson Street hit the headlines in newspapers around the country. Ellen Webster had committed suicide, murdering the elder of her sons at the same time. She had poisoned herself and both sons, but the younger recovered. Her daughters were at a boarding school in Sale, Cheshire, and although she had sent a servant to bring them home, apparently with the idea of killing them as well, their arrival was delayed, and they were saved. The inquest returned a verdict of murder and suicide, due to temporary insanity. The funeral of poor Ellen Webster and her son was held at St Aloysius Church, Ardwick, where she had been married a couple of years earlier.

Thus, in 1898, when Emmeline Pankhurst was looking for a house to rent, she would have been well acquainted with Nelson Street, not only as the address of the dancing school that her daughters had attended but as the site of a very recent Manchester tragedy.   

Besides the dancing school Nelson Street contained another cultural centre at number 66 – the Schiller Anstalt Institute – a centre for the large Manchester German community. The Institute was housed in a building that had been converted from domestic use in 1886 and now offered a concert hall and gymnasium, holding a regular programme of lectures and musical activities [For more information about the Institute see here.] The Institute did not close until 1911 and it may well be that, as it was so close by, members of the Pankhurst family did occasionally attend an event there.

Between number 62 Nelson Street and the Schiller Anstalt Institute, number 64 was a large, detached house, once the home of a mayor of Manchester, but now, known as Nelson House, run as a private nursing home. This may explain why, when, previously, number 62 had been advertised for rent it was deemed ‘suitable for a medical man’.

Number 62 was described as offering ‘Three entertaining rooms, five bedrooms, dressing room, bath, w.c. and well-appointed domestic offices’, large enough for Emmeline to devote one room (presumably one of the ‘entertaining rooms’), as her registry office. The bedrooms were under pressure on the night of the 1901 census, for sleeping in the house were Emmeline and her four children, together with her two brothers, Walter and Herbert Goulden, the latter’s son, and the family’s two servants, the cook, Ellen Coyle (of whom Sylvia speaks very fondly) and Mary Leaver, the housemaid. I imagine that the Pankhurst children were made to share rooms, but presumably that was unusual and, now ranging in age from 20 to 11, they normally had a little more space to themselves. It’s difficult to imagine Christabel and Sylvia being happy to share, but doubtless on occasion they were forced to.

The situation only eased in the autumn 1904. Mrs Pankhurst placed an advertisement in the Daily News, ’Wanted, for art student. One or two Rooms, furnished or unfurnished. Near South Kensington Museum. Terms Moderate.’ The reply address was ‘Pankhurst, 62 Nelson Street, Manchester.’ Sylvia was off to London, to study at the Royal College of Art, freeing up a bed in the family home.

In October 1907 advertisements for 62 Nelson Street once more appeared in the press, in the Manchester Courier, indicating that the house was again to let. Emmeline Pankhurst, who had formed the Women’s Social and Political Union in the kitchen just four years earlier, had already left for London to join her daughters, Sylvia and Christabel, who had brought the fight for the vote to the capital.

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A reader of this blog has asked me to confirm who was the ‘Mrs Rachel Scott’ who unfurled the ‘First in the Fight’ Manchester WSPU banner in 1908.

You will remember that I wrote here about the discovery of the banner and the subsequent appeal that resulted in it being acquired by the People’s History Museum in Manchester. In that piece I wrote that I suspected that the woman given the honour of unfurling the banner was the Mrs Rachel Scott who had been the WSPU’s first honorary secretary, rather than Rachel Scott, wife of C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian. And, of course, the merest further investigation showed that it was indeed Mrs ‘Secretary’ Scott who had unfurled the banner – not least because Mrs C.P. Scott had died three years earlier, in 1905.

But my enquirer was still interested in finding out something of Mrs Rachel Scott, the ‘unfurler’….so I have done a little delving. For, although her name has often been mentioned in studies of the early days of the WSPU, she has not, as far as I can see, hitherto been credited with a real life.

I can report that she was born Rachel Lovett in Chorlton, Lancashire, in 1863, one of the many (at least 9) children of Thomas Lovett and his wife, Elizabeth. Her father was a labourer in the oilcloth industry and in 1871 the family was living next to the Marsden oilcloth factory at Canal Side, Newton Heath. Rachel’s older sisters became weavers or winders as soon as, aged 14, they left school. However, the 1881 census shows that Rachel had escaped this fate and, aged 17, was working as a pupil teacher. She presumably continued teaching until her marriage in 1890 to Henry (Harry) Charles David Scott, the son of a schoolmaster. Harry was at this time described as a ‘cashier’ but by 1901, when the family, now with four children, was living at 5 Duncan Street, Broughton, he was ‘managing director of an engineering firm’. In fact, he worked for the Manchester firm of Royles for most of his life, becoming chairman of the board of directors. At the turn of the 20th century he was a strong supporter of The Clarion, the socialist newspaper, and was a member of the Independent Labour party, paying the rent of the Party’s Manchester meeting room.

For we know it was through the Manchester ILP that Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst encountered Rachel Scott, who was one of the women she invited to the meeting at her house in Nelson Street, Manchester, on 10 October 1903, at which the Women’s Social and Political Union was founded. Mrs Scott was appointed the WSPU’s first secretary and had a letter published in the 30 October 1903 issue of The Clarion alerting fellow Socialists to the existence of this new organisation and appealing ‘to all women Socialists to join in this movement to press upon party and community the urgent need of giving to women the vote, that they may take their share of the vote for social emancipation’.

Rachel Scott maintained her involvement with the Manchester WSPU for some years, noted as present at various meetings and demonstrations, for instance appearing on Platform 12 at the WSPU Hyde Park demonstration of Sunday 21 June 1908 (described in Votes for Women, 18 June 1908, as ‘well-known as a capable speaker and hard worker in the Manchester district’) and, of course, was singled out to present the banner to the Manchester WSPU on 20 June 1908, the day before the Hyde Park meeting. The banner hadn’t been ready in time to be unfurled with others in the Queen’s Hall in London.

Rachel Scott was on the platform at a meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on 19 January 1909 when Christabel Pankhurst received a rapturous welcome but I get the impression that after this she rather fades from view, perhaps less interested as it became clear that the WSPU was no longer a supporter of the socialist movement with which, in 1909, she was still actively involved. Certainly, she did not boycott the 1911 census and was at home (‘Arrandale’, Crofts Bank Road, Urmston) on census night with her husband and by now five children. Her eldest son was a ‘student of chemistry’, another was an ‘engineering apprentice’, and a third was a clerk. The other two children were still at school.

One of Rachel’s sisters was living with the family in 1911, as she appears to have done all their married life. Another of Rachel’s sisters died that year but had previously worked as a superintendent in the ‘Imbecile Wards’ of the Crumpsall (Manchester) Workhouse. Yet another sister had for a time been employed as a nurse in the same workhouse. Presumably both positions had been an improvement on the sisters’ earliest employment in the cotton industry. Doubtless both from her own experience and that of her sisters Rachel Scott was well apprised of the state of the poor and afflicted and had hoped that the WSPU would be a means of improving their lot. She may have become disillusioned.

Rachel Scott died in 1925. Of her sons, one was killed during the First World War, one became an analytical chemist, another an engineer designer, and the fourth emigrated to Australia. Her daughter married, but died in 1935. Harry, still a director of Royles, was appointed a magistrate in 1931 and died in 1937.

Copyright All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere and are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement.

 

Kate Frye’s diary, which she kept from the late 1890s until 1958 is very much the diary of a middle-class, albeit impoverished, ‘Everywoman’ of that period. Her experiences, although so particular to her, were shared by millions of others. Thus it was that, in 1919, she had a first-hand encounter with the Influenza – ‘Spanish ‘Flu’ – Pandemic, which, because it could prove quickly lethal, was rightly feared.

John Collins, husband of Kate (nee Frye) had come through the First World War, collecting a Military Cross on the way, and they were about to settle back into civilian life in a small rented flat in Notting Hill when, in February 1919, disaster struck.

On 12 February, to Kate’s horror, John was rushed to hospital – ‘The Prince of Wales Hospital in Marylebone. The old Great Central Hotel where our brief honeymoon was spent.’ The hotel (now the Landmark Hotel,  had been taken over in 1916 by the War Office and turned into a military hospital for officers. ‘I had heard the doctor -“Influenza and pneumonia – both lungs”. ‘He is very ill, it is a toss-up if he pulls through.’

The Winter Garden, Great Central Hotel, Marylebone – a postcard kept by Kate all her life as a memento of her one-day honeymoon

So, rather than home-making, Kate’s first days back in London revolved around visits to the hospital.

Thursday 13 February 1919 [London: Notting Hill]

To Hospital 1.45 up to day sister’s room as she had promised the doctor’s report. But she was frightfully cross and rude to me. Sat with John 2 till 4 then was turned out. He looks very bad and is lying propped up by a back rest and in a pneumonia jacket. He is quite sensible but I would not let him talk much. They are frightfully rushed and not enough sisters – 800 patients and many dying of pneumonia.

A ‘pneumonia jacket’ was used to warm the patient’s chest, then one of the few treatments available.

Friday 14 February 1919 [London: Notting Hill]

No one can ever know but those who go through it what these hours of waiting are like and then the Hospital with its inhospitable airs and snubbing attendants. They are bound to answer enquiries concerning the ‘serious’ cases but that is as much as they will do. I stayed until I was driven away. He hates me to go and to leave him like that was so distressing.

Anecdotally, the hospital was not a happy place and, following the ‘flu outbreak, complaints were made in Parliament that patients with flu were being nursed in the same rooms as those recovering from wounds, thus causing a serious possibility of the infection spreading.

John remained in this Marylebone hospital for a month and then, having more or less recovered, was sent to a military convalescent home in Bournemouth. It was housed in the former Mont Dore Hotel (now Bournemouth Town Hall). Kate followed him, staying in digs.

Saturday 12 April 1919 [Bournemouth]

John had been before a Board and been granted 3 weeks sick leave, so that is alright – he is due to leave the Mont Dore today but can arrange to stay until Monday.

Monday 14 April 1919 [London: 12a Colville Terrace]

[Back to London flat] It is very wonderful to be home in our dear little flat and with John practically well again.

Kate’s diary is now housed in the Archives of Royal Holloway College, University of London. I only transcribed a few of the Influenza entries when writing her biography – Kate Frye: the long life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette – published as an ebook by ITV – see https://tinyurl.com/qn7rhxq. More useful information can be found in the diary if anyone is writing a study of the Post World War One influenza pandemic.

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21 November 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the passing of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, by which women were for the first time able to stand for election as members of Parliament.

It was only earlier in the year, on 6 February, that some women (over 30 and fulfilling a small property qualification) had at long last been granted the parliamentary vote and now, as the Great War had come to an end, women actually had the prospect of sitting in the House of Commons.

The short bill, passing rapidly through all stages of the parliamentary process with little opposition, granted the right to stand for election to all women over the age of 21, although any woman of that age would have been unable to vote. A curious situation.

With a general election called for 14 December, there was little time for women to organize election campaigns, but in the event 17 women took to the hustings. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll tell you something about each one of these pioneers, taking them alphabetically.

This is the second:

Mrs M.C. Ashby who was standing in Birmingham’s Ladywood constituency as a Liberal candidate, with support from the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

Margery Corbett Ashby (1882-1981) was the daughter of a Liberal MP, Charles Corbett, and both her parents were strong supporters of women’s suffrage. She had a university education, trained as a teacher in Cambridge and from 1907 to 1909 was secretary of the NUWSS and in 1910, the year she married, she was an organizer for the Liberal party. She resigned from the NUWSS executive committee in 1914, too committed a Liberal to support the Election Fighting Fund policy, by which the NUWSS was backing Labour party candidates at elections.

After the First World War she took Mrs Fawcett’s place at the Versailles Peace Conference (Mrs Fawcett did not wish to attend) and helped advise Germany on the founding of its women’s police force.

Margery Corbett Ashby’s candidature at the 1918 general election caused some difficulty for the Birmingham Society for Women’s Suffrage which was criticized for supporting her, rather than the Labour candidate, as the latter party had, unlike the Liberals, traditionally supported the suffrage movement. She was also supported by the Society for Discharged Soldiers – who obviously liked point 7 of her Election Address.

In her lengthy Election Address Margery Corbett Ashby made her (Liberal) views clear:

1. A League of Nations. To make another War impossible, to abolish conscription, to lighten the burden of taxation for armaments, to substitute open treaties, ratified by Parliament for secret diplomacy, to pool raw materials and food for the hungry peoples of the world. I welcome the practical beginnings of the idea in the International Council which will be established at the Peace Table to ration the nations.
2. Free Trade and No Food Taxes.
3. Rights of Little Peoples: Home Rule is imperative to give Ireland the same free choice of government we have demanded for Poland, Alsace-Lorraine and Serbia.
4. Health and Housing: I believe the urgency of housing admits of no delay, and that there must be immediate provision of a) Houses with at least 3 bedrooms, bath room, water laid on, within the average wage-earner’s means. b) A garden or allotment with each house, for those who want it. c) State assistance to encourage municipal enterprise; the adequate taxation of land values; and the right of compulsory purchase of land for all public requirements at the rate-book valuation.
5. Equal Citizenship: Real equality between men and women before the law in a) all questions of marriage, morals and the home. b) Opportunities of general and technical training. c) Equal pay for work of equal value above a sound minimum for all. d) All trades, industries and professions.
6. Labour and Leisure. a) A shorter working day and adequate minimum wage, enforced by law if necessary. b) Regularity of income through universal non-contributory unemployed insurance. c) More freedom and consultation in the workshop. d) Public recreations of a wholesome kind
7. Soldiers, Sailors and Mothers: I believe in Justice without Charity to secure: a) Adequate pensions for widows with dependent children. b) A real right of maintenance for wives. c) Fullest possible help of all kinds to disabled or discharged soldiers and sailors. d) Fair treatment for women war workers. I welcome Mr Asquith’s desire to improve the Old Age Pensions secured by the Liberal Party, and should like to see the pension raised the age limit lowered.
8. Civil and Industrial Liberty: I support the immediate restoration of a) All British liberties of citizenship; and b) All essential trade union rights for men and women to enjoy the full use of collective bargaining, surrendered or lost during the war.
9. Trade and Transit: I favour a) The removal of irksome Government control from private industries. b) The encouragement of production by science, canals and railways. c) The continued municipal ownership of electrical supply. In general I should like to see more Municipal Administration and less Whitehall Bureaucracy.

At the December 1918 election Margery Corbett Ashby polled 1152 votes and lost her deposit. She then stood, again unsuccessfully, at every inter-war election except that of 1931. She succeeded Eleanor Rathbone as president of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship and in the late 1920s was the co-founder of the Townswomen’s Guild. She also was president of the Women’s Freedom League. At various times she was also president of the British Commonwealth League, member of the executive committee of the Family Endowment Society and chairman of the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene. Margery Corbett Ashby was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1967.

 

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When I gave a keynote talk  -‘ Surrounded by Suffrage: Situating Shaw, Wells and the LSE in Suffrage Sites’ – at the joint H.G. Wells Society/Shaw Society’/ LSE Language Centre conference at LSE on 23 September 2017 the constraints of time meant that I was unable to include all that I would have liked to have said about this stained glass panel. I am, therefore, taking the opportunity my blog affords of relaying a little more of my research into this most interesting artefact.

The panel may be construed as a political allegory on the early years of the Fabian Society. Its artist was Caroline Townshend (1878-1944).

Received opinion has it that it was Bernard Shaw who designed the panel and I can find no original evidence one way or the other to back or disprove the claim. Received opinion – such as the article about the window on the LSE website – also has it that Caroline Townshend was commissioned to make it by GBS. However, I have discovered an item in the London Daily News, 8 November 1911, that explicitly states ‘The political allegory in stained glass which Miss Caroline Townshend, the well-known artist, has just completed for Mrs G.B. Shaw, conveys a good deal of humour and not a little kindly satire’.

It would hardly be surprising if it were Mrs Charlotte Shaw who had commissioned the work. The artist, Caroline Townshend, was not only a fellow Fabian but her own first cousin. Charlotte’s father, Horace Payne-Townshend, was half-brother to Caroline’s father, Chambrey Corker Townshend. Horace, as the first born, had inherited the greater part of the Townshend estate – allowing his daughters to be brought up in considerable comfort – while the family of Chambrey Townshend were very much less financially secure.

Both these fathers seem to have been rather ineffectual characters, married to very much more assertive wives. However, while Horace’s wife, Charlotte’s mother, was a frivolous termagant, Caroline’s mother, Emily Townshend, was much- admired, intellectually curious, and socially conscious. As Emily Gibson she had been one of the Girton Pioneers – one of the five first students at the college at Hitchen that later became Girton. One of her fellow Pioneers was Isabella Townshend, whose brother, Chambrey,  Emily married in 1873. She had left Hitchin the year before without completing her degree course.

My researches (see here) indicate that Isabella Townshend had left Hitchen at the same time and then set up as an interior decorator with a Mrs Hartley Brown (whom I’ve so far been unable to identify). Emily Faithfull, when discussing new trade opportunities that were opening for women, mentioned in Three Visits to America (1884) that ‘Mrs Hartley Brown and Miss Townshend, soon after entering into partnership, were appropriately employed in decorating Merton College, and devised with much success some new stuffs for the chairs and sofas for the use of Cambridge girl graduates.’ (‘Merton College’ was an early manifestation of what became Newnham.)

Another of Chambrey Townshend’s sisters, Anne, was involved from 1888, when she was its first secretary, until 1910 with the Ladies’ Residential Chambers Company (the founders of which included Agnes Garrett and Millicent Fawcett – for more on the LRC see here). She had trained as a nurse, been a matron at the Hospital for Hip Disease in Childhood  before by 1882 moving into philanthropic administration as secretary of the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants (MABYs).

These interesting women were  cousins to Charlotte Payne-Townshend, the future Mrs GBS, although  there is nothing about them in her biography by Janet Dunbar or, as far as I can discover, in any of the many biographies of Bernard Shaw.  Charlotte fervently lamented the sterility of her early life and one wonders if she knew anything of the enterprises undertaken by her cousins. If she had, one imagines she would have rather envied them.

In the 1870s Isabella and Chambrey Townshend moved in artistic socialist circles, as close friends of Walter and Lucy Crane. Chambrey was an architect of whom his wife later wrote  ‘Chambrey Townshend had little push and no business ability to back up his remarkable artistic abilities.’ He worked as an assistant for George Edmund Street but never set up his own practice. Emily eventually decided that the family could live cheaper abroad and this they did – in France and Switzerland – from 1886 until 1893.

Caroline  was born in 1878, the fourth of Emily and Chambrey’s five children. After the family’s return from Europe she was for a time a pupil at Wycombe Abbey School before, by 1901, becoming a pupil to the leading stained-glass artist, Christopher Whall.

Charlotte Shaw was twenty years older than Caroline Townshend and had been brought up in very much more financially secure circumstances – yet she, Caroline, and Emily came to share the same social and political philosophy. Whether or not there had been earlier contact it is certain that in the early years of the 20^th century their paths most certainly did cross – all being early members of the Fabian Society. Even so, the names of Emily and Caroline Townshend do not occur in Shaw’s published letters, although the LSE archives holds a few photographs showing Caroline’s sister, Rachel, on holiday in Wales with Charlotte Shaw (see, for instance, here).

So, if the Shaws were thinking of commissioning a stained glass panel, they knew they had an artist in the family who could accomplish it. Or, could it have been the other way round? Perhaps having a stained-glass artist in the family was too good an opportunity to miss. Perhaps Charlotte Shaw thought she must put her cousin’s talent to use. Did she discuss with GBS how this might be achieved? And did he then sketch out that political allegory? There are so many mysteries surrounding the panel. What was the purpose behind the commission? Where had they intended to place it? In their London apartment at 10 Adelphi Terrace –or at their country home Ayot St Lawrence – or in the Fabian Office? Whatever the intention, the panel was still in Caroline Townshend’s possession at the time of her death in 1944.  It seems very odd that it should have been discussed in the press in 1911 – and yet wasn’t claimed by one or other of the Shaws. Was Caroline paid for it?

Caroline also retained the original design for the panel – the cartoon – which in 1954 was given by Joan Howson, her artistic and life partner (they traded as Townshend and Howson) to Wimbledon’s William Morris House in memory of Emily and Caroline Townshend.  Emily Townshend had lived in Wimbledon and, with Caroline, was a shareholder in Wimbledon Labour Halls Co-operative Society Limited – also known as William Morris House.

Information on the William Morris House website (see here) states that the Fabian Society panel was made at the William Morris Works at Merton. I think this is probably mistaken. Emily and Caroline Townshend had in 1931 given WMH two Burne-Jones windows. These had been given by Burne-Jones to Chambrey Townshend and would have been made at the William Morris Works, but Caroline Townshend’s panel was almost certainly made at the Glass House, Lettice Street, Fulham, where she had a studio from c 1910 until the 1920s.

The Glass House had been set up in 1906 by a stained glass craftswoman, Mary Lowndes, to provide facilities for other stained glass artists and had proved most successful in attracting young women to the craft. Mary Lowndes was one of the founders of the Artists’ Suffrage League but I’ve found no clear evidence that Caroline Townshend was a member. The ASL records (held in the Women’s Library@LSE) are scanty but, as Mary Lowndes’ involvement with preparations for suffrage events was at times overwhelming, Caroline Townshend must have been only too well aware of all that activity and it would seem likely that, even if she were not a formal member, she would have lent a hand on occasion. Anyway, if she wasn’t an active suffrage supporter, her mother and sister certainly were. In 1907, Emily Townshend, then aged 57, spent two weeks in Holloway after being involved in a suffragette protest and in 1909 was followed by Rachel, who spent two months in prison. Caroline was living at home during this time and could not but help be swept up in the drama. So, by the time Caroline Townshend received the Fabian commission in 1910, she was surrounded by suffrage talk and activity at home and at work.

Of the kneeling female figures that on the far right is Caroline Townshend and two of the other figures demonstrate a strong connection between Fabianism and suffrage. The figure third from the right is Mary Hankinson, who was a very active suffragette – and from 1905 until 1948 a member of the Fabian Society. A teacher of physical education, she was hired in 1907 to give instruction in Swedish drill and country dancing at the first Fabian Summer School – funded by Charlotte Shaw – and from then until 1938 she was general manager of all Fabian summer schools. She was also a member of the Women’s Freedom League, one of the militant suffrage societies, and was president of the Gymnastic Teachers’ Suffrage Society. Her brother was Unitarian chaplain to Holloway prison and was used by Christabel Pankhurst as a conduit of information to and from suffragette prisoners. The suffrage collection he amassed includes a copy of Saint Joan presented to Mary Hankinson by Shaw, who wrote in it a very Shavian inscription ‘To Mary Hankinson, the only woman I know who does not believe she was a model for Joan, but also the only woman who actually was.’

On the stained glass panel between Mary Hankinson and Charlotte Townshend is the figure of Mabel Atkinson, who was a postgraduate student at LSE, a member of the executive committee of the Fabian Society from 1909 until 1915 and chairman of the Suffrage Section of the Fabian Women’s Group when it was formed in 1911. She was involved with Mary Hankinson in the development of the Summer School and was also a donor to and speaker for the WSPU.

In passing it’s worth noting a little remarked fact – that Charlotte Shaw was one of the WSPU’s most generous benefactors: for instance in March 1908 she gave them £100 and on 21 June took part in a spectacular WSPU procession – walking with the Fabians under the Society’s banner, which was carried by Maud Pember Reeves. Shaw watched from the pavement as she passed.

You can read more here about the iconography of the Fabian stained glass panel  and of its rather idiosyncratic history between 1944 and 2006, when it finally came to rest in the care of LSE. There it has most appropriately been installed in the Shaw Library, a room that commemorates not GBS, but Charlotte Shaw, who was a most generous benefactor to the LSE.

Charlotte Shaw was a very interesting woman – who evaded the limelight. At the Shaw/Wells/LSE conference we were treated to an excerpt from ‘Mrs Shaw Herself’ – a one-woman show – with musical accompaniment- about her. I thoroughly enjoyed this and thought I must let you all know that there will be a full perfomance next Saturday (30 Sept 2017) in St Lawrence Church in Ayot St Lawrence, the village where she and GBS made their home.

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A curious incident that occurred – or, rather, didn’t occur – a couple of days ago reminded me of a past link I effected between Persephone Books and English women writing about Italy. For, many years ago, I gave a talk on this subject at a symposium organised by Persephone at Newnham College. I have in the past posted a few articles on my website amplifying some of the material covered – but here below is the fons et origo.

We have to imagine the subject of one of Persephone’s latest books [Flush] curled up on the sofa alongside his mistress in the drawing room at Casa Guidi in Florence. It’s early evening and the long shutters have been opened, letting dusky light into the somewhat cavernous drawing room. Flush is startled by a sudden movement as his mistress puts aside her book, raises herself from a reclining position and takes a few steps over to the open window. They both venture out onto the narrow balcony, facing the imposing wall of the church, opposite across the narrow road. While Flush is involved with Flush business, Elizabeth cranes over the railing, to catch a glimpse of a young boy as he passes, singing, along the street below. It is the essence of his song that I have lifted to name this talk. This is how Elizabeth Barrett Browning put into words her experience that evening:

‘I heard last night a little child go singing

‘Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,

O bella libertà, O bella – stringing

The same words still on notes he went in search

So high for, you concluded the upspringing

Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch

Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,

And that the heart of Italy must beat,

While such a voice had leave to rise serene

‘Twixt church and palace of a Florence street’

Thus in Under Casa Guidi Windows, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of England’s most famous exports to Italy, extolled ‘La Bella Libertà’, the freedom that was Italy’s due. However it takes only a cursory reading to realise that ‘sweet freedom’ was what above all Italy gave to the many English women writers who have, over the last two centuries, flocked there.

As we can recognize, ‘freedom’ is not synonymous with ‘bliss’, but in Italy English women have felt free to fail as well as succeed – to be unhappy as well as happy – at least to be unhappy in their own way. They have felt able in that country, far from home, the Alps a psychological as well as a physical barrier, to construct a life for themselves, untramelled by the conventions that controlled society in England. One would think that nowadays such escape would no longer seem necessary. But nobody can fail to have noticed the recent spate of books by women – not only British women, but also Americans and Australians – describing new lives forged in Italy. These are merely the latest in a line of such love affairs with Italy that stretches way back into at least the 18^th century. Indeed, Italian-American women (that is women whose parents or grandparents left the mother country – usually the poor south – for the US) have produced so many works recounting their return that a school of literary criticism is being developed to discuss the phenomenon. And guess what these writers call themselves? – yes, Persephone’s daughters. Persephone, whom the myth relates was snatched from the fields of Enna in Sicily, has become a particularly appropriate symbol for such women who travel in order to reconnect with their ancestral heritage and discover a new identity. Because of patterns of emigration English women are far less likely to have this experience of searching for Italian roots. Rather, individually, they set forth for Italy to root themselves. I know – my own daughter has done so.

What follows is a series of vignettes of the lives of English women writers shaped by Italy. Apart from marvelling at the bella libertà these women, in a myriad of ways, found, I have no particular thesis  but have allowed myself – and I hope – you  -the pleasure of glimpsing a diverting eclectic range of women and of experiences in Italy.

There are two early books by women that piqued my interest. The first, Travels in Italy between the years 1792 and 1798, (published in 1802) is by Mariana Starke, who when she began her Italian travels was 30 years old. Travels in Italy evolved into the first modern guide to the country or, indeed, at least in English, to anywhere. For those who had previously undertaken and written of the Grand Tour had not burdened themselves of the precise – or, doubtless, even a vague – knowledge of the price to be paid for washing petticoats in Pisa, buying wax candles in Venice, asses milk in Tuscany, or hiring  carriages in Florence. It took a woman, and a woman conscious of value for money, to gather and set out all these – and a thousand more fascinating details – of life as a traveller. She gives a very lengthy list of the equipment it is necessary to take – from a chamber pot that could be fitted into the well of a coach to a nutmeg grater – and goes into considerable detail about how to get across the Alps – this at a time before Napoleon for his own purposes had constructed a manageable road. She describes what type of coach was suitable and how it had to be taken apart, laden onto mules and its passengers then carried in sedan chairs over the mountain pass by porters. The book covers all the major towns of Italy, giving details of the best lodging houses, restaurants, doctors, dentists, provision merchants, dress makers and tailors, and details of all the principal sights.

Mariana Starke introduced an innovation into travel writing, annotating particular buildings and paintings with exclamation marks to indicate merit – five, I think, for the best. She wanted the visitor, if pressed for time, to select only the best – and set out a daily itinerary in order to ‘prevent Travellers from wasting their time and burdening their memory by a minute survey of what is not particularly interesting, and thereby, perhaps, depriving themselves of leisure to examine what really deserves the closest attention.’ Doesn’t that sound the advice of one who knew what it was to have been dragged around one gallery too many?

In the late 1820s Mariana Starke was taken up by John Murray and wrote for him a guide to the whole Continent – her exclamation mark system being now exchanged for a system of stars. So when you next consult your Egon Ronay or Good Food Guide, it is Mariana Starke you have to thank for inventing the tools of discrimination. [For more on Mariana Starke see here].

My second book is a novel – Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, published in 1794, at a time when Mariana Starke was well into her travels, and which captivated the British reading public – particularly its female portion – painting Italy as picturesquely gothic. The irony is that this romantic view of Italy was shaped by a woman whose continental travels never extended further than Holland and Germany, and then only after the success of her Italian novels. Her landscape descriptions were drawn from travel literature and from the work of mid-17^th century Rome-based painters such as Claude Lorraine, Poussin and Salvator Rosa. Her descriptions in turn had an overwhelming influence on the way that Italy was seen by later travellers. Northanger Abbey, published in 1817, is, of course, a delicious parody of her subject matter and style.

Whereas Mariana Starke, having detailed the nitty gritty of passing across the Alps, gives us no description of the scenery, Mrs Radcliffe in Udolpho more than makes up for this. ‘The snow was not yet melted on the summit of Mount Cenis, over which the travellers passed; but Emily [our heroine], as she looked upon its clear lake and extended plain, surrounded by broken cliffs, saw, in imagination, the verdant beauty it would exhibit’ – .’ who may describe her rapture, when, having passed through a sea of vapour, she caught a first view of Italy; when from the ridge of one of those tremendous precipices that hang upon Mount Cenis and guard the entrance of that enchanting country, she looked down through the lower clouds, and, as they floated away, saw the grassy vales of Piedmont at her feet.’ This is Arcadia.’

Whereas Mariana Starke said of Venice only that ‘from its singularity alone [it] highly merits notice’ and that ‘it is less strikingly magnificent than many other cities of Italy‘,  in Udolpho ‘nothing could exceed Emily’s admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours…the sounds seemed to grow on the air; for so smoothly did the barge glide along, that its motion was not perceivable, and the fairy city appeared approaching to welcome the strangers.’ It was Mrs Radcliffe’s view of Italy as arcadia and fairyland, albeit with a gothic tinge, that inspired the dreams of so many English women travellers in the early 19^th century – and it is those who wrote who have immortalized their dreams. However, if these women held Mrs Radcliffe in one metaphorical hand, they held Mariana Starke’s guide book in the other. It was her details, perhaps prosaic then, but utterly fascinating now, that gave a reality to the dream – women could work out how, and how to afford to, to travel to arcadia.

All these features –an appreciation of the gothic and the arcadian and fairyland nature of Italy– resonated through the work and lives of the English women I shall discuss.

Lady Elizabeth Foster

My first vignette is of a woman whose early Italian travels, undertaken in the last quarter of the 18^th century, are the stuff of the gothic novel and whose later, 19^th-century life, was devoted to uncovering the arcadia of classical Italy. Her whole life is something of a fairy tale. While not a published writer, Lady Elizabeth Foster commended her daily experience to 128 volumes of journals, excerpts of which have been used in recreating both her life and that of her dearest friend, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. A biography of Georgiana has in recent years received almost as much media hype as did the works of Mrs Radcliffe at the end of the 18^th century, so some of you may well know something about her life. However, its dramas and excesses pale into insignificance beside those of her ‘Dearest Bess’. Lady Elizabeth’s ‘sweet freedom’ lay in being her loveable, incalcitrant, self-indulgent self and Italy allowed her to be so. She married young but after five years separated from her husband who consequently forbade her to see their two sons, whom she didn’t meet again for a further fourteen years – but who still remained devoted. Returning to England from the marital home in Ireland, she cast her spell on the Devonshire House circle. In fact the circle became a triangle when Lady Elizabeth, while remaining the Duchess’s most intimate friend, in the autumn of 1784 also became the lover of the Duke. Unsurprisingly she soon became pregnant; surprisingly there was no hint of any scandal as she took herself off to Italy, from whence she had only very recently returned. By April 1785, keeping up her diary, which served as a confessional, Lady Elizabeth was in Pisa, Florence, and then Rome, where she wrote ‘Sometimes I look at myself in the glass with pity. Youth, beauty, I see I have; friends I know I have; reputation I still have; and perhaps in two months, friends, fame, life and all future peace may be destroyed and lost for ever to me. If so, my proud soul will never, never return to England –But it was not his fault. Passion has led us both awry – his heart suffers for me I know’.  Entries such as this – and there are very many more – would not disgrace a gothic novel.

After a stay in Naples, at the end of June she was accompanied to Ischia by her brother, Jack Hervey, himself something of a rake, who was living a racketty life at the Naples court and, like everybody else, was quite oblivious of her condition. She had thought the island suitably remote and settled there to await the birth, but after a couple of weeks discovered that friends from Naples were coming to the island and that she would no longer be able to conceal her condition – and disgrace. She now revealed her predicament in a letter to her brother, who hastily returned to Ischia and appears to have been entirely supportive, although ‘I could not – dared not name the dear Author of my child’s existence’ Jack told her she would have to leave Ischia and, with her faithful servant, Louis, they set sail for the mainland in an open boat. ‘How calm the Sea is – it scarce is heard as it beats against the rocks, the air is perfum’d with herbs, the sky is clear, at a distance blazes Vesuvius – oh were I happy’.

They landed at Salerno and then travelled to nearby Vietri, a little town now swallowed up in greater Salerno. When, many years ago, I read the following entry from her journal  – written over 200 years before that – it made an impression such that I have never forgotten it . ‘With no woman at hand, encumbered by the weight of my child, enfeebled by long ill health, fearing every person I met, and, for the first time in my life, wishing only to hide myself, I arrived at last.’ The place to which brother Jack directed her appears to have been at best a kind of baby farm, at worst a brothel – perhaps a bit of both. Her description of the ‘seraglio’, as she called it, is gothic –run by ‘The Arch-Priest of Lovers, his woman-servant, a coarse, ugly and filthy creature, the doctor (his brother) and his wife, two young girls, pretty enough but weeping all day, the nurse who was to take charge of my child; and some babies which cried from morning to night.’  One wonders quite how it was that it was her brother knew of this place. She passed as Louis’ wife, as a servant’s wife dishonoured by Jack Hervey. A few days later a daughter was born and, as so often in gothic novels, the heroine now showed resilience in a time of extremity. Thinking her attendants quite ignorant, she immediately took care of the new-born baby but then, instead of the usual lying-in period of a month or so, which she had enjoyed after the birth of her previous children, was back on the road after six days, leaving the baby behind, eventually arriving at her brother’s house at Naples. Louis later fetched the baby, Caroline, from Vietri and brought her to Naples – where she was looked after by foster parents. I always thought this a memorably Italian episode.

Georgiana died in 1806 and in 1809 Lady Elizabeth married the Duke. He died in 1811 and in 1815, after peace had returned to Europe, Elizabeth, now Dowager Duchess of Devonshire returned to Italy, living in Rome until her death in 1824, keeping a very elegant salon, packed with diplomats, painters and sculptors. During her earliest visit to Italy in 1784 she had described in her journal, with impressive diligence, the paintings and antiquities she had seen. Now, in this new stage of life, she really did become a lady of letters, commissioning de luxe editions of Virgil and of Horace. She took up antiquities, under the guidance of Cardinal Consalvi, her last love, secretary of state and spy master to Pius VII. Of her excavating, Lady Spencer, the sister-in-law of the first Duchess, wrote ‘That Witch of Endor the Duchess of Devon has been doing mischief of another kind to what she has been doing all her life by pretending to dig for the public good in the Forum’. Mrs Charlotte Ann Eaton, who had travelled to Italy with her brother and sister and published her observations in 1820 as Rome in the Nineteenth Century, commented apropos the reclamation of the Forum, ‘the English, as far as I see, are at present the most active excavators. There is the Duchess of D— at work in one corner, and the Pope, moved by a spirit of emulation, digging away in another’. Italy had certainly allowed Lady Elizabeth the freedom to develop in ways she found unconventionally satisfying.

Charlotte Eaton’s sister, Jane Waldie, also published her description of their journey, albeit with a different publisher, and her enthusiasm still leaps off the page –  when ‘the dome of St Peter’s burst on  our view in the midst of the Campagna. Unable any longer to restrain ourselves, we leaped out of the carriage and ran up a bank by the road-side. Never, oh, never, shall I forget the emotions with which I gazed on this prospect! That Rome itself should really be before me seemed so incredible, that my mind could scarcely take in the fact.’ She and Charlotte stayed first at the Hotel de Paris  in the Via della Croce, which runs off the Piazza di Spagna in the heart of the ‘English’ quarter, but didn’t remain there long – on the second night of their stay the chimney of one of their apartments took fire and they moved to lodgings in the Corso. [For more about Charlotte Eaton see here and here.]

In fact the Hotel de Paris, or Villa di Parigi or Albergo di Parigi as they variously term it, provided shelter to a series of our English women writers over the next 20 years. [For more about the Hotel see here.] It is slightly surreal to see their shades slipping into bed, one after the other, under this one Roman roof. Amusingly all commented on the indifference of its facilities. It was at the Villa di Parigi in the summer of 1819, while the Duchess of Devonshire, the sole survivor of her menage  à trois, was still digging in the Forum, that another interesting trio took up abode in Rome. Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, were accompanied by Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont. All three sought inspiration from Italy and freedom from censure and their past –which was already gothic both in life (Mary’s half-sister, Fanny, and Shelley’s wife, Harriet, had both recently committed suicide) – and literature – Mary Shelley had just published Frankenstein. The drama of their stay in Italy was to be remorseless.

Claire Clairemont, who had devoured Mrs Radcliffe in her exhaustingly wide-ranging reading, wrote in her journal of the descent from Mont Cenis that   ‘The primroses are scattered everywhere. The fruit trees covered with the richest blossoms which scented the air as we passed. A sky without one cloud – everything bright and serene – the cloudless Sky of Italy – the bright and the beautiful’. Thus she entered Arcadia. But with Shelley and Mary, and their two young children, William and Clara, she was travelling to hand over her daughter, born the previous year when she was 19, to the child’s father, Lord Byron. This was done in April 1818, at Venice, and in August she received permission from Byron to visit the child. She persuaded Shelley and Mary to accompany her, although Mary was very reluctant because baby Clara was unwell, To Mary’s great grief, as soon as they arrived in Venice, Clara died. ‘Sweet freedom’ was not without its dangers – the story of English women in Italy is littered with lost or dead babies. The mother with a secret and – often related – the orphan  – are recurring themes in gothic novels.

The Shelley party later travelled to Rome and the Villa di Parigi. Claire appears, like all good travellers, to have been planning a book about Rome. Mary, who in the 1840s did publish a book on her later Italian travels, also at this time recorded her impressions of the city, ‘The other night we visited the Pantheon by moon  light and saw the lovely sight of the moon appearing through the round aperture above and Lighting the columns of the Rotunda with its rays…’ But there was little time for sight seeing –  tragedy had not done with them. On 7 June, despite having moved from the Villa di Parigi to an apartment at the top of the Spanish Steps, where the air was thought to be less malarial, the Shelleys’ two-year old son, William, died of Roman fever and was subsequently buried in the Protestant cemetery. He is a doubly lost English baby because when, all too soon, his grave was unearthed in order to bury him near his father, the grave marked as his was found to contain not a baby but the remains of an adult. The year after William’s death Mary wrote a verse drama for children, heartrending when one knows what she had recently suffered. It is, what else, but Proserpine’  – filled with Ceres’ anguished search – ‘Where is my daughter? Have I aught to dread? Where does she stray..I fear my child is lost’. Two years later Claire’s daughter, Allegra, died, a five- year old banished by her father to a convent, bereft of her mother’s care – and a couple of months after that Shelley was drowned off the Ligurian coast.

Mary remained in Italy until 1823 but was back in England when, in 1826, she proposed writing a review article based on a handful of books that had recently been published by English writers about Italy. One of the books she reviewed was The Diary of an Ennuyée, published anonymously and purporting to be the diary of a young governess, travelling in Italy with her charge, but broken-hearted, having left a shattered romance behind in England. Indeed so broken-hearted was she that at the end she goes to her grave. However, although there was much that was true in the book, its author, then Anna Murphy, but who, soon after her return to England, became Mrs Anna Jameson, had not in fact died, but was at the very beginning of a long and distinguished writing career, in which Italy played a central part. Indeed the Diary of an Ennuyée, in the intervals between anguished breast-beatings, serves as a very detailed guidebook to Italy, particularly Rome. A guidebook, admittedly, that veers more towards Mrs Radcliffe than Mariana Starke. It contains little in the way of practical details, such as routes and prices, but her descriptions do have the merit of being based on personal observation.

Anna Murphy’s  first day in Rome strikes as true a note as did Jane Waldie’s description of her arrival: ‘The day arose as beautiful, as brilliant, as cloudless, as I could have desired for the first day in Rome. About seven o’clock, and before any one was ready for breakfast, I walked out; and directed my steps by mere chance to the left, found myself in the Piazza di Spagna and opposite to a gigantic flight of marble stairs leading to the top of a hill. I was at the summit in a moment; and breathless and agitated by a thousand feelings, I leaned against the obelisk, and looked over the whole city.’  She was here standing a few yards away from where young William Shelley had died barely five years previously. And, yes, her party was staying at the Albergo di Parigi.

Having spent an adventurous 20 or so years – she travelled extensively around north America and Canada, having ditched her alcoholic husband, and earning a living through her writing – Anna Jameson returned to Italy in 1846 under rather romantic circumstances. It was she who conducted Mr and Mrs Browning from Paris to Pisa.   She was as surprised as the rest of the world at the Browning marriage. When she was contacted in Paris she had only a few days previously bade farewell to her friend Elizabeth Barrett in Wimpole Street, having no inkling of the planned elopement. Anna was on her way to Italy to research a new book, Sacred and Legendary Art, and was delighted to act as courier for the impractical pair. From Paris she wrote to her sister ‘I have also here a poet and a poetess – two celebrities who have run away and married under circumstances peculiarly interesting, and such as render imprudence the height of prudence. Both  excellent; but God help them! for I know not how the two poet heads and poet hearts will get on through this prosaic world.’. She later commented that the elopement ‘was as delightful as unexpected, and gave an excitement to our journey which was already like a journey into the old world of enchantment – a revival of fairyland.’

Italy indeed had a magical effect on Elizabeth Browning. While on the journey Mrs Jameson wrote to her sister from Avignon ‘Our poor invalid has suffered greatly, often fainting and often so tired that we have been obliged to remain a whole day to rest at some wretched place..’ But as Flush noted (courtesy of Virginia Woolf), after their arrival in Pisa ‘she was a different person altogether. Now, for instance, instead of sipping a thimbleful of port and complaining of the headache, she tossed off a tumbler of Chianti and slept the sounder..Then instead of driving in a barouche landau to Regent’s Park she pulled on her thick boots and scrambled over rocks. Instead of sitting in a carriage and rumbling along Oxford street, they rattled off in a ramshackle fly to the borders of a lake and looked at mountains…Here in Italy was freedom and life and the joy that the sun breeds.’ Indeed, breeding began as soon as she reached Pisa, although she miscarried five months later. Rather than lamenting this loss, she was very proud of having been pregnant at all. After a recuperating stay in Pisa, a city that had for many years been host to an interesting, rather Bohemian English set, all escaping one thing or another, the Brownings travelled on to Florence in the summer of 1847, eventually moving into an apartment in Casa Guidi.

It was here in Florence, having never previously been particularly interested in national politics – although she had long been concerned with social reform – that Elizabeth took up the cause of Italian freedom. On a more prosaic level for the first time she was able to experience other aspects of her freedom – she furnished her first home and in 1849, following a second miscarriage – and when she was 43 years old – she gave birth to a son.

Two years later, in 1851, she published Under Casa Guidi Windows, in which she charts her initial optimism that the newly awakened liberal movements would result in the freedom and unification of the Italian states and, then, her disillusionment when the movement was crushed. Biographers have suggested that she equated the oppression of the Italian people (most of Italy was then under Austrian rule) with that of her father against her. Whether or not there is any truth in this analogy – it has a rather depressingly contrived feel – there were other English women – some of whom had certainly grown up happily in the bosom of supportive families – who were also intensely interested in the cause of Italian freedom.

One such was Jessie White, born in Gosport in Hampshire where her father had a ship building firm, and who i 1854, when she was 22, met Garibaldi in London. She was no conventional young lady, having already studied for a time in Paris and was at this time writing for Eliza Cook’s Journal, a London-based feminist publication. Garibaldi fired her with enthusiasm and she travelled to Italy, where she met Mazzini and became a disciple.

Mazzini appears to have had this effect on women –at least on English women. Another of his devotees was Emilia Ashurst, known at this stage of her life as Mrs Sidney Hawkes, a member of a London family all of whom involved themselves in the radical causes of the day. When Jessie White returned to England in 1855, she met Emilie, who had already had many Italian adventures. Besides acting as his secret agent Emilie wrote a memoir of Mazzini and translated his works into English. She was also an artist and a copy of her portrait of Mazzini, enigmatically labelled as by ‘E. Hawkes’, is on display in the Museo di Risorgimento, housed inside the Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome. It struck me when I saw it that, as visitors drifted past it year after year, there could hardly be among them anybody who would realize that behind this painting lay an Englishwoman’s deep commitment to Italy. Emilie separated from Hawkes and later married Carlo Venturi, a Venetian patriot, who proved an altogether more satisfying husband.

Jessie White, too, wished to give practical aid to Italy. She thought she would train as a doctor in England, but, as a woman, she was refused admittance to medical school, and she settled on offering herself as a nurse to the Italians and also, as had Emilie Venturi, concentrated on translating Italian works of propaganda and writing articles for the English press. In 1857 she took part in an uprising led by Mazzini and was arrested and imprisoned. In prison she met Alberto Mario, like Venturi a handsome Venetian, whom, on their release, she married. In the early 1860s, with her husband, she followed Garibaldi and his men, nursing the sick  – for most of the time the only woman attached to the campaign. From 1866 until her death in 1906 Jessie White Mario, as Italian correspondent of the Nation, analysed Italy for American and English readers. She travelled all round Italy in search of material for articles and is now esteemed in Italy as one of the first of its investigative reporters, writing about economic developments and social conditions – especially in the south –her writing forceful in detail, vivid and vigorous. When she died in 1906 one paper connected two Anglo-Italian patriots, specifically remarking that her funeral procession in Florence, ‘passed the Casa Guidi, which was decorated in honour of the centenary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’.

Amongst the artefacts now displayed in Casa Guidi is a cast of the clasped hands of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. The sculptor of this incarnation of romance was a young American woman, Harriet Hosmer. Harriet had lived and worked in Rome since 1852, part of a group of ‘jolly female bachelors’ that clustered around the overpowering personality of the American actress, Charlotte Cushman. After meeting Charlotte with her companion, Matilda Hays, Elizabeth Barrett Browning had written to her sisters ‘I understand that she and Miss Hays have made vows of celibacy and of eternal attachment to each other – they live together, dress alike …it is a female marriage’. A photograph of the two women certainly shows them dressed alike, skirts topped by tailored shirts and jackets. Matilda, who preferred to be known as ‘Max’, is lean and saturnine. She was a novelist, who in 1847 had, with Emilie Venturi’s elder sister, Eliza Ashurst, embarked on the daring project of translating the works of George Sand. When she and Charlotte arrived in Rome they were looking for freedom from the social constraints imposed in America and England. Charlotte wrote that in Rome ‘the Mrs Grundies [are] so scarce, [and] the artist society ..so nice, that it is hard to choose or find any other place so attractive’. They spent most of the next five years or so in Rome – during the winter and spring of 1856 to 1857 Anna Jameson was part of their circle. But the Hays/Cushman female marriage was volatile and in 1857 came to a violent end – swearing certainly and, fisticuffs, possibly, were involved – and Matilda was forced to leave Rome.

Nine years later she published a novel, Adrienne Hope, in which she painted a very lifelike picture of Roman life as experienced by the expatriate English. Her main protagonists live in what was clearly the apartment in the via Gregoriana, along from the top of the Spanish Steps, in which she had lived with Charlotte: ‘a suite of rooms on the fourth piano, beneath the windows of which Rome lay extended like a panorama… There lies the Queen City of the World, with its quaint, irregular, grey roofs, its 364 churches, its noble pagan temples and imperial palaces, noble in their ruin and decay, basking through the day in the undimmed lustre of an Italian sun, to be glorified by its setting rays of gold, and crimson, and purple, the depth and richness of whose hues none who have not seen can by any means imagine, and none who have seen can ever forget.’ [For more about Matilda Hays and Adrienne Hope see here.]

Although Rome was at this time the centre for artistic training there was from the mid-19^th century a revived interest in medieval Italy as inspiration for both art and literature. Tuscany in general and Florence in particular was the mecca for English devotees. One such arrival was Louise de la Ramée, who wrote under the pen name Ouida. She had already had considerable success and had made a considerable amount of money from her sensational novels. Having found her life in Bury St Edmunds insufficiently exciting she left England for Florence, where she quickly fell in love with a neighbour, the Marchese della Stuffa, for whom she felt all the passion that she had previously only been able to allow to her heroines. However, what she didn’t for a long time realise was that the Marchese was already spoken for – he had for several years been the ‘cavalier servante’ of Mrs Janet Ross – queen bee of the English circle in Florence. As her biographer put it. ‘Soon there was open enmity between Ouida and Mrs Ross, each fiercely resenting what she considered the other’s preposterous tendency to behave as if della Stufa were her property. Both were women of strong character, Mrs Ross the more domineering, Ouida the more impassioned’.

Ouida took up what she considered was her best weapon – her pen -and wrote a roman a clef based on this intriguing triangle – entitling it with the mot just – ‘Friendship’. When one knows something of the background, it makes a very good read. She describes Mrs Ross in the character of Lady Joan as ‘ a faggot of contradictions; extraordinarily ignorant, but naturally intelligent; audacious yet timid; a bully, but a coward; full of hot passions, but with cold fits of prudence.. She had a bright, firm, imposing way of declaring her opinions infallible that went far towards making others believe them so .’  Her own character was quite the reverse – all modesty and balm, ‘She gave him a yellow rose from a cluster that she had been placing in water as he had entered; there was tea standing near her on a little Japanese stand; she poured him out a cup, and brought it to him by the hearth; he followed all her movements with a sense of content and peace. As she tendered him the little cup, his fingers caressed hers, and as he drew the cup away, his lips lingered on her wrist. She coloured and left him.’ 

 Her friends begged her not to publish it – the Ross side threatened a libel suit. Eight years later a reviewer wrote: ‘Italy was destined to do more for Ouida, as an artist, in a larger sense of the word, than to satisfy her ideal of the beautiful in landscape. An experience was reserved for her there, or more probably, a series of experiences, which vastly enlarged her knowledge of living men and women’.

Janet Ross was a member of a family of strong-minded women. In 1888 she and her husband bought a castle near Settignagno. In her memoirs she recounts her investigation of its history and its reclamation, describing for instance ‘having hateful French wallpaper scraped off the walls and having them washed a light grey stone colour – to the dismay of the workmen’ – so like all the villas in Tuscany idylls, where the jarring contemporary is erased in order to reclaim the peace of the past. Forging the path that so many later have followed she wrote a cookery book, Leaves from our Tuscan Kitchen. Those intimate with the Ross household later made clear that, of course Mrs Ross never needed to concern herself with the workings of the kitchen – and her cook, who prided himself on being able to produce more than the cookery of the region, had provided her with recipes that were, as a result, by no means authentically Tuscan. The commission for the book had, in the first instance, come from J.M. Dent to Janet Ross’s young niece, Lina, who, however, thought a cookery book dull work and preferred another commission, The Story Of Assissi. For the same ‘Medieval Towns’ series Janet Ross wrote The Story of Pisa and Lina’s friend, Margaret Symonds, The Story of Perugia.

Lina married an artist, Aubrey Waterfield, and in 1905 they bought their own castle, Fortezza della Brunella, near Carrara. Three years later Lina wrote Home Life in Italy, describing, in her turn, how they had made their castle habitable, and writing about their servants and local customs. The castle sounds magical: ‘As the evening draws in, wisps of clouds become suffused with a lustre of rose-purple and gold, to fade with the light to the colour of a Florentine iris. How often have I not returned home dazed by it all, and reached the drawbridge just as the birds were settling to rest with a great flutter and commotion among the ilexes in the moat..’ In 1917 she was one of the founders of the British Institute at Florence, which has subsequently served as an easy escape route into Italy for England’s well-heeled youth.  From 1921 until 1939 Lina Waterfield was Italian correspondent for the Observer, speaking out firmly against Mussolini. That life at Fortezza della Brunella was for a child the embodiment of arcadia is set out in the memoir, A Tuscan Childhood, written by Lina’s daughter, Kinta Beevor, and published in the 1980s. Thus three English women of one family have between them recorded 100 years of Tuscan life.

At the same time as the Waterfields were restoring their castle, another English woman, Georgina Graham was living near Carrara, enjoying life in Italy and writing of it In a Tuscan Garden. Rather than a horticultural treatise this was in essence a guide for those wishing to move to Italy.  ‘The ideal condition of residence is to have the home in England, and to be able to leave it for the winter or spring months… But when that ideal is beyond attainment, and when one has to choose a place of exile, Italy appears to me, taking it all round, to afford greater compensations than any other country.. Before settling in Tuscany, I had heard the remark that English society in Florence was for the most part so unpleasant, that every one did his best to keep out of it, and that if you wished to make a mortal enemy, you had only to offer to introduce one person to another.’. Doubtless the standoff between Mrs Ross and Ouida had many lesser emulators.

Mrs Graham continues, evoking the Florence of A Room with a View: ‘Nowadays Florence may be said to be one vast pension, it was totally different when I first knew it in the sixties; such places hardly existed then, and if they had, the class of English visitors of that day would not have gone into them. Many of them were badly off –; but it would not have occurred to them to herd with other people.’ Describing how easy it is to rent rooms for the long term, she comments:  ‘It is astonishing how many Englishwomen of small means there are living here in respectability, and comfort in their own small etage, who, if in London, would be in comfortless suburban lodgings, in two rooms in one of those “ladies’ flats” to which all sorts of drawbacks and restrictions are attached. In Florence everything lends itself to their independence.’ Georgina Graham relates that she was seized with ‘Italy Fever’ back in the 1860s but that as time has passed ‘a long residence in Italy gives an intimate knowledge of her people, her standards, and her morale generally, under the influence of which the poetry becomes less prominent, and what may be called the seamy side is apt to be painfully to the front. But in spite of all, to those who have once yielded to its charm, it ever remains the enchanted land.’

This ‘Italy Fever’ had doubtless seized many of the women who were not so fortunate as Mrs Graham in finding themselves enjoying a large Tuscan villa and garden but, as she describes, happily occupied a room or two in Florence, with or without a view. I have been struck by the number of books that were published about Tuscany by women writers at the turn of the 20^th century, including a couple by a woman of whom I had never before heard. One was Scenes and Shrines, written by Dorothy Nevile Lees, who had been born in Wolverhampton to a reasonably prosperous family. In 1903, aged 23, gripped by Italian fever, inspired by the poetry of Byron and Shelley, she left Wolverhampton and travelled alone to Florence. At the opening of Scenes and Shrines she recounts how  ‘ I passed the great mountain gates which bar the way to Italy, the enchanted land of my childish imaginings, the Mecca of my dreams.’ In order to learn Italian as quickly as possible she chose to board with a middle-class Florentine family and plunged with a will into Italian life.

Both Scenes and Shrines and a second book, Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends, were published in the same year, 1907, and were probably the result of collecting together articles that she had already had published in the English press. Tuscan Feasts opens with a hymn to her new land ‘ O Italy, my land of Heart’s Desire/No Paradise could be more fair than thou’, and the finding of her dream villa.  ‘The Villa strictly speaking, was not beautiful; its time-stained plastered walls, its lofty height, its heavily-barred windows were a little gaunt and forbidding; and yet, as I stepped down from the carriage, I felt instinctively that I had found the place of dreams and peace’. If Dorothy Nevile Lees had been of our time she would have been a participant in ‘A Place in the Sun’ – making a television programme about her new Tuscan life.

I then discovered that in 1907 Dorothy Nevile Lees met Edward Gordon Craig, theatrical director, stage designer, son of Ellen Terry, married man and father, and, clearly, a great charmer, and that from 1908 until it folded in 1929 she was the editorial mainstay of his theatrical magazine, The Mask. She lived all this time in Florence – while Craig travelled the world – he went through a couple of marriages, and several affairs – including one with Isadora Duncan (by whom he had two children). In 1917 Dorothy herself had a son, David, by him, the existence of whom Craig was very keen to keep quiet – so quiet indeed that his entry in the new ODNB makes no mention whatsoever of Dorothy Nevile Lees or her son (although conceding that Craig had many children). It is clear Craig did what he could to ensure that David Lees, who in fact became an internationally-renowned photographer, would become another of England’s children lost in Italy. In 1935 Dorothy heard that Craig had denied that he was David’s father. When she commented on this, by way of reply he counselled her ‘not to blab’.

Dorothy Nevile Lees, clearly a woman of independent spirit, remained in Florence during the Second World War, shielding Craig’s archive from the Nazis, despite an office raid, and eventually giving the British Institute in Florence a collection of his theatrical material. One cannot know what she had really expected when she arrived as she had put it, in ‘the Mecca of my dreams’, but she had certainly carved out for herself an interesting life, one unlikely to have been her fate in Wolverhampton. [For more about Dorothy Lees see here.]

Life in a Tuscan villa in the years before the Second World War and then in wartime Florence falls to the lot of Fenny, the creation of Lettice Cooper, whose eponymous novel, Fenny, was published in 1953. I don’t know enough of Lettice Cooper to know what part Italy played in her life, but the loving description of her heroine’s enjoyment of her surroundings at least suggest that the author relished her research. Fenny is not the chatelaine of the villa – that character is a spoilt and wilful Englishwoman – but Ellen Fenwick, who until shortly before the opening of the novel, which begins in 1933, is a teacher in an English girls’ high school and is then invited to Tuscany as a governess. One can imagine her background as not unlike that of Dorothy Nevile Lees. When she arrived at the villa Fenny considered life within its grounds as paradise –she really does say ‘When I first arrived her I thought I’d got into a house in a fairy-tale’ –  a very suitable  romance follows but it is stifled by the lady of the house – Fenny later copes with the war – and ensures that her much loved pupil will not suffer as she suffered. A conventional enough plot, lovingly told against the backdrop of Italian life and landscape. The novel ends with Fenny saying to the young boy she has rescued from the disasters of war, ‘All right, Dino! We’ll go to Rome.’

 And it was to Rome in the year of Fenny’s publication that the novelist Elizabeth Bowen went, sponsored by the British Council. She had made many previous visits, but her husband had recently died and she made this extended stay the occasion of specific research for her book, A Time in Rome. I love this book. I love the way she explains how she got to grips with the city –‘My object was to walk it into my head and (this time) keep it there.’ I love the way she is alone as she does this (or at least appears to be alone) – I like the idea of the solitary walker –the observer.  And I love this sentence she wrote early on in the book; ‘To talk of “entering” the past is nonsense, but one can be entered by it, to a degree.’ The book’s final sentences even on re-reading are still affecting. ‘Only from the train as it moved out did I look at Rome. Backs of houses I had not ever seen before wavered into mists, stinging my eyes. My darling, my darling, my darling. Here we have no abiding city.’

Through the second half of the 20^th and into the 21^st century women have still relished the challenge of reshaping a life in Italy. And as in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, writing still offers the possibility of earning a living and a new and interesting locality provides possible material for the writing. Detective fiction, blending social observation and deduction/intuition, has proved a successful genre for women writers; an exotic locality gilds the lily. The best-known woman writer of English-language Italian detective fiction is Donna Leon, whose policeman, Guido Brunetti, is the epitome of Venetian suavity and good humour. However Donna Leon, although an intriguing woman, is an American and doesn’t qualify for discussion today.

But while thinking of women writers and detection in Venice I must mention in passing Sarah Caudwell – the pen name of Sarah Cockburn –now, alas, dead – who led a life of bella libertà. She was a charming and scatty, pipe-smoking lawyer who wrote four witty detective novels, the first, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, set in Venice. While I am sure Sarah enjoyed complete freedom at all times and didn’t need to go to Venice to find it, it was assumed by those who knew her that an opportunity to foster close acquaintance with young Venetian men made her research all the sweeter.

Magdalen Nabb, an English writer of detective fiction, has, like Donna Leon, created an Italian policeman. Her central character is Marshal Guarnaccia and she has posted him in Florence, close to the Pitti Palace. All I know of Magdalen Nabb is what is revealed on her book jackets – but in its bare outline it is the epitome of the ideal life of the English women writer in Italy. ‘She was born in Lancashire in 1947 and trained as a potter. In 1975 she abandoned pottery, sold her home and her car, and went to Florence with her son, knowing nobody and speaking no Italian’. When she wrote the first of what are now 12 books in her detective series she was living in an apartment in Casa Guidi. Indeed I first came across her novels while staying there myself, in the Brownings’ drawing room, in the Library supplied by the Landmark Trust.

Another English writer, who has written at least one thriller with an Italian setting, and who has also taken root in Florence, is Sarah Dunant. She has described in an interview how, after the break up of a relationship, she thought life needed a radical change – and so bought a flat in Florence. She holds the city responsible for her own personal renaissance and it, naturally, became the setting for The Birth of Venus, a novel that I am sure is selling very well and ensuring her a comfortable Florentine life. [The Birth of Venus was the only one of Sarah Dunant’s Italian novels published when I gave the talk – but she has written more since – see here.]

As well as being the setting for detective stories, which I could perhaps tie into my gothic theme, Italy has also provided the setting for a number of contemporary arcadian or fairyland novels. In these authors have gathered together a group of disparate characters and allowed enchantment of one kind or another to work on them. In Enchanted April, published in 1923, Elizabeth von Arnim describes in loving detail (detail so easily translated into a gentle film) how four women, previously unknown to each other, rent a castle on Italy’s Ligurian coast, overlooking the bay where Shelley drowned, and find themselves and happiness.

Amanda Craig’s Love in Idleness cleverly and amusingly reworks A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in the setting of a houseparty in a Tuscan villa, effortlessly evoking the magic suspension of reality that overtakes her characters. ‘The heat intensified. At night the house creaked and whispered, so that they woke to confusion, climbing out of their dreams on the ladder of light cast by the shutters, excited, ashamed, frustrated. During the day each person became more and more enervated, yet also more relaxed.’

A similar atmosphere of shimmering heat and long shuttered siestas, interspersed with bursts of uncharacteristic behaviour, is what I remember of The Italian Lesson, a 1985 novel by Janice Elliott. Again a group, most previously unknown to each other, gathers for a holiday – this time in a restored castle a few miles outside Florence. William, one of the central characters, has for years been researching a monograph on E.M. Forster and Italy and the novel is intertwined with Forsterian allusions. His wife is recovering from a still birth and in the course of the novel another baby is carelessly lost to death, its fate an echo of the bronzed baby in Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread, and an echo of all those others that have been lost in Italy – in both fact and fiction.

I shall end this talk in Venice, Mrs Radcliffe’s ‘fairy city’, with Julia Garnet, the creation of Salley Vickers, who will give the First Persephone Annual lecture on the 5^th October, discussing Miss Garnet alongside Persephone’s Miss Pettigrew and Miss Ranskill. I am very fond of Miss Garnet, who is the epitome of all the women whom we have encountered today. One can, in fact, imagine that Julia Garnet is what Fenny would have become if she had not been transported to Tuscany in her youth. For Julia Garnet came to Venice only on her retirement from teaching and there found the angel that was to guide her to the next world. Like Elizabeth Bowen, she walks the city into her head, transformed by it – ‘Venice has changed me’ she thought. We can see that Julia Garnet, while remaining essentially herself, has changed – her emotions and understanding expanded, Venice and the people she found there, Anglo-American as well as Italians, having worked their magic. As in so many novels that centre on Venice the cast of characters includes art historians and art restorers and I will leave you with a glimpse of this –the handwritten diary of a young Englishwoman, which details a three-month stay in Venice, where she was taking an art history course [Note: this diary was an item that I had in my book dealing stock at the time]. This was in 1986 – exactly 200 years after Lady Elizabeth Forster wrote up her Italian diary.   What this young woman puts on paper is equally self-regarding, sprawling and observant – it could be raw material for a novel –   a romance, a romantic comedy, a detective novel, or even, perhaps, a tragedy.  The writer is anonymous –– although I suppose there are sufficient clues scattered throughout that would enable her identity to be discovered. But let her remain anonymous, her experience in Italy in the mid 1980s merely a contemporary version – factor in drugs, sex and rock and roll – of the bella libertà enjoyed by all our English women writing in Italy –  her refrain, like that of all the others, is: ‘I never want to go back to England.’

Copyright

In Suffrage Stories: ‘Home Art Decorator’ To The Queen – And The ‘Human Letter’ – I told the story of Charlotte Robinson, her sister, Epsey McClelland, and her niece, Elspeth McClelland. I have now been alerted to the existence of another of Charlotte’s sisters, Mrs Anne Atherton, who also worked in the art world – as the co-founder of the Society of Artists. In my rummaging around I had come across mention of this ‘Society’, which operated from premises in New Bond Street, London, but had not made the connection to Charlotte Robinson and Epsey McClelland.

Anne Elizabeth Robinson was born in Settle, Yorkshire, in 1849. Known as ‘Annie’, she was the fourth child of Henry Robinson and his wife, Elspet, two years younger than Epsey and nearly ten years older than Charlotte. I can discover nothing of her life before her marriage in 1870 to Francis Henry Atherton. The son of a solicitor, he had been born in Wiltshire in 1840 and was, therefore, about ten years her elder. I presume that until her marriage Anne had lived at home in Yorkshire, but after their marriage the couple disappear. I cannot find them on the 1871 census and have only caught up again with Annie Atherton in 1881 when she was living at 103 Warwick Road, Paddington, with her sister Epsey McClelland, her brother-in-law (John McClelland, an accountant) and a visitor, Kate Thornbury. Epsey and Anne are each described as ‘Artist (Painter)’ and Kate Thornbury is ‘Secretary’. In fact Kate Thornbury was secretary to the Central Committee of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage from 1877-c. April 1881.

I don’t know when the Atherton marriage broke down. From later evidence I know that Francis Atherton was a mining prospector and it may be that he and Anne were living abroad in 1871, hence their absence from the census. But at some point Annie Atherton returned to England (if she had indeed been away) and entered into a close friendship with Kate Thornbury that was to last the rest of their lives.

According to Annie Atherton’s obituary (The Suffragette, 28 November 1913), she and Kate Thornbury had founded the Society of Artists thirty-two years earlier –that is, in 1881 – perhaps around the time that Kate left her position as secretary to the suffrage society. However in 1887 (in a letter published in the Pall Mall Gazette – see below) Kate dated the formation of the Society to 1883 and it would, perhaps, be sensible to accept this as the correct date. The couple took premises for the business at a very good Mayfair address – 53 New Bond Street – and remained there – and then at no. 52  -until 1914. No. 53 is now occupied by Dolce and Gabbana – and, from the look of it, the façade of the building may well be much the same now as it was in the 1880s. In 1886 Kate Thornbury was also working as secretary to the Froebel Society from no. 53.

It is difficult to discover the exact nature of the Society of Artists. It doesn’t appear to have been a Society in the sense of having members, rather it offered premises in which artists could exhibit. All the reports of exhibitions that I can find are of work by women. Moreover the ‘work’ was usually of a ‘craft’ nature, not fine art. It would also appear that the Society of Artists operated, at some level, as a house decorating business, competing in the same field as Annie’s sisters, Charlotte Robinson and Epsey McClelland.

I sense that the relationship between the two establishments, the Society of Artists and that of Charlotte Robinson, was, for a time at least, not entirely harmonious – for the 27 December 1887 issue of the Pall Mall Gazette carries a letter from Kate Thornbury in response to ‘Ladies as Shopkeepers’, the article by Emily Faithfull that had appeared in the previous week’s issue (for more on this article see Suffrage Stories: ‘Home Art Decorator’ To The Queen – And The ‘Human Letter‘). Kate Thornbury expresses her ’great astonishment [that she found in this article] no mention whatever of Miss Robinson’s elder sister Mrs Atherton, who, as Miss Faithfull is well aware, had started a large business under her own superintendence in New Bond Street, London, under the title of the Society of Artists, for the sale of all kinds of artistic work, house decoration &, in the year 1883. Mrs Atherton it was who first braved ‘that bugbear which terrifies most women – the loss of social status’ and the great success which attended (and still attends) her venue induced Miss Robinson twelve months afterwards to open a similar business in Manchester, under the same name. In Miss Faithfull’s zeal for the prestige of the younger sister with whose success she is identified , she has shown a strange forgetfulness of Mrs Atherton’s claim as the originator of the movement which finds such merit in Miss Faithfull’s eyes.’

Armed with the information that Charlotte Robinson’s business in Manchester traded, at least initially, under the name the ‘Society of Artists’, I have now found corroboration in the form of a report (Manchester Courier, 30 March 1886) which, when referring to the fact that Charlotte Robinson was setting up a type-writing office in the city, mentions that she was ‘well known in connection with the Society of Artists’. One would have thought that there must have been some agreement with Annie Atherton and Kate Thornbury that allowed Charlotte to use their business name, but, three years or so later, the letter betrays a distinct note of rancour, aimed perhaps more at Emily Faithfull than at Annie’s younger sister.

Descriptions of the actual work exhibited by the Society of Artists are rather scant. This, from The St James’ Gazette, 7 April 1898, is one of the more forthcoming, describing how poker-work photograph frames ‘in straight bands of vivid colours – red, yellow and green – set amidst the dark poker-work..and beaten pewter and copper frames make much pleasanter Easter gifts than the usual flimsy eccentricities sold for such. The society has also the most delightful green ware to match its green furniture. It’s very pleasant to house one’s frocks, one’s candles, one’s flowers and plants all in the same harmonious tone of green.’ Well, there’s not much to choose between this artless prose and that of today’s house magazines (which, incidentally, I love, while laughing at their writing style). A report of an exhibition organised by the Society of Artists in Aberdeen in 1888 described their wares as ‘decorative novelties’, which seems a fair summary.

I have found only two clear indications that the Society of Artists was involved in house decoration. In its issue of 19 December 1904 the Derby Daily Telegraph mentioned that Elspeth McClelland was, most unusually for a young woman, studying architecture at the Polytechnic in London and that ‘she has occupied a post as a designer at a large firm of decorators, known as the Society of Artists.’ So, any rancour that may have existed between the Robinson sisters in the 1880s had long since been forgotten and in the new century the Society of Artists had welcomed Annie Atherton’s niece, Elspeth, as a member of its team.

The second reference comes nine years later when the Pall Mall Gazette (10 November 1913) reported that ‘a well-known Princess who is fitting up a “lordly pleasure-house” for herself in the neighbourhood of the Bois de Boulogne, has given the internal decoration into the hands of the Society of Artists. The society has an excellent habit of collecting ancient beams and panelling, and the Princess’s Parisian mansion is being transformed into an old English manor-house, after the fashion of Haddon House. In the Princess’s house there are to be great open fireplaces, panelled walls, and an entirely new wooden staircase is being put in.’ The next paragraph refers to the work of a woman architect, Mrs Elspeth Spencer (née McClelland), this juxtaposition making me wonder if she could have been involved with the Parisian project. Annie Atherton had just died and Kate Thornbury was 65 years old – was the younger generation now directing the work of the Society of Artists?

For years Annie and Kate had a London address, 12 Horbury Crescent, Kensington, and for a time had a country cottage at Peaslake in Surrey – the 1891 census found them living there in the quaintly named ‘Jottel [??] Hutte’. Annie Atherton is ‘head of household, Kate is ‘Friend’ and they had a young local girl as a servant.  However by 1901 they had left arts-and-craftsy Peaslake  for a house in Shire Lane, Chorleywood. This house was, rather charmingly, named ‘Chums’, which might speak something of how they saw their relationship. In the 1901 census Anne is given as ‘head of household’ and Kate as ‘joint owner’, while they are both described as ‘artists’.  Their next-door-but- one neighbour on one side was Charles Voysey, who lived until 1906 in ‘The Orchard’, the arts-and-crafts house that he had built in 1899 for his family, while on their other side lived another architect, Charles Simmonds. At the very least Annie and Kate must have known Voysey on a social level but I wonder if their ‘decorative novelties’, while ‘craft’, would have appealed to his spare ‘Arts and Crafts’ sensibility.

In 1911 both Annie and Kate boycotted the census. The Registrar completed their form, recording their relationship as ‘sisters’ and knowing enough to describe Annie’s occupation as ‘Society of Artists’. Across the form is written ‘No Votes No Census. When women become citizens they will fulfill the duties of citizens.’

On the 1881 and 1891 censuses Annie Atherton gives her status as ‘married’ and by 1901 as ‘widowed’. However on her death in 1913 the Probate Register describes her as ‘wife of Frank Atherton’ – and that seems to have been her true status for there is no evidence that she was divorced. In fact Francis Henry Atherton appears on the 1911 census, aged 70, mining prospector, living with his ‘wife’ , Julia, and five of the seven children born to them, at Langhurst, Witley, Surrey. [Incidentally, for more about the house, which Atherton presumably leased from the publisher Edward Arnold who had built it in 1908, see here.] The children, who had all been born in Queensland, Australia, ranged in age from 19 to 10 and Atherton stated on the form that he and Julia had been married for 25 years. In fact this was an untruth twice over. Not only was he, apparently, still married to Annie Atherton, but a marriage ceremony between him and Julia had taken place at St Pauls, Covent Garden as recently as 10 September 1907. It seems inconceivable that Annie Atherton did not know that her husband and his family were living in Surrey and that, as it appears, he had committed bigamy. One can read on-line the oath he swore that there was no legal impediment to this marriage and, incidentally, that his bride, Julia Walford, was a widow. This, again, was another untruth as ‘Walford’ was her maiden name; their Australian-born children were registered with Francis Atherton as their father and Julia Walford as their mother. Perhaps it was felt that back in England propriety demanded that the liaison  should appear more regular. Had he asked Annie Atherton for a divorce and been refused? I wonder if any reader of this post will know the answer.

When Annie died in 1913 the executor of her will was, naturally enough, Kate Thornbury. Kate died in 1920 (incidentally leaving £100 to the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship) having appointed Clara Garrett her executor. The latter was the wife of Samuel Garrett, brother of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Millicent Fawcett, and Agnes Garrett – and, guess what, I’ve just put two and two together and realised that Clara was Kate’s sister. Of course it’s a small world but I wonder if this overlap between the Robinson and Garrett family circles extended to an overlap in house decorating taste. Could Annie Atherton and Kate Thornbury have initially been inspired by the example set by the firm of R & A Garrett?  Clara Thornbury drew her sister into the Garrett Circle when she married Samuel in 1882. Could conversations with Agnes and Rhoda have given Kate and Annie the idea of launching the Society of Artists a year later? At the very least the two couples must have had many interests in common – suffrage and applied art being the most obvious. Were Annie and Kate entertained at 2 Gower Street by Rhoda and Agnes and, later, by Agnes and Millicent? Were their decorating tastes similar? Did they visit each other’s shops? Buy each other’s wares? Who knows.

It is a pity that for a post concerned with the visual I have no illustrations to use. I know of no likenesses of Annie Atherton or Kate Thornbury, have no images of rooms they decorated, or the goods they sold. Despite the longevity of their business they seem to have left a fainter mark on history than Charlotte Robinson, who had Emily Faithful as her promoter.

I am most grateful to Thamar McIver who is researching suffragettes in Pinner (where Elspeth McClelland lived) and first brought Anne Atherton to my attention. The rest is –  a sort – of history.

Copyright

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although I am no longer the guardian of Kate’s diaries, I am still able walk in her footsteps. The hottest day of the year earlier this week found me in Rye in Sussex. I was recovering from a short, sharp illness but the overnight visit had been booked ages ago and I really didn’t want to forfeit the outing. However, rather than wafting around Rye as I had envisaged, I managed only to place myself for a brief moment outside the digs in which Kate Frye had stayed in April 1911 and take in the scene before retiring to enjoy a lady-like recline.

Kate had been sent by the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage to rouse Rye to the Cause. She had booked two rooms in the digs – the other was for one of the NCSWS ‘s founders – and Kate’s ‘sort-of’ friend – Alexandra Wright.

Their landlady was a widow, Mrs Jane Harvey, who lived in the house with her 23-year-old daughter, Lilian, who worked as a clerk.

Like the Rev Llewellyn Smith we were staying at the Mermaid Inn. I doubt it has changed much since Kate escorted him there 105 years ago.  If you have a feel for these things – that time is only a thin layer – you might sense the Rye of Kate Frye merging with that of Mapp and Lucia.

Wednesday April 19th 1911

Did not stop before Ashford and changed there for Rye. Got a porter to bring up my Trunk and walked to Mrs Harvey, 13 Market St. What will happen to me with such a number?

Real lodgings – but nice and clean and two nice large bed-rooms – much larger than the sitting-rooms. I went out for a few minutes stroll – came in about 7. Unpacked my bag – had supper at 7.30 – then my box and arrived so I went up and unpacked that – then wrote letters & diary till 10 o’clock. Felt rather tired – and very on Tour – the Sunday night feeling in a strange town being intensified by the Church Bells being practised.

[The last comment harks back to Kate’s days as an actress – on tour].

Thursday April 20^th 1911

Up in good time to breakfast – wrote a little then out the shops – and then back to fetch Bills, which had been sent in last night – and to start my canvassing. Did all up and down the High St and Mint as a beginning. Didn’t feel very impressed with my work but suppose it is alright. In to lunch at 1 – then at 2.30 out to Playden where I had some addresses and found a lot more. It was a good way so I stuck to that district. No real success – so many people out. In to tea at 5.30.

A little more Bill distributing – then to the station to meet Alexandra, who arrived at 6.30. We walked straight up and a man came up with the box. She unpacked and we chatted. Had dinner at 7.30. Talked till 11 o’clock, then to bed. A lovely day.

 

Friday April 21^st 1911

Breakfast at 8.30 – a little writing then Alexandra and I went out to the shops and bought lunch. She came in to do some writing for the rest of the morning and I went paying calls. Met with some success. Got in the Nonconformist set and kept on till 1 o’clock. Alexandra went out again from 2.30 till 3.30 – then came back and a Miss Harris, Winchelsea, and Miss Spalding, the nurse, here came to tea. Out at 5.30 till 7 again – more calls. A lot of people out but we got hold of the Vicar who promised to come. It was very windy all day and rather cold but the view was nice.

[Miss Margaret Spalding was the district nurse, who lived at Church Cottage. She joined the NCSWS.]

Saturday April 22^nd 1911

A glorious day – really beautiful. Breakfast 8.30. Some writing – then I went out. Did the marketing – some canvassing – set Alexandra’s feet in the right direction for Playden and continued my canvassing unto past 1.

Came in very tired. Alexandra did not get in till past 1.30. At 3.30, having changed, we went out on business to station & Hotel etc – then tea at a Mrs Clements and her two daughters at 4.30. 4 other ladies were there to meet us. It was rather appalling – but I think I was given a gift. More calls after shopping. Tea at 7. Supper. Talk & writing.

[Mrs Elizabeth Clements, 56 year old widow of a leading Rye estate agent and valuer . One daughter, Katherine (Kitty), was a teacher of music. They lived at 6 High Street.]

Monday April 24^th 1911

Alexandra had some writing to do – so I did the shopping and then more calls all the morning about town. After lunch, to Playden more calls, more success, and one fearful & furious Anti. It was a lovely day. A few more calls after tea with Alexandra and bearded one very notorious lady but found her quite nice. Then to tidy ourselves and to have our supper. More letters afterwards. Met and had a long chat with Miss Spalding

Tuesday April 25^th 1911

Another nice day. To the shops in the morning and then canvassing again. But we are getting to the end of our list, and I really had to slack in a bit. I began to feel very tired – yesterday I was at it all day long. So after lunch I did not go out but had all the Literature to see to.

In the evening Alexandra and I went out together. A few successful calls – especially good with the school master. I think Alexandra converted him. Both awfully tired but in to change to go and have supper with Miss Spalding. There was another lady there. We talked all ‘Suffrage’ and came away at 10 – a little warm over our fire and then to bed.

Wednesday April 26^th 1911

Alexandra was very nervous all the evening as to the result of the meeting but I felt sure it would be alright. Showers in the morning but the day was fine. Alexandra & I went out, bought dinner, paid Bills etc and did some jobs. After lunch Alexandra lay down on her bed and went to sleep and I did some of my packing up etc.

To the Hall at 4 o’clock to get it settled to our taste – a long job – to put out Literature etc. Back at 5.30. Miss Ogston had arrived and we began on the arrangements. She had had some tea – so we had ours – an egg. Then to change – leaving Miss Ogston to have some dinner at 7. Alexandra and I went to meet the Rev Llewellyn-Smith at 6.30 and take him to the Mermaid Inn. A chubby, cheerful young clergyman who seemed quite ridiculous when he spoke, as he constantly did, of ‘my wife’.

Leaving him to dine, we went on to the hall soon after 7. A Mrs Harrison and a Miss Mac Munn had arrived from Hastings so Alexandra took them back to Market St to have a rest – while I waited. [I] received the Stewards – two Miss Harrisons of Winchelsea, Miss Spalding and Miss Clements. They sold Literature and the Misses Harrison and I took the collection – £1-3-7. Lady Brassey took the Chair and her daughter came with her in a lovely car – they had to drive 50 miles so it was awfully decent of her, but she is very keen. A Lieut Col A Savile came to assist Lady Brassey take the Chair and spoke after her. Then Miss Ogston – then Mr Smith.

I didn’t hear the speeches as I was outside with the boys – then in amongst some rather troublesome youths. But nothing happened and we had an excellent meeting – quite full and overflowing. The Vicar came, bringing Miss Proctor, who had vowed she would not come. I was very glad when it was over. Every one congratulated us and seemed to think it was a record for Rye. Miss Ogston went off with the Harrisons of Winchelsea. Mr Smith and Miss Spalding walked up with us – then went on to their respective houses. Alexandra and I had an egg each and some bread & butter. Then I went through the Literature and collection and we did accounts til midnight. Then to bed.

[Mrs Darent Harrison and Miss Lettice MacMunn were both member of the committee of the Hastings and St Leonard’sW.S. Propaganda League.]

 

Thursday April 27^th 1911

We woke to a pouring wet day and it kept on till after 12. The Rev Mr Smith appeared before breakfast was over – buoyant as ever. Then Miss Spalding came in and we all talked. She did not wait long, but he did not go till 11.30 or after and then we had to drive him forth. I went out about 10.30 to buy the dinner after I had packed up the Literature Box, and then we sat talking. Alexandra and I at last got upstairs to finish our packing – and left our boxes to come by Advance Luggage. Had lunch at 12. Then to the station for the 12.55 train – after parting with Mrs Harvey, our most kind and moderate landlady.

Kate was sent back to Rye later in the year but unfortunately Mrs Harvey’s digs were unavailable and the new ones not nearly so agreeable. Amongst all the other details of this second visit, she did record one incident in Market Street – outside the Guildhall. The ‘hot penny’ ceremony is associated with that of the election of the new mayor – and is still carried out today.

Thursday November 9^th 1911

Did my shopping and met Miss White. We were just against the Guildhall and saw the Mayor & Corporation come forth. It was so funny. I laughed till I cried – such frock coats and top hats on such heads. Then we watched the ancient custom of throwing pennies from the Hotel Balcony to the crowds below – such a scramble as good many got hard bumped. A good many pounds must have been thrown away like that – some of the coppers were thrown out hot on a shovel. Then out 3 till 5.30 to Playden. Met two very violent ladies – one good Christian woman, entertaining a working party for the Church, pushed me out.

For more about Kate Frye’s suffrage campaigning see here

For more about Kate Frye’s life story see here

Copyright

Each year on 2 July the Fawcett Society holds a short service and lays a red, white, and green wreath in remembrance of Millicent Fawcett in St George’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.

For it is in this small chapel, which now also holds the Coronation Chair, that the joint memorial to Henry and Millicent Fawcett is sited.

It was originally erected in 1887 in memory of Henry Fawcett, who had died in 1884, and was the work of the sculptor Alfred Gilbert. Ironically Gilbert’s daughter, Caprina Fahey, was later a very active member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, rather than of Mrs Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. For after Millicent Fawcett’s death a commemoration of her life and work was in 1932 added to her husband’s memorial – in the shape of two roundels, one of which contains the insignia of the NUWSS.

This year I was honoured to have been asked to speak a few words about Millicent Fawcett during the Service – and below is the text of my address.

 

I imagine I’ve been asked to give the address today because over the last 20 years I’ve researched and written about the various enterprises and campaigns that Millicent Fawcett – and her immediate circle – conducted through the second half of the 19^th century and the first two decades of the 20^th. But I first made direct physical contact – as it were – with Millicent Fawcett some years before I began my research –back  in the mid-1980s – when, as a book dealer – because I sell books about women as well as write them, I braved the closing-down sale of a Bloomsbury bookshop. I say ‘braved’ because it was owned by an elderly irascible gentlemen who barked at any potential customer ‘what do you want’? Well the joy of such bookshops is that you don’t know what you want until you find it – so after one such encounter I’d never been back. But closing down was different and customers were given the run of the shop.

Down in the cellar I found the floor covered with a heap of books – splayed open, piled on top of each other – and – serendipity – when I picked out one I found it to be a short popular biography of Henry Fawcett –not, actually, very interesting in itself – but – and my heart leapt – with Millicent Fawcett’s bookplate pasted inside the front cover. I believe this book had lain in the bookshop ever since Philippa Fawcett finally gave up the family home at 2 Gower Street to move to a more manageable flat just before the Second World War. It is only too likely that books surplus to her requirements had been sent to this nearby bookseller. There seemed a very thin veil separating me from the past when I held that book in my hand.

So this bookplate is the first of four images I want to recreate for you this evening. It probably dates from the 1880s – it has very much the flavour of the Aesthetic movement. Millicent’s full name – Millicent Garrett Fawcett – takes centre place. To the right is a woman in a loose fitting gown, with bare feet, head turned towards the rising sun. To the left rises a lily, so much of its period, and beneath the name are scattered books and an inkwell and quill pen. The caption is ‘Truth is the Light’.

‘Light’ – the image of the rising sun, of hope, of the New Dawn – was one that permeated all the campaigns for women’s rights – not just for the vote – but for emancipation in all spheres of life. ‘Truth’ was the leitmotif running through Millicent Fawcett’s life. In an article her cousin Edmund Garrett, a boy she had helped bring up after the early death of his parents, wrote: ‘More even than by her writings or her speeches, she has helped the cause by her influence, her tone, her personality. The impression which she has made upon public men who have come in contact with her has been, perhaps, her most valuable service to it. The one thing that she cannot be doing with is doubleness. Anything the least ‘shady’ in quite small matters of money or of conduct damns a man at once.’ Edmund Garrett goes on to mention the Ibsen-esque quality of Millicent’s novel Janet Doncaster which, as well as giving a delightful portrait of a thinly-disguised Aldeburgh, does, I think, reveal more of her character than she disclosed in her autobiography. It is well worth a read.

So – Millicent Fawcett was guided by her principles. These at times, especially in attempts to effect an equal moral standard between men and women, could put her at odds with other campaigners, even members of her family. For instance, she and her sister Elizabeth held opposite views as to whether the Contagious Diseases Acts should be repealed – Millicent for and Elizabeth against.

But strong principles – an adherence to Truth –and being true to oneself – don’t necessarily make for any easy life. My second image recreates a scene that is not one you’ll find in either Millicent’s autobiography or in Ray Strachey’s fond biography – it is very trivial, but I think, revealing. One summer afternoon Millicent was taking tea in Lady Maude Parry’s garden in Rustington in Sussex. Lady Maude was the wife of Hubert Parry, whose music has, of course, echoed so often within this Abbey –and it was Hubert, rather than his wife, who was a close friend of Agnes Garrett and Millicent Fawcett. Indeed he’d built a house in Rustington to be close to one that Agnes Garrett had rented there for years.

Anyway, as they were taking tea Lady Maude was stung by a wasp and that evening confided to her diary that Millicent hadn’t been very sympathetic – penning the immortal phrase ‘There’s something hard about the Garretts’. Perhaps I’m perverse but I like that comment. I think it is true – the Garretts were hard – in that they had enjoyed a robust upbringing – encouraged to think for themselves and be self-reliant – Lady Maude was very much more conventional – and although Lady Maude may have meant the comment pejoratively – we shouldn’t take it as such.  In her biography Ray Strachey felt compelled to dispute the notion that Millicent was ‘compounded only of “thrift, industry and self-control without any of the gentler virtues”’, stressing that it was Millicent’s great ability for practical friendship that made her such a popular and effective leader. She didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve, she didn’t waste time on emoting; she did things. I’m sure Millicent would have ensured that Maude was treated with a blue bag or whatever was the current remedy for a wasp sting, but wouldn’t have seen it as an occasion for high drama. As Edmund Garrettt wrote ‘She is, above everything, ‘sensible’. She never stickles for unessentials’.  The success of a principled, disciplined woman such as Millicent Fawcett was due to her ability to focus on what was important, dismissing the setbacks – the wasp stings –that punctuated all the various campaigns with which she was associated during a career of over 60 years.

Above all Millicent Fawcett was – in her conduct of the constitutional suffrage campaign – calm and diplomatic. As Ray Strachey wrote, ‘Her task was to provide convenient ladders down which opponents might climb, and to help them to save their faces while they changed their minds.’ It was this skill that finally allowed women over 30 to be given the vote in 1918. Although Millicent Fawcett recognised that this age discrimination was quite logically indefensible she knew that once they’d won this measure – full equality would follow. By letting anti-suffrage MPs appear to have retained some control, she had at last manoeuvred women onto the electoral register. As she said, ‘We should greatly prefer an imperfect scheme that can pass, to the most perfect scheme in the world that could not pass.’

The third image takes us into Millicent’s home, 2 Gower Street. From standing in that Bloomsbury bookshop basement, holding a book that had once been on a shelf in the house, fast forward about 30 years to 2014 when I spent some happy hours with a colleague inside the house as we tried to work out how it was used when Millicent, her daughter Philippa, and her sister Agnes lived there. Agnes and her cousin Rhoda had taken on the lease in 1875 –running their pioneering interior design business from the house –Rhoda had died in 1882 and Millicent and Philippa had moved there after the death of Henry Fawcett in 1884. So Garretts had lived in 2 Gower Street for roughly 65 years. We know that Millicent conducted her campaigns from the first floor drawing room – which runs across the front overlooking Gower Street – sitting under a lovely ceiling, painted by Rhoda and Agnes – pale green, pink and yellow prettiness – featuring hummingbirds and swags and flowers, with portraits of four great artists in the corners. Do look up and give her a thought if you go past. The National Portrait Gallery holds a photograph of Millicent (see here) working at her desk in that room in 1910.

The desk, a tall bureau, is tucked into the alcove to the side of the fireplace and Millicent is sitting there working through a pile of letters, looking up for a moment to turn to the photographer. This domestic scene was the power house that fuelled the 20^th-century constitutional suffrage campaign. In addition – from that desk Millicent Fawcett involved herself in a wide range of disparate, though interconnected campaigns – for instance, the international women’s suffrage campaign, the campaigns for opening up university education to women, for raising the age of consent, for opening up horticulture as an employment for women, for criminalising incest, for providing homes for middle-class working women,  and even for offering a new German ‘open-air treatment’ to men and women suffering from TB. This last was prompted by the fate of her cousin Edmund who had contracted the disease – but rather than wringing her hands Millicent, with her friend Dr Jane Walker, just went ahead and built a sanatorium in Suffolk where the new treatment might be carried out.

Sitting at that desk Millicent is neat in a tailored costume, but my last image is of her standing in the St John’s Wood studio of a very well-known photographer – Lena Connell – dressed for a more formal portrait. She is posing, but, as ever, conveys an air of subtle reticence. I think we can be pretty certain she didn’t make her appointment with Lena Connell because she wanted more photographs for her own album – but, rather, was prepared to endure the process for the sake of the Cause. For, thanks to a lucky discovery a few weeks ago – in a locked drawer in a Fawcett Society desk – we are now able to deconstruct that photograph and realise that she is presenting herself as the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

For on her breast she is wearing a beautiful pendant given to her by the NUWSS in 1913. Presumably after Millicent’s death Philippa Fawcett had returned the pendant to the London Society for Women’s Service, the precursor of the Fawcett Society, and as time went by its existence and meaning had been forgotten.  But that photograph speaks to us now – for engraved on the reverse of the pendant are the words that sum up the values that her co-workers appreciated in Millicent Fawcett  – ‘Steadfastness and Courage’.

Copyright

By the summer of 1897 alterations had been made to The Plat, the house leased by Frederick Frye on the banks of the river Thames at Bourne End. It was substantially expanded, acquiring two circular-roofed turrets which housed additional reception and bed rooms. Now, for the first time, the family – Frederick, his wife, Kezia, and their daughters, Agnes and Kate  – were to spend Christmas there. In past years they had come down from London to stay for Christmas at the much grander home of Aunt Agnes Gilbey at Wooburn – a short distance from Bourne End. On these occasions Kate Frye had moaned in her diary about the boredom she had endured but now, in 1897, she was at last able to enjoy a Christmas untrammelled by another family’s conventions.

From Kate Frye’s diary

Wednesday December 22^nd 1897

I have bought Mother a jolly purse and today I have bought Agnes a silver thimble in a case – a thing she very much wants. Daddie a splendid pocket book – a real beauty and a pair of braces. The servants – Cook a purse – Emily a writing case – Alice a work case and Lotty Grey, the new microbe [such was the epithet Kate used at this time for the ‘tweenie’ maid] a silk neck handkerchief.  Mother has  bought Agnes a gilt chain purse by special request and me by desire a travelling case holding boot cleaning appliances, brown and white cream and brushes and leather. [We have bought] 10 shillings’ worth of toys from Aunt Anne’s [charity] bazaar for our Tree – a fairy for the top – glass balls amd birds – drums – trumpets and penny toys of all kinds and many more little things. Small hampers and drums filled with cottons, needles etc for the Servants as extras.

Thursday December 23^rd 1897

Directly after lunch Agnes and I started on the Christmas Tree. It is such a beauty and touches the Drawing Room ceiling. We did up part of the presents – the principal ones in coloured papers. Just as we were in the midst of it Constance and Katie [daughters of Aunt Agnes Gilbey] arrived down – we just let them peep in the room which was in a fine muddle. .. Aunt Agnes’ presents arrived in the evening – a huge lampshade for Mother and two pairs of silk stockings each for Agnes and I – such beauties – couldn’t have chosen anything nicer. We were obliged to look at them – then wrapped them up for the Tree. We allowed Mother in the room but she didn’t assist but Daddie we couldn’t allow in much to his annoyance really. The Tree looks lovely – it ought to be a huge success. I have never seen one look nicer and it is simply crammed with things.

Friday December 24^th 1897

Christmas Eve

It was a beautiful morning though still most bitterly cold – ever so many degrees of frost – and we went out – the three of us – to try to get warm – the house is icy. It was very foggy early but the sun broke through and it was lovely..Then went up to Cores End for Mother to go and see old Mrs Nicholls and leave her Christmas present. Directly after lunch the three of us started decorating till four o’clock. Pratt [the gardener] cut up the Holly and we put it and lots of mistletoe up everywhere – except Daddie’s room – he is most disagreeable just now.  Our turkeys haven’t arrived – they were to come from Leverett and Fryes at Finchley with lots of other foods. [Leverett and Frye was Frederick Frye’s grocery firm.]

[The Fryes’ rather glamorous friends, Norman and Stella Richardson, arrived from London to stay for the festivities.] Norman has brought us two lovely boxes of Fuller’s sweets and also presented his and Stella’s Christmas present to us in the evening. His is a silver backed manicure rubber each to Agnes and I and Stella’s a work bag made by herself each – such nice ones. Of course we won’t let them see the Tree – they are very funny over it and pretend to be very curious. We were all very jolly in the evening except Daddie.

Saturday December 25^th 1897

Christmas Day

Agnes and I were called at a quarter to seven and got up and went to early service at St Mark’s Church. There were not many people. It was bitterly cold and very foggy. We didn’t have breakfast till about 9.30 as Mother and Daddie were late. Norman was down before we got in and Emi soon after but Stella of course had her breakfast in bed and had a fire to get up by. Mother, Emi and I walked to Wooburn Church for morning service – Agnes would have liked to go with us but went for a walk to Maidenhead with Stella and Norman  – they were to see Mrs Quare and came back to lunch in a fly.

We met Katie just as we were going in Church so she made us go up to Aunt Agnes’ pew as only she, Aunt Agnes and Constance came to Church. I did enjoy the service – it was so bright and I think the Vicar is so nice. It was quite like old times and I felt we must be staying with them  – especially as we walked up the hill with them after Church. It was simply lovely up there – no fog and perfect sunshine – quite thawing the frost on the treees it was so hot. We saw Southard and Gilbert [Gilbey] who has not been at all well – then Aunt Anne [a sister of Agnes Gilbey and Kezia Frye, Kate’s mother] came in – we had already met her on her way to Chapple [sic]. Then after a chat and inspection of everyone’s presents we came away home. Met Mrs Southard & Henry and Lola and her maid walking up the Hill. They had just got back from Marlow where they drive to church.

We had a quiet afternoon round the fire in the Morning Room – can’t let anyone in the Drawing Room as the Tree is there. I slipped off after tea to finish it all off. We have got up fair fun and excitement over it – and made them all curious. We were all very merry at dinner – except Daddie who is still seedy – although we had no Turkey. Had a pair of our own fowls killed as they have not arrived – I don’t like Christmas dinner without Turkeys – but we had the Pudding, mince pies and crackers alright. Then came the Christmas Tree which was a huge success and we all went quite mad.

We had the servants in at the beginning and gave them their presents – Pratt has had a splendid knife off it. We played all the musical instruments and with all the toys. Then after we had carted our things away we went in the Morning Room again in the warm. Daddie went to his room and went early to bed – he has given the servants each a present of money. We had snap dragon later on but I got most fearfully tired and was glad to go to bed. We all went off about 11.30.

Sunday December 26^th 1897

We sat in the Morning Room round the fire – the Drawing Room is such a cold room and looks so miserable with the huge Christmas Tree stripped of all its glory. After tea Norman read ‘Alice In Wonderland’ aloud nearly  through to us and we sat round and roared – it is a lovely book I think – most awfully clever.

**

With this depiction of a true Victorian Christmas I wish my readers – in the words of the Fryes –

a

‘Hearty Christmas Greeting

and Best Wishes

For a Happy & Prosperous New Year’

from 

Elizabeth

For the whole story of Kate’s life – as told in her diary – download this e-book  from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal or from Amazon. It would make a good read over the Christmas period.

Kate Frye’s work as a suffrage campaigner in later years is fully covered in Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary. – for full details see here. UPDATE Now out of print, alas

Copyright

This post is based on a talk I gave – under the title ‘Shooting Suffrage’-  at the Women’s Library on 13 October 2005 – the hundredth anniversary of the first militant act carried out by suffragettes. Now that suffragettes are once more on the big screen – with the general release this week of ‘Suffragette’ – I thought it might be timely to reprise my research on the films that suffrage activists themselves would have seen.

‘It is 100 years to the day since Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney heckled Sir Edward Grey in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and were arrested and sentenced to a week’s imprisonment. It is remarkably appropriate that this new stage in the suffrage campaign– a campaign that had already been running for nearly 40 years – should be commemorated by a discussion of the part played by film in its development. We shall see how the new methods that the WSPU brought to the campaign were peculiarly suited to the camera – both moving and still.

We can divide films associated with the suffrage campaign into two types -newsreel/actuality films and feature films. I’ll begin by looking at the actuality films and by way of introduction let’s look at the earliest surviving suffrage newsreel film. It was shot in Newcastle, on the occasion of a visit to the city by Lloyd George on 8 October 1909, a year that saw the beginning of a cinema boom. By the end of the year Britain had between 600 and 1000 cinemas; by 1914 the number was closer to 4500. The newsreel, of which this film would have been one item amongst several, formed part of the cinema programme – usually a prelude to the feature film. Newsreels showed for 3 or 4 days at each cinema and each reel would then circulate for several weeks. ‘News’ was, thus, not hot news – for that there were newspapers. And newsreel was limited to the peculiarity of the medium. It could never be just a filmed version of a newspaper story; it had to have its own filmically interesting subject.

You can view many- but by no means all – of the incidents – from the suffragette campaign here – as presented by Pathé in a compilation. Alas, the company did not attempt to put their films in chronological order – a test for all of you interested in the suffragette campaign. To help you out, when I’ve used them in this piece I’ve given a rough timing on the video as reference. But for most of the films I have linked in to the BFIPlayer which allows us to view a wide range of ‘suffrage silents’.

Obviously the ability to show movement was the most significant advantage that the cinematograph had over the still photograph – thus parades were made for newsreel – encapsulating news, spectacle and movement.

In the  Newcastle film we can see that the procession includes not only women who supported the militant WSPU, seen wearing their ‘Votes for Women’ sashes, – even one man is prepared to proclaim his support –  but also many members of the NUWSS societies –who are carrying banners from, for instance, Darlington, Gateshead and Tyneside.. This is a visual record of the fact that at this stage of the campaign both suffragettes and suffragists were prepared to make common cause in their peaceful demonstrations.

This film was produced by the Warwick Trading Company, which had been founded at the very end of the 19^th century by Charles Urban, an American who came to England and concentrated on making reality films. The company’s offices were in Warwick Court, Chancery Lane (close to the WSPU offices in Clements Inn) and its cameramen travelled all around the country.

Two years before the shooting of the Newcastle film Charles Urban had produced his manifesto, The Cinematograph in Science, Education, and Matters of State. In this he wrote of the importance of cinematograph film in the study of history, noting that ‘affairs of state, royal movements, naval and military demonstrations .. are all depicted as they are actually seen by the accurate and truthful eye of the camera, and the day has arrived when motion pictures of current events should be treasured as vital documents among the historical archives of our museums. Animated pictures of almost daily happenings, which possess no more than a passing interest now, will rank as matters of national importance to future students, and it behoves our public authorities.. to see that the institutions under their control become possessed of these important moving records of present events. Books, pamphlets, prints, and the like, are perforce kept for reference, but films depicting important movements with a detail verbally impossible are lost to the nation for want of a little forethought.’

Unfortunately for us, Charles Urban’s plea was not heeded and only a handful of the actuality films that were made of the suffrage campaign have survived – but I have included links to many of them in this post.

I am sure that the Newcastle demonstration was not the first suffrage event to be filmed. For instance the previous year – on 18 June 1908 – a representative of the Graphic Cinematographic Company of 154 Charing Cross Road wrote to Minnie Baldock, one of the London-based WSPU speakers, confirming arrangements to ‘cinematograph’ her meeting to be held the next day during the dinner hour outside Waterlows factory in Shoreditch.  Doubtless many more such informal scenes were filmed but, not being dramatic set pieces, have failed to survive.

The fact that the WSPU’s early organised militancy was made for the moving camera has clearly occurred to at least one pot-boiling novelist. John Jakes has a set piece at the beginning of his 1998 novel, American Dreams, in which one of his main characters, a US film cameraman working in London in early 1907, is one of three cinematographers filming a deputation led by Mrs Pankhurst to the Houses of Parliament. He describes how the cameraman sighted his camera and then cranked it ‘with a practiced, steady rhythm, one, two, three; one, two, three’ as Mrs Pankhurst ‘bore down on a cordon of policemen blocking the doors’.

In the period before the 1909 cinema boom it is likely that, rather than being intended for showing in picture palaces,  such early films as that of Mrs Baldock’s meeting, were used by the WSPU for propaganda purposes.  The WSPU was quick to adopt such new means of communication, for instance we know that in 1908 it projected cinematographic advertisements onto sheets displayed in its shop windows, inviting people to demonstrations and showing short scenes from the suffrage campaign. Later newsreels, such as those made by Pathé, were, of course, shown in public. They were seen not only by the casual cinema-goer, but by suffrage campaigners around the country, who could take the viewing as another opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to the cause.

For instance, on 29 March 1914 Dr Alice Ker, a leading member of the Liverpool WSPU, recorded in her diary that she went with some other WSPU activists ‘to the Picture House to see Sylvia Pankhurst leading East End women to Westminster Abbey’. This was a film of a demonstration that had taken place on 22 March – ‘Mothering Sunday’ – an event that Sylvia Pankhurst later recorded was ‘greatly minimized by the press’. Thus, although we now have no record of it, we know that the film cameras were there. It is unlikely that Dr Ker went often to the Picture Palace – cinema-going still had infradig associations – a hangover from its early gestation in the fairground and music hall.

In the 19^th century the suffrage campaign could not rely on such powerful visual images – either moving or still. The only contemporary memento of what we take as the starting point of the campaign – the presentation, in 1866, of the first petition to Parliament calling for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men – is a printed version of the petition itself.

Although the women taking part in this early stage of the campaign were merely ciphers – signers of petitions – it took only two years for women to emerge from the privacy of their homes onto the public platform. Once in the public domain it was possible for their images on occasion to be captured in line engravings by the illustrators working for the national press. However, for most of the 19^th century, the campaign was depicted in words rather than by pictures. This paucity of visual image has resulted in a lack of public awareness of the existence of this early part of the campaign – both then and now.  We do, of course, have images of some the leading 19^th -century campaigners – but these tend to be posed studio portraits unconnected to the promotion of the campaign itself.  Perhaps the surviving type of image that comes closest to indicating an involvement in public affairs is the caricature.

Here is Lydia Becker, the campaign’s prime mover for much of the 19^th century, with Jacob Bright, the campaign’s most supportive MP. Similarly, none of the events staged by the 19^th-century campaigners were recorded in photographs – and they did hold hundreds and hundreds of very large public meetings throughout the country .

Besides the millions of words contained in newspaper reports, the only images left to us from this period are the occasional printed survival –such as this –

However, after the turn of the century, as photography became to be used to illustrate such new popular papers as The Daily Mirror – which, coincidentally, was launched in November 1903, a mere three weeks after the founding of the WSPU – so the suffrage movement adapted in order to present itself in such a way that its message would reach the public – and parliament – by means of these pictures.

A newspaper photographer from the Daily Mirror was  first called out to record a suffrage demonstration in February 1906, on the occasion of the first WSPU march to Caxton Hall. And in the following months the Daily Mirror was there to record suffragettes, such as Dora Montefiore and Teresa Billington, doorstepping.the prime minister at 10 Downing Street and Asquith at his house in Cavendish Square. From then on we have a full record of the suffrage street theatre – the publicity- conscious processions and parades – that in the years before the First World War was performed not only in London but throughout the country. In the years between 1906 and 1914 hundreds of photographic images deriving from the women’s suffrage movement were published on postcards, outnumbering those relating to any other contemporary campaign.

 The history of this political campaign can also be viewed as a history of how women presented themselves – and were represented. The idealization of woman as an agent of social reform, in particular her responsibility for the welfare of children, runs as a theme throughout the campaign.

In 1906 the plight of women such as these – the so-called ‘Sweated Workers’, women working from home for a pittance, making matchboxes or sewing shirts, was, thanks to an exhibition sponsored by a newspaper, at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness at the time when the cry ‘votes for women’ really made itself heard in the nation’s capital. And middle-class suffrage campaigners explained that if they received the vote on the same terms as men they would use it to protect their disadvantaged sisters.

However with the beginning of WSPU militancy women were also to be seen as they had never been seen before.

This was an image so contrary to what was to be expected of a well-brought up middle-class girl that it necessarily had a startling effect.

The women engaged in the suffrage campaign were not only aware of the necessity of themselves creating images that would influence their contemporaries, they also understood that images drawn from the past could shape perceptions of woman’s position in society and in political life. In 1910 Bertha Mason, a member of the executive committee of the NUWSS, converted into lantern slides numerous images of women from history and of the suffrage pioneers, adding others of ‘the present day workers’ and ‘election incidents’ to illustrate a ‘limelight lecture’ that she delivered to suffrage societies around the country.

WSPU lecturers, such as Rose Lamartine Yates and Florence Haig, also used photographs as the basis of their very popular lantern lectures. In a similar fashion, for display at their grand 1909 Knightsbridge Bazaar, members of the WSPU put together a ‘Photographic Exhibit’, depicting a history of the suffrage movement as seen through the eyes of press photographers.

The WSPU campaign moved to London in early 1906 and Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst were joined by Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, wealthy philanthropists who proved adept at all aspects of propaganda. It is Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence who is credited with organizing the extremely successful demonstration held by the WSPU in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908. Both the WSPU and the NUWSS had previously marched through London, but it was only on this occasion that co-ordinated spectacle really made its mark and that the colours purple, white and green became synonymous with the WSPU.

The Artists’ Suffrage League, under the direction of Mary Lowndes, produced for this occasion many of the banners that were to be such a strong feature of suffrage processions. Banners were made to laud eminent women of the arts, science and the feminist pioneers – showing what women could achieve and to advertise the contemporary suffrage societies.

In June 1910 another in the long succession of bills to enfranchise women was introduced into parliament. Prepared by a committee representing all parties, it became known as the Conciliation Bill. The WSPU was rather optimistic that the end of the struggle might be in sight and suspended hostilities. For by this time the militant campaign had escalated dramatically and hundreds of women had already been imprisoned, many going on hunger strike and being forcibly fed. On 18 June 1910, in co-operation with the Women’s Freedom League, the WSPU staged a major demonstration in support of the bill. You can watch elements of the procession here.

Of the occasion Annie Kenney wrote: ‘The procession was six miles long and took three hours to pass a given point. We had every imprisonment represented. Hundreds of ex-prisoners in prison dress carried broad arrows mounted on sticks covered with silver paper. Representatives came from all over the world, the saying in other countries being: “once British women have won, we also shall win.” We had almost a thousand women graduates. Women graduates always, I noticed, awed the public. A woman in cap and gown roused great admiration. Forty bands played triumphant music. Banners made the procession gay and bright..’

Amongst the women marching in cap and gown near the head of the graduates’ procession look out for one of the pioneers of the suffrage movement – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, now elderly, wearing a bonnet and carrying a stick. Also in the film look out for Mrs Pankhurst’s banner, carrying the date of the founding of the WSPU, 1903, and the ‘Prison to Citizenship’ banner, designed by Laurence Housman. Among other banners is that of the Wimbledon WSPU.

The leading section of the procession consisted of the WSPU fife and drum band, led by Mary Leigh. It had been formed the previous year.

As Annie described, we could see at the centre of the procession the contingent of 617 women, looking very dignified, dressed in white and carrying the long silver staves tipped with the broad arrow, representing all those who had been imprisoned.  Imprisonment in the suffrage cause was now rewarded by the presentation of brooches and badges – in the film one of the prisoners who passes close to the camera can be seen wearing her hunger strike medal. Imprisonment and the hunger strike had become symbolic of the martyrdom women were prepared to endure in the pursuit of their goal. The film shows that many of the marchers carried flowers; and the Daily Express noted that ‘the air was fragrant with the scent of iris and lily’

You can see that this spectacle was intended to present women as dignified martyrs. The final shots, filmed in a side street, are more feisty – showing Flora Drummond, who, as Votes for Women recorded was in ‘supreme command’, posing for the camera, together with an inseparable pair of horsewomen, Evelina Haverfield and Vera Holme, who had acted as marshals.

As Annie Kenney noted, the image of the woman as university graduate was one that was treasured by the suffrage societies, representing as it did the intellectual and – in a way – the moral heights that women could reach while still being unrepresented in parliament. The lot of the ‘sweet girl graduate’ was commonly contrasted with that of the convict or the ‘lunatic’, who suffered a similar disenfranchisement. One postcard issued by a suffrage society made the point that while such noble women as nurses, mayors, doctors and teachers didn’t have the vote, men, even if they were drunkards or physically unfit to serve their country – or even if they had in the past been convicted or classified as lunatics – could be directly represented in parliament.

Stressing its interest in using constitutional methods to achieve suffrage for women, the NUWSS was keen to influence the male electorate to join them in lobbying parliament. For a NUWSS demonstration held in Trafalgar Square on 9 July 1910, headquarters requested that banners should be made carrying the number of local electors who at the January 1910 general election had signed a petition organised by the NUWSS. Watch the demonstration here.

 

In this short film we can glimpse the wording of these banners – such as that shown here to the camera by the women of the Dundee NUWSS.  Pathé  labels the film ‘Mass Meeting of Suffragettes’ – although this meeting was that of the suffragists. At the time the popular usage of the names was interchangeable. However, I do think the BBC TV programme ‘Suffragettes Forever’, which concentrated on the militant campaign, should not have included this clip, pretending it was the work of the WSPU rather than the NUWSS. Could it be that the makers of the TV series didn’t recognise the difference? Yet again the NUWSS campaign is eclipsed even when it has staged a popular demonstration – and has taken the trouble to ensure the cameras are there to film it.

However, despite the staging of many more rallies, both in London and in towns around the country, it became clear, at the beginning of the new parliamentary session in mid-November, that the government was not prepared to give time to the bill. In July Christabel Pankhurst had promised that if the government’s veto of the Conciliation Bill was not overturned at the opening of Parliament: ‘a great concourse of women will, immediately after Parliament reassembles in the Autumn, proceed to Westminster to demand of the Government that the Suffrage Bill be forthwith carried into law.’[Votes for Women 29 July 1910]

Thus, massed ranks of the WSPU met in Caxton Hall on 18 November, the day of the opening of parliament, only to hear that because of the battle for supremacy that was raging between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, parliament was in fact going to be dissolved to allow for another general election. There was, of course, no suggestion that women were to be enfranchised before then – and so Christabel’s promise was put into effect. Once this news had reached Caxton Hall a deputation of 300 women set out, in groups of ten, to walk the short distance to the House of Commons and met with vicious treatment from large crowds of police and bystanders. You can watch it happening here.

Sylvia Pankhurst, who with Annie Kenney, was riding around Parliament Square in a taxicab, described the scene: ’as we stood up we could see that a body of men were hustling and jostling the deputation so roughly that we feared that it would never be able to reach the House. Our taxi passed slowly right on the outside of the railings that enclose the Abbey & St Margaret’s and we stopped a little to the right of the Strangers’ entrance. As soon as we left the cab we were struck in the chest and pulled this way and that by the police and by a number of men who were evidently detectives in plain clothes’.

What is clear from the film is that, in what is captioned as ‘Suffragette Riots at Westminster’, men are in the overwhelming majority. The two placards that we see rising and falling in the midst of the crowd were presumably carried by women. They are clearly being mobbed. The day, known to the suffragettes as ‘Black Friday’, became notorious for the brutality with which women were treated, both by the police and by men who clearly thought that women demonstrators were fair game for physical molestation.

The Liberals were again returned to government after the general election at the end of 1910. The Conciliation Committee redrafted its bill, which in May 1911 passed its second reading in the House of Commons. In June the government promised that time would be made for further consideration of the bill in the next session of parliament. In a spirit of optimism and co-operation all 28 suffrage societies, militant and constitutional, combined to stage on 17 June 1911 a spectacular procession to mark the coronation of George V. This ‘Coronation Procession can be seen here.

The Historical Pageant, as described in the film’s caption, related to only one small part of the long procession. Its purpose was ‘to illustrate the great political power held by women in the past history of these Isles – beginning with Abbess Hilda and attendant nuns’.

These are the wimpled figures (looking rather like nurses) that we see in the first few seconds of the film.

The procession also included a Prisoners’ contingent – here  we see them carrying their pennants, – a section representing musicians and actresses and an elaborate Empire pageant, in which women from around the world were represented.

The message at the meeting held in the Albert Hall at the culmination of the procession was that, although it was still necessary to be vigilant, victory was within grasp.

It was the near certainty that the cause was about to be won that made an announcement from the prime minister on 7 November 1911 such a bitter blow. In this he revealed that, rather than considering the Conciliation Bill further, the government intended to introduce a bill to widen the franchise for men, and that this just might then be amended to include women.  As Millicent Fawcett put it ‘If it had been the Prime Minister’s intention to enrage every woman suffragist to the point of frenzy, he could not have acted with greater perspicacity’.

Despite a joint deputation from all the suffrage societies to Asquith and Lloyd George it became quite clear that the government was adamant. The WSPU’s response was swift  – Mrs Pankhurst declared ‘The argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics ‘.  On 21 November, while Mrs Pethick-Lawrence led a deputation from Caxton Hall to the House of Commons, another body of women, armed with bags of stones, set about breaking the windows of government offices and business and shop premises. On 1 March 1912 150 members of the WSPU, armed with hammers, broke the windows of West End shops and offices.

Over the next few days 220 arrests were made and on 5 March Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, together with both Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, were charged with conspiracy to commit damage. Christabel evaded arrest and escaped to Paris, where she was to remain until the outbreak of the First World War. At a meeting held in the Albert Hall Emmeline Pankhurst now announced the new WSPU policy of destruction of property, declaring, ‘I incite this meeting to rebellion’.

At the same time as resuming militancy the WSPU, together with the NUWSS, continued to campaign at by-elections. Tactics at the short, sharp Bolton by-election in 1912 were typical. It was reported that a remarkable number of press photographers covered this by-election – among whom we can now see was a Pathé  cinematographer. You can watch his film here.

Both the Liberal candidate, Tom Taylor, and the Conservative, Arthur Brooks, gave their pledge, albeit somewhat half-heartedly, in favour of a limited extension of the parliamentary franchise to women. In a speech the Liberal contestant, Tom Taylor, was reported as saying that ‘During the last days the ladies had been like bees around him asking his views on the question. They had been at the mill, at the Liberal offices, at the Reform Club and sometimes some of them at two places at the same time (Laughter)’.

In the  run-up to polling day the Bolton NUWSS society ran a non-party campaign, concentrating on highlighting the suffrage cause. The WSPU also opened an office in the town – their tactics were, however, rather different. Under the leadership of Mary Phillips, one of the most experienced of their organizers, they campaigned to ‘Keep the Liberal Out’.

A reporter from one of the local newspapers made particular mention of the campaigning that took place in the dinner hour in the neighbourhood of Kay Street, a part of the town packed with mills and foundries, writing, ‘..on no occasion can it be recalled when the battle of orators was so keenly fought as during the present contest. Today hundreds of workers had dined and returned to this fighting field by one o’clock and they were at once offered the choice of Unionist, Tariff Reform, Liberal, Free Trade, Socialist and Suffragette speakers.’

A couple of days later mention was again made of this ‘cockpit of the electoral battle. Prominent amongst the propagandists were the ladies, who got together a fair crowd. They were of the non-militant methods, but the workers see no difference between the two. They tar all with the same brush. They thought of all the awkward questions, but generally speaking the plucky soul who was up against them quite held her own.’

It is, as we now realize, quite as likely that the women speaking to the crowd were in fact suffragists as suffragettes. They were as the reporter candidly admitted ‘All tarred with the same brush’.

Besides campaigning at by-elections, the NUWSS was involved in complicated lobbying in order to ensure the best possible outcome to amendments to the Franchise and Registration Bill – the government’s bill that was before parliament. Asquith had pledged that this bill would be drafted so as to be capable of amendment to include women. However on 27 January 1913 the Speaker ruled the women’s suffrage amendment out of order. Asquith said that the government had been taken by surprise, but thanked the Speaker for saving the House from a waste of valuable time. One can see why the WSPU nicknamed him ‘Two-faced Asquith’.

At the very moment when the government was extracting itself from its pledge, suffragist protesters paraded outside Parliament, their billboards calling MPs to ‘Put Honour First’.  Watch here. The man you see leaving the House of Commons, looking very dapper in his top hat, is Sir Edward Grey who, it was rumoured, had threatened to resign from the cabinet if the suffrage amendment was defeated. As it was, because the amendment had been ruled inadmissible, he was not put to the test.

The immediate effect was that all the suffrage societies united in demanding a government bill to give women the franchise, this being now regarded as the only possible solution. The WSPU had been on a truce while the suffrage amendments were being considered. However as soon as news of the Speaker’s ruling became known, Mrs Pankhurst made clear that this was at an end. ‘It is guerilla warfare that we declare this afternoon’.

And guerilla warfare was what followed. Besides the firing of pillar boxes and damage to such ‘masculine’ property as golfing greens and cricket pitches, individual members of the WSPU pursued a policy of arson. Parliament passed what was called the ‘Cat and Mouse Bill’. Under these new regulations prisoners on hunger strike, rather than being forcibly fed, could be temporarily released from prison, without any remission of their sentence and then recalled a little later when they had recovered their strength. Needless to say very few of the ‘mice’ were so obliging – and by enacting the Bill the government actually encouraged the most desperate –or adventurous – members of the WSPU to create a sub-culture of terrorism. As long as the ‘mice’ were not thought to be involved in further militant activity, the police made no serious attempts to recapture them. .

However, some very active ‘mice’ managed to evade capture, using their freedom to carry out what they called their ‘work’. You can see what here what happened to, Levetleigh, at St Leonards in Sussex, the home of the local MP, Arthur du Cros, which was set on fire on 13 April 1913.

The arsonist was ‘Kitty Marion’, a variety actress, or, as she was billed, ‘A Refined Vocal Comedienne’, who, although German born, had lived in England since 1886 and was a long-standing member of the WSPU and of the Actresses’ Franchise League.

She was only captured after committing her 5^th arson raid. This last one was a spectacular. In June, two months after burning down Levetleigh, she and another suffragette destroyed the Grand Stand at Hurst Park race course, apparently as a tribute to Emily Wilding Davison, who had died earlier that month at nearby Epsom. In an unpublished memoir Kitty Marion gives a detailed description of the arson at Hurst Park, remarking ‘We both regretted that there was no movie camera to immortalise the comedy of it’.

For, on 4 June 1913 the suffragette movement had gained its first real martyr when Emily Wilding Davison stepped onto the Derby racecourse and attempted to hold the bridle of Anmer, the King’s horse.

The camera was, of course, set up to record the race – with no knowledge that such a dramatic event was to be enacted in front of it. Was it possible that Emily Davison chose to position herself at that point at Tattenham Corner so that the camera, which would have been obvious to her, set as it was at a level well raised above the crowd, could not fail to capture her action? You can watch the race here. There are other views of the incident to be found on Youtube.

As you see Emily Davison was thrown to the ground, suffering a serious head injury. She never regained consciousness, and died on 8 June. On 14 June she was accorded a martyr’s funeral. The long, impressive procession made its way through the streets of London to St George’s Church in Bloomsbury, where the service was conducted by the vicar, a supporter of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage. From there the coffin was taken to King’s Cross, and on by train to her home town, Morpeth in Northumberland. You can watch both funeral processions here.

Here is a still of the cortege at St George’s Bloomsbury.  I pass the church several times a week – and often wait at the bus stop just beside it – picturing the scene as shown in the film – with the figure in white with her back to us saluting the coffin.

Shortly after the WSPU staged this display of mourning and spirituality, the NUWSS began their ‘Women’s Suffrage Pilgrimage’. Their organization was by now so effective that it had taken only a couple of months to plan. The idea was to gain public support by launching a concerted nationwide demonstration. The NUWSS organized their members to walk to London from all parts of the country, along set routes, carrying banners and holding meetings as they went – in order to meet for a rally in Hyde Park on 26 July.

Here we see the start of the Pilgrimage from the south-west –walking, and bicycling, from Land’s End to London. The women were urged to wear a uniform for the occasion – a white, grey, black or navy- blue coat and skirt or dress. Hats were to be simple and in one of the main designated colours. For 3d headquarters supplied a compulsory raffia badge, a ‘cockle shell’, the traditional symbol of a pilgrimage, to be worn pinned to the hat. One of those taking part later recorded that she felt ‘very self conscious in sash and cockade’, NUWSS members were not so used to public parade as were those of the WSPU. Although the news camera was there in Hyde Park, if they did film anything of the pilgrims and platform speeches these have disappeared. All we see in this surviving film is the interest of chaps in seeing themselves on film.

A couple of weeks after this, the cameras were back to film another demonstration in London. On 10 August 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst appeared as a speaker at a rally in Trafalgar Square. By now she was out of sympathy with many aspects of WSPU policy, in particular she was not in favour of the arson campaign. Her idea was that pressure should be brought on the government by the working-class, in particular the women of the East End, where she was building her power base. Sylvia was at this time a ‘mouse’, on the run from the police.

She described how  ‘Eluding the police I drove to the Square and sprang from a taxi into the East End procession as it came swinging round from the Strand. The marchers hoisted me to the plinth, and a crowd of them jumped up beside me as a body-guard’.  She then led a crowd to Downing Street.

In spite of the ‘rushes’ made by the crowd to protect her, she was rearrested in Downing Street and returned to Holloway. You can watch the film of this scene on here.

Through the first few months of 1914 the damage escalated –  suffragettes attacked churches, mansions, grandstands, golflinks, and even paintings in the National Gallery and Royal Academy. But in contrast with all this violence the WSPU was still able to stage an attractive spectacle to pass through the streets of London. There is film of this May Day Pageant, which took place on 1^st May 1914 and aimed to promote sales of the WSPU paper, the Suffragette. Although it was organized at very short notice and police permission had not been sought – because they knew it would be refused – the WSPU had obviously, however, had the foresight to alert the Pathé film crew

 

A month later, on 21 May, Mrs Pankhurst was rearrested while leading a deputation to Buckingham Palace. She had hoped that the King would receive them. Needless to say the palace gates were kept firmly closed. You can watch the scene here.

This was no staged spectacle. Outside the palace women, armed with clubs, battled with the police. Scenes such as these – and those previous ones of Black Friday and of Sylvia Pankhurst being arrested in Trafalgar Square – must surely have seemed scandalous to the viewing public. The palace battle was headline news and the next day the police raided the WSPU headquarters and closed it down.

The battle at the Palace is the last extant reality film of the pre-war suffrage campaign. The days of spectacle and of organised demonstration were past. The WSPU now had no fixed headquarters and its organisers were harried by the police from office to office around London. The NUWSS, while still growing steadily, was devoting itself to political negotiations, a strategy that had little appeal for the camera. And with the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914 this stage of the suffrage campaign came to an end.

The WSPU suspended its activities in order to support the war effort and in 1915 organised, with Lloyd George, a ‘Right to Work’ rally – a demand that women should be allowed to undertake war work. You can watch the women marching here. Kate Frye (actually by now Mrs John Collins) was one of the company.

During the war leading members of the WSPU travelled extensively both in Britain and abroad as government emmisaries, explaining the Allies’ war policy. In the Pathé compilaton (at 11mins 46 secs), filmed on 8 November 1916, we see Mrs Pankhurst speaking in Trafalgar Square, telling her audience about the government’s policy in Greece and Rumania. She is the second of the speakers shown – the first is Norah Dacre Fox.

On 4 November 1917, by which time it could be seen that women’s enfranchisement was at last about to be realised, a cameraman was on hand to witness the launch of a new organization. See here  as the former leaders of the WSPU, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, Annie Kenney and Flora Drummond, arrive at the Queen’s Hall, north of Oxford Street for the occasion.

However, after Christabel was unsuccessful when she stood as MP for Smethwick at the general election in 1918, the Women’s Party lost momentum. But even so the erstwhile members of the WSPU continued to be well aware of the power of publicity. They ensured that Emmeline Pankhurst was honoured with a statue. You can watch here as Stanley Baldwin unveils it in 1930.

That statue became the focus of a reunion held each year on 14 July – Mrs Pankhurst’s official birthday. Even in the years after the Second World War the increasingly elderly suffragettes – who had formed themselves into the Suffragette Fellowship – came to pay homage to their former leader. Watch a filmed suffragette reunion here.

The publicity given to their cause by the actuality films – whether enhancing their dignity as they marched in symbolic procession or broadcasting their ability to commit acts of terrorism – surely played its part in shifting the perception of what a woman could be and made more possible – at last – her involvement in the constitutional political life of the country.’

The second part of this talk will discuss the comic ‘Suffrage’ feature films.

Copyright

 

 

December was always a good month for fund-raising suffrage parties.

For the suffrage movement was not all about militancy and processions. Money had to be raised to pay for the campaigning and for the management of the rapidly-developing organisations – and much of it was done in the time-honoured way of bazaars and balls. Here is a flyer for a Café Chantant organised by the London Society for Women’s Suffrage in December 1909.

The flyer comes from the collection of Kate Parry Frye, where it lay between the pages of her diary in which she describes the event itself.

She was living at home in North Kensington and had already had some experience as a reader of palms at earlier suffrage fund-raising events. On 6 December 1909 Kate wrote:

‘Agnes [her sister] and Katie [Finch-Smith – neé Gilbey -her cousin] arrived about 12.30. I had lent Katie a white dress as she had not got one and she had brought up the regulation white cap and apron and I also supplied the colours. I wore my best. We started off just before 2.30. One bus to the Grove [that is, Westbourne Grove] and another to Kensington and to the Town Hall for the Café Chantant got up for the Funds of the London Society and National Union.

It began at 3 o’clock. Katie left her things in the cloak room and we all went upstairs together. Agnes had to pay her 3/- to go in and for tea but Katie and I went in free. I found Mrs Rowan Hamilton who had charge of the Palmists and she hadn’t got me a table and I would not begin till she had one brought. I had told her two chairs and a table would be required. I had a little spot close by screens – my name up – ‘Katharine Parry’ – spelt wrong of course. I was just beside the tea tables so I could be near Katie till the fun began. We introduced her to lots of people. I hoped she enjoyed it but I think she got very tired.

 Miss Lockyer [she had been housekeeper to the murdered storekeeper, William Whiteley] with a friend came very early and I am afraid did not enjoy herself much. I just spoke to her but could not leave my corner and she thought 2/6 too much to consult me – it was a lot. There was another Palmist ‘Ravario’ and my crystal gazer – Clare Crystal. Agnes and Katie consulted her and found her rather poor. The Wrights were there, of course. Alexandra only a simple ‘Tea Girl’ but she selected Agnes to have tea with her – such an honour for Agnes. Miss Carl Hentschel was a Tea Girl and her Mother helping everywhere and lots of people I know.

At first I could not get any clients – no-one knew me. The first was a man about 3.30 – a funny sort of thing – then a lady, who was so delighted she went out to boom me and she did – for, for the rest of the day, I was besieged. I could have gone on all night. It was hard work but I enjoyed it. I had such nice interesting people – a few made me feel miserable, they were so unhappy – but some were charming – two insisted upon having my address. One said she would try and get me some engagements – a Miss May Oakley. I kept on till 20 minutes to 6 when Agnes dragged me out to have some tea – and John [Collins, her fiancé] came upstairs – he had been taking tickets from 2.30.

So I had some tea and he had a second tea. We had it from Miss Doake’s table as Katie was away. I had promised to go back at 6 o’clock and there was already a client sitting in the retreat. I kept on till 6.30 when the affair was over for the afternoon and we all four went home feeling very tired. John had to be back before 8 o’clock and we were not back till after 7 – so had to rush about and he had a meal as quickly as it could be got and go off.

Leaving Agnes behind, Katie and I left again at 8 o’clock and went by bus to Kensington. It was all in full swing again. The entertainment going on as before and more theatrical and Ju Jitsu displays and heaps of people. John was taking tickets again as happy as a cricket. I had said I would be back 9 till 10 – but I was pounced upon straight away. I had a horrid few moments when I missed my muff but John found it for me.

We worked till I was nearly done and told about 14 or 16 – and 17 to 20 in the afternoon. I had to refuse more as it was 10.30 and I was so tired – though the people came and begged me to go on. Gladys herself honoured me – and she told me that people were giving up their tickets for the other Palmists to come to me. John seemed playing about all the evening and Katie was serving coffee and cakes. There was an auction of cakes – and I bought a lovely Fullers cake. All the cakes had been given and were simply lovely ones. It was pouring with rain and we had to have a cab to the flat. Got in about 11.30.’

Interesting to see that Edith Garrud was happy to give jujitsu displays for the non-militant society.

For more about Kate Frye and the suffrage movement see here:

 

 

For more about the entirety of Kate Frye’s life see here

Kate was very sympathetic towards the Women’s Social and Political Union and was, briefly, a member. She was particularly concerned about improving the life of her poorer sisters and without a doubt would have loved the film ‘Suffragette’.

Copyright

I dedicated Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette to all those women who, in the words of George Eliot, have ‘lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs’. Since then I’ve done a little to ensure that Kate’s life is no longer hidden and (with Helen Nicholson, Berghers Hill resident and Royal Holloway professor of theatre) that her tomb need not be unvisited – I stood by it myself at the beginning of the year.

However there are others who feature prominently in her story  whose tombs are most definitely unvisited. Finding myself this week in Ditchling, Sussex, where I knew Abbie Frye, Kate’s cousin and dearest friend, had been buried, I thought, by finding her grave, I’d do something to remark her existence.

However, when we arrived at Ditchling Church – dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch – and I saw the large, well-tended graveyard I did doubt that we’d have any chance of stumbling across Abbie’s grave. But, as luck would have it, after enjoying the calm interior of the church and the scent of lilies,  on the way out I spotted on the ‘literature’ table a typed list of ‘Monumental Inscriptions in St Margaret’s Churchyard’. What a find. My most grateful thanks to the Ditchling History Project – for there, in the index appears Abbie’s married name – ‘Hargrave’.

As you see, Abbie – and her husband, Basil – lie in an unmarked grave. Without the reference to its position in this guide (see also its website here) there would be no possibility of identifying it. As it is, you’ll doubtless be thrilled to know that I can show you the very patch of springy turf under which they lie.

But who was Abbie Frye/Hargrave? Although she has left a considerable body of published work, unlike Kate she left no diary- but through Kate’s words we can glimpse something of her world and her life.

She was born Gertrude A. Frye c 1871 in Calcutta, the daughter of Charles Frye, a brother of Kate Frye’s grandfather. Abbie’ s mother, Marguerite Maria Frye, had died by 1881 for in that year’s census Charles Frye is described as a widower – and a professor of music (I think he taught at King’s College, London). His address was 4 Buckingham Road, Tottenham, but his daughters, Abbie (aged 10) and Maggie (8), were by now in the care of his sister, Caroline, and her husband, Basil Hargrave, and living at 3 Havilland Terrace, Defoe Road, Tooting.

The latter, born in 1849, had married Caroline Frye in 1873 and was a clerk in an insurance office. Charles Frye died in 1886, orphaning Abbie and Maggie who by 1891 were still living with the Hargraves – now at 20 Castlewood Road, Stamford Hill, close to Caroline’s mother.

In the 1890s Abbie was working as a daily governess but at the same time was beginning her career as a writer of magazine stories, publishing them under her own name. One of the journals in which her stories appeared was Cycling World.  On Monday December 15^th 1896 Kate wrote in her diary: ‘I heard this morning that the Cycling World has just accepted another  of Abbie’s Stories – I am more delighted than I can say and so is she I know. She got £2 10s for the other which is splendid pay I consider. I hope she will do as well by this.’ That £2 10s was very important for Abbie had no money of her own and her aunt and uncle had little to spare.

Kate’s diary is full of Abbie in whose literary career she took a keen interest. Her diary entry for Monday February 14^th 1898 describes a visit with Abbie to Paternoster Row – to an agent  ‘Mr Burghes who has Abbie’s two tales to send about. She wanted to see him to ask him about them – so had asked me to go  with her. We were shown into his office where he was sitting writing and he was awfully nice. I don’t know that we did much good by going to see him – but it can do no harm and it may possibly wake him up a bit. He spoke so nicely and was very polite – I thought him very charming – he might have been most snappy one does hear such awful tales of publishers and those kind of people.’

Abbie’s home life was not at all happy. She and the Hargraves were by 1898 living in Sutton, where on Friday 1 July Kate paid a visit. ‘Mr Hargrave came in just before we left – him I cannot do with – such a surly sort of man – I didn’t even want to be nice to him – Aunt Carry I don’t so dislike though no doubt she is a bit of a vixen – but her good man I should soon fall out with. The girls seem just like visitors there and have to be awfully careful what they say.’

Mind you this visit came only a couple of months before Caroline Hargrave was diagnosed with cancer and underwent an operation on at Guy’s Hospital – so there might well have been a reason for the miserable atmosphere Kate experienced.

Abbie continued to live with the Hargraves, nursing Caroline while making a determined effort to progress as an author. In February 1902 Kate wrote that Abbie ‘has been having rather excitements lately. She sent the “The Poet and Penelope” to Fisher Unwin who won’t publish it at their own risk but for £50. Her Uncle has offered to lend her £25 and I have offered her the other £25 – my last money almost in the Bank – but I am glad for her to have it. Of course she will never get it out of this book but it is the only chance for the future I can see for her. I do hope it will be a success for her sake. Of course I don’t expect to see my £25 back and I do think it is good of her Uncle out of his small means to lend her the money.’

The Poet and Penelope was published in May 1902 by T. Fisher Unwin in the UK and by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the US, Abbie using the pseudonym of ‘L. Parry Truscott’. It must have been a sufficient of a success because, in 1903, 1904 and 1905, Fisher Unwin published three more of her novels. With Basil Hargrave, Kate had been instrumental in launching Abbie’s career and, less than a year later, her second novel, ‘When the Tree Falls’, bore the printed dedication ‘To Kate Parry Dear Cousin and Dearer Friend This Book’.

Over the next couple of decades Abbie published a total of thirteen novels but, although in her heyday quite successful, her pseudonym has proved all but impenetrable. A dictionary of pseudonymous writers ascribes ‘L. Parry Truscott’ to some other woman and the Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction mis-states her dates and merely notes that ‘little is known about this writer’. It is only through reading Kate’s diary that her identity and the pattern of her life has been revealed.

Caroline Hargrave died in 1904 and in May 1905 there was a new development.  Kate ‘broke the news first to Mother then to Agnes about Abbie. Mother wasn’t a bit surprised but Agnes was astounded. If I am disappointed it is no use showing it – it is for the general happiness to make the best of it and as I only wish for the best for Abbie I will honestly do any little thing I can to bring about the best.’ ‘The news’ was that the man who, echoing Abbie, Kate always referred to as ‘Uncle’, wished to make his niece his wife.

Although Basil Hargrave was uncle to Abbie only by marriage, he had brought her up since she was a young child. Thinking him dull and despotic, Kate had never cared for ‘Uncle’ but, for Abbie’s sake, was prepared to do everything she could to ensure the marriage was accepted with good grace by the family. She went down to Broadstairs, where Abbie was staying, finding her ‘looking uncommonly well and very cheerful’. From now on Kate dropped the pointed use of ‘Uncle’, commenting ‘Abbie writes to Basil every day and gets Volumes in return. She is going to say “yes” to him when he comes for his answer at Whitsun. I am very pleased people are taking it well for both their sakes. He must be very fond of her and that he appreciates her writing is the greatest possible point in his favour. Now the thing is where can the marriage take place?.’

Marriage between uncle and niece was then prohibited under the laws of consanguinity (and would still be illegal if Basil Hargrave had been Abbie’s formal adoptive father) so advice was sought as to where the couple could go to enter into a legal marriage. On 13 June Kate was at Bourne End when she ‘heard from Abbie that she has given her word to marry Basil but they cannot find out where the ceremony can take place to make it legal. Jersey won’t do, where the deceased wife’s sisters go. In the evening I told Daddie and was fearfully amused at the way he took it. He was pulling up onions at the time and all the while seemed much more interested in onions than Abbie. He said he wasn’t surprised and of course I knew he would not be likely to object and he is going to find out “where” if possible.’

The answer was Brussels, where the wedding between Abbie Frye and Basil Hargrave took place on 2 August 1905. But before then Kate took Abbie shopping for her trousseau, lending her £16 to pay for indulgences, such as new underwear, that were the right of any bride. The cousins thoroughly enjoyed their scamper through the West End and Westbourne Grove shops and Abbie duly repaid the money out of her earnings from her next novel, “Motherhood”.

By 1909 the Hargraves had moved from the dreary Sutton house to the very much more agreeable village of Ditchling. In this pretty village, nestling in the South Downs, Abbie, as a novelist, was in her element amongst the bohemian artists and craftsmen who had begun to make it their home. Their first home in the village was Chichester House in the High Street, where in 1910 Kate paid them a visit and in their drawing room listened to a talk by Eric Gill on ‘Arts and Crafts in the Home’. You can read my post about this visit here.

In August 1911 Abbie had a son, Basil Truscott Hargrave. When, in the autumn, Kate paid another visit to Chichester House she wrote  ‘This is a most exciting visit, it seems so wonderful to see Abbie with her Babe – and Basil as a Papa for the first time at his age.’ Abbie was now 40 years old and Basil 62.

Basil Hargrave’s was the first coffin in that grave under the churchyard turf. He died in 1919, leaving very little money. Abbie was faced with the prospect of keeping herself and raising her son, now barely eight years old, on the proceeds of her writing. Sales of her novels were now negligible and it was difficult to interest publishers in new work. In the 1920s she managed to place two novels, one under the pseudonym ‘Anna Hurst’ and another under her own name – ‘Abbie Hargrave’.

Abbie and Truscott continued to live in Ditchling, latterly in ‘Oldways Cottage’. It was on 16 November 1936 that Kate received a letter from Truscott telling her of Abbie’s death on the 14th. The next day Kate wrote of  ‘a dreadful feeling of sorrow and blankness. If my sense of loss is wide and deep what must Truscott’s be – and what of his future. But one feels it could not have gone on – that mounting load of debt and Abbie’s ill health. But my life-long friend – and such a loving one – I shall miss that affectionate interest so very much.’ Kate ‘bought a black hat and some grey stockings’ and on 19 November travelled by train and bus to Abbie’s burial, alongside her husband, in Ditchling churchyard. Dr Habberton Lulham, a Ditchling medical practitioner and photographer (you can read more about him here) was the only Ditchling resident present at the funeral whom Kate remarks. She had met him on her previous visits and there may have been others there whom she did not know and so doesn’t mention.

The following day Kate ‘sent a cheque for £5 to Truscott to begin to pay his mother’s funeral expenses’. However, this gift clearly did not cover the cost of a headstone.

Truscott Hargrave continued to live in Ditchling for a few more years, working for some of that time as secretary to the Saint Dominic’s Press, which had been founded by Eric Gill. He later ran a grocery shop at Upper Dicker

 

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Caroline Anna de Cherois Crommelin (c 1854-1910) was born in Co Down, Ireland, one of the many children of Samuel  de la Cherois Crommelin of  Carrowdore Castle.

Although of gentle birth, the family had little money. Political unrest in Ulster forced a move to England and after their father’s death in 1885 Caroline Crommelin and her sisters found it necessary to work to support themselves.

Caroline’s elder sister, May, became a novelist and enjoyed a measure of popular success. In 1903 another sister, Constance, married John Masefield (who was very much her junior).

In 1886 another of the sisters, Florence, married a solicitor, Rhys Goring Thomas, and in the late 1880s with Caroline, who seems to have been the driving force, embarked on a career as a ‘lady decorator’. The pair were able to travel easily along the path blazed for them a decade earlier by Rhoda and Agnes Garrett.

Unlike the Garretts, Caroline and Florence do not appear to have had any specific training, although years later Caroline wrote that an apprenticeship was essential. Rather, they relied on what was assumed to be a natural taste absorbed from their early surroundings. In a later interview Caroline described how their father had given the two of them a room in Carrowdore Castle to do with as they wished and from painting and papering this room they had learned their trade. Whereas Rhoda and Agnes Garrett were happy to deal with drains and internal structures, I doubt that such practicalities fell within the Crommelin sisters’ remit.

It was ‘beautifying’ that was the word most often used to describe Caroline Crommelin’s work. An article by Mary Frances Billington in The Woman’s World, 1890, describes how in 1888 Caroline Crommelin  set up a depot at 12 Buckingham Palace Road for the ‘sale of distressed Irish ladies’ work’ and then ‘saw a wider market as a house-decorator, so she wrote ‘Art at Home’ on her door-plate, took into partnership her sister, Mrs Goring Thomas..and boldly set forth to hunt for old oak, rare Chippendale, beautiful Sheraton and Louis Seize furniture’. She attended auctions in all parts of the country and, in case there was any doubt as to the propriety of this involvement with trade, reported that she had no difficulty doing business with dealers, meeting only with civility.

Noting the popularity of old, carved oak, the sisters’ bought old plain oak pieces and then had them carved by their own craftsmen. There was always a stock of such pieces in their showroom.

The ‘Arts at Home Premises’ were opened in Victoria Street, London, in early 1891. I think their house was at 167a Victoria Street – certainly by 1898 this was Caroline Crommelin’s work premises, but it’s possible that in the late 1880s she was working from 143 Victoria Street. Of the ‘Arts at Home’ premises The Sheffield Telegraph (9 March 1891) described how’charmingly arranged rooms, stored with delightful old oak, Sheraton, and Chippendale furniture, quaint brass ornaments, old silver, beautiful tapestries, and old china were crowded all afternoon with the many friends of the clever hostesses.’..The oak room featured a delightful ‘cosy corner’ in dark oak with blue china arranged on the top ledge against the pink walls. May Billington’s article includes a line-drawing of a corner of the ‘Arts at Home’ showroom.

In its 23 November 1895 issue the York Herald commented of Caroline Crommelin that  ‘Her house in Victoria St is conspicuous to the passer by for the pretty arrangement of its curtains, and inside the artistic element is even more apparent. Miss Crommelin has been very successful as a house beautifier and her opinion has been much sought after and esteemed by those who like the home to be dainty and harmonious.’

In 1891 the sisters also displayed their wares at the Women’s Handicrafts Exhibition at Westminster Town Hall. The Manchester Times singled them (‘two of our cleverest art decorators’) out for praise.  ‘These ladies have shown that… old oak furniture need not be gloomy and dusty and that new furniture may be made to look as good as old, even if the old be Chippendale or Sheraton, Queen Anne or Dutch marqueterie.’

One of Caroline Crommelin’s first ‘beautifying’ commissions was carried out for Lord and Lady Dufferin on the British Embassy in Rome in 1890/1891. The Manchester Guardian (8 Oct 1889) reported that she redecorated the entire embassy. Doubtless this plum commission was not unconnected to the fact that the Dufferin estate in Co Down was a mere 10 miles from Carrowdore Castle; the families were presumably known to each other. Rather more surprising is the claim made in an interview with her in the Women’s Penny Paper, 23 Nov 1889,  that she had ‘supplied nearly all the furniture to Lord Cholmondeley’s old place at Houton [sic].  Houghton Hall was let to tenants during the 19th century so, perhaps, there is a kernel of truth buried in this statement – but I don’t think we need go looking at Houghton as it is today for evidence of Caroline Crommelin’s involvement in its decoration.

In interviews Caroline Crommelin also made clear that she  ‘undertakes, when required, to furnish  a whole or any part of a house, either going with the customer to different firms or selecting for them’ and ‘does not confine herself to decorative work alone, and will put up blinds or attend to the whitewashing of a ceiling with the most professional alacrity’.

Both Caroline and Florence were supporters of the campaign to give the vote to women householders and were keen to see women’s advancements in the professions – particularly as architects.

In 1895 Caroline Crommelin married Robert Barton Shaw, nephew of a former Recorder of Dublin, who in the 1901 census return is described as an estate agent. I wonder if his wife helped in ‘beautifying’ houses he had for sale? In 1901 they were living at 50 Morpeth Mansions, Morpeth Terrace. Caroline in this census return is described as an ’employer’. Florence lived close by -in 1891 at 3 Morpeth Terrace. However hers was to be a short-lived career – she died in 1895, aged only 37, a few months before her sister’s marriage. In the 1889 Penny Paper interview Florence was quoted as saying ‘I believe everybody is happier for working. It carries  one into a new life, and one does not have time to think of being ill’. In the light of her early death this has a certain poignancy, suggesting she may have had a chronic illness to overcome.

Caroline carried on the business on her own and in 1903 teamed up with her sister, May, to write a chapter on ‘Furniture and Decoration’ in Some Arts and Crafts (ed Ethel Mckenna), published in The Woman’s Library series by Chapman & Hall. In this they ran through the various periods of furniture and room design but did not bother to disguise their support for one style in particular. ‘Anyone of artistic feeling is sensible of a singular sense of well-being on entering a genuine Queen Anne sitting-room. If analysed, the sensation will be found to arise from an instantaneous inner perception that all is in just proportion. The height and size of the room obey accurate laws. Its ceiling is relieved by geometrical designs. The walls are half-wainscoted; the polished floor shows up the tapestry-like carpet in the centre. The ornaments of furniture and general decoration are neither profuse, grotesque, nor severe. In all, the fatal “too much” is avoided.’

Caroline Crommelin (or, rather, Mrs Barton Shaw)  died at 18 Albion Place, Ramsgate on 1 February 1910.

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In April 1915 Kate Frye was still working with the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage when it was announced that an International Congress of Women would convene at The Hague. Around 1200 delegates from 12 countries attended the Congress hoping that the women of the warring countries could be organized to exert a moral force for peace. The British government, however, prevented interested British women from attending by refusing them passports and suspending the ferry service across the Channel. The Peace Conference led to the founding of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom but, as Kate relates, the issue divided suffragists.

‘Tuesday April 20^th 1915 

Some office work then to finish off the Hall – put things out for Sale etc. I arranged a stall of Workroom things – haberdashery etc. Meeting at 3 o’clock. Afterwards there was a great disturbance. Mrs Cecil Chapman from the Chair condemned the Peace Conference which is to take place at The Hague. I agree with her. How can English Women at the moment go and prattle with German Women of peace when there will and can be no peace until Germany has withdrawn her hosts from Belgium, France and Poland?

At the moment when thousands are laying down their lives for women to talk like that is to my mind showing a tremendous lack of nationalism. We didn’t want to fight – we were totally unprepared – the more credit in one way to us – and if German women want peace let them begin to preach it in Germany. I very much suspect this talk.

However to go back. Miss Wiskemann, who is half German, didn’t like it – and, instead of publicly protesting, she was heard saying things to people by several of our members who are most fiery the other way and told Mrs Hartley we had a traitor in our midst, and Mrs Hartley, never too cool in an emergency, went for Gladys, whose friend Miss W. is – and I’m not sure didn’t go for Miss W. herself. Anyhow Miss W. is not coming amongst us again but going over heart and soul to the United Suffragists who I think are utterly mad and will do our cause much harm by pressing the question of ‘Votes’ at this minute. How can they – in this life and death struggle? If the NCS took that line I should have to leave them. I couldn’t bear it – it’s wicked and selfish and small – nothing matters except we beat Germany – but people are leaving us because we do not press Votes. It is a mad world.’

‘Miss Wiskemann’ was Eugenie Wiskemann, elder sister of the future historian, Elizabeth Wiskemann; Mrs Beatrice Hartley was one of the founders of the NCS, as was Gladys Wright.

Click here to see a short documentary, ‘These Dangerous Women’, about the 1300 women who held a Peace Conference at The Hague in April 1915. These were the women whom Kate condemned as prattlers for peace.

You can read about Kate Frye’s work as an organiser with the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage in Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary. – for full details see here.

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For some time I have been meaning to investigate Charlotte Robinson, ‘Home Art Decorator’ to Queen Victoria, mention of whom I came across years ago while researching the interior design career of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. Now that I have done so, I’ve discovered, as an added bonus, her family link with one of the WSPU’s more imaginative publicity stunts.

 

Charlotte Robinson was born c 1859 in Settle in Yorkshire, one of the younger children in the large family of a Yorkshire solicitor. He died in 1870, leaving an estate of c £20,000. A later biographical piece about Charlotte noted that she (as presumably were all the children) was left a share of his property and it was this that gave her the freedom to develop a career.

By 1871 Charlotte had been sent as a boarder to a small school in Bolton but was later moved to the rather more prestigious Queen’s College in London. Education complete she returned home for a time  – the 1881 census finds her living with her brother, William, a solicitor, in Keighley. She then spent some time travelling abroad.

Emily Faithfull

For some of that time, certainly in 1883, Charlotte was travelling in America with Emily Faithfull  –  described on the manifest of the ship on which they travelled to New York as ‘Secretary’. You can read a very interesting article about Emily Faithfull here. It would seem, from remarks recorded by Emily that she had met Charlotte when the latter was still a pupil at Queen’s College.

Emily Faithfull was, of course, a fierce advocate of work for middle-class women so it’s unsurprising that, when interviewed in the 1890s for Manchester Faces and Places,  Charlotte described how on her return from her travels ‘she resolved to invest her money in a business which she could control herself instead of returning to the usual round of gaieties, varied by intermittent charitable enterprises.’ The journalist then elaborated –  ‘Having always been interested in decorative art, friends who knew her marvellous deftness of touch and infallible sense of colour, strongly advised her to turn these special gifts to account.’

In an interview that appeared in the Women’s Penny Paper, 9 February 1889, Charlotte went into more detail. ‘The idea of house decoration as a profession came to me while travelling through America. I was much struck with the interiors of some of the magnificent houses to which I was invited in some of the principal cities between New York and San Francisco, and on my return to England began to supplement previous artistic study. My first professional business was in furnishing houses, now I decorate them through, as well as working in conjunction with my sister, Mrs McClelland, who presides over the studio from which come the beautiful friezes you have just been admiring.’ So that is how Charlotte Robinson came to become a ‘house decorator.

She was setting up in the house decoration business ten years after the trail had been blazed for women by Agnes and Rhoda Garrett and, like them, she stressed the necessity of undergoing a training. However, although we know that the Garretts were pupils of the architect John Brydon, I’ve been unable to discover where or with whom Charlotte Robinson trained. All that is revealed in the Manchester Faces  interview is that she ‘went through the necessary course of study and thoroughly qualified herself for the work.’ As Emily Faithfull put it in a later article Charlotte studied ‘house decoration from hearth tiles to frieze painting’.

According to Emily Faithfull, Charlotte Robinson  first went into business in London. This must, I think, have been immediately on their return from America – and was probably by way of dipping a toe in the water. But very soon – probably in late 1884/early 1885 – the two women moved to Manchester and, as Emily wrote, ‘regardless of that bugbear which terrifies most women – she [Charlotte] put up her own name over the door.’

That door gave entrance to 20 South King Street, in the central Manchester shopping district, the premises serving primarily as a shop. It would seem from other remarks that Charlotte’s design work was done at home – 10 Plymouth Grove – the house she shared with Emily Faithfull. By 1886 a part of 20 South King Street had been given over to a ‘Typewriting Office’, run by a Miss Giles. As the Manchester Courier remarked when reporting this ‘Doubtless the typewriter will soon become as popular here as in America’. One can imagine that this was a development of which Emily Faithfull was fully supportive.

It is clear from every description that Charlotte Robinson’s ideas of interior design were the antithesis of those of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. It is impossible to imagine the latter displaying mirrors such as one to be found in Charlotte Robinson’s establishment – for on it was painted ‘a pool fringed with rushes in which a wild duck and her brood were swimming, while the old mallard was taking wing to enjoy the pleasures of the world beyond – after his kind – leaving to the mother the care of the little fluffy yellow ducks, whose very feathers seemed to move with the passing wind’. (Manchester Courier, 6 February 1885).

Items such as this were produced not in Manchester but in London, in the studio of Charlotte’s sister, Mrs McClelland (33 Warwick Avenue, Paddington). Epsey McClelland was twelve years older than Charlotte – in the 1891 census she is described as a widow, a ‘decorative artist’, living with her daughter at the Warwick Avenue address. In an article on ‘Ladies as Shopkeepers’, reprinted in Pall Mall Gazette, (23 December 1887), Emily Faithfull extolled Charlotte’s taste –  ‘Her furniture designs are simple and unique; she has dainty and quaint arrangements for cosy nooks and odd corners, and has good reason to be proud of the work of the artists employed in in the studio over which her clever sister, Mrs McClelland is the presiding genius.’

In 1887 Charlotte Robinson took stands at two exhibitions. In Saltaire in June she showed  ‘..beautiful painted screens, brackets, plaques, a corner cabinet richly decorated with painted flowers and an excellently painted frieze.’ (Leeds Mercury 3 June 1887).

Of the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition, June/July 1887, the Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher wrote:- ‘Miss Charlotte Robinson showed a frieze, corner sideboard, overmantel, draught screen, fire screens, Tuckaway tables, and other knickknacks, all, more or less decorated with the light and fanciful painting for which she had made a name.  It is in some aspects too “pretty” for our taste, but it is none the less skilful.  This lady is happy in the sprightly woodwork forming the  foundation of her paintings.  The corner sideboard is particularly pleasing.’

We can get a clearer picture of the ‘light and fanciful painting’ from a description given of Charlotte’s stand at the Glasgow Exhibition the following year. ‘Visitors to this stand ought to note the billet-doux writing table, a facsimile of that purchased by the Princess of Wales, and invented and patented by Miss Robinson. Beside this is the ‘Interloper’ chair purchased by the Countess of Rosebery. Both are painted with white French enamel, and decorated with blue tom tits. There are two friezes, specially designed for drawing rooms bearing groups of roses and chrysanthemums and one for a smoking room, with a design of wild ducks in flight.’ (Glasgow Herald 25 May 1888).

Blue tom tits for the ladies and wild ducks for the gentlemen – an aesthetic very different from that of the Garretts, whom Sir Hubert Parry commended – writing in his diary while staying in their house – ‘The quiet and soothing colour of the walls and decoration and the admirable taste of all things acts upon the mind in the most comforting manner. I was quite excised of the vulgar idea that everything ought to be light & gaudy & covered with gilt in London.‘

In late 1888 Charlotte received the accolade of being appointed ‘Home Art Decorator’ to Queen Victoria. Over 20 years earlier Emily Faithfull had been appointed publisher and printer in ordinary to the Queen, her brushes with scandal having apparently done nothing to dent her reputation in the eyes of the royal family.  On 9 October 1889 the Leeds Mercury reported that  ‘Miss Charlotte Robinson has had the honour of submitting to her Majesty some dessert d’oyleys painted on silk, from sketches taken near Palé as mementoes of Her Majesty’s visit to Wales’ and, as we have seen the Princess of Wales had already bought one of her writing tables’.

By October 1888 business was sufficiently prosperous for Charlotte to open a London showroom – in Mayfair – at 20 Brook Street – and in the same month was appointed as editor of ‘the decorative department’ on the magazine, The Queen, in succession to Mrs Talbot Coke. She was now in a position both to dictate taste and to supply the means of achieving it. She held her position on The Queen for the rest of her life. A small measure of this power was the fact that in an advertisement a Gloucester furnishing store, Messrs Matthews, regularly mentioned that their stock was approved by the leading Art Critics of the Day – such as Charlotte Robinson, Mrs Talbot Coke and Mrs Panton.

The interview given to the journalist from the Women’s Penny Paper took place in the Brook Street showroom, among the ‘cream coloured music racks, dainty billet doux tables, LouisSeize screens etc which provide an artistic public with useful as well as beautiful wedding and birthday gifts’. Charlotte commented that ‘I spend a great deal of time in Manchester, where I have a large business to control, and much is taken up in travelling “back and forth” as we say in the north, between the various houses I have to decorate and furnish in London and the country.Through The Queen I have to advise about houses in every part of the world.’

However for all the reports of how busy she was with her commissions –  ‘She can drape a room in less time than it takes most people to think of it’ – there is no information now available to tell us who her clients were or which were the houses she decorated. In the case of the Garretts I was able, from a variety of sources, to piece together a short list of their clients, but I can find no trace at all of Charlotte Robinson’s private clients. There is mention that in in June 1892 she was commissioned to decorate a hotel being erected in Manchester for the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, that she did some work for Cunard, and that she was called upon to redecorate the Lord Mayor’s Parlour in Manchester Town Hall.  The latter is a superbly Gothic creation and certainly no place for tom tits and wild ducks.

Emily Faithfull died in 1895, leaving all her property to Charlotte.  In her will, which had been written in 1893, she wrote that’ I feel sure that any loving members of my family, who may survive me, will appreciate my desire that the few possessions I have should be retained for the exclusive use, and as the absolute property, of my beloved friend Charlotte Robinson, as some little indication of my gratitude for the countless services for which I am indebted to her, as well as for the affectionate tenderness and care which made the last five years of my life the happiest I ever spent.’

After Emily’s death Charlotte Robinson continued to cut a dash in Manchester society. The local newspapers record her attendance at numerous balls and conversaziones – for instance, in July 1899 dressed in white brocaded silk and heliotrope velvet. On these occasions she is often in the company of Julia Dux, who lived close by in Plymouth Grove.

Charlotte Robinson’s career was brought to a premature end, however, by her death at home, in October 1901. She left £3100 – and the executors of her will were her sister, Epsey, and her niece Elspeth McClelland.

The latter, then aged 22, continued along the path that her aunt had, to a degree, forged and, with the changing times, was able to become more fully a professional and practise as an architect. You can read an account of her career here. and a 1905 article (issue 32, p, 114) about her in a Spanish architectural journal here She, like her aunt Charlotte, was clearly a woman of independent thinking and, not unsurprisingly, was swept into the Edwardian suffragette movement, achieving a certain notoriety in 1909 when she was one of the ‘Human Letters’ sent as a publicity stunt to 10 Downing Street. You can see a photograph here of Elspeth posing for the camera – with Daisy Solomon, her fellow ‘Letter’, on the left and Annie Kenney in support on the right. Under her married name – Mrs Elspeth Douglas Spencer – she has an entry in the Suffrage Annual and Woman’s Who’s Who.

Thus, by way of Charlotte Robinson’s ‘home art decoration’ , we can trace a line of endeavour that stretches from Emily Faithfull’s involvement in the 1860s with the Langham Place Group (middle-class women intent on improving work opportunities for their sisters) to a woman architect who, in  her short life, managed to design and build several houses – as well as giving birth to three children. It was, apparently, that third birth that in 1920 killed her – putting an end to another interesting career.

For more about the interior design work of Rhoda and Agnes Garrett see Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle, published by Francis Boutle.

 

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In the Introduction to my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide I wrote:

‘Although women may be “hidden from history” they are not, on the whole, hidden from the Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths nor from the Principal Registry of the Family Division (in England and Wales) or the General Register Office in Scotland.’ 

However there is no getting away from the fact that, despite one’s best efforts, there are some women who resist all attempts at discovery. One such is the rather mysterious ‘Mrs Alice Green’ who we come across in the intertwined stories of Emily Wilding Davison and Kitty Marion.

For instance, in The Life and Death of Emily Wilding Davison (p 131-32)  Liz Stanley and Ann Morley tell us that for some months in 1913 Emily Davison was staying with Mrs Green at 133 Clapham Road. We  assume that it was from here that on 4 June she set out for the WSPU office and then the Derby. They also note The Suffragette (13 June 1913) as mentioning that a Mrs Green was at Emily’s bedside in the Epsom Cottage Hospital. However, although Stanley and Morley do so much to reveal other branches of Emily’s friendship network they pass Mrs Green by without comment.

And I’m not surprised –  because ‘Mrs Alice Green’ is more resistant than most to the historian’s intrusive gaze. But, lifting the dusty Victorian curtain, the earliest sighting I have of her is at the Dover Register Office on 11 June 1898 where, as ‘Alice Kellie’, spinster, 26 years old, she married Edward Basil Green. The couple each gave their address as 4 Eastbrook Place, Dover.

But who was ‘Alice Kellie’? From searching through all the resources of Ancestry and FindmyPast I could find no suitable candidate and was sufficiently intrigued to order a copy of the marriage certificate in the hope it might offer a clue. Well, the only extra information it gave me about ‘Alice Kellie’ was that she was the daughter of ‘James Kellie (deceased), boot (or book?) dealer’. That actually didn’t get me any further because I couldn’t find a trace in any census of a suitable James Kellie. Who is to know if Registrars are given the true facts? I can find sufficient evidence in my own family history to know that they often are not.

On the other hand I had no difficulty in uncovering the background of the bridegroom. Edward Basil Green had been born in 1873 in Folkestone, the youngest son of Samuel Richard Green ( 1837-1882),  a mechanical engineer, and the grandson of Edward Green, a Yorkshire ironmaster and founder of E. Green and Son. At the time of the marriage he would have been 25 years old – yet the certificate has his age as 27. The bride’s age is given as 26. If the bridegroom felt compelled to add a couple of years could this mean that the bride was perhaps rather older. Who’s to know!

What the marriage certificate did tell me was that no member from either family was there to witness the marriage. The certificate is signed by the wife of the Registrar and by either the wife or the daughter (they both had the same name) of the tobacconist whose shop was next to the Register Office. This lack of family support may be explained by the next sighting I have of the happy couple – as they became parents of a son (Edward Basil Green) on 27 August 1898. It looks as though Alice Kellie was about seven months pregnant when she married Edward Green.

And that is the last I time I catch sight of Alice Green before she appears 15 years or so later as a friend and supporter of Emily Wilding Davison. I cannot see that either she or her husband were on the electoral roll as inhabitants of 133 Clapham Road and, indeed, cannot spot them in London until they appear on the 1921 electoral roll (with their son) living at Powis Terrace in north Kensington. From 1930 until 1939 Alice and Basil (as her husband was known) continued to  live in this area – now at 13 Colville Mansions.

In the meantime Mrs Green, as well as supporting Emily Davison, had also helped Kitty Marion, being one of three (Dr Violet Jones and Mary Leigh were the others) who took her to Paris on 31 May 1914 to show Christabel Pankhurst the result of the treatment that she had suffered in prison. As Kitty Marion was on the run at the time as a ‘mouse’, Alice Green was taking something of a risk in accompanying her.

In 1915 Mrs Alice Green was secretary of the Emily Davison Club that Mary Leigh had formed to perpetuate their friend’s memory. In October 1915 Mrs Green was one of those who contributed towards Kitty Marion’s fare to the US – the party to bid her farewell was held at the Emily Davison Club. Meetings of the Club were held in 144 High Holborn, which housed the offices of the Women’s Freedom League and the WFL’s Minerva Cafe.  Over a period of years, from the 1920s until at least 1938, the Greens were also, with others, such as Charlotte Despard, Elizabeth Knight, Octavia Lewin, leaseholders of 144 High Holborn.

From her involvement with the suffrage movement I get the impression that Mrs Green was reasonably well off, although I cannot discover how her husband was employed. The family does not appear in the 1911 census – presumably they followed the WFL/WSPU boycott. As a mechanical engineer did he, perhaps, work for the family firm?

Any difficulties there may have been over the shotgun wedding had long since been forgotten. In 1923 Edward Basil Green was left £10,000 in the will of his uncle, Sir Edward Green, and many years later his son was the executor of the will of one of his Green aunts.

It’s not only Alice Green’s birth that is obscure, but, very surprisingly, I cannot even discover when she died. Her husband was living at Minehead when he died in 1958 – but probate was granted to a solicitor (and not, rather surprisingly, to his son) and I haven’t gone so far as to investigate his will.

The career of Alice and Basil Green’s son is rather easier to follow – he became chairman of Doulton, retiring in 1963. I wonder if his descendants have any information about ‘Mrs Alice Green’ – or are aware of the part she played in supporting two of the most militant of the suffragettes?

 

 

 

 

After an engagement of eleven years Kate Frye and John Collins are at last about to be married – in All Saint’s Church, Hove. No wedding photographs were taken so we have to imagine Kate in her ‘best black frock – new boots, my silk hat which is quite pretty – squirrel coat and muff. Agnes’ present [a gold watch and bracelet] has blue stones in it and I borrowed a handkerchief from Mother. I was wearing a mixture of old and new.’ John, of course, wore his officer’s uniform.

The moment of departure arrived, the hiatus between the old life and the new.

 My Wedding Day and my Birthday. 37. 

 ‘Just after 12.30 Mother, Agnes and I left in the taxi for All Saints Church, Hove. We walked up the Church – Mother and I together and she and Agnes went into a seat. Then I saw John coming from the Vestry. I was only conscious that he looked alright and not nervous. I spoke very, very slowly I noticed, as if I were weighing every word – and I said “obey” most deliberately and carefully. I would have rather had it left out altogether but had come to the conclusion that if I had the Church of England marriage service at all there wasn’t much more objection to that one word than to much of the other. That I still object fundamentally to unequal vows is one thing very sure, but it has been so restful not to have to go and argue with the Vicar beforehand, which I meant to do and should have done if I had not been so tied to the house. He would not have altered it I am sure and it would have spoilt all the joy of the good feeling. It probably sounds lazy. One ought to battle for one’s conviction.’

There was no father figure to give Kate away, no best man to support John and no bridesmaids. It was as simple a wedding as could be. Perhaps one All Saints regular might have slipped in a pew, but otherwise Mother and Agnes were the only witnesses. Did Kate have any moment of regret that hers was not a grand wedding? She had witnessed so many over the years as Gilbey, Blyth and Gold brides, bedecked with satin and lace and trailing bridesmaids, were supported up the aisle by their prosperous fathers. She had inspected mountainous displays of presents, listened to the congratulatory speeches and seen the happy couples depart on honeymoon visits to the Italian Lakes, or Paris, or Switzerland or Rome.  But, if there was ever a twinge of disappointment, Kate did not confide it to her diary. She thoroughly enjoyed herself, taking pleasure from everything the day had to offer.

‘Brighton was all en fête as the King and Queen had come to visit the wounded – and as chance would have it when we were turning off the front we saw a little group of people and finding the King was expected we waited for about ten minutes. Then past they came, the King quite deliberately turning to John and returning his salute. It was exciting and on my Wedding day too. I wanted to stop them and tell them all about it.’

Returning to Portland Road from All Saints, which Kate described as ‘such a gorgeous Church – like a small cathedral’, Mr and Mrs John Collins walked up the short tiled path and into number 58. The winter sun shone through the decorative door panels of art-nouveau stained glass as married life at long last began. ‘I just took off my hat and coat and John came upstairs. And John kept kissing me and I said “someone’s coming” in the old way, forgetting it wouldn’t matter.’ For tea ‘we had a wee cake covered with white sugar and I cut it with John’s sword’ and then it was off to Brighton station ‘to catch the 4.40 train. It proved slow – but it didn’t seem to matter – we just sat and hugged each other – Government compels us now-a-days to travel with the blinds down so it was alright.’

From Victoria they took a motor taxi to the Great Central Hotel at Marylebone Station, where they had decided to spend their wedding night. ‘I suggested we had better not pay too much, but it was really rather nice on our arrival not to be consulted and just taken to the first floor – Room No 123. I suggested to John – my husband – that he could go on down while I changed but he flatly refused so he sat and watched me do my hair and then did my dress up for me.

We went straight into dinner about 8.15 and had nine rather bad courses. Very few people there and the room gradually emptied till we were the last. I was hungry and ate quite a lot. Then we strolled round the palm court where a band was playing but we didn’t seem to want people so we went in the drawing- room.

Then we both said we were tired so I said I thought I had better go to bed – it was then 10. John said he would come, but I told him not for twenty minutes. He didn’t like it but gave in and I went and got the key and went up alone. I was so excited – who isn’t at such a moment?

I undressed all backwards and was only just done when John arrived. Ours was a gorgeous room, the bed in an alcove. We had meant to have a fire, it would have been nice, but really the room was so warm we didn’t need it. I laughed at first. Later I shed a tear or two and John would turn up the light to look at me. Then he saw my tears and wept himself. We did try to go to sleep, but I don’t think John had more than two hours and I had considerably less. But we were very, very happy.’

The Hotel Great Central is still there – now the Landmark Hotel. In 1919 Kate was to renew her acquaintance with it in very different circumstances when it had been turned into a hospital for officers and John was admitted as a patient, seriously ill with Spanish Flu.

[Incidentally – very incidentally –  it was on the site of the  Hotel Grand Central that in the 1870s and 1880s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson ran her first ‘New Hospital for Women’. It was because the houses in which  the hospital operated were due to be demolished to make way for the new station and hotel that she was forced to look elsewhere – eventually selecting the Euston Road site on which to build what became the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital – see Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery.]

Kate’s wedding day was re-enacted in episode 2 of ITV’s The Great War: The People’s Story (shown on 17 August 2014) – in which Romola Garai plays Kate and Tom Turner plays John.

For much more about Kate’s life – as told in her biography, based entirely on her own diary, – see here.

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Kate  is beginning her Christmas holiday. ‘Young Bernard Shaw’ was the son of her cousin, Agnes Shaw (née Gilbey) Shaw. Almost exactly a year later another of Agnes’s sons, Arthur, was killed in France; he was only 19.

The purchases that, with diffidence, Kate showed her mother, were modest items of clothing – mainly underwear – that she had put together as her trousseau. She felt rather guilty about spending money on herself.

 

Thursday December 24th 1914

Up 7.30. Breakfast 8.30 and packed up by 9.30. Off soon after in a Taxi for Victoria and the 10.15 train to Hove. A crowded carriage – otherwise a comfortable journey only so saddened by seeing in the Roll of Honour killed in action young Bernard Shaw – Agnes’s second boy – 21 years old. Such a radiant young life ended and done with and what a heart ache for Agnes. Got a porter to bring my luggage and walked to 58 Portland Road. It was a lovely day though wet under foot. Agnes [her sister] and I took dear love [her little dog] just to see the sea after I had seen my baggage in – my room is messy and bitterly cold.

We sat over the fire all afternoon. Agnes went out after tea and I unpacked and showed Mother my purchases – I was a little diffident – but it went very well. Then Agnes had to see them. Then to a little needlework. Very tired and bed early. It’s a queer sort of Christmas.

For much more about Kate’s life – as told in her biography, based entirely on her own diary, – see here. I rather think you might find it an enthralling Christmas read.

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Kate is working at the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage office in Knightsbridge, superintending the workroom that the society had set up to give employment to women dressmakers thrown out of work by the outbreak of war and the drop in demand for finery. She and John, her fiancé of many years, had at long last decided to get married. The chosen date was to be 9 January 1915, Kate’s birthday. At this time she was living in digs in Pimlico.

 Wednesday 23 December 1914

A real busy day at the office getting everything tidied and straightforward for my holiday. Had quite a surprise first thing by a presentation of an Ink Pot from all the girls – so really nice of them. They had given Miss Grey a flower stand – it’s most awfully generous of them. I told Miss Grey later on that I was going to get married and she was very interested and full of good wishes.

Miss Simeon left at lunch time and Gladys who had not come till about 11.30 left at 3.30 – so although I had accepted an invitation to tea up in the Work Room I had to give it up, but they brought mine down – a cup of cocoa and a lots of Scotch cakes made by Miss Grey. The girls were crazy with excitement all day. I had a thorough clear out and tidy up of everything – then locked up – at 5 o’clock. Had such a queer feeling as I came away – like locking my old self within – because probably my old self never will return – if I am married by then it will be so different.

I was rather tired but ate my supper – made up a big fire and started to pack up – had not finished before midnight.

New Constitutional Society Workroom

For much more about Kate’s life – as told in her e-book biography – see here -only £1.19 to download from Amazon . I rather think you might find it an enthralling Christmas read.

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An Army of Banners

 

In June 2008 I was invited by The Women’s Library to give a talk on suffrage banners to mark the 100th anniversary of the first of a new style of spectacular processions staged by the British women’s suffrage movement. For it was on the afternoon of Saturday 13 June 1908 that over 10,000 women belonging, in the main, to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies processed through central London to the Albert Hall, where they held a rally.The image above was that used to publicise the procession.

The talk I gave was accompanied by a Powerpoint illustrating all the designs for the banners mentioned or, indeed, the banners themselves. Although, or copyright reasons, I am unable to insert these illustrations directly into this article I have provided links on which you can click to see them for yourselves.

And what was the reason for the procession?

It was to draw the country’s – and the government’s -attention to the women’s demand that they should be given the vote – on the same terms as it was given to men.

Yet by 1908 the campaign was already 42 years old. Since 1866 thousands of meetings had been held in cities, towns, villages, and hamlets throughout the entire British Isles – from Orkney to Cornwall and from Dublin to Yarmouth. Some of these had been no more than small gatherings in cottages, others had been held in middle-class drawing rooms, in Mechanics’ Institutes, in market places and in church halls –  while many others had been held in the largest public halls of the largest cities of the land. Yet despite all this activity women had not achieved their goal.

At times they had thought they were coming close – when, for instance, a franchise bill managed to jump a few of the parliamentary hurdles. And 1908 was one of those times. In 1906 a Liberal government had been elected – and the suffragists, despite many past disappointments, always had higher hopes of the Liberals. And now, just a few months previously, in February 1908, a Liberal MP had introduced yet another women’s suffrage bill in Parliament – and it had actually passed its second reading – before being blocked. Another failure, of course, but this was the greatest progress that a suffrage bill had made since 1897. The leaders of the NUWSS thought that the time was ripe to capitalise on this quasi- success and show the country how well-organised and united women could be in publicising their claim to citizenship. Incidentally there was also a new prime minister to impress. Asquith had just taken office in April, succeeding the dying Campbell-Bannerman.

The image used on the advertising flyer for the procession was also used a little later on the badge given to those organising local NUWSS societies throughout the country. We can see that the bugler girl is calling her comrades to rally to the banner  – and it was banners that were recognised at the time – and are remembered today – as the most significant visual element of that procession a hundred years ago.

The journalist James Douglas, reporting for the Morning Leader put it rather well ‘They have recreated the beauty of blown silk and tossing embroidery. The procession was like a medieval festival, vivid with simple grandeur, alive with an ancient dignity.’

‘Blown silk and tossing embroidery’- a wonderful phrase – conjuring up an alluring image.. In fact a high wind that afternoon meant that the silk was certainly blown and the embroidery tossed.

And his observation that the procession was like a medieval festival – invoking concepts of ‘grandeur’ and of ‘ancient dignity’ – was just what the organisers were aiming for. The designer of the majority of the banners was Mary Lowndes, a successful professional artist, very much a product of the Arts and Crafts movement, who specialised in the designing of stained glass. A year later she put down on paper her thoughts on ‘Banners and Banner Making’, tracing women’s involvement in this craft right back to the ‘warrior maidens’ of a romanticized – if not an entirely  mythical – medieval past. She lamented the use in recent years of manufactured banners – the implication being that these were carried by male groups – both civil or military – but that ‘now into public life comes trooping the feminine; and with the feminine creature come the banners of past time’ She applauds what she calls ‘the new thing’ – writing that by this she means the ‘political societies started by women, managed by women and sustained by women. In their dire necessity they have started them; with their household wit they manage them; in their poverty, with ingenuity and many labours, they sustain them.’

The NUWSS had actually staged its first procession through the streets of London the previous year – in February 1907.  This had had a startling novelty value – it really was the first time that large numbers of middle-class women had taken to the streets. On that occasion, too, banners had played their part. However February was not a good month for a procession – it was not for nothing that the occasion acquired the soubriquet the ‘Mud March’(for more about the Mud March see here). To be fair – the timing of the procession had been chosen with a purpose – to coincide with the opening of parliament (which was then held in February). However the NUWSS organisers learned from their mistake and June was chosen as a more suitable season for their second public procession.

This particular June Saturday was selected because the International Conference for Women’s Suffrage was about to be held in Amsterdam – it was starting on Monday 15 June. This meant that many important delegates from around the world were passing through London and were able to take part in the British demonstration. The other main suffrage organisation, the WSPU – the Women’s Social and Political Union – had chosen the following Sunday, 21 June, on which to stage their most ambitious rally yet – it was to be known as ‘Woman’s Sunday’– processions culminating in a rally in Hyde Park. The two events have sort of rolled into one in the popular memory – but the NUWSS procession was the first of the two. The WSPU, too, carried a brilliant display of banners – but most of theirs were made by commercial manufacturers and, sadly, none seems to have survived.

An announcement that the NUWSS procession was to take place on 13 June was made in a letter that appeared in the Times on 8 May. This was signed by leaders of the NUWSS, including Millicent Fawcett, the president. The letter stated that ‘Professional women, University women, women teachers, women artists, women musicians, women writers, women in business, nurses, members of political societies of all parties, women trades unionists, and co-operative women all have their own organizations and will be grouped in the procession under their own distinctive banners, which have been specially designed for the occasion by the Artists’ League for Women’s Suffrage.’ The letter then appealed both for funds to help pay for the banners and ‘for the personal support and presence in the procession of women who conscientiously hold that every kind of constitutional action should be taken in support of the rights they claim.’

So what was this Artists’ Suffrage League?

It had been founded in January 1907 by Mary Lowndes to involve professional women artists in preparations for the Mud March. Among the founding members were an Australian artist, Dora Meeson Coates, and Emily Ford, whose sister, Isabella, was a member of the procession’s organising committee. The Fords came from a Leeds Quaker family with a long history of involvement in the suffrage movement. Emily was by now living and working in a studio in Chelsea, a close neighbour of Dora Meeson Coates and of other women artists who supported the suffrage cause. The ASL’s secretary was Barbara Forbes, Mary Lowndes’ companion – and sister-in-law – who worked alongside her in her stained glass business.

The Artists’ Suffrage League representatives on the NUWSS committee organising the 13 June procession were Mary Lowndes and Mrs Christiana Herringham. In 1903 Mrs Herringham had been the originator of the National Arts Collection Fund, which made its first purchase of a painting in 1906. Ironically this was Velazquez Rokeby Venus, which in 1914 was to be badly damaged by the action of a militant suffragette, Mary Richardson (for more about this incident see here and here). Mrs Herringham had been a supporter of suffrage societies since at least 1889, and by 1907 was subscribing to both the NUWSS and the WSPU.

In a letter to the Times that appeared on the day of the procession, Millicent Fawcett noted that, besides Mary Lowndes and Emily Ford, other artists involved in the production of the banners included May Morris, daughter of William Morris, and Mrs Adrian Stokes – she was an Austrian artist, Marianne Stokes, who had been a friend of Millicent Fawcett for some years – for instance they were both staying with mutual friends at Zennor in Cornwall when the 1891 census was taken. From newspaper reports it would appear that ’80 ladies’ had been involved in the production of 70-80 embroidered banners that were made specifically for this procession – and that they had been working on them since the beginning of the year.

Amazingly – of the banners made by the Artists’ Suffrage League for this procession many are still in existence – most of them held in the Women’s Library@LSE, with another selection housed in the Museum of London. We are extremely fortunate in that not only have the banners themselves been preserved, but so have the original designs. For in the Women’s Library collection is the actual album in which Mary Lowndes sketched out her designs for the banners, the colours to be used indicated in watercolour, and, in many instances, with swatches of likely fabric also attached. However, the designs that were included in the album are not dated and one cannot assume that all necessarily relate to banners designed for the June 1908 procession. For instance the album contains a design for a banner for the Manchester Federation of the NUWSS– but the Federation didn’t come into existence until 1910.  So I have tried to be careful and to relate the designs to the reality of the banners as described in newspaper reports of the day. There are a few newspaper photographs of sections of the procession but, on the whole, they are not as helpful in identifying specific banners as are the words that accompanied them. The NUWSS missed a trick in that, unlike the WSPU the following week, they did not think of publishing photographs of the procession as postcards.

However the procession – and its banners – certainly did attract columns of newsprint – a good selection of which were carefully cut out and pasted up in another album kept by the Artists’ Suffrage League. In fact a leaflet was printed by the NUWSS containing extracts from the press reports specifically about the banners.

The ASL banners had been on display in Caxton Hall, Westminster, for a couple of days before the procession – and the press had been invited along to view them. The Daily Chronicle reporter had clearly got the message – writing that ‘the beauty of the needlework.. should convince the most sceptical that it is possible for a woman to use a needle even when she is also wanting a vote’.

It was not only the skill of the needlewomen that was remarked on. The Times was always rather loathe to give any credit to the suffrage cause, but was prompted – after its usual weasel words casting doubt as to whether the procession caused ‘great masses of the people to be deeply moved on the suffrage question’-, to admit that ‘in every other respect its success is beyond challenge. To begin with, the organization and stage-management were admirable, and would have reflected credit on the most experienced political agent. Nothing was left to chance or improvisation: and no circumstance that ingenuity or imagination could contrive was lacking to make the show imposing to the eye. Those taking part in the demonstration were all allotted their appointed stations, and every care had been taken to enable those stations to be found with the greatest ease.‘

It was 3 o’clock when the start was made. At the head was borne the banner of the NUWSS, on which was inscribed the legend ‘The franchise is the keystone of liberties’. Beneath the folds of this banner – which has not survived – marched Lady Frances Balfour and Mrs Henry Fawcett, wearing her cap and gown – the robes of her honorary doctorate from St Andrews University.

Then, as the Times, reported, came all the provincial detachments. The NUWSS could trace its descent from the first suffrage society that had been formed in 1866 – but by 1908 it had been transformed out of all recognition from this first, very tentative, incarnation. Through the 19^th century local groups had been formed in towns and cities around the county, aligning themselves with the main societies – in London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham and Edinburgh.  In 1896 they all grouped together under the umbrella of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The NUWSS had continued to develop and in 1907 had adopted a new constitution and strengthened its organisational structure. The provincial societies, although they had a measure of autonomy, were given strong leadership from the London headquarters. But it was the London Society, under the command of Philippa Strachey, that was responsible for the organisation of the procession – just as she had the Mud March the previous year.

It was important to the organisers that it should be made clear that the procession was representative of women of the entire country – which was why so much emphasis was given to indicate on the banners the names of the towns from which they came. As a convenient shorthand the designs for these banners used existing emblems associated with the town or region. The Westminster Gazette took the point, commenting that ‘Nothing like them for artistic skill, elegance and emblematic accuracy – to say nothing of their great number – has ever been seen in a public demonstration of this kind before.’

And the Scotsman reported, ‘The most remarkable feature of the procession was the great display of banners and bannerettes. It was said there were as many as 800 of them, and the designs and mottoes which they bore appeared to be almost as numerous. Many of them were effective works of art, and bore striking inscriptions’. Unfortunately few of these local, provincial, banners are amongst those that have survived. They would have been taken back to the home town and were certainly then used in many other local demonstrations – before, I suppose, eventually becoming damaged or forgotten. That is why it is so fortunate that we have Mary Lowndes’ original designs as a record of what has disappeared.

The provincial detachments processed in alphabetical order. First came Bath, then Birkenhead, Birmingham, Blackburn, and Bradford. Of these we have no record of either the design or the banners themselves – which were probably designed and made locally.

But then came Brighton. And I know that this Mary Lowndes design really was made up into the banner carried on the day – because it appears in a photograph published in the Daily Mirror. The dolphins were a long-established symbol of the town – appearing in the Brighton coat of arms and ‘In deo fidemus’ was certainly the town’s motto at the beginning of 20^th century. The swatches attached to the album design, however, indicate that the colours used were dark and light green and gold – rather than blue that appears here

By 1908 the Brighton Society had over 350 members and as Brighton is close to London the society should have been able to produce a sizeable contingent of supporters to walk with their banner.

 I found this next design particularly interesting, referring as it does to the Bristol Women’s Reform Union  –not a name that will be very familiar even to close students of the suffrage movement – which is why it is rather exciting to see its existence given credence by this design. The society had been founded in the early 1900s by Anna Maria and Mary Priestman from Bristol – radical liberal, Quaker campaigners – whose involvement went back to the very first years of the suffrage movement. The Reform Union existed in parallel to the main suffrage society in Bristol, but aimed to set the question of the suffrage in the context of wider social reform. It finally amalgamated with the Bristol NUWSS society in 1909.

Next came Cardiff – one newspaper reporting that the ‘Dragon of Cardiff excited general attention’. There is no design for Cardiff in the Lowndes album it is more than likely that it was made by members of the newly-formed Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society and is the one that has now (in 2016) been donated to the Special Archives and Collection of Cardiff University (for the full story see here).

Next came the women of Cheltenham. The town had over the years proved to be a very effective centre of the suffrage campaign in Gloucestershire. A fashionable spa, the town was attractive to single women of means. In 1907 the town had collected 900 signatures to the Women’s Franchise Declaration – another in the long series of mammoth petitions that had been presented to parliament. The Cheltenham banner has not survived – but a newspaper report does tells us that it bore the motto ‘Be Just and Fear Not’

 The design of this next banner – beneath which marched the women of East Anglia – had been, in part at least, suggested to Mary Lowndes by Millicent Fawcett – an East Anglian herself – whose hometown was Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast  In her report of the procession that appeared in the Times on the big day, she particularly mentioned this banner – writing that it ‘shows the three crowns of the East Anglian St Edmund and a representation of the wolf traditionally associated with the miraculous preservation of the martyr’s head – and the motto – Non angeli, sed Angli’. Many of the elements – the three crowns and the wolf – are still in the coat of arms of Bury St Edmunds. The wording is the reverse of what Pope Gregory is reputed to have uttered when, in 573AD , he was shown some captive British children in Rome – that is ‘Not Angles, but Angels’ – the rewording is supposed to mean ‘Not angels, but Angles – that is, citizens.’ A nice hit at the ‘Angel in the House’

And here is a photograph taken on the day – showing the banner with in front from left to right, Lady Frances Balfour, Millicent Fawcett, Emily Davies and Sophie Bryant, headmistress of North London Collegiate.

For the Mud March the previous year Millicent Fawcett had not worn academic dress –but it had been decided that today it would be worn –  to imbue the occasion with as much dignity as possible .  Next to her, with bonnet, bag and umbrella, is Emily Davies who, in 1866, with Elizabeth Garrett, had handed to John Stuart Mill the very first women’s suffrage petition. She was now 76 and yet was still to be around, in 1918, to cast her vote for the first time. One newspaper reported Emily Davies saying on 13 June ‘It is a great day for the movement, I would not have missed it for the world.’

Scotland was, of course, represented in the procession. Here is Mary Lowndes’ design for the banner – and here is the reality. The black and red, triple-towered castle is as it appeared at the time on the city of Edinburgh coat of arms – with the thistles added  to highlight Scotland’s commitment to the cause.

The next banner of which we have a record is that for Fleet, in Hampshire..I must admit that when I saw the design for this banner in the Lowndes album I was a little doubtful as to whether the town of Fleet would have mustered a contingent for this particular procession – there is no record of a suffrage society in the town at this time. But to my delight I came across a newspaper report that specifically mentioned this banner – which was made up, as shown, in yellow and orange – and with the motto as depicted – ’Delay of Justice is Injustice’ – an ancient proverbial concept – the wording put into this form by Walter Savage Landor. Because this Fleet banner was proved to be ‘right’ I have extrapolated from this that so are other Surrey and Hampshire ones the designs for which are in the Lowndes album

Thus Guildford is just such a one – depicting Guildford castle and two woolpacks – anciently the town’s staple trade– both of which feature on the Borough of Guildford coat of arms today.  A Guildford NUWSS society was definitely formed in 1909 but I don’t think that there was one in 1908. However this area of Surrey was the home of women who were not only committed suffragists – but who also had long association with the Arts and Crafts movement – and clearly the combination of suffrage and needlework was appealing. Christiana Herringham’s sister, Theodora Powell, was the secretary of the Godalming society formed in 1909 – and she was also instrumental in the founding of the Guildford society. The president of that was Mrs Mary Watts, widow of the artist, G.F. Watts

By the way, a later Godalming banner was worked by Gertrude Jekyll and is now held in a local museum.

Next came the banner of Haslemere and Hindhead – a banner of which we know – although it is now lost – because it was described in the press reports

It bore what might appear the surprising motto:

‘Weaving fair and weaving free

England’s web of destiny’

At least one scholar has assumed that Haslemere – then a small sleepy Surrey town – could not have been associated with the weaving industry – and, as one can so easily do, made the assumption that a Lancashire name with a similar name must have been intended – but in 1908 Haslemere did support a weaving industry – of a sort. It was far removed from the dark satanic mills of Lancashire – but had been founded in 1894 as a branch of the Peasants Art Society – weaving cotton and linen. Haslemere was in fact a haven of an artistic community. By 1909 it, too, like Godalming and Guildford, had its own NUWSS society. The chairman was Mrs Isabel Hecht.

The next banner in the alphabetical procession was that of North Herts, which, according to the press report, ‘declared in black and white that it was undaunted’. To put it more prosaically the banner included the wording ‘North Herts’ and ‘Undaunted’. It had been known as the Hitchin Suffrage society – but became North Herts Women’s Suffrage Association, with Lord Lytton as its president – his sisters, Lady Betty Balfour and Lady Constance Lytton were also associated with the society, though Lady Constance was, of course, much more famous for her association with the WSPU. One of the secretaries of the Association, Mrs Edward Smithson, who lived in Hitchen, had been a founder member in the 1880s of the York Suffrage Society – an example of the dedication that many women, whose names are not now remembered, had given over decades to the suffrage cause.

Next came Huddersfield. There is a Huddersfield banner still extant, held in the Tolson Museum in Huddersfield. It, too, is a work of art, designed and made by a local suffragist, Florence Lockwood – depicting local mills and with the motto ‘Votes for Women’. This wording might more usually be associated with the WSPU than with the NUWSS, but Florence Lockwood definitely gave the banner to the local NUWSS society. However I rather think that it post-dated 1908 – and was probably not the one carried in the 1908 procession

Hull’s banner, however, probably was – although it wasn’t singled out for mention in any newspaper report. In fact the Hull NUWSS society, which had been founded in 1904 by Dr Mary Murdoch, sent the largest contingent of any provincial society to walk in this suffrage procession. Local members subscribed over £100 to meet the expense of the trip and hired a special train for the occasion .The device of the three crowns is still used today on the city coat of arms

Keswick, too, had a banner in the procession – described as an ‘exquisitely painted view of Derwentwater’. In fact the Keswick society had two banners at its disposal – the one that Catherine Marshall, the young and energetic secretary of the society,  refers to at one point – with no further description – as ‘our banner’ and a private one lent by her cousin’s wife, Mrs John Marshall of Derwent Island. It is possible that it was to this one that the press report referred. The ‘our banner’ one is, I think, the one that still exists, with Catherine Marshall’s papers in the Cumbria Record Office.

A Kingston NUWSS society was formed in 1908 – here is the design for its banner. The swan seems to have been a fanciful device conjured up by Mary Lowndes– the Kingston coat of arms at the time sported three salmon – with no mention of a swan.

 The Sheffield Daily Telegraph commented particularly on the Leeds banner, noting ‘One device with the golden fleece bore the phrase ‘Leeds for Liberty’’ – so we can be certain that this banner was indeed carried in the procession. Leeds had a long history of involvement in the suffrage movement. The fleece, three stars and owls all derive from the Leeds coat of arms . ‘Leeds for Liberty’ certainly has a heartier ring to it than the city’s motto, which was (and is)  ‘Pro Rege et Lege’ (for King and the Law). Annotation on the design shows that the banner was 4ft 4” wide by 6ft 6in high. ‘With bamboo poles and cords complete £2. The lovely blue and gold strips are given by Mrs – Herringham. The owls are silver.’

Leicester, too, had a long history of involvement in the suffrage movement. By 1908 there had been a local suffrage society in the town for 36 years and here is Mary Lowndes’ design for their banner.

After Leicester came Liverpool. The Liverpool NUWSS society had taken its banner very seriously – commissioning a local artist to design it. It is a most impressive work of art – featuring a Liver bird and a galleon and carrying the message –  ‘Liverpool Women Demand the Vote’. The society had opened a shop in Bold St, one of Liverpool’s most fashionable thoroughfares, and in the days before the procession, displayed the banner there. On 13 June members of all Merseyside branches accompanied their banner to London, travelling on specially hired trains. The banner still exists – now in the care of Merseyside Museums.

The next design – that for a banner for Newcastle – highlights the difficulty of assigning a date to a design. Newcastle certainly had a banner in the June 1908 procession – but I am not convinced that it was this one, designed by Mary Lowndes. Newspaper reports of the June procession describe Newcastle’s banner as carrying the message, ‘Newcastle demands the Vote’ – perhaps along the lines of the Liverpool one. Needless to say the three castles do feature on the city’s coat of arms – of which red, white and black are the dominant colours. The design may have been changed, or used on another occasion.

Next came North Berwick. An attractive design – and the town’s coat of arms does includes the ferry boat. I haven’t come across a suffrage society specific to North Berwick, but there were clearly women from the town who were sympathizers.

Next came the banners of Nottingham and Oxford. We know that the members of the Oxford society cooperated with the Birmingham society to reserve seats on a special train and that 85 members travelled to London on the day, accompanied by their banner. Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t appear to have survived.

Portsmouth women, too, carried a banner – remarked on by the press for its motto, echoing Nelson, ‘Engage the enemy more closely’. It, too, has disappeared

We do, however, have a record of the design of Purley’s banner – although I don’t think Purley ever supported a suffrage society – but it presumably formed part of the Surrey coterie – its banner designed by Mary Lowndes. I must say that, although I have been able to decode most symbols on the banner designs, I couldn’t fathom out why this one should have what appeared to be shamrocks across the top. But they may, just possibly, be oak leaves – the Purley oaks – an ancient local landmark – feature in one version of an old coat of arms

Next in the alphabetical order came Reading. And there was a Reading banner – for newspaper reports mention that ‘A dozen women tugged at the ropes of the big banner of Reading to prevent it being blown over’. Alas it has vanished.

Likewise there was a banner for Redhill, and one for Sevenoaks, the latter carrying the motto, ‘What concerns all should have the consent of all’, and for Stratford-on-Avon. All have disappeared.

We do, however, have the design for the Walton banner – again part of the Surrey group.

The Warwick banner was designed by Mary Lowndes. I haven’t been able to establish that the motto has any significant relevance to the town. But it is a good strong message

 By way of contrast the West Dorset design in the album is very faint – the faintest of all. Whether or not it was made up I am not sure – nor whether it was carried in this procession – but it is evidence that even in that quiet rural area women suffragists were sufficiently stirred to request a banner to represent them.

The Woking banner carries the motto ‘In arduis fortitudo’- fortitude in adversity’. I think the design displays a degree of artistic licence – the town didn’t receive a coat of arms until 1930. An NUWSS society was formed in the town in 1910 – and of course the fact that one of its residents, Ethel Smyth, gave sanctuary to Emmeline Pankhurst when she was released from hunger striking, did ensure it some suffragette notoriety.

We know that contingents of supporters from Worcester and York – together with their banners – also took part in the procession – but neither banner has survived.

A large Irish contingent was also present – marching under at least one banner, which I have seen faintly in a newspaper photograph. And with the marchers were Thomas and Anna Maria Haslam, both of whom had been leaders of the campaign in Ireland since 1866 – and both of whom were now over 80. It is an indication of how seriously the procession was taken that, despite age and infirmity, they had made the effort to travel over from Dublin to take part in the procession.

The local societies were followed by a group of colonial and foreign representatives, many of whom, as I have already noted, were passing through London that weekend on their way to Amsterdam. It was, of course, thought appropriate that some women pioneers of countries other than England should be commemorated by this group.

Advance knowledge that this was to happen had irritated one correspondent to the Times, for, writing from Kensington on 10 June, ‘E.M. Thompson’ had declared, ‘A few days ago I found a youthful adherent of the suffragist cause industriously embroidering a woman’s name on a small bannerette intended for the great occasion. Neither she nor I had ever heard of this lady before, but my devoted young friend was quite satisfied with her task, and informed me that it was the name of an “American pioneer, now dead”. Personally I have no particular wish for a vote, but under any circumstances I should most emphatically refuse to march under an American banner in company with Russian, Hungarian and French women, to demand from the English government a vote to which I considered that I was entitled as an Englishwoman. It seems to me little short of impertinence for those who, up to the present, have failed to get votes in their own countries, to interfere with our home politics, and by swelling the size of the procession to help to give a wrong impression of the number of women in England in favour of the movement.’

 I wonder which of the ‘American pioneers, now dead’ was being commemorated in embroidery by that industrious young suffragist?  Banners had certainly been made to flaunt the names of Susan B Anthony, Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two former banners are still held in the Women’s Library.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton one, however, is not with them. It was assumed to be just missing – that is ‘missing’ in a general sense – like many other of the banners. However when undertaking this research, I discovered that in August 1908 this particular banner had been sent over to New York – sent by Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, to whom it had been presented. She and her daughter, Mrs de Forest, had been present at the Albert Hall meeting on 13 June. As the New York Times reported ’The most gorgeous souvenir is the “Elizabeth Cady Stanton” banner of white velvet and purple satin that was used to decorate the Albert Hall. The name is embroidered in enormous letters in purple and green, the suffrage colours, and the whole mounted on a background of white velvet).’ As you can see from this report there was already some confusion as to what constituted suffrage colours. The purple, white and green combination was first used by the WSPU the following Sunday – for their Hyde Park rally. But there is no doubt that the Elizabeth Cady Stanton banner was carried in the NUWSS procession on 13 June.

Among those marching with the American contingent were women representing the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women of New York, the organisation founded by Harriot Stanton Blatch in 1906 – and which later changed its name to the Women’s Political Union. Also present were the niece of Susan B. Anthony and the Rev Anna Shaw, who was one of the speakers at the Albert Hall meeting. She specifically mentioned that she and her fellow Americans had not come to tell British lawgivers what to do for the women of this country – they could do that for themselves – but to extend to them the right hand of comradeship in the warfare which they were waging. A statement that was greeted, according to the newspaper report, by cheers.

The Commonwealth of Australia was represented by a banner – painted rather than sewn – that had been designed by Dora Meeson Coates.  It bore the message ‘Trust the Women Mother As I Have Done ‘, a reference to the fact that Australia had granted women the vote 6 years preciously, in 1902. That banner was given by the Fawcett Library to the Australian government in 1998 and now hangs in Parliament House in Canberra.

As already noted there were delegates from other countries – such as Russia, Hungary and South Africa – in the procession, marching under the banner of the International Delegates – now held in The Women’s Library.

Reports suggest that the banner celebrating Marie Curie, then considered, at least by the women’s movement, as one of the foremost living scientists of the day, was carried by Frenchwomen. This is Mary Lowndes’ design for it.

After all the provincial societies came the Second Detachment –  comprising doctors and other women graduates. I always thought it rather touching that the printed leaflets setting out the arrangements for the day specifically mentioned that there would be robing rooms available at 18 & 19 Buckingham St, just off the Strand, and at the Albert Hall to allow some privacy for the arranging of academic dress.

This group clearly impressed the Times. Their reporter wrote ‘Next marched the women doctors, in caps and gowns, followed by the lady graduates of the Universities of the UK, most of whom were also in academic dress. A brave show they made’.

The fact that women were now being granted academic degrees by many of Britain’s universities was often used in other propaganda material – such as this poster designed by Emily Harding Andrews. (For more information about this artist see here.)

The intention was, of course, to emphasise women’s suitability for citizenship – particularly when contrasted with those whom they considered less worthy examples of the male of the species.

The Liverpool Post and Mercury reported that ‘One of the most beautiful banners was the doctors’; it was of rich white silk, with the word ‘Medicine’ in gold letters across the top, a silver serpent embroidered in the centre, and a border of palest green on which were worked the rose, shamrock, and thistle.’ The banner is now missing – but, quite by accident, I did come across a photograph of it in one of the Women Library’s archival holdings [Vera Holme album 7VJH/5/2/14].

The leading women doctors of the day – Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and her sister-in-law, Mary Marshall, together with Flora Murray, Elizabeth Knight and Elizabeth Wilkes were among those walking in this section.

The doctors carried banners commemorating Elizabeth Blackwell, the first British woman to qualify as a doctor –  although she had had to do so in the US. This banner is now held in the Women’s Library collection. The letters and the symbol are appliquéd.  The symbolism is interesting. Instead of the rod of Asclepius (a snake entwined around rod – the symbol of the authority of medicine) here it is entwined around a lamp. The lamp was associated with the light of knowledge and might also be a version of the cup of Hygiea – the daughter of Asclepius – who was celebrated in her own right as a giver of health.

Another banner commemorates Edith Pechey Phipson, who had been a member of the first small group of women to qualify as doctors after Elizabeth Garrett. In 1906 she had represented Leeds at the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance conference at Copenhagen and had been one of the leaders of the Mud March in February 1907.  She had died just a couple of months before, on 14 April 1908, and this banner was obviously intended as a special tribute. Perhaps we could date its manufacture to the preceding two months.  It survives in the Women’s Library collection.

The profession of Education was represented by a specific banner.  The Sheffield Daily Telegraph helpfully described it, reporting that ‘Miss Philippa Fawcett has presented the education banner, with its device of an owl and a small boy climbing the ladder of learning’.  It has, however, disappeared

 But that carried by the Graduates of the University of London  – designed by Mary Lowndes – is now in the Museum of London collection.

Cambridge was represented by a particularly beautiful banner, now on permanent display in Newnham College. As a newspaper reported, ‘’The alumnae of Cambridge University, a detachment nearly 400 strong, were headed by the gorgeous banner of light blue silk which has been designed for the occasion,’ It was noted that these women didn’t wear academic dress – because the university still refused to grant them degrees – and would, of course, continue to do so for many more years. They did, however, as was reported, wear ‘on their shoulders favours of light blue ribbon’.  Mary Lowndes had designed the banner and, as executed, the words ‘Better is Wisdom Than Weapons of War’ (a quotation from Ecclesiastes) were added below the Cambridge device. The pale blue silk had been given by Mrs Herringham from a quantity of materials that she had brought back from her travels in India.

After the Cambridge brigade marched business women. There were:

Shorthand Writers.  The motto on their banner – designed by Mary Lowndes and held in the Women’s Library, is rather cleverly lifted from Robert Browning’s Asolando.  And then came the Office Workers – their banner now, I think,held  in the Museum of London. The Manchester Guardian described its device as, ‘Three black ravens bearing quills on a gold ground ‘

Next came a group of very active suffragists – the Women Writers’ Suffrage League -mustered under a striking banner that had already given rise to controversy,

This is the design in Mary Lowndes’ album. But the clerk to the Scriveners Company had written a letter, published in the Times on 12 June, saying that he had read that a banner bearing the arms of the Scriveners was to be carried and that any such banner certainly did not have the approval of his company. As it was, on the banner, as executed, WRITERS was substituted for SCRIVENERS. A letter from Mary Lowndes, published in the Times on 13 June, insisted that a black eagle upon a silver ground was certainly not the blazon of the Scriveners’ Company – but it would seem that the women had changed the associated wording at some point after the design was made.

The resulting banner, worked by Mrs Herringham, appliquéd in black and cream velvet, was given by Cicely Hamilton and Evelyn Sharp and was carried in the 1908 procession by them and by Sarah Grand, Beatrice Harraden and Elizabeth Robins. Cicely Hamilton wrote of the banner that it was ‘distinctive in black and white, impressive in velvet, and swelling, somewhat too proudly for comfort, in a gusty breeze’. This photograph was probably taken on a later occasion.  In 1908 among the other women marching behind this banner were Mrs Thomas Hardy and Flora Annie Steele. This banner is now in the Museum of London collection.

Beside the banner advertising their own society, members of the Women Writers’ Suffrage League carried with them another series of banners now held here in the Women’s Library – banners bearing such names as Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Bronte. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph particularly noted this one – writing ‘Names of famous women are emblazoned on some of the banners and ‘Emily Bronte and Charlotte Bronte’ are two which Yorkshire women will be pleased to see on a simple green banner’. The addition of a white rose stresses the women’s Yorkshire connection.

Others commemorated Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth. The Museum of London also now holds another two from this series – commemorating Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot.

After the writers came banners glorifying Great Women of the Past. This was an obvious theme – and one that was to be used in later processions and stagings – such as Cicely Hamilton’s ‘Pageant of Great Women’.

These banners have survived well. Most were designed by Mary Lowndes and all were made by members of the ASL. Of them the Sunday Times wrote ‘The new banners of the movement are wonderful. Many of the banners were designed to celebrate the memory of the great women of all ages, from Vashti, Boadicea and Joan of Arc down to Mrs Browning, George Eliot and Queen Victoria. It was an attempt to represent pictorially the Valhalla of womanhood…As the procession moved away it presented a vista made up of wonderful colours, and it reminded one somehow of a picturesquely clad mediaeval army, marching out with waving gonfalons to certain victory.’

Reports indicate that a banner to Vashti led this element of the procession – but no trace of it remains.

Next came Boadicea. This is Mary Lowndes design – the actual banner is now in the Museum of London collection. Boadicea was a popular heroine of the moment – the bronze statue of her riding her chariot beside Westminster Bridge, right opposite Parliament, had been erected just six years previously, in 1902. In December 1906 each guest at the banquet at the Savoy put on by the NUWSS for released WSPU prisoners had been given what was described as ‘an emblematic picture of Queen Boadicea driving in a chariot, carrying a banner with the message “Votes for Women”‘. And by the autumn of 1908 the WSPU was selling in its shops ‘Boadicea’ brooches.

Joan of Arc was another great heroine of the suffrage movement and the idea of the warrior maiden with God on her side was invoked by both the constitutional and militant societies. Joan’s own banner was loved by her ’40 times better than her sword’, wrote Mrs Fawcett in a short biographical essay on Joan published by the NUWSS. The title page of this biographical pamphlet carries the same emblem of the crown and the crossed swords as appears here on the banner. The motto is, of course, Joan’s own.

In 1909 Elsie Howey, a WSPU activist, dressed as Joan and rode on horseback to greet Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence on her release from prison. You can see a photograph of Elsie in that week’s issue of Votes for Women. In 1909 a Jeanne d’Arc Suffrage League was formed in New York and on 3 June 1913 Emily Wilding Davison is reputed to have stood before the statue of Joan that took pride of place at that year’s WSPU summer fair  -before setting off for Epsom and martyrdom. The statue had Joan’s words inscribed around the base – ‘Fight On, and God Will Give Victory’ and these were the words emblazoned on a banner carried at Emily’s funeral 11 days later. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in 1912 the Catholic Women’s Suffrage League’s banner, designed by Edith Craig, had St Joan as its motif and a few years later the society actually renamed itself the St Joan’s Social and Political Alliance. And, it was a version of Joan, uttering the words ‘At Last’, that the NUWSS used to greet the eventual attainment of partial suffrage in 1918. Images of Joan are to be found in the work of many women artists associated with the suffrage movement – Annie Swynnerton and Ernestine Mills spring to mind.

St Catherine of Siena, another woman visionary who combined piety with political involvement, also merited a banner Josephine Butler had written a biography of St Catherine in 1878. The banner was probably designed by Mary Lowndes and is held in the Women’s Library. Siena’s colours are black and white and the lily is symbolically associated with St Catherine

St Teresa’s banner, again designed by Mary Lowndes, is now in Museum of London. She featured also in Cicely Hamilton’s Pageant of Great Women  – as the only woman on whom the title ‘Doctor of the Church’ has ever been conferred.

The banner to a Scottish heroine, Black Agnes of Dunbar – is now in the collection of the Museum of Scotland in Chambers St, Edinburgh. Of it the Daily Telegraph wrote ‘ There was one flag which attracted much attention. It was carried in front of the Dunfermline deputation. On a yellow ground was the representation of a portcullis, and beneath the large letters “Black Agnes of Dunbar” were the lines reminiscent of the defence of Dunbar castle by the Countess of March nearly 6 centuries ago: “Came they early, came they late, They found Black Agnes at the gate”. The banner perhaps should be placed earlier – with the provincial societies – but it fits well here – alongside the banner to

Katherine Bar-Lass – Katherine Douglas – who tried to save King James I by putting her arm in place of a missing locking bar in a door. This event took place in Perth and it may be that this banner heralded the deputation from that town. The banner is now held in the Women’s Library collection.

There is no difficulty in explaining why Queen Elizabeth I should be commemorated among the Great Women with a magnificent banner. Indeed the queen was something of a favourite of Millicent Fawcett who, in August 1928, unveiled an ancient statue of the queen at St Dunstans in the West, Fleet Street, having worked with a campaign for its restoration. She even left money to ensure its upkeep. (For more about Millicent Fawcett and the statue of Queen Elizabeth see here.)

Millicent Fawcett had also championed Mary Wollstonecraft, whose reputation during the 19^th century had never recovered from William Godwin’s memoir of her. Mrs Fawcett wrote a preface to an edition of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1891, the first for 40 years. Mary Wollstonecraft’s banner is held in the Women’s Library.

As is the rich and beautiful banner is to the astronomer Caroline Herschel, the discoverer of five new comets. Lady Caroline Gordon, the very elderly grand-daughter of Caroline’s brother, Sir William Herschel, had a letter published in the Times of 12 June 1908. She wrote ‘I observe that in the woman’s suffrage procession tomorrow it is intended to carry banners bearing, among others, the names of Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville, thereby associating these honoured names with the cause. A more unfounded inference could hardly be drawn. My great aunt, Miss Herschel, never ceased during her very long life to insist on the fact that she was only her brother’s amanuensis, and it was the glory of her life to feel that she had a real work to do and a province all her own, which was to help him in his arduous labours, and keep worries and troubles from him. She sank herself and her own great and valuable discoveries entirely. All who knew Mrs Somerville (and I was one of them) can testify to the great humility and simplicity of mind which were her characteristics. Her work was done for work’s sake, not for any wish to show what a woman could do. Such a thought would be utterly distasteful to her. To think that the names of these two noble women should be paraded through the streets of London in such a cause as woman’s suffrage is very bitter to all of us who love and revere their memories’.

Here is Mary Somerville’s banner. On 15 June Millicent Fawcett replied in the Times (her letter was dated 13 June – she had taken the time and trouble on such a busy day to write it).‘May I be permitted to point out that suffragists believe that the names of “distinguished women who did noble work in their sphere” are in themselves an argument against relegating a whole sex to a lower political status than felons and idiots? This is quite independent of whether the particular distinguished women named on the banners were suffragists or not. The names of Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth are found on the banners. The inference is surely clear. Lady Gordon affirms that her distinguished great-aunt Caroline Herschel was no suffragist. No one in their senses would expect a German lady born in 1750 to be one. Her services to astronomy were well recognized in the scientific world of her time. Her extreme modesty gave an additional luster to her name. Her chief work in astronomy was undertaken and carried through after her brother’s death and it was for this that she was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828. Mrs Somerville’s case is quite different. She belongs to our own nation and to the modern world, and was an ardent suffragist. She wrote expressing her deep gratitude to JS Mill for raising the question of women’s suffrage in parliament. She signed parliamentary petitions again and again in favour of removing the political disabilities of women, and was a member from its foundation to the date of her death in 1872 of the London Society for promoting the movement.’

 Mary Kingsley, the  traveller and explorer, was another heroine who merited a banner, although no supporter of women’s suffrage.

The Elizabeth Fry banner was designed by Mary Lowndes and was, I know, donated by a Miss Prothero. Although I don’t know exactly who Miss Prothero was, I am sure there must be a Quaker connection. It is now in Museum of London collection. Josephine Butler had died only 18 months before the procession. Her banner is now held in the Women’s Library.

 Lydia Becker was very suitably represented by the pick and shovel of the pioneer.  She had worked for over 20 years at the suffrage coal face – organizing, devising, interviewing, writing, lobbying and speaking. Her banner, unfortunately, is one of the few of this series that is now missing, another being that commemorating a very Victorian heroine, Grace Darling, a figure who features in many of the suffrage pageants..

The final banner in the sequence, a rich riot of colour commemorating other pioneers  is held safely in the Women’s Library collection. The first four it lists are particularly related to Bristol.

After the Pioneers came the artists, the musicians and the actors. The beautiful banner made for the Artists’ Suffrage League itself is now in the Museum of London. Christiana Herringham helped to embroider it – with its motto ‘Alliance Not Defiance’, supplying silks for it that were among those she had brought back from India.

A banner bearing the heading ‘Music’, designed by Mary Lowndes, was given by ‘Mrs Dawes and worked by her and her daughters’ – but has now disappeared.

Jenny Lind’s banner, was carried in the procession by her daughter, Mrs Raymond Maude, who was described as ‘a striking figure in green and white, with a Tuscan hat’ [ I think a ‘Tuscan hat’ was a wide-brimmed straw hat]. The banner was designed by Mary Lowndes and is now held in the Women’s Library collecction.

Artists were represented by Mary Moser, who, with Anglica Kaufmann, was the first woman  to be elected to the Royal Academy. She was renowned as a flower painter –and was paid the enormous sum of £900 for the decorations, which notably featured roses, of a room she painted at Frogmore for Queen Charlotte. These decorations can still be seen – as can this banner, now in the Women’s Library collection.

Angelica Kauffman also had a banner– but it is now lost.

Sarah Siddons’ banner which was carried in this section of the procession is now held in the Museum of London.

As is the banner to ‘Victoria, Queen and Mother’ – which was carried in the procession of Maud Arncliffe –Sennet – who, I must say, I always think of as something of a self-publicist – an opinion not actually belied by finding that she had had, or caused to have had, a photograph taken of herself on the day, holding the banner – there is a copy of that postcard, too, in the Museum of London collection.

After the banners commemorating the heroines of the past came one celebrating Florence Nightingale – then still alive – a heroine in her own lifetime. The banner was carried by a contingent of hospital nurses, marching in their uniforms. The Daily Express  reported that ‘The Florence Nightingale banner received the greatest notice. It bore the word “Crimea”, and at the sight old soldiers saluted and bared their heads.’

As an added gloss I might mention that in June 1908 a bill to allow for the registration of qualified nurses was before parliament –it passed its second reading on 6 July and many leading suffragists, such as Millicent Fawcett, Isabella Ford, and Hertha Ayrton had signed a letter to the Times in support of the bill.

There followed also groups of women farmers and gymnasts, each with their own banner. Women gardeners carried a banner worked in earthy colours – green and brown,  with the device of a rake and a spade. All these now, unfortunately, are lost.

After the nurses came the Homemakers – we can see the banner here – although the photograph was probably taken on another occasion. As the Sheffield Daily Telegraph put it, ‘The sacred fire of the domestic hearth is pictured by the home workers, who ‘remember their homeless sisters, and demand the vote’. Another newspaper report describes this contingent as comprising ‘Housekeepers, cooks, kitchenmaids and general servants’ – and laments that they were not wearing their uniforms. Note also in the photograph the banners for Marylebone, Camberwell and North Kensington.

After the home makers – came working women – working women of all sorts, carrying a variety of banners. These would appear to be plainer than the Artists’ Suffrage League ones and were locally made.

After the working women came the Liberal women, who, as one newspaper reported, bore a banner announcing that they demanded the vote…as well as Conservatives, who were led by Lady Knightley of Fawsley, and by Fabians, whose banner, had been designed by May Morris, with the motto ‘Equal Opportunities for Men and Women.’.

Then came members of the Women’s Freedom League – the press particularly mentioned its leader, Mrs Despard, together with Teresa Billington-Greig and young Irene Miller,  The WFL banner was black and yellow, figured with a device of Holloway, where many of its members had recently been imprisoned, and with the inscription ‘Stone walls do not a prison make’. The WSPU, although not invited to take part, did supply a banner under their insignia – declaring ‘Salutation and Greeting. Success to the Cause’.

Finally, closing the long procession, came the hosts –  London Society of the NUWSS. This is the design for the society’s banner. The banner itself is now in the Museum of London collection

This section included detachments from the various London boroughs – such as Camberwell, Croydon, Chelsea and Holborn. The Daily Telegraph tells us that ‘The Holborn deputation was headed by a picture of some of the ancient shops opposite Holborn Bars, and the words “The old order changeth”.  Enfield’s banner survives and is now in the Museum of London – but we have no design for it so it probably was not one of Mary Lowndes’ creations.

This design for Wandsworth in the Mary Lowndes album has the initials ‘A.G.’ at the side – and I did wonder if these could possibly refer to Agnes Garrett – sister of Millicent Fawcett. It is by no means impossible that she was involved in the banner-making – given that her professional career had been devoted to the designing and making of furnishings. But I don’t know.

Wimbledon was a very committed suffrage stronghold – both of the NUWSS and of the WSPU – and both groups featured the windmill on their banners. Of the NUWSS one only this design survives – but the Women’s Library does hold the actual WSPU banner.

All in all the procession, which was accompanied by 15 brass and silver bands, – one reporter particularly mentioned that hearing the Marseilles being played in these circumstances quite brought a tear to his eye – and the Albert Hall rally that followed, were both deemed a great success. Afterwards a decision was made by the NUWSS to keep the banners together and tour them. It was realised that ‘undoubtedly we have here an opportunity of presenting an artistic feast of the first order under circumstances that make it in itself, and in all attendant conditions that may be grouped around it, a unique act of propaganda.’

They lent out the banners to the local societies, charging £3 10s for all 76 banners or £2 for half the number –with the express proviso that they were not to be used for what was termed ‘outdoor work’..

In 1908 exhibitions of the banners were held at Manchester, Cambridge, Birmingham, Liverpool, Camberwell, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Lady Frances Balfour opened those last two – and performed the honours again at Brighton in January and Fulham in March 1909. We can be sure that the local societies made the most of these occasions. I know that when the banner exhibition was held in December 1908 at the Glasgow Fine Art Institute it was accompanied by tea, a small string band and a pianola. The Society clearly expected a reasonable attendance, finding it worthwhile to buy in – to sell to visitors – 200 copies of the pamphlet describing the banners.

Thus not only did the banners allow suffragists to rally round as they were paraded through the streets but they also provided a focus for further conscious and fund-raising efforts that neatly combined a forceful political message with what been described, very eloquently, as the power of ‘the subversive stitch’.

P.S.

Kate Frye was a banner bearer – for North Kensington – in this procession – and you can read all about her experience on the day here.

Copyright

 

Many of you familiar with the propaganda produced by the British women’s suffrage campaign will recognise this image, which was  printed by Weiners of Acton and published as a poster by the Artists’ Suffrage League. In The Spectacle of Women, Lisa Tickner dates it to c 1908; the catalogue of The Women’s Library@LSE to c 1912. I would tend to support the earlier date.

The artist is known to be Emily Jane Harding Andrews. But who was she? What can we discover of the life behind that image?

She was born Emily Jane Harding in 1851 at Clifton in Bristol, the eldest of the several children of Thomas Giles Harding (1827-1899), a commercial traveller, and his wife, Rosa Jane (nee May). Emily and her sister, Rosa Elizabeth Harding, were educated at Clifton Ladies’ College and in October 1868 both gained certificates of art in the second grade in a prize giving at the Bristol School of Art.

By 1871 the family had moved to London . They moved around the Kensington, Hammersmith, Shepherds Bush area but their first address was 21 Holland Road, Kensington. Emily clearly continued with her art studies. She exhibited portrait miniatures at the Royal Academy in 1877, 1897, 1898. Now in the National Portrait Gallery is a chalk portrait of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (d 1881), dean of Westminster. Was this the work that she exhibited at the RA in 1877?

By the time the 1881 census was taken Emily was married to a fellow artist, Edward William Andrews – although I cannot find a record of the marriage. He was ten years older than her and had been born in Kidderminster. By the time he was 21 was describing himself on the census form as ‘Artist portrait painter’. The only paintings I can locate by him are copies of two portraits after Gainsborough – see here.

In 1881 Emily and her husband were living, with one servant, at 23 Iverson Road, west Hampstead. By 1891 they had moved to Chalcot Gardens, Hampstead, an area popular with artists, and now had no servant. In 1901, still fending for themselves, they were living in a flat in 95 Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Hampstead.

Through the 1880s and 1890s Emily produced illustrations for a series of books – mainly for children. They included Bright Pages for Children of All Ages, 1886, Helen Milman’s The Little Ladies, 1890, Merry Moments for Little Folks by Rose E May, published by Frederick Warne, 1893. Emily’s sister, Rosa (or Rose) had married Frederick Lamartine May, son of a well-known bookseller, and a relation on their mother’s side. She also provided the illustrations for Disagreeable Duke: a Christmas whimsicality for holiday boys and girls by Elinor Davenport-Adams, published by George Allen, 1894 and in the same year for Lullabies of Many Lands by the editor and translator Alma Strettell, 

 

In 1896 Emily Harding (the name under which she then published her work) was both the translator (from the French) and the illustrator of  Fairy Tale of the Slav Peasants and Herdsman by  Alex Chodsko, published by George Allen.

I don’t know how Emily Harding Andrews made contact with the Artists’ Suffrage League, although it’s hardly surprising, moving as she did in artistic, bookselling and publishing circles. Besides the poster illustrated as the introduction to this article, Emily Harding Andrews designed another for the ASL – ‘Coming in with the Tide – Mrs Partington’ – and was on sufficiently close terms with Mary Lowndes, the ASL’s leading light, to propose a design for a Christmas card -sent with an informal note on the reverse. It can now be found in Mary Lownes’ ASL album in the Women’s Library@LSE.

 

Although clearly supportive of the suffrage campaign, Emily Andrews, like Mary Lowndes, did not boycott the 1911 census. This shows us that – married for 31 years, with no children – she was living, aged 61, as a boarder at 15 Bank Place, Bayswater. She still described herself as an artist. Her husband, on the other hand, was enumerated in his one-room studio at 48 Fortune Green Road, Hampstead. Had they separated?

Edward Andrews died in 1915, while living at 1 Linden Gardens, Hornsey Lane. He left £160; his wife is not named as an executor.

I next find Emily Harding Andrews in 1918, living at 6 St George’s Square, Camden, at the same address as another artist of her generation, Julia Bracewell Folkard and an Elizabeth Folkard. However, this seems to have been Emily’s base for only a short time and I can find no further trace of her for another 17 years, until in August 1935, aged 85, she set sail for Sydney, Australia. On the passenger list her address is given as ‘South Street Mission, Hammersmith’, although in what capacity she was living there I cannot say.

Gertrude, one of Emily’s much younger sisters, had emigrated to Australia with her husband, Edward Nevill Parker, in the 1890s. He had died in 1931 and I suspect that, in her old age, Emily went out to join Gertrude for I next find her living at Illawa, Judd Street, Cronulla, Sutherland, NSW. Emily died in Sutherland in August 1940 and her ashes were scattered in Woronora Cemetery, which was also the last resting place of her sister and, years later, of a nephew.

This is only the briefest outline of a long life lived. I shall have to imagine all those decades of London days, of Emily living and working in a succession of studio flats, of visiting publishers, of struggling to gain commissions, of the brief flowering of interest in the suffrage campaign, of, perhaps, sinking with old age into penury and then, the last adventure, sailing to the other side of the world – to the heat and light of Australia.

Copyright

 

 

I originally gave this paper at the Women’s History Network Conference, Southampton, September 2005

 ‘Painting Days at School of Art are perfect bliss: the manuscript diary (1892-1914) of Sarah Madeleine Martineau, art student and craft worker’.

This paper is based on the manuscript diary of Sarah Madeleine Martineau, the first entry in which is for 1 January 1892 and the last for 25 January 1914. I bought the diaries a few years ago, at the time giving them merely a cursory glance and registering only that the world they depicted was one that appealed. At odd intervals I have undertaken some research into the life and work of Sarah Madeleine Martineau and now think that what the diaries reveal is of some general interest.

She was born in London at 4 South Road (later 122 King’s Avenue), Clapham Park, on 2 May 1872, the final child in the family of David Martineau, the senior partner in a firm of sugar refiners and a leading Clapham Liberal. David Martineau’s grandfather was a brother to the father of Harriet Martineau and Dr James Martineau. In 1856 David and his wife, Sarah, settled in South Road, in leafy Clapham Park. The Martineaus’ house and its immediate neighbours have been demolished, making way for tower blocks, but it was then quite new, was large, double-fronted and detached, set well back from the road, with stabling, and grounds ample enough to include a tennis court.

The Martineaus were Unitarians and with another South London family, the Nettlefolds of Streatham Grove, Norwood, were pillars of the Unitarian church in Effra Road, Brixton. The Martineau family comprised four sons and four daughters, the eldest child, Daisy, being 16 years older than Madeleine. Of the Martineaus’ sons, two married Nettlefold sisters; Unitarians tended to stick together. Although enjoying an active social life the younger Martineau daughters do not seem to have attended many formal parties or dances. Of the daughters only Daisy married; Lillie, Lucy and Lena (such were the diminutives by which they were known) probably lived together in the family home, certainly until the 1940s, and then either together, or near each other, in south London, for the rest of their long lives. At the 1891 census besides members of the immediate family there were also living in the house a cook, a parlour maid, two house maids and a 20-year old cousin, Charles Worthington. Lena possibly had a tenderesse for Charlie; she always mentions any little attention she received from him, but in 1895 he died suddenly – the relevant entry reads: ‘Charlie, the sweetest man that ever lived is dead. He died on Christmas day..’

David Martineau’s sister, Mary, who lived close by with their mother, can be spotted as a member of many of the women’s causes of the day, for instance signing the 1889 Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage. Lena Martineau and her sister Lucy, who was three years older, had been boarders at Roedean school in Sussex, which, recently founded, was much favoured by the daughters of the wealthy non-conformist middle class. When Lena begins her diary in an exercise book in January 1892 one of the first entries relates that Barbara Shore Smith, who had been a contemporary at Roedean, had come to stay and in May 1892 Lena and Lucy went to visit Barbara, then at Girton, staying in lodgings near the college. Lena must have been well aware of all the feminist causes of the day, but, although writing her diary through the years of the main suffrage activity, makes no comment whatsoever on any aspect of the woman question. It must also be mentioned that in the entire 22 years covered by the diary she only mentions one book. On 23 February 1893 she wrote, ‘Have been reading a book called ‘Mona Maclean, medical student’, & think it splendid.’

Perhaps Lena was uninterested in the written word but her free-thinking, prosperous, well-educated family set great store by art.  Lucy and Lena were clearly given every encouragement to practise any aspect of art in which they were interested. Thus apart from visiting friends, playing tennis, taking what seem exceptionally long walks and bicycle rides, and helping with bazaars and garden parties, Lena seems to have been fully occupied with attending art classes and visiting galleries. There were prominent role models very close to home. The two daughters of Dr James Martineau, Gertrude and Edith, together with their sister-in-law, Clara Martineau, were all working artists, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy and at the Dudley Gallery. Their work now sells well – a watercolour by Edith Martineau sold for over £3,500 in 2005. The Martineaus were committed visitors to art galleries. For instance in the diary’s first year, on 22 April, Lena wrote, ‘Lucy and I met Papa at the private view of the Old Water Colours. It was very hot and full, but a good many very nice pictures.’ I am afraid that Lena’s criticism of the art that she took such care to see rarely rises above this level of comment.

In her new diary on Friday 8 January 1892 Lena Martineau wrote: ‘Art School began again on Monday, but we did not go till Tues. I have a side view of the girl so shall soon have done it..’  The Art School that she and Lucy attended was Clapham Art School, in Vernon Road, Clapham High Street, which had been founded in 1885 and was associated with the Government Schools at South Kensington – students were expected to take the Government examinations. In January 1892 Lena was taking drawing and painting classes, which she very much enjoyed, writing on 3 February ‘Joy! Mr Nightingale [the headmaster] told me that I am to begin painting my next head’ and on 21 February the entry that gave this paper its title ‘Painting days at School of Art are perfect bliss!’. In May she sat exams in the Life and Antique – ‘Given the choice of faun or the discobolus, we did the latter’. In July she heard that she had passed the exams, both 2^nd class.

After a summer break, some of which was spent sketching in Wales, Lena returned in October to Clapham Art School. Her entry adds, ‘Found that Miss Pemberton is working there now’.

From the context it would appear that Lena already knew Sophie Pemberton, a Canadian artist, just three years older, who had already studied in Paris at the Academie Julien. Her father was the first surveyor general for Vancouver Island and Sophie was living in Alexandra House in Kensington, which had been built to house women music and art students and to where she often invited Lena for tea. It was – and remains, though much altered – a rather glamorous hostel, replete with terracotta panels and intricate Doulton tiles and picture panels.

In May Lena took Life and Still-life exams. Of the latter she wrote ‘the group was a top hat and two oranges on green baize!. Got home in time for some tennis’. On the 29th there was the recurrence of a problem that plagued the art school, ‘I went to the Art School but finding no model returned – & had my hair cut.’  I suspect that Clapham School of Art did not meet Sophie Pemberton’s standards because she instigated a move to Westminster School of Art in Tufton Street, Dean’s Yard, where, by October, she, Lucy and Lena were enrolled. As with the Clapham School, Westminster followed the South Kensington regime. It is worth noting that Lena chose to attend such a school, where the syllabus was geared to an examination system, rather than one of the many art schools established to cater for the ‘ladies’ market.

Of Mr Loudan, the principal instructor at Westminster and a portrait and genre painter, Lena remarked ‘Very squashing, makes me scrape out but does not say much’. On 7 December she wrote ‘Today Mr Loudan was very crushing to me’. However she persevered happily, the following March reporting that  ‘Our new model on Monday was a boy and on Thursday Mr Loudan praised me for better colouring and came twice to me’.  That May she again sat the Life and Antique exam. All this intermingled with much gallery visiting; Venetian pictures at the New Gallery, a visit to Herkomer’s studio to see the work of some of his Bushey students (‘Very good some of them’.), and to the Guildhall (‘splendid exhibition’). She returned to Westminster Art School in October and on the 4^th recorded ‘Lucy and I went to town today for the summer sketch criticisms at school of art. Mr Loudan presented me with £3, as third prize for the year’s composition sketches. Delightful surprise..’

In the autumn of 1897 Lena and Lucy travelled over to Park Walk, Chelsea, to visit the complex of the Stanley Studios, where Sophie Pemberton was based. Sophie’s star was on the ascendant; that year she had exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Unfortunately there was no studio available there, and with Ethel Le Rossignol, a school friend with whom they proposed to share and who much later became a practitioner of spirit-channeled art, Lucy and Lena embarked on a search.  By the end of November they had found a studio, at a rent of £35 a year – and were very pleased with it. They had fun arranging to move in, buying things with which to decorate, including a new stove and oriental rugs. Lena hired models and also arranged for family and friends to sit for her. The studio gave the sisters an opportunity to invite round their friends, in a way they probably did not do at home. On 6 March ‘Barbara Nightingale came to tea at studio yesterday’. [Barbara Nightingale was the same person as Barbara Shore-Smith – there had been a change of family name.] In April Lucy had a picture accepted by the Royal Academy, Lena describes the subject as being 3 parrots; the exhibition catalogue gives it the title ‘Red, White and Blue’. The picture was sold to a Captain B for 7 guineas.

In 1899 and 1900 Lena continued working from the studio, concentrating on pictures to submit to the Royal Academy. However they were all rejected or crowded out. In the summers, with Lucy and Ethel Le Rossignol, she took sketching lessons from professional artists, the first year in Mayfield in Sussex and the next summer at Brockham Green in Surrey. In November 1900 she returned to the Westminster Art School, taking lessons in modelling from life.

She also began to learn metal repoussé, possibly at the Westminster School – her diary is not entirely clear on the point. Lena was following the spirit of the times. There had in the last five years been a definite upsurge of interest in craft work. Lena, however, quickly gave up this class in order to attend a modelling design class at St John’s School of Art and Science at New Cross, where a Mr Miller and a Miss Jean Milne, who had been fellow students at Westminster, were master and assistant mistress. Lena placed the receipt for the course (10/- for the term ending 12 April) between the pages of her diary and began modelling a door knocker.

However, for whatever reason, at the end of the term she did not continue at New Cross, but went over to Chelsea to investigate the modelling class at the South West Polytechnic in Manresa Road. She duly joined that class and ‘settled to join the handicraft studio for metal repousse on Tuesday afternoons’. In May she sat a Modelling Design exam, which she passed 1^st class, and a Life exam and was awarded a book prize in the National Competition work at South Kensington for her ‘head of Papa’. The National Competition was run by the Science and Art Department of the Committee of the Council on Education and several thousand students from art schools around the country competed for the prizes.

In October Lena began classes again, taking a modelling life class at the Manresa Road Polytechnic and one in modelling design at St John’s. She was also doing metal work, perhaps at the polytechnic. I think she must have given up her studio some time before this and in November (1902) when she decided to make a commitment to metal work and bought a muffle furnace, she made her workshop at home in the harness room. In December she went over to Whitechapel to the Sir John Cass Institute ‘as I think of going there for metal work and design after Christmas’. The Sir John Cass Institute had only opened the previous June so Lena was obviously well aware of developments in the field of craft education. She then left the St John School of Art at New Cross and in January 1903 ‘started work at the Sir John Cass Technical Institute’. The head of the Arts and Crafts Department was Richard Llewellyn Rathbone, Harold Stabler was teacher of drawing and design, Gilbert Bayes was teacher of modelling, and there were also teachers of jewellery and enamelling.

Lena took the enamelling class on Tuesday evenings, jewellery on Wednesdays and design on Fridays. During the day on Tuesdays she still attended modelling classes at the Polytechnic.

She continued with these classes until the end of the summer term and then went to Walberswick with Lucy to take sketching lessons from Bertram Priestman. She returned to the Cass in October and found that Jean Milne was also now working there. Among her fellow students were Violet and Frances Ramsay and Thalia How. She attended the Cass for all three terms that year and returned to Walberswick in September for two more weeks of sketching with Bertram Priestman.

When she returned to the Cass in October 1904 she learned that she had received a book prize for a figure she had sent up to the National Competition. She once again rented a studio, this time in Tachbrook Street. Lena was now established in her jewellery making; a pendant she had made was given to Barbara Nightingale as a wedding present as she embarked for India to marry  ‘a Mr Stephens’. In her studio she began modelling a bust of her father and began another happy round of studio teas; Jean Milne and Thalia Howe were among the guests. She continued at the Cass throughout 1905, receiving a prize for metal work at the end of the year.

In January 1906 she had at least two pendants accepted for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. One of her pieces was described in the Exhibition catalogue as a necklace and enamel pendant and was priced at £2 12s 6d. There was increasing organization in her area of the art world and in April she notes the first meeting of the Sir John Cass Arts and Crafts Society and in May that she had ‘applied to join a new club called the United Arts Club.’ The Studio reported that as ‘it is hoped the club will become a recognised medium for effecting sales, it was of importance to establish at the outset the standard of work which will entitle members to the privilege of having their work included in the quarterly exhibitions’. Lena was accepted as a member.

In June the Sir John Cass Arts and Crafts Society held its first exhibition and Lena noted in her diary ‘One of mine is to be photoed for the Art Journal’. In fact the December 1906 issue of the Art Journal includes both a silver necklace and a copper and enamel candlestick by Madeleine Martineau. Among the other pieces photographed were a copper tea caddy by Jean Milne, a pendant each by Thalia How and Violet Ramsay and a brooch and a necklace by Harold Stabler.

In November 1907 at the Cass annual show Lena exhibited two jewel cases and a metal fruit dish with a figure pedestal.  In December she received a prize from the Cass Institute, the book selected being a copy of Lewis Day’s Enamelling. In May 1908 she ‘took up a case of jewellery to agents for Liverpool exhibition’, in November she was exhibiting at the Sir John Cass society show and also sent a case of jewellery to a show in Cambridge. At the end of the month she ‘took a case of jewellery to the United Arts Club and another to the Lyceum Club’. From the Cambridge show she received a first class certificate.

She does not mention if any items were sold from these exhibitions. In February 1906 she had noted that a ‘pendant I sent to show at Alderley Edge has 2^nd prize and is sold to Katherine Greg’ and that from the Cass show in November 1907  ‘one thing of mine was bought, a copper clasp’. In February 1909 came her first commission. The relevant entry reads ‘I have been to Club today to meet lady who wishes for a gold medal to be made for the poets club to award the best poem’. The lady was a Mrs Higginbotham and the Club was the United Arts. Lena began the medal on 11 April and delivered it two months later. She had not been working at it all this time; she had enjoyed a two-week holiday in Italy. However on 20 July she received ‘ a rude letter from Mrs Higginbothom this morning refusing to take the medal, and saying it is not worth more than 15/- to a guinea!. Tho all 18ct gold with pearls and enamel.’ Lena reported the matter to the Club who arranged for her to make an appointment to speak to Mrs Higginbotham in person.

However Harold Stabler advised her not to go but to write. The matter ended with Mrs Higginbotham returning the medal to her. There is no mention of her ever receiving another commission. She kept busy in the autumn, exhibiting jewellery at an exhibition in Dresden and at the Cass society’s annual show.

In January 1910 she took a case of jewellery and an epergne to the New Gallery for display at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition and two cases of jewellery to the Society of Women Artists. She is noted as an exhibitor in the catalogues of both exhibitions. Her work shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition included a gold pendant and chain, entitled ‘ St Cecilia’; a gold necklace, a gold enamelled pendant and a gold necklace with tourmalines. For what it is worth it so happens that in the copy of the catalogue held by the British Library Lena Martineau’s pieces have been annotated in the margin in pencil. There are very few other markings – Cobden Sanderson’s books are so marked – and the impression is that the holder of the catalogue walking around the exhibition had approved of her pieces. There is no indication, however, of whom this visitor was.

In February 1911 she won 1^st prize in the competition organised by the Studio for the design for a necklace pendant . The prize was 3 guineas – and, of course, her name was published in the magazine. In June when the Studio reported on an exhibition organised by the Sir John Cass Arts and Crafts Society it mentioned that ‘the jewellery included a dainty gold necklace by Miss Martineau’. Then on 24 November her father died. For whatever reason after this she made very few diary entries and the diary ends, at the bottom of the final page of the book, on 19 March 1914. I do not know if she carried on with her diary beyond the final 1914 entry. Until November 1911 entries had been made quite regularly and contain far more detail than I have been able to include in this paper.

Moreover, in the few 1913 and 1914 entries she makes no mention of any artistic endeavour. However, a (February, I think) 1914 article in the Studio ,‘Some Examples of Modern English Jewellery’, is illustrated with what the magazine says is ‘a small selection of recent work by artists whose productions are familiar to exhibition visitors’. Among the artists so recognized was S. Madeleine Martineau, with an ‘enamelled gold pendant with four pears, wreath and bird repousse’.

As the Studio describes the work illustrated in the article as ‘recent’ it is likely that this piece was less than three years old, – that it was in fact made in the period after the last mention in her diary of her jewellery work. However, when the next Arts and Crafts Exhibition was held in 1916 Lena Martineau was not an exhibitor, although Violet and Frances Ramsay, Jean Milne and Thalia How all were. This would seem to be reasonably definite proof that she was by then no longer part of the arts and crafts scene.

But life has odd quirks. It was because the bird piece had been photographed for the Studio that when it was bought c. 1973, as part of a collection, by a dealer specialising in art nouveau jewellery, he was able to identify its maker. As Lena Martineau only died in 1972 – aged over 100 – my surmise is that the piece, along with others in the same collection, had remained with her all her life and had formed part of her estate. Once the dealer was able to identify this piece, others in the same collection were attributed to her.

Around the same time, interest in arts and crafts and art nouveau jewellery was developing, and two books by Vivienne Becker, Art Nouveau Jewelry and Antique and Twentieth Jewellery: a guide for collectors, drew on this art nouveau dealer’s stock of photographs for illustrations. A few facts about Lena Martineau’s life were surmised, mostly incorrectly.

It is not my contention that Lena was a feminist icon, a forgotten heroine. What is interesting about the life revealed in the diary is its very ordinariness. She had no struggle to receive her art education; her family backed her in her attendance at classes, in renting studios, and by sitting for her. Her diary reveals how much freedom a young woman – 20 when it opens – had in following her inclinations in this direction. There is nothing in her diary to suggest that she felt thwarted or discontented in any way. Moreover, whether or not she deserves the accolade, Sarah Madeleine Martineau has now entered the canon as an arts and crafts jeweller, the presumption being, merely because she is included, that her work was exceptional. However, in reality it is only because it has been possible to identify a little of her work – although that certainly is because she was considered by her contemporaries (except for Mrs Higginbotham) as being more than competent – that she has received this measure of recognition. Her diary gives a fascinating glimpse into the life behind the pendants.
Sarah Madeleine’s Manuscript Diary is now held in the collection of The Women’s Library@LSE.

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For the latter part of the First World War Kate Parry Collins (nee Frye) lived in a cottage in the tiny Buckinghamshire hamlet of Berghers Hill – on tenterhooks for news of her husband, John, who had been fighting in France since the end of 1916. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery during the Battle of Arras – and, to Kate’s great relief, came through the war unscathed. We can imagine the emotion that lay behind the following entry in her daily diary.

Monday November 11^th 1918 [Berghers Hill]

I was thinking and wondering every inch of the morning, and could not settle to anything. Was cleaning a collection of shoes about 11.30 in my room, the windows were open – I sat up and listened. Boom-Boom-Boom – then a Hooter and then I thought it time to bestir myself and went in to Agnes [her sister] then downstairs to Kathleen [the daily maid] and out to listen to the various sounds proclaiming that the Armistice has been signed. And thank God for our many and great mercies. Mother was down the hill and had called at the Manor House – the news was all over the green [Wooburn Green] and soon up here – and the remarks of the hill were marvellous. As soon as I could settle to anything I sat me down and wrote to John. Is he safe, and will he really be spared to come home to me?

[She eventually manages to buy a copy of the Daily Telegraph] ‘Yes, the glorious news, as announced ‘Surrender of Germany’ Armistice signed at 5 a.m. Cease fire at 11 a.m. The D.T. has news of Abdication of the Kaiser and Crown Prince, and flight to Holland. The whole of Germany is seething with revolution. It seems as if it will be a second Russia.

Ten years later, Kate and John were living in a tiny north Kensington flat. For the past three years, at 11 o’clock on Remembrance Day,  they usually visited the Royal Artillery memorial at Hyde Park Corner – John having been a member of the RA. But on this special 10th anniversary of the Armistice they planned to join in the main London celebration. Kate was determined that she would have a Sunday free from domestic chores in order to dedicate herself to remembrance.

Saturday November 10th  1928 [Leinster Square, London]

A great day of preparation so as to be free for Remembrance tomorrow. So John went out for me and did the rest of the shopping and I first did the usual housework and a bit extra then dinner at 5.30. Shoulder of lamb, onion sauce, potatoes, sprouts, apple crowdies and a large one for tomorrow. Then cleared away, washed up, put all ready for the morning and scrubbed the kitchen. Sat down rather broken – but determined to wake at 7 tomorrow.

Sunday November 11th  1928

I woke at 7.30 and up straightway and J and I both up to breakfast. Up – washed breakfast and off. Train to Westminster – a packed tram and an impossible place – such a crowd. I jumped on a bus to get out of it. fortunately it took us to Charing Cross. We tried Whitehall from top – no good. I was afraid of the crowd – so eventually just off by Whitehall Court and heard the singing and the last post – a marvellous two minutes silence. A rest in the Club – then an hour and a quarter pilgrimage to pass the Cenotaph – again most wonderful. Came on to rain so made for Lyons for lunch in Victoria Street. Then to go through the Abbey past the Tomb [of the Unknown Warrior] and for the 3 o’clock service.

 

Home by bus, raining still – the queue [stretching] from Trafalgar Square. Our dinner – frightfully tired. Service on wireless. Bed – then Albert Hall meeting in bed with one earphone each up to 11pm. A really wonderful day of Remembrance.

Twenty-eight years later, after several years of caring for John at home as he became increasingly afflicted with dementia, Kate was finally forced to allow him to be admitted to the local asylum. They did not have sufficient money to pay nursing-home fees. She recorded the following entry in her diary on the first Remembrance Day after he was lost to her.

11th November 1956 [Hill Top, Berghers Hill]

To Cenotaph at Wooburn. I sat and wept – but tried to pull myself out of the tears. But so sad without John here with me. Remembering all the 11 o’clocks we had heard together.

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – do read the e-book, Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette published by ITV as a tie-in with their series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. It can be downloaded from  from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  from Amazon.

I’d love to hear what you think of Kate and the life she lived. 

To read in detail about Kate’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign – in a beautifully-produced, highly illustrated, conventional paper book – see  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

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We are familiar with the toy factory opened during the First World War by Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes at Bow in London’s East End, but how many of us know that another suffrage society, the Women’s Freedom League, operated a similar factory in Hackney?

At the beginning of the First World War the WFL announced that, among the schemes prompted by the new situation, they had opened a toy factory ‘where girls and women have been trained to turn out perfectly finished and well-dressed dolls – the specialities being the Dombey boys and the Tipperary Twins.’

With the outbreak of war the various suffrage societies had recognised the need to provide employment for women put out of work as dress-making establishments suffered a sudden drop in demand. In the autumn of 1914  the thoughts of the women of the nation were, unsurprisingly, on other than on sartorial matters. The New Constitutional Society, for instance, hoped to help destitute dressmakers by opening a war-relief work-room , organised by Kate Frye (for details see  Campaigning for the Vote –  to see Romola Garai as Kate Frye in that work-room as realised by ITV see here ) .  The NCS opted to make clothes.

The ELFS and the WFL, however, decided to take advantage of the gap in the market that had opened now that toys could no longer be sourced from Germany, hitherto the main supplier of presents for British children.

But where in Hackney was the WFL toy factory?  It looks from the photograph as though it was located in a private house, probably comprising only a couple of rooms. This wasn’t a factory on the scale of Lesney – Hackney’s other – once-famed – toy maker. 

Update: Reading Jennie Churchill’s Women and War Work  I’ve discovered that the toy factory was in South Hackney…but have not yet pinpointed a road. Interestingly, the photograph at the head of this blog post came from a postcard album compiled by  Louisa Thompson-Price, who is named as a contributor to the chapter that mentions the WFL toy factory.

How long was the factory in production? Mrs Sarah Ann Mustard (1864-1936), of 48 Moresby, Upper Clapton, had been president of the Hackney branch of the WFL from about 1910 and it is she who described the work of the factory at a WFL meeting- in Mayfair – on 26 March 1915. However, the WFL’s newspaper,The Vote, then goes decidedly quiet on the factory and its products. It is especially curious that none of the reports of the many fund-raising bazaars makes any mention of Hackney-made toys for sale – nor does The Vote carry any small ads for its wares.

And yet the WFL had felt it worthwhile to ask Fleet Street photographer, Barratts, to come along to their ‘factory’ and take a photograph. This doesn’t seem to have been published in The Vote, but, fortunately, was issued as a postcard – allowing us a glimpse of one all- but- forgotten War Work effort with, in the background, an array of its products.

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Tonight Kate Parry Frye – in the guise of Romola Garai – appears on our television screens (Sunday 17 August, ITV at 9pm). What was she doing on this day 100 years ago?

Kate was still on holiday from her work with the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage, spending the time with her sister and mother in their rented rooms at 10 Milton Street, Worthing. However, this was no summer idyll such as the Fryes had enjoyed in days gone by. Then they had rented a large house and travelled down from London with their four servants, to spend a season by the sea. Now that they were virtually penniless, these rented rooms were all they could call home. In the life of Kate and, more tragically in that of  her sister, we see the jarring disconnect when young women, brought up to a life where marriage was to be their only trade, are left with insufficient money to support their social position and expectations. As such Kate’s life story is very much a tale of its time.

Monday August 17th 1914

Gorgeous day. Up and at house work. Out 12.30-  just to the shops. Wrote all the afternoon  and after tea to 6. Papers full of interest. Preparing for the biggest battle in the World’s History. There is no doubt the English have landed over there. I hear from John most days – that he is very busy but not a word of what his work is. Mickie [her Pomeranian] and I went out after tea. Agnes still a bit limp.

John Collins, Kate’s fiancé, who had long been an officer in the Territorial Army, had already been recalled to his barracks at Shoeburyness – leaving his engagement with a touring repertory theatre company. Kate’s sister, Agnes, at the first hint of the European trouble had taken to her bed, prostrate. Kate, a would-be playwright, was busy writing – although exactly what she was writing at this time she doesn’t divulge. On her death forty-five years later she left behind a box of unpublished scripts – and one that was published. She  hoped one day to achieve fame and fortune. As it was she would soon be back at work at her suffrage society’s headquarters – with a new role as organizer of their War Work Work Room.

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £4.99 from Amazon.

I’d love to hear what you think of Kate and the life she lived. 

To read in detail about Kate’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign – in a beautifully-produced, highly illustrated, conventional paper book – see  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

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Based on her prodigious diary, this e-book is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the  ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’, in which Romola Garai plays Kate. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here. Kate appeared in the second episode – which you can now watch here.

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  from Amazon .

Writing up her diary in her miserable rented room in Worthing on 7 August 1914 Kate could not have thought – even in her wildest dreams – and she certainly did on occasion allow herself wild dreams of fame – that one hundred years later YOU would be able to read her life story.

It is something of a fairytale – from the discovery of the boxes of wringing-wet diaries in a north London cellar to the publication of Kate’s story, now available for the World to read at the click of a mouse.  It is a dream realised, not only for the Kate I have got to know so well and who through her diary entries makes us privy to her hopes, but also for myself. To be given the chance to resurrect the story of an ‘ordinary’ woman (though she most certainly was not ordinary to herself) is the culmination of a lifetime of biographical reading.  Moreover it is ‘hidden lives’ -such as Kate’s – that have been of abiding interest.

There is a certain fitness that at a time when the major publishing conglomerates tend, for safety’s sake, to concentrate on the lives of those whose names are already known – for whom a market already exists – that it is a television company, ITV, that is taking a bow at a venture and allowing you to read the life of an ordinary woman. Kate, I am sure, would have been most interested to watch The Great War: the People’s Story. For her entire life she was entranced by the telling of tales – in novels, on the stage, on film, on radio and, in her latter years, on television and it so happens that the one play she succeeded in getting published was set on the Western Front – in the final hour of the Great War.

When editing Kate’s suffrage years as Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary I did briefly debate (and did so at much greater length in a post – Kate Frye and the Problem of the Diarist’s Multiple Roles)  the ethics of mining a diary and presenting only one aspect of the subject’s life. I have now been able to reconcile any doubts I might have had. Kate’s suffrage diary undoubtedly adds to our understanding of the suffrage campaign and it is now with considerable satisfaction that I am able to present to you Kate’s life in its entirety.

Coincidentally yesterday I spotted a new blog review of Campaigning for the Vote that not only gives a delightfully long review of that book – but also reveals that the writer is longing to know more about Kate and – at the last moment – is pleased to have just downloaded the e-book and begin a deeper acquaintance.

 

If you are interested to find out more about Kate’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign – in a beautifully-produced, highly illustrated, conventional paper book. .In London it is in stock in Foyles, Charing Cross Road, and at the Persephone Bookshop in Lamb’s Conduit Street. and is available by mail order from the publisher –  see  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary

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TODAY’S THE DAY ITV is publishing  Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this e-book is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’, in which Romola Garai plays Kate. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here. The first episode of the series can be seen on ITV at 9pm on Sunday 10 August – I think Kate makes her entrance in Episode 2 – 17 August.

Leading up to publication I’ve shared with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Today’s in the last in this series. Writing up her diary in her miserable rented room in Worthing on 7 August 1914 Kate could not have thought – even in her wildest dreams – and she certainly did on occasion allow herself wild dreams of fame – that one hundred years later YOU would be able to read her life story.

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. It will also be available  -today –  any moment now – on Amazon.

 

Through her day-to-day experience as recorded in her diary we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate Frye was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft – but has now begun her summer holiday, staying with her mother and sister in Worthing.

‘Friday August 7th 1914

News of British steamer – the Queen Amphion – having been sunk by a German mine – some of them saved, but many including some German prisoners blown to bits. Nothing else official. Rumours of course of all kinds – some to make one’s heart ache. But the admiration of the World for plucky Belgium. A lovely day. Up and did my room – our landlady is so disorganized it is the only way of getting it done before night. Jobs.

Mother went out and did the shopping then I took Mickie out to the Beach 12.30 to 1. Had a Telegram from John when I got in asking me to meet him in London tomorrow. So after lunch I went off to find out about trains and send the answer – telling him to let me know where to meet.

Then on the Parade for a miserable walk until 4.45. Jobs in the evening and sat talking to Agnes. Mother out in the evening. I did not go but sat upstairs. Agnes still in bed and very weak. I felt dead tired. After supper there was a wild rumour so I rushed out to get a later paper. The Germans have asked for an Armistice at Liege. It says they have 25,000 dead and wounded. It seems impossible. The wonderful German army. There could only be an excuse for the Kaiser taking his country to War, and that would be that his army is invincible – that nothing could vanquish it and that he is prepared to conquer Europe. If not the man must be a fool.’ 

And with that decisive opinion we take our leave of Kate – at least for the time being.

To read in detail about Kate’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign – in a beautifully-produced, highly illustrated, conventional paper book – see  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

Tomorrow – 7 August 2014 – ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’, in which Romola Garai plays Kate. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £4.99 from Amazon.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft – but has now begun her summer holiday, staying with her mother and sister in Worthing.

Thursday August 6th 1914

A fearful wind all day. Up late and household jobs seeing after Agnes etc – out at 12 with dear love, bought a paper and sat in a shelter reading it until 1. There is very little official news, but I think there is no doubt they are arranging for an expeditionary force to go to help France and Belgium. Germany seems ruthlessly violating every treaty that was made and will soon end by not having a single friend in Europe or elsewhere. The Belgians area making a most spirited and heroic defence of their forts – and so far the Germans have had a set back which could never have calculated upon. They thought the Belgians would let them calmly walk through their country to attack France. A nice sense of honour  they must have got themselves. We have the sinking of a German mine layer to our credit.

The reading of the paper and rushing out for the latest Editions has become a vice with me, but I can’t keep away from them. Read in the afternoon, and who should arrive but Stella Richardson at 3.30 till 4.45 and had tea with us. But I felt in no mood for her with her cheap opinions. I am afraid I flared out at her. Agnes was of course in bed all day, said she felt a bit better.

I had a card from John – he has his orders – has to report himself at Shoeburyness on Sunday. Oh dear!!! A letter from Constance full of War news – their men being called up – the younger generation volunteering etc – and Jack Gilbey off to the front. That pretty gay young lad. What a responsibility the Kaiser has taken upon himself to be sure. Oh if only someone could get at him and his precious son and do for them. John thinks banishment to Bacup the best punishment – we want to get him here and hammer him all over beginning with his feet. I have heard someone suggest cutting his head off and making it into sausages for the Germans to eat – and that she would willingly turn the handle. I wonder what history will make of him?

It was ironic that Stella Richardson should choose this moment to call. She was very much a representative of the ‘gay and reckless’ life that Kate had once enjoyed. You will be able to read about Stella – and her husband – and their relationship with Kate – in Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette.

Kate’s diary is certainly a faithful record of events. On the Today programme this morning a naval historian mentioned the sinking of that mine layer as being one of the first naval actions of the War.Moreover,  I think it’s interesting that on a day such as this – with no knowledge of what lies ahead (perhaps, despite what John predicts, the war will be over by Christmas) – that Kate thinks, however fleetingly, in terms of the Kaiser’s place in history. While concerning herself with the quotidian, she is well able to appreciate that hers is but one moment in time. It is this self-awareness that gives the diary a measure of importance as a document of social history.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’, in which Romola Garai plays Kate. 

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £4.99 from Amazon.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Kate has just begun her summer holiday – staying with her mother and sister in their rented rooms in Worthing.

Monday August 3rd 1914

I think the Blackest Bank Holiday that the world has ever known. What an appalling day – the most dire and awful depressio over everyone – like a pall shutting out the idea of holiday – jollity, sunshine and air – everything dead and dumb and yet one’s nerves turned up to a frightful pitch.

A European War and England must be drawn in. It is all rushing upon us now – a huge welter of realisation of what we are in for – what our navy means to us, and what the machines of death will bring to innocent men and their wives and families.

I am all for peace – always for peace, war is too repulsive, but I am for the honour of England too – and come what may we must link ourselves with France and help keep off the aggressive – brutal – nation that is at her doors. What an awful day. I shall never forget it.

Agnes in bed very seedy in that miserable dark hole of a room – would not even have the blind up all day. I went out in the morning and evening for strolls – not a smile on the face of anyone one met – simply a grim, hard, and quiet manner, but terror at our hearts. What will the war mean towards us?

Read the papers all the afternoon. The Bank Holidays are to continue for 3 more days to let the staff get things into order and issue £1 & 10/- notes to make up for the shortage of gold. Some people are getting panic stricken – taking out their money. Then some people are buying up huge quantities of food stuffs and stocking their houses as for a siege. How mean and beastly of them – the people with money trying to get some advantage over the poor who cannot hoard – and of course creating an artificial demand and raising prices needlessly. One lady bought 18 hams – besides a huge amount of other goods – some people giving orders of £75. I hope their foodstuffs will be chasing them round the house before they can eat it. 

Travellers are getting stranded in Austria and Germany where they are mobilizing and using the railways for that purpose so that people cannot get home. Oh dear – oh dear. It’s awful.

I did not go out after tea but greased Mickie’s skin for 2 hours. He is in an awful state. I brought a small pot of my stock of grease when we left the Plat last September.

Well, Kate’s words speak for themselves. Hers was the experience of most of Britain – a month ago she would never have dreamed that the country was about to enter a European War. Then, on 3 July,after a morning of canvassing for ‘votes for women’ in Peckham,  she and John had pottered down to Worthing for a short weekend-break.  As unremarkable a couple of days by the seaside as one could imagine. Here she was in Worthing again – and the world she had known was turning upside down.

Do look at this article on Worthing History  to read about the enticing range of entertainments Worthing had to offer on that Bank Holiday Monday while Agnes, typically, lay in her ‘dark hole of a room.’ Kate, although she may not have gone to listen to the illuminated concert on the Parade, at least went out to sample Worthing’s mood and when at home soaked up what information there was in the papers. Knowing  how near to penury her family now  was, we can recognise why she took a very personal interest in the reported selfishness of the wealthy.

NOW PUBLISHED (7 August) Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £5. 14 from Amazon.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’, in which Romola Garai plays Kate. 

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £4.99 from Amazon.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Thursday July 30th 1914

The holiday that I have longed for – from the point of view of rest but know that I shall not enjoy from the point of  view of enjoyment – has come at last. It is years since I have had a holiday free from some anxiety that I can’t believe in this one much.

Up at 7. Breakfast at 8 and my man came for the luggage and got a Taxi and I left here at 9.30 – parting from the Misses Heffer in great friendliness. At Victoria it was a pandemonium. I don’t know what was the matter with the station – it couldn’t be all the holiday traffic, but I had to fight to get a Porter and to get my luggage put in the train – and we were 20 minutes late in reaching Worthing.

The journey seemed short as I had bought no end of papers to read of the Crisis – it is becoming too awfully serious for words. Home politics are clean out of it at this moment – everyone’s interest is fixed further afield. Fancy a European War at this period of our so-called civilization.

Mother met me at Worthing station looking most depressed – oh dear I am so tired of it. Agnes not well to start with. I arranged with a porter to bring my things and walked up with Mother to 10 Milton Street. ‘Dear love’ raced up the road – he was ever so pleased. Agnes does not look well. Mother is going to Wooburn on Wednesday so I am to have her room to save 2 moves. We had lunch and sat and talked. Tea at 4 then I unpacked a little bit – it’s an awful muddle being in anyone else’s room. The three of us then took a walk, supper and bed. I feel utterly tired and depressed.

Well, as Kate guessed – she – and the rest of Britain – had not picked the right year if they wanted  a quiet summer holiday untroubled by anxiety. The pandemonium at Victoria was an indication that, with the crisis in Europe mounting, people had found a sudden necessity to travel. Holiday makers from the Continent , of whom Kate had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there appeared to be many more in London than usual, were cutting short their stay in Britain and returning home.

Kate had been born in 1878 and during her lifetime had  known  a Europe in the main at peace. I don’t think there was a mention in her 1913 diary of the troubles in the distant Balkans – she had been far too caught up in the suffrage struggle at home.  In the days when the Fryes were still prosperous she had spent long, languid holidays at spas in Germany and Austria  – how difficult it must have been to contemplate – at least initially -that the people she had met there were likely now to be ‘the enemy’. The war that had involved her generation had been fought in far-off South Africa  – a rather more suitably exotic stage on which to mount the clash of arms.

In the meantime it was back to the gloom of family life – such of it as remained – in rented rooms in Worthing. The ‘holiday’ element merely meant that for a month or so Kate didn’t have to go into the Office each day – or canvass for ‘Votes for Women’ around London. She obviously wasn’t expecting much in the way of pleasure – but at least would be with ‘Dear love’ – aka as ‘Mickie -, her beloved Pomeranian.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. 

To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958  – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or  £4.99 from Amazon.

 

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Wednesday July 29th 1914

A busy morning of packing and cleaning and washing. I had ordered a chop so had my meal in – and [went]  out at 3. Took a coat and skirt to try and sell but no one would have it – so had to take it to the Office. Gladys was there – very important and bad tempered. How she snapped at me. Mrs Chapman came in and she was discussing the grave crisis of the War. The area is spreading. She is going to Austria – and Alexandra and Gladys too – to the Tyrol – but they will never get there if things develop.

Had tea and said good-bye to Miss Burnaby who is leaving the staff as she had a very good appointment elsewhere – and good-bye to Miss Simeon and Gladys. It seems so final somehow. I could wish I wasn’t going back. I have grown so sick of the work. In saying good-bye to Gladys she said to me ‘Please don’t make a speech’ in such a rude, aggressive manner. I tried to turn it off by saying if I were doing so it was because I had had so much practice lately, and she said ‘Oh, Yes. Mr McKillop has been in today singing your praises – saying how well you speak that you ought to be made to speak, and what a splendid organiser you are, and what a wonderful person altogether.’ So I suppose that was the trouble. I got my salary and holiday cheque and made off.

Bus to Whiteleys and shopped, tried to get rid of coat and skirt – bus to Oxford Street and strolled all round the British Museum as I remembered a shop buying off me once. No good – so I enjoyed the curio and picture shops. Walked down to the Strand – had a vile meal at Slaters there – walked to Trafalgar Square and got my 24 Pimlico bus back at 9 o’clock. I wonder when I shall stroll about London again. Finished my packing and then to bed.

How Kate must have disliked lugging an old coat and skirt around London all day – in the vain hope of selling them for a shilling or two. Especially having listened to others in the Office making plans for the kind of continental holiday she had once enjoyed – and never would again.

Kate had already had considerable experience of selling garments belonging to members of her family to a variety of ‘old clo” women – usually around Kensington – as well as jewellery – and even her parents’ old false teeth – so I imagine she had become rather inured to the associated humiliation. By ‘strolled around the British Museum’ she means, of course, the streets around the BM, rather than the Museum itself. Bloomsbury was then a centre for curio shops, second-hand bookshops and picture dealers and picture framers. It still is, to a certain extent, if one blanks out the tatty souvenir shops.

And the number 24 is still the bus that runs from Trafalgar Square to Pimlico.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV published an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the  ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I shared some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Monday July 27th 1914 [Kate has been staying for the weekend at the Kennels, a house in which her aunt Agnes Gilbey was living on the Gilbey estate at Wooburn]

Breakfast 8.30. Put my things together, had a talk to Mrs Wootten on the Telephone at The Plat then with Constance walked to the Manor Farm and she showed me all over it. It is a dream of a place, and the garden is perfect. Then she saw me off by the 11 o’clock train to Paddington.

At Maidenhead Mrs Burls was seeing her daughter Olga and ‘Emma Murry’ off and they got in my carriage – she recognised me so I had to chat. I was very absorbed in the paper. Great and serious news – a terrible conflict between the Nationalist Volunteers in Dublin and the Police – 3 shot dead and many wounded. Will this mean an Election? Things seem really serious in Ireland – and then the even more serious continental news.

By underground to Victoria and bus to Claverton St. Just unpacked my things and then bust to Victoria – lunch at Slaters and met Mrs Chapman at 3 o’clock and we went to Peckham together canvassing. We kept on until about 5.30 – having the usual sort of experiences – then tea together in an ABC and I saw Mrs Chapman off. I did some more canvassing, then bought an evening paper and went into a Lyons and ate a macaroon to read it. There is going to be serious war and Russia and Germany are beginning to fall out now. Oh dear.

To the Triangle at 7.45 – and our meeting at 8. I took the Chair and Miss Hawley and Miss D’Oyly were the speakers. I got the names of 10 sympathisers and we had  a nice meeting but did not keep it going so long as ususal. I was back home at 10.15. had some supper of a kind and then to bed.

The significance of looking around the Wooburn Manor Farm lay in the fact that Aunt Agnes Gilbey, together with her unmarried daughter, Constance, and her widowed daughter, Katie Finch-Smith, were soon to move into this house on their estate – and remain there for the remainder of their lives. Olga Burls who sat with Kate in her railway carriage on the way back to London was then about 17 years old and, with the middle name ‘Gilbey’, was in some way related to the family. I can only guess that ‘Emma Murry, whose name was put in quotes by Kate,’ was a dog – unless, of course, she was a maid!

As we can see Kate was still – just – marginally more concerned about events in Ireland, which might trigger a General Election and thereby disrupt her planned holiday break,  than with war preparations in Europe. And, of course, Peckham still needed to hear the message – ‘Votes for Women’.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Sunday, 26th July 1914 [Kate is staying for the weekend at the Kennels, a house in which her aunt Agnes Gilbey was living on the Gilbey estate at Wooburn]

A cold and showery day. I had a beautiful bath and was down to breakfast. Constance of course had been to Church but as she was not ‘feeling her best’ much to her annoyance she could not go to morning service. Aunt Agnes came downstairs and said she felt better. She stayed up until after supper. We had a fire in the drawing-room it was so chilly.

I wrote letters and chatted all the morning. Gilbert, Edith and their 3 daughters came to luncheon. A most uninteresting party – really Edith is a block. She never wrote to Mother when Daddie died – or referred to it in any way. She is horrible. Gilbert brought the news that the Stock exchange was in an awful way yesterday – in a state of collapse over the War rumours. Things are so allied nowadays that I suppose Servia and Austria make a panic everywhere – in case England is drawn in too. The ‘Chalklands’ family went off about 3.

I got ready and we went for a stroll all around the garden and on the hill. The valley did look lovely – the silver thread of the Thames running through it madee me very sad too – I cried a little. Then I sat out of doors until tea was ready, and just as we had started tea Newman’s Jack [that is Jack Gilbey, son of Newman Gilbey] – now a full blown Lieutenant and one of his younger brothers Frank arrived on a Motor Cycle. He has ridden from Aldershot and fetched his brother from Beaumont [Jesuit boarding school then at Old Windsor, Berkshire]  and came on to tea with his grandmother. They are most fascinating boys – Jack is a dear and so amusing. How well I remember the 3 in the old days Harry, Jack and Charlie. Charlie is now engaged to Lettice Watney. It seems simply absurd – she may be only a year or so older, but in type and character she seems a middle aged woman. What strange marriages they make.

After the two boys had gone Constance and I hurried off to evening service at the Parish Church. Mr Unsworth preached but was not very interesting. Back and changed for supper, when I had 2 goes of everything to make up, as I told them, for going supperless tomorrow. Bed at 10.10. They really have been more than kind and though I dreaded coming I have enjoyed myself.

The description of Constance ‘not feeling her best’ – inside Kate’s inverted commas – was probably a euphemism for ‘having her period’. In Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette  I do discuss the blight that menstruation appeared to cast over the lives of Kate’s circle – but I’ve not previously come across it as a reason for not being able to go to Morning Service. Unless, of course, when 11 o’clock came Constance was actually feeling unwell.

Gilbert and Edith Gilbey lived at ‘Chalklands’, a house at Bourne End that was subsequently owned by the writer Edgar Wallace. At this stage their family comprised three daughters (one of whom, Brenda, was to become too keen a supporter of Hitler for Kate’s liking at the beginning of the Second World War), to which a son was added in 1917.  All three of Newman Gilbey’s sons, Harry, Jack and Charlie, were fortunate enough to survive the coming war – although there were casualties among their cousins, including two of the sons of Gilbert and Newman’s sister, Agnes Shaw.

A few years earlier Lettice Watney had helped Kate organize a dance in aid of funds for the London Society for Women’s Suffrage –  in the days when Kate was still a volunteer for the Cause. Lettice was exactly a year older than Charlie Gilbey; they were married in June 1915. Lettice’s ancestry is inextricably linked, back through several generations, with the Gilbey and Gold families

 

 

In April 1892 Kate and Agnes Frye were bridesmaids at this double Gilbey/Gold wedding . Agnes, carrying yellow roses, was among Mary’s bridesmaids – Kate was among Lizzie’s bridesmaids, who were themed with pink roses.  As Agnes remarked of a Blyth/Gold marriage in 1897  ‘Are they all going to marry each other?’ I can see that this phenomenon continues down until the present day.   Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette describes the way, for good and ill, the lives of the Frye family were intertwined with that of the Gilbeys.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here. As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman. Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

Friday July 24th 1914 Felt rotten. Up late. Jobs and writing but practically gave myself a holiday. It was a very heavy day. I had ordered a chop to come in so ate my dinner within. Had tea and then out – but rather late as I had waited to see if we were in for  thunderstorm. Some supper at Lyons at Charing Cross – then to Covent Garden and up in the gallery to hear Charpentier’s ‘Louise’. It had already commenced but I found a seat near the door-  the Russian Opera at Drury Lane must have made a huge difference to Covent Garden. Edvina was singing as Louise. I was disappointed at first but I think it improves immensely as it goes along and the end is fine and so splendidly acted – it made one feel wrought up. It is a very elaborate opera. I heard Ruby Heye [sic – I can’t really make out this name] – Ivan’s friend – in a small part and if she was the girl I picked out she was good. Not in until 12.15.

Louise Edvina was a Canadian soprano, the first to perform in London as ‘Louise’ in Charpentier’s eponymous opera. As Kate hints, the Drury Lane Theatre season of Russian opera and ballet rather eclipsed the Covent Garden Opera House offerings. Among the wonders of the 1914 Russian season were ‘Boris Gudonov’ with Chaliapin, ‘Prince Igor’, ‘Coq-d’Or and ‘Daphnis and Chloe’. ‘Ivan’ was Ivan Phillipowski, a young pianist whom Kate had met when they shared digs in Dover in 1913. Ivan was then in his late teens – very much younger than Kate – but he appears to have been rather smitten with her – or so Kate confided to her diary. Ivan was to have a  successful musical career and in the inter-war years Kate occasionally went to his concerts. Or, at least she went when she could do so without her husband knowing. John was clearly rather jealous.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary. Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing.

For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

‘Thursday July 23rd 1914

To Office to attend the Committee for the last time as we break up next week. It was simply awful – Alexandra Wright lost her temper before everyone and made a scene. And then Miss McGowan lost hers and was frantic and Gladys was very rude to her. I felt like walking downstairs and away, but I made myself go back and I gripped Ailie [Alexandra] by the arm and did what I could to soothe her.

Everyone left but Mrs Hartley- she is very good with everyone and we four went out to lunch at Harrods together. But it was all most sickening. Came back and worked in the office until 6 o’clock and did some packing up there. Bus to Victoria – shopped and walked down. Rested till my meal at 8 o’clock and afterwards some writing.’

Well, from my pretty extensive reading of the minutes of suffrage societies I can say that such scenes were not at all infrequent. Of course usually we can only glimpse the atmosphere in the committee room from the wording and tone of minutes of a meeting. Here we have it unglossed. This was a fight – but about what, heaven knows.

Mrs Hartley, who appears here as a peace-maker but about whom Kate can sometimes be quite sharp, has an interesting history. She was born Beatrice Julia Sichel in Timperley, Cheshire, in 1857 – daughter of Julius Sichel, a merchant and Austrian vice-consul, and his wife, Matilda Britannia (nee Lloyd).  Beatrice Sichel was orphaned after her mother died in 1872 and her father in 1874 – at Dinard. She was then adopted as her daughter by Eliza Lynn Linton, the novelist., and in 1880, at Hampstead, married Lion Hertz, who had been born in the Netherlands though a British subject. They had three children and, although I can find no record of Lion Hertz’s death in Britain, in the 1891 census Beatrice Hertz is described as a widow. By 1898 Mrs Hertz had changed/anglicized her surname – and those of her children – to ‘Hartley’. She had been hon secretary of the Hampstead branch of the London Society for Women’s Suffrage before defecting to help form the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage.

Mrs Hartley’s daughter, Olga, was co-author with Mrs Hilda Leyell of the rather influential The Gentle Art of Cookery (one of the re-issues of which I remember being delighted to receive as a Christmas present many, many years ago), was associated with her in ‘Culpeppers’, the chain of herbalist shops- as well as publishing at least a couple of novels. I’ve often wondered what cookery books Kate possessed when she had to start cooking in earnest after the end of the First World War. I wonder if the New Constitutional Society – and vegetarian – connection persuaded her to buy this book.

The war was to cast its shadow over Mrs Hartley – as Kate reveals in her diary  entry for 30 November  1918 – ‘Mrs Hartley’s son Lynn was killed a month or two back. Poor woman and that is a tragedy indeed, she was simply devoted to him. Poor Mrs Hartley’.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing.

For the previous few weeks Kate’s fiancé, John Collins, had been renting  a room in another house in Claverton Street but he has now left for the West Country, to take up a position with a touring repertory company. Kate is feeling rather bereft.

‘Wednesday July 22nd 1914

To meet Miss Jerningham at 11 at Victoria and with her to Peckham by Train and we canvassed until 1.30 and then had lunch together at Newmans. Back as far as Victoria and I did some shopping and got in at 3.30. Tea at 4.30 after a rest.

Changed and then bus to Victoria and train to Praed Street and to see Miss Lockyer. I had telephoned to her yesterday as I have been meaning to go for weeks. It poured with rain, but cleared up just as I got there. She was very pleasant and seemed glad to see me, but she is very flithered [sic]. Told me all about the Frank Whiteley Divorce case which is to come on and the reasons for it – all very terrible but it never seemed likely to be a success. She was a horrid little woman.

Then at 7 to Pembridge Crescent to have dinner with Alexandra and Gladys. Mr Wright was in to the meal but I did not see him afterwards. Both the girls rather miserable –  the cottage or rather the Mother at Hythe does not seem a success.’

 

‘Newmans’, which may have had branches in both Peckham and Brixton, was, I think, a provisions dealer – with a shop that also incorporated a cafe. It may have been similar to the shops in the chain – Leverett & Frye – operated from the 1870s by Kate’s father. At least one of the Leverett & Frye stores – the one in Charlotte Street in London – had included a cafe.

Miss Lockyer had been ‘lady housekeeper’ to William Whiteley, ‘the Universal Provider’. He had been the owner of Whiteley’s department store in Westbourne Grove before he was gunned down outside his office in 1907. Kate’s father had been a  friend of Whiteley and for a time the families had been close. In their teens Kate and her sister were often paired up – at dinners and at outings to Ascot – with Frank Whiteley and his brother, Will. As she grew older, however, Kate professed to lose interest in them, thinking them too ‘shoppy’, although still enjoying the occasional whirl through London in Frank’s car. Frank had married in 1904 but in 1914 had filed for divorce, citing the cause as his wife’s misconduct with Capt Lancelot Gladwin. The settlement of the divorce case was reported in newspapers on 1 August 1914 and Ethel Whiteley and Gladwin married in October. The ‘horrid little woman’ was, of course, the transgressing Mrs Whiteley, not Miss Lockyer.

Kate had known Gladys and Alexandra Wright since 1906, when they all campaigned for the Liberals at the General Election. it was thanks to them that she was working for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. Their parents seem to have lived rather separate lives. The girls and Mrs Wright often rented houses in the Hythe area for extended periods, but I don’t think they were joined there by Mr Wright. You can read much more about Alexandra and Gladys in Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

 

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Monday 20th July 1914

Woke up at 6 and thought of John and then went to sleep again. Called at 8. Breakfast at 9 and then slept on until 10.30 when I realised I had not breakfasted – so got up and recooked the egg and dressed and went out at 2 o’clock. Had some lunch and did some shopping – in at 3.30 – had a rest and went to sleep again.

Tea at 6 – and then off to Peckham for the open-air meeting. Self in Chair and Mrs Kerr as speaker. We finished at 10.15. Home soon after 11. We did not have quite such a big crowd as usual. I was bitterly tired.

Well, life certainly does seem dreary for Kate without John.

As yet Kate, who was a keen reader of newspapers, has not commented on events in Europe or in Ireland- and nor does she mention details of the increasingly militant WSPU campaign. For instance, on 14 July an attempt was made to burn down Cocken House, owned by Lord Durham, on 15 July the Secretary for Scotland was attacked with a dog whip, on this very Monday suffragettes interrupted a service in Perth Cathedral protesting against forcible feeding of suffragettes in Perth Prison, and on 17 July a WSPU member had attacked Thomas Carlyle’s portrait in the National Portrait Gallery (see my post about the current NPG exhibition commemorating this here). It was against this background that the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage continued with its strategy of holding open-air meetings in the hope of  converting the inhabitants of south London to the idea of ‘Votes for Women’.

See also  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Sunday July 19th 1914

Slept until late. John came in early to fetch his things and then did his packing and made his arrangements and did not come until 12.30. We sent by bus to Charing Cross and had lunch at Appenrodts in the Strand.

Then a bus to Hampstead Heath. It looked very threatening and we had one shwoer, then it cleared off and we were able to wander and sit about – there were couples sitting and lying at every turn. It really is a most beautiful place. We wandered about and came to Spaniards Road so found our way to the Old Bull and Bush where we had a 1/- tea amd sat in the garden and watched people being photographed. It wasn’t very nice.

Then by Tube to Covent Garden and to the London Opera House to a meeting of the Theatrical folk called together by Mr Poel to consider the way of getting the Shakespeare Tercentenary Festival to come off in 1915 into the hands of the Profession. Stewart Headlam – very old now, was in the Chair. Mr Poel spoke, Mr Mulholland, Miss Horniman and Miss Lena Ashwell. It was a very small gathering in front. John and I were practically first in the theatre and sat in the front row – one was admitted on one’s performance card. Very few people of any note were there. It seemed strange to be figuring at a theatrical meeting again – but I always feel to belong more to that than anything and I do agree with Mr Poel that Shakespeare was an actor and wrote essentially for the stage and that we should claim him as one of us.

The meeting began at 8 and was not over until past 10. We walked to the Corner House – such a dense throng of people about the streets it was difficult to get along. I have never walked through Leicester Square before on a Sunday night – it is horrible. So as they close early Sundays we had to make a hasty meal of sandwiches. Walked to the Bus and only got one as far as Victoria and walked from there.

Said good-bye as John is due at rehearsal at 12 o’clock tomorrow at Weston-super-Mare and his cab is ordered for 6 am. He was miserable at saying good-bye. I should like to go and see him act for a week during my holiday. I mean to go if I can, but my plans never come off. Otherwise we are not due to meet until Christmas. He has signed on with the Alexander Marsh Repertory company for another year at the old salary £3 per week. It is splendid experience but if they are all as awful as he says they are he may get into some bad ways. I wonder if he can act. I have enjoyed having him here these three weeks – he is very cheery but I have often felt too tired to be nice. I have tried to give him a good time – the three weeks has slipped by.

He waited to see me upstairs and I waved from the window, and he walked backwards down the middle of the road. Then I shed a few tears. it’s all very miserable.

This really was a holiday for Kate and John -a wander on Hampstead Heath was such a typical London thing to do, but I don’t ever remember them going there before – and is fittingly poignant in retrospect as John’s farewell to peace-time London.  The garden behind the pub was dotted with tables and chairs where they sat to eat their 1/- (one shilling) tea.

The tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth actually fell in 1916. This gathering of the ‘Profession’ was probably in response to a meeting held in July by ‘ a group of distinguished men’ headed by Lord Bryce, president of the British Academy. It looks as though the ‘Profession’ felt it was being excluded from the commemoration plans and wanted to make its own mark. William Poel had founded the Elizabeth Stage Society in 1895 and as an actor and theatrical manager was particularly devoted to staging Shakespeare. Kate had had several brushes with him at the beginning of her theatrical career. Stewart Headlam was a leading clergyman – who, among his many activities, was involved with the London Shakespeare League, Annie Horniman and Lena Ashwell both ran their own theatre companies.

Throughout their lives John and Kate were devoted Shakespearean – and you will be able to read about their continuing involvement with the theatre in Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and sufffragette. In the 1920s John worked with the William Bridges-Adams company at the old wooden Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and even in the mid-1950s. well into their old age,  John and Kate were still making expeditions to Stratford to see productions starring the new generation of actors – Richard Burton, Anthony Quayle, Michael Redgrave and Peggy Ashcroft.

You can read my post about the London Opera House (which was in Kingsway) and the suffragette movement here.

Presumably John’s interview with Frank Benson a couple of days earlier had come to nothing and he had decided to tour again with the Alexander Marsh Repertory Company – which specialized in Shakespearean productions. It was, as Kate said, ‘good experience’ – but it was now over 10 years since he started in the theatre.

See also  Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Saturday 18 July 1914

Very tired – and struck work. Up late. John in about 12 and both went out at 12.15. Bus to Charing Cross – lunch off salad at Eustace Miles.

Then we tried to get in ‘The Belle of New York’ on John’s card – no good – so we wandered about and eventually got in ‘The Palace’ to see the Revue ‘The Passing Show’. I was so glad as I wanted to see Elsie Janis. She is clever -something quite out of the way, the real thing in talent and a beautiful dancer. The revue was funny in parts but a mad sort of affair – Arthur Playfair and Basil Hallam.

We walked to Piccadilly coming out – had tea at Lyons and then by bus to Earls Court to the Spanish Exhibition. A much commoner affair than the White City – like a Fair in parts but we enjoyed it. Had a good dinner which made us feel better and did a few side shows. The Spanish singing and dancing in the Empress Hall was too awful  – we were in fits. Stayed until just upon 12 – then a train to Victoria and walked down. Nearly one o’clock when I got in. I was very tired but not unhealthy – very different to last week and I had enjoyed the outing.

Eustace Miles’ Restaurant was the best-known vegetarian restaurant in London – see my post on the Eustace Miles Restaurant and Suffragettes. Incidentally Hallie Miles, Eustace’s wife, is one of the diarists who, with Kate, features in the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. So, as we think of Kate and John eating their salad at this restaurant 100 years ago today, we can ponder on the gossamer strands of coincidence that intertwine to place them both in a television programme in 2014.

‘The Belle of New York’ had been all the rage in the late 1890s and in her late teens Kate had loved to dance routines from the show – especially if she had an admiring audience.

‘The Passing Show’ had opened in April at the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was while playing in it that American-born Elsie Janis (1889-1956) and Basil Hallam met and fell in love.  However the War, now barely three weeks away, was soon to kill Hallam. In 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, he hurtled to his death from an observation balloon when his parachute failed. Elsie Janis worked throughout the War, entertaining British and American troops.

The Anglo-Spanish Exhibition was subtitled  ‘Sunny Spain’. A newspaper reported that ‘Spanish music and song will be a feature of the open-air entertainments’  and that ‘In the Empress Hall will be found realistic reproductions of Spanish cities, Spanish cathedrals, Spanish villages and pleasure resorts’  This was the nearest Kate was ever to come to Spain.  The Exhibition closed at midnight – so Kate and John had spent the whole evening there, staying until the very end.

Copyright

One hundred years ago today – on 17 July 1914 – a suffragette, Margaret Gibb, who also went by the name of Ann Hunt, took a cleaver to a portrait of Thomas Carlyle that was hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. See the damaged portrait here.

Margaret Gibb was held by an attendant, charged and, on 21 July, sentenced to six months imprisonment. She was released on 27 July – presumably under the Cat and Mouse Act, having gone on hunger strike. See here for a surveillance picture of Margaret Gibb taken in the exercise yard at Holloway. On 31 August she was spotted again at the Gallery and, although the WSPU had called a halt to its campaign, was refused admission then – and in the future.

One hundred years later the NPG has  mounted al display case exhibition – in Room 31 –  showing something of the effect of WSPU militancy on the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. Margaret Gibb’s story is related and includes a comment to the effect that it was doubted that the picture’s attacker knew that Carlyle was a particular hero of Emmeline Pankhurst – an aperçu I remember making when referring to the damaged portrait in the entry on Emmeline Pankhurst’ in my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide. I’d be rather thrilled if I was the originator of the comment – but I daresay others have thought of it independently. I was particularly struck by two small photographs of Mary Richardson in the display that date from 1918 and show her sitting, delicate and pretty, in a room neatly furnished with flowers and 18th-century furniture. This is an image far removed from the chopper-wielding attacker of the ‘Rokeby Venus’ – (see here for a post on Mary Richardson).

In the entrance – Room 30 – to the gallery that contains this display case the National Portrait Gallery has now hung the full-length  portrait of Christabel Pankhurst by Ethel Wright – opposite the Brackenbury portrait of her mother – Emmeline Pankhurst.  Christabel’s portrait, in which she is wearing a green dress – apparently a favourite colour – was painted in 1909 and first shown at the WSPU Skating Rink Exhibition. It was bought by Una Duval and remained in her family before being  bequeathed recently to the NPG.

Good as it is to raise the profile of the women’s suffrage campaign – all this attention on the WSPU only highlights for me the lack of attention given to the constitutional campaigners – those who worked for sixty years without wielding cleavers. So let me take the opportunity here of repeating my mantra  – and drawing attention to my post on the subject –  Make Millicent Fawcett Visible.

Copyright

 

 

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Friday July 17th 1914

John arrived unexpectedly early, before I was up, but I just let him in to hear the news – he has had a letter from Benson saying he would see him, so was off. I had received a letter from Mr Dingle saying he could not speak – so as soon as I was up I went off to the Men’s League at Westminster and saw someone there who called Mr McKillop in from an office next door, and he like a lamb said he would come to Isleworth in Mr Dingle’s place. I expected to have to rush round London.

So I walked up to the A.A. and found John just having lunch with a very pretty woman and joined them as I wanted to hear what Benson said, but it was a very short interview. John saw me to Charing Cross then went off to a meeting and I came back to Victoria and bought some food then came in and had a rest and fell asleep.

John came in at 5 and we had a meat tea and then off together, Bus to Victoria – train to Hammersmith – train to Isleworth arriving at 7.15 – at the Upper Square. There were hundreds of children ready to greet us, I got a friendly feeling and they were very good but a great nuisance. John went off to find the Lorry as it was not punctual, but he missed it and it arrived alright and I got it fixed up.

By the time the speakers, Miss Dransfield in the Chair, Mrs Merivale Mayer and Mr McKillop and Miss Fraser to help had arrived we were absolutely mobbed – and we got a huge gathering. The first Suffrage meeting of any kind which had been held in Isleworth.

Mrs Mayer as usual was very disagreeable when she arrived, but it was really such a magnificent meeting she was quite pleased at the end, and as usual she spoke splendidly and we quite got the people round.

Having settled up early well came away together – Mr McKillop left us from the train, we parted from Mrs M.M. at Hammersmith and Miss Fraser at Victoria.

John and I were starving and we went into a restaurant at Victoria. John had salmon and cucumber – at 11.15! It was a lovely day.

John Collins was ‘resting’ at the moment – as is clear from the amount of time he was able to devote this month to helping Kate with her suffrage work. He would have been very excited about the prospect of employment in Frank Benson’s Company. The A.A., where Kate surprised him lunching with ‘a very pretty women’, was the Actors’ Association, the club in Covent Garden to which they both belonged.

The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage to whose office Kate went for help when her speaker had failed was at 136 St Stephen’s House on the Embankment. The massive building was demolished, apparently in the early 1990s. We have already met the obliging Mr McKillop, who had for some years earlier been librarian to the fledgling London School of Economics. Kate had warmed to him after he praised her public speaking.

Well, this must have been the site of Isleworth’s first ‘Votes for Women’ meeting – or, at least, the first of which Kate had heard tell. Presumably during her canvassing she had met with plenty of local people who would have given her this kind of information. By ‘fixing up’ the Lorry Kate meant that she decorated it with posters – inquisitive children were suffragettes’ constant companions.

You can read about Mrs Merivale Mayer in Campaigning for the Vote – suffice it to say that Kate found her a great trial and, I am sure, knew nothing of her somewhat scandalous history. If she had known she would doubtless have felt vindicated in her dislike for this most difficult of the New Constitutional Society’s speakers. But Kate gave credit where it was due and often commented, as she does here, that despite the ructions she caused Mrs Mayer was an excellent speaker.

 

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Tuesday July 14th 1914

Felt much better. what a relief – I was bubbling over with the joy of life. John came in before I  had finished dressing but as I had to go out I left him at work on his Typewriter finishing something for the afternoon, and I went off to the Office, taking my dress for the afternoon with me.

Helped arrange things for the afternoon – and John came and he helped. Then when I could get away I changed and he and I went out to lunch and then back at 2.15 for the Summer Sale and Tea at the [ew].C[onstitutional] Hall. His work was to raffle signed photographs and mine to tie up parcels. But I never tied up one – the Palmist failed and I had to Palm – I hated it, but I really had quite a good time. Miss Lena Ashwell opened the Sale and though there did not seem many people we made quite a lot of money.

Mr Grein came straight from the Haymarket Theatre and the first Public Performance of ‘Ghosts’ as it has now been Licensed and had his hand read. But it was really very funny as he seemed to want to talk more about me – told me to go and see him – gave me his card, and said he liked my ‘eye’.

Gladys [Wright] was quite put about, ‘of course you will be leaving us now’ etc. She is quaint. But I do think the vain little man took rather a fancy to me and I imagine he is always on the look out for people likely to do him credit. I played up rather a game with him, but he quite took it all in. John was awfully upset.

John and I had tea together, and I think he enjoyed himself – he wore a new suit which was quite a success. We left soon as we could – rushed home and just tidied ourselves but no time for much – then out – no time for dinner – but straight to the Haymarket Theatre – Balcony stalls to see ‘Driven’. I enjoyed it immensely – beautifully produced and Alexandra Carlisle looking a perfect picture and greatly improved in her art and Owen Nares a fine actor – simply delightful in a most difficult part. Aubrey Smith as usual but good. The last act is idiotic, of course. John and I are certainly leading the gay and reckless life.

To supper at the Corner House. Waited for the last bus, but must just have missed it. Then found we had missed the last to Victoria – so made for the Underground. It had started to pour with rain by then and John in his new suit. We just caught the last train 12.20 and had to walk from Victoria, but fortunately the rain had not reached this district.

The New Constitutional Society’s Hall was close to their Office, inside Park Mansions Arcade in Knightsbridge. This is now the site of the Burberry Menswear Department (see ‘Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Frye and Knightsbridge’  ). Kate had developed her skill as a Palmist in her youth – in lieu of the more conventional accomplishments expected of a young woman – such as piano playing, singing, or reciting. In her early involvement with the women’s suffrage movement she had often, as a volunteer, provided palm-reading entertainment at bazaars and dances. (See ‘Palmist at the Women’s Freedom League Fair).

Lena Ashwell was a leading member of the Actresses’ Franchise League and, over the years had opened many a suffrage bazaar and fair.  A month from now she would be the instigator of the Women’s Theatre Camps Entertainments and of the Women’s Emergency Corps.

On Sunday 26 April 1914 Kate had been in charge of the box office  at the Court Theatre (later the Royal Court) when J.T. Grein staged a private performance of Ibsen’s ‘Ghosts’ as a fund-raising event for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. This, of course, was before the Lord Chamberlain had removed his censorship of it by, as Kate explains, granting the play a performance Licence. Dutch-born Grein was a champion of European theatre.

‘Driven’, on the other hand, was a rather English comedy by E. Temple Thurston. The play’s run at the Haymarket came to an abrupt end at the outbreak of war – but in December was staged on Broadway, with Alexandra Carlisle again in the cast. The producer was Charles Frohman, with whose company Kate had had her first professional engagement ten years or so previously.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV published an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Monday July 13th 1914

Up late. Letters all the morning. John came in and sat with me. Lunch together at Slaters, then I met Mrs Chapman and we went together to Peckham and canvassed. We had tea together and I saw her off about 5.30.

Then I wandered about and John met me at the corner of Rye Lane at 6. He had not had tea so I went with him to have some – then we strolled on the Rye and to the Triangle at 7.30. Had to take the Chair and, as Miss Feddon had not turned up at 8.15, I went on as long as I could as Miss D ‘Oyly was the only other speaker.

But Miss Feddon arrived and held the crowd for a long time. I had not wanted to speak before John, but as I had to I did it. He said he was surprised how well I did it – no hesitating and he heard one man in the crowd say ‘That’s the one I like to hear, she comes straight to the point.’

Miss D’Oyly went off early but Miss Feddon returned with us and we 3 went into a restaurant at Victoria and had some supper than we walked back and we saw her to Chichester Street. She is a nice woman but overwrought with militancy. The things that are going on are too awful, it is enough to wring anyone’s heart and mind.

I had felt really ill in the morning and feared a collapse, but I started on my white Liver Tabloids and they seemed to act by the evening. I felt decidedly better  Not in until 12 o’clock.

 Perhaps Kate and John met at this corner – where Hanover Park meets Rye Lane? Probably not, but Williamsons looks a handy place to have some tea here. (Image courtesy of Transpontine website)

[Constance] Marguerite Fedden (1879-1962) came from a wealthy Bristol family and at this time was principal of a College of Housecraft and Domestic Science, 4 Chichester Street, Pimlico.  During the First World War she worked as a VAD nurse at Salonika. From Kate’s remarks she clearly was very troubled by the pitch of aggression that had now  been reached in the struggle between the militant suffragettes –  the WSPU – and the government.

A few days previously Mrs Pankhurst had yet again been arrested and  had immediately undergone a hunger and thirst strike. She was then released on a four-day licence, under the terms of the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act. She was soon to be rearrested.

Other leading members of the WSPU, such as Flora Drummond, Annie Kenney and Norah Dacre Fox, were also under constant threat of rearrest after failing to comply with the terms of their licence. In May and June the number of arson and bomb attacks had escalated throughout the country and already in July there had been explosions at Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh and, on the day previous to this entry, at St John’s Westminster.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV published an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and was a tie-in with the ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I shared some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Sunday July 12th 1914

It simply came down in sheets. I had a rest and got up late. John came in at 12 – we had meant to go into the country but it was awful and so tiring as there was thunder in the air and every now and again it seemed most oppressive. We went out at 1.30 – bus to Trafalgar Square.

We did not know where to go so dashed in a restaurant in the Haymarket – very expensive and full of smart people – so, as we were anything but smart, it was rather awful. However we had a very good lunch and bore our shabbiness with as much of an air as we could.

It was still pouring when we came out so there was nothing for it but to come back. John did some typing and then we had tea – and went out again at 6. Walked all along the Embankment and over on the other side by St Thomas’ Hospital. The Houses of Parliament do look lovely from there. Over Westminster Bridge and we sat in the Charing Cross Embankment Gardens until 9 when we were turned out.

Then to Appenrodts in the Strand for some supper and a very delicious salad. Back by bus. Not in till 11.30.

 

Kate and John’s 12 July 1914 is the epitome of a peaceful, rather boring, London Sunday. I daresay we’ve all spent a day like this. The kind of day when it rains and rains and then clears up for a watery sunlit evening. Neither Kate or John had cooking facilities in the room – hence the regular eating out.

 

 

Hermann Appenrodt had come to London in 1886 from Germany and had launched a very successful chain of delicatessens and restaurants. In 1914 he had three branches in the Strand. Appenrodt also had a branch in Paris which, a little over a month after Kate and John had enjoyed this Sunday supper, wa sto be badly damaged by an anti-German mob.

 

Copyright

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Saturday July 11th 1914

I was most frightfully tired – really felt very seedy. Up late – then John came in, and we went out together and had some lunch in Lyons, but it was so nasty we did not get nourished. To the Duke of York’s Theatre by bus and Stalls to see ‘The Land of Promise’ which we enjoyed immensely.

The first act was real, the others impossible but the whole thing charming and so beautifully produced and acted. Irene Vanbrugh and Godfrey Tearle quite delightful both of them. It was quite like a professional matinee – nearly all pros. Gladys Cooper in a box – I don’t think her pretty and such a mean silly little face.

No end of people we knew and suddenly someone came up and spoke to me. For the moment I couldn’t remember and then the voice – Miss Mabel Wynne, the great fat girl in ‘Quality Street’ and grown quite slim. She knew me at once she said. I haven’t seen her since those days. She has been on the stage ever since, is very shoppy, and no nearer getting to London. Irene Vanbrugh got quite an ovation after every act – she is a brainy actress.

John and I went to the A.A. and there was Miss Wynne again – so we had a chat over tea. Then John and I by tube to the White City and there we strolled about. I was dead tired and had the rat horribly until we had some dinner when I revived a bit but felt anything but lively and walked about in rather a dead fashion.

We did not try many side shows and they were failures. Bostocks Zoo – heaps of performing lions but all very sad. We missed most of it as we went there last but we saw the poor dears fed. We also saw some wonderful racing on a miniature motor track, but John was seized with a panic fear so we came out.

It was really a most amusing evening there as the Eton and Harrow match had been played – Eton winning and all the boys, mothers  and fathers, cousins and uncles were there. It was a crush and crowd, all the side shows packed, crowds waiting for everything and so much real typical English excitement – not only amongst the young folks,  but even Mas and Pas, and all decorated with light blue.

It was a scene on the Witching Waves – they collared the whole corner and in the end had to stop it and get a policeman!!! How the boys enjoyed the joke. It made me feel very old to be walking round in that mournful manner in the midst of all that fun. We did not leave until 12 – got a train to Victoria and then had to walk. Oh I was tired.

‘The Land of Promise’ was a three-act comedy about life on the Canadian prairie written for Irene Vanbrugh by  Somerset Maugham. Kate had actually appeared alongside Godfrey Tearle- for one performance only – in Christopher St John’s censored play, ‘The Coronation’ [see Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary pages 88-89]. Kate had met Mabel Wynne while touring in J.M. Barrie’s ‘Quality Street’ in 1903/4 – in the early days of  her stage career. Mabel had played the part of ‘Patty, a cheeky servant’.

The ‘A.A.’ was the Actors’ Association – a club – with premises at 10 King Street, Covent Garden.

After the theatre Kate and John went to the Anglo-American Exhibition, which had opened on 14 May, to celebrate a century of peace between Britain and America. Until 1908 this area at Shepherds Bush had been farmland before becoming first the site of the Franco-British Exhibition and then of the Olympics. The sideshows ‘such as made Coney Island one of the merriest spots in America’, as one newspaper report put it, were very much a feature of the exhibition.

Kate was very much an animal lover – hence her qualms about the ‘heaps of performing lions’. A little over a month later newspapers reported that  ‘Three healthy medium-sized elephants have been requisitioned from Bostock’s Zoo at the White City by the military authorities. It is presumed they will be used for heavy draught purposes. At the end of the war the elephants will be returned to the menagarie.’ I wonder what happened to those elephants?

The Eton and Harrow match clearly engaged the public in a way we can scarcely now imagine. Kate was not exaggerating the rumpus caused by the ‘rag’, as it was described between the rival supporters. On the following Monday morning the Daily Gazette Middlesborough reported that   ‘To clear up the traces of Saturday nights’ Eton and Harrow revels at the Anglo-American exhibition took until after midnight on Sunday and thiry wagons were needed to remove the litter of paper streamers and other debris.’  The ‘Witching Waves’, which according to Kate bore the brunt of the revelry, was one of the Coney Island sideshows . When the Prince of Wales had visited the Exhibition it had been difficult to remove him from ‘the little cars that navigate the rolling, heaving platform called ‘Witching Waves’.

The Anglo-American Exhibition was brought to a premature end by the outbreak of war.

 

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in a room at 49 Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John has a room along Claverton Street, at number 11.

Friday July 10th 1914

Slept until 9. dressed after breakfast. Wrote letters at 11. A very hot day. Had letter from Kathie in answer to mine of good wishes – speaking in glowing terms of her engagement. I am glad she is happy.

John and I went out to lunch at Slaters. Then we both went to Office for the Banner and Leaflets. By bus to Hammersmith and train [to] Hounslow where we got rid of the rest of the thousand handbills. Had tea at 5.30.

To Broadway at 7.15 and the Lorry arrived at 7.30 and we decorated it, getting an enormous crowd of children round.

Then the speakers Mrs Kerr and Mr McKillop arrived and Mr Fox in the Chair. Miss Raynsford Jackson and Miss Arber came down to help with giving out notices. We had a huge crowd and ours was the first open air meeting ever held in Hounslow.

The people were a bit troublesome at first but came round wonderfully. We had a little passing trouble with tin trumpets and a gramophone but I managed to quell it and we really had a magnificent meeting.

John and I waited just to pay up and we came to Victoria by train from Heston Hounslow. Went into Rinaldo’s for supper. It would have been quite nice only there was the most awful drunken man there making a scene.

We walked down. Got in at 12 o’clock. A great relief to me to have the meeting over.

Here, on The Broadway, Kate organized Hounslow’s first ever open-air ‘Votes for Women’ meeting. Her main speakers were Mrs Barbara Kerr, whose sister, Louisa Raynsford Jackson, we have already met, and John McKillop. The latter had, until 1909, been secretary to the London School of Economics and its first (part-time) librarian – but was now secretary to an MP. His wife, Margaret, was a lecturer in chemistry in King’s College, London, Woman’s Department. Interruptions from tin trumpets and gramophones were par for the course. At least there weren’t any vegetable or firework throwers – such as Kate had had to contend with on previous occasions. Inquisitive children were a suffrage organizer’s constant companions.

Rinaldo’s was an Italian restaurant at 15 Wilton Road, just opposite Victoria Station. in his Gourmet Guide to London (1914), Lieut-Gen Nathaniel Newnham-Davies describes the interior of Rinaldo’s – ‘Its walls a pleasant grey with decorations in high relief on the upper part, and on the stained glass of the skylight are paintings of game and fruit. Baskets of ferns in the shape of boats hang from the roof and there are always bunches of roses on the tables.’ Before setting up his own restaurant Rinaldo had worked at the Savoy – and The Gourmet Guide reported,  his restaurant attracted an aristocratic clientele. Alas that one drunk should have spoiled Kate’s pleasure. She had been entirely used to dining out in the best London restaurants in her younger days when her father appeared the epitome of prosperity – but that was now a vanished era.

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.

Copyright

 

On 7 August 2014 ITV will publish an e-book, Kate Parry Frye: The Long Life of an Edwardian Actress and Suffragette.  Based on her prodigious diary, this is my account of Kate Frye’s life and is a tie-in with the forthcoming ITV series ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’. For details of the TV series and its accompanying books see here.

As a lead-up to publication I thought I’d share with you some entries from Kate’s diary from the month before the outbreak of war. Through her day-to-day experience we can see how the war stole up on one Everywoman.

Kate was at this time 36 years old, living in Claverton Street in Pimlico and working in the Knightsbridge headquarters of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. It was now nine years since she had become engaged to (minor) actor John Collins. Her father died in March 1914 and her mother and sister, Agnes, now all but penniless, are living in rented rooms in Worthing. John and Kate have joined them there this weekend.

‘Sunday July 5th 1914

I felt very rotten from natural causes so did not mind the rain and the wet – it poured nearly all day. I came down late – then brushed Mickie, slept on the sofa in the afternoon, some writing in the evening, and Agnes, John and I went for a stroll about 6.30. Very grey and quite cold. What a change from last week.’

By ‘natural causes’ Kate, as you might guess, meant that she was suffering with her period. In Kate Parry Frye: Edwardian actress and suffragette  I discuss the way that menstruation affected Kate and her close companions.

Mickie was Kate’s dog – a Pomeranian – a type that required a good deal of grooming. Mickie was a ‘theatrical’ dog, acquired by Kate and John in 1904 to appear in the opening scene of a play they were touring. Mickie was adored.

Coincidentally, when Sylvia Pankhurst visited her sister in her Parisian exile in early 1914  she mentioned that during their interview Christabel was nursing a small Pomeranian.

Kate always had some ‘writing’ on the go. If she was not busy with her diary, there were always letters – and stories and plays – all but one of which were unpublished – to keep her occupied.

 

See also Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary

 

Mary Richardson, c 1913. This image of her was included in the sheet of ‘surveillance photographs’ of known suffragettes sent to museums and art galleries

I was asked the other day to speak briefly on Woman’s Hour about Mary Richardson, the suffragette who took a hatchet to the Velasquez painting, The Toilet of Venus  -known as The Rokeby Venus ,  while it was on display in the National Gallery in March 1914. You can listen to the resulting piece – which includes a clip from a 1957 Woman’s Hour interview with Mary Richardson – here.

Looking again at Mary Richardson’s story – as she tells it in her suffragette autobiography, Laugh a Defiance –  I was interested in a brief mention she made of the house from which she set out for the National Gallery on that fateful day – Tuesday 10 March 1914. It was a house  in which she had been given shelter when she was let out of Holloway the previous October under the terms of the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’,  after going on hunger strike. She continued to live there clandestinely – as a ‘mouse’ – evading the police.

As she tells it, this house in Doughty Street in Bloomsbury had once been the home of Charles Dickens but was now under the charge of a ‘Mrs Lyon’. Investigation reveals that in 1914  the house that was Dickens’ home from 1837-9 and is now the Charles Dickens Museum was, together with number 49, a boarding house run by a Miss Jane Lyons. Mary Richardson wrote that she knew immediately that it was to Dickens’ house that she had been brought. Indeed she would have, for as she left the motor car that had carried her from Holloway she would have seen this plaque, which had  been placed on the front of 48 Doughty Street by the LCC in 1903. Once settled into the boarding house doubtless she would have heard from Miss Lyons more about  the famous connection that gave cachet to the establishment.

Number 48 Doughty Street was acquired by the Dickens Fellowship in 1923 and opened as the Museum in 1925. Interestingly the Museum has quite recently acquired number 49 – so that the two houses are now interlinked as  they presumably were when Mary Richardson was given shelter in Miss Lyons’ boarding house. When Mary Richardson made her  acquaintance in 1914 Miss Lyons would have been 78 years old. She may well have been given the honorary title of ‘Mrs’ and it isn’t particularly surprising that Mary Richardson had, 40 years or so later, slightly misremembered her surname. The only information that Mary Richardson offers about ‘Mrs Lyon’ was that she had once been housekeeper to Benjamin Disraeli. Could that have been true?

Jane Lyons had been born in Plymouth in 1836, one of the eldest in a large family – of possibly 12 children. Her  father, Moses Lyons (who also gave his name on various censuses as ‘Lewis Lyons’ and ‘Morris Lyons’) was a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries – that is, he was qualified as a doctor and practised as both a doctor and as a dentist. He had been born in Coventry c 1811;  his mother had been born in Russia. The family were probably Jewish in origin – although there is no evidence that they practised that religion. One sister, certainly, was married in a Congregational church. In 1871 the Lyons family was living in the Islington area of Birmingham and Jane Lyons worked with her mother and five of her sisters in the family’s stationers shop.

By 1881 Jane Lyons had come to London and on the night of the census, 3 April 1881, was living in a boarding house at 72 Gower Street in Bloomsbury, described as an ‘annuitant’. So it doesn’t appear that  she was Disraeli’s housekeeper at the time of his death –  which occurred 16 days after the census was taken. But I suppose it is not impossible that she was so employed at some time during the previous decade.

By 1891 Jane Lyons was housekeeper at ‘Brunswick House’, 56 Hunter Street, Bloomsbury.  Here lived 45 boarders – all women – most of whom were working – as teachers, typists, clerks, and artists.

48 Doughty Street – post 1903

Ten years later, in 1901, Jane Lyons was the proprietor of a ‘Private Hotel and Boarding House’ at 48 & 49 Doughty Street.  Here, on the day of the census, she had 24 boarders – all women – again clerks, teachers and typists (and a stockbroking nephew). By 1911 Miss Lyons’ clientele had slightly changed – now numbering a good half-dozen men among her boarders.

Miss Lyons, as a single woman running her own business, was very much the type of woman we might expect to support the ‘votes for women campaign’ – perhaps as a member of the Tax Resistance League. But from Mary Richardson’s evidence she went that bit further and gave active support to those who were evading the police. According to Mary, while she was living at number 48 Annie Kenney, who was also on the run, stayed for a time in Miss Lyons’ boarding house. I wish I knew more about Miss Lyons.

In Laugh a Defiance Mary Richardson relates that she had planned her attack on the RokebyVenus in advance – presumably while living under Miss Lyons’ roof. Indeed she states that she had sought approval from Christabel Pankurst for her plan. But never once in Laugh a Defiance  can I find any mention of the fact that since March 1912 Christabel had been living in Paris. Mary Richardson refers to her as though she were living close by, convenient for consultation. I find it difficult to believe that in those febrile months in 1914 Mary Richardson was in such close contact with Christabel. Did she, 40 years later, feel it necessary to justify her actions by implying that she was always ‘acting on orders’?

The sequence of events ran like this. Mrs Pankhurst was arrested in Glasgow during the evening of Monday 9 March – after something of a battle with the police at a meeting in the St Andrew’s Hall. Around her was a bodyguard of women –  one of whom was Mrs Lillian Dove-Willcox, with whom Mary Richardson was closely associated.

Lillian Dove-Willcox (photo courtesy Bath In Time website)

After one of her hunger strikes Mary had recuperated at Lillian’s cottage in the Wye Valley and their friendship seems to have lasted all Mary’s life.  Symbol Songs, a collection of poems she published in 1916 contains  ”The Translation of the Love I Bear Lillian Dove’ – and it was Lillian (by now, after remarriage, Mrs Lillian Buckley) who wrote Mary’s obituary for the Suffragette Fellowship newsletter.   It wouldn’t surprise me that if the ‘Rokeby Venus’ plan had been shared with anyone, it had been shared with Lilian Dove-Willcox, who travelled back from Glasgow on the train in which Mrs Pankhurst was being escorted by the police.

However the train stopped at a station short of Euston and Mrs Pankhurst was taken off it and driven straight to Holloway in order to avoid the suffragette crowds that were awaiting her at the terminus. The news of her arrest was in the Tuesday morning papers. I don’t really want to add any (quite gratuitous) speculation to Mary Richardson’s already rather unreliable memoir, but I’m going to anyway.

Could Mary Richardson have seen Lilian Dove-Willcox early that Tuesday morning and  heard first-hand of the dramatic events in the St Andrew’s Hall? And dramatic they were. It was a violent scene – with clubs wielded by the women and a gun – loaded with blanks – fired by Janie Allan, a wealthy Scottish supporter. A report from the front line, made by a close friend, or even the knowledge that such a friend had been involved in such a battle could have been the real catalyst for choosing this day of all days for putting her plan into action.  Doughty Street is only a short distance from Euston. Although Mary Richardson says in a radio interview that she was in the National Gallery as early as 10 am, The Times report, Wednesday 11 March, mentions that she was there at 11 .

Mary Richardson is not explicit as to whether she had already purchased her weapon of choice – a butcher’s chopper – although she does state that she bought it in the Theobald’s Road – a main road close to Doughty Street .However, because, as she repeatedly explains, she fixed the chopper into her sleeve with a chain of safety pins (though I can’t quite work out how the first in the chain was attached to the chopper??) it seems unlikely that she would have undertaken this rather cumbersome exercise on her way to the National Gallery, suggesting that she had the chopper already primed, as it were, in her room in the boarding house.

In another BBC radio interview, broadcast on 23 April 1961 – click here to listen to it – Mary Richardson revealed that she had chosen the Rokeby Venus  because she hated women being used as nudes in paintings – she had seen the picture gloated over by men, and she ‘thought it sensuous’. In the 1957 Woman’s Hour interview she mentioned that she felt the painting was held in high regard because it was so financially valuable  (it had cost £45,000 when purchased in 1906), whereas Mrs Pankhurst’s life counted for nothing. Presumably she was unaware that it was a fellow suffragist, Christiana Herringham, who had been the driving force in the setting up of the National Art Collections Fund – the organization that bought the painting for the nation.

In the later interviews Mary Richardson doesn’t mention that Mrs Pankhurst had only just been rearrested – but tells the story as though Mrs Pankhurst had been held for a long time, on hunger strike,  in a damp underground cell in Holloway – and that her life was in danger. But, as we see, Mrs Pankhurst could have barely reached Holloway by the time Mary set out from number 48.I have mentioned that Mary Richardson’s Laugh a Defiance  is an unreliable memoir. At the most basic level the account she gives of her involvement in the suffragette campaign is not chronologically accurate – rather she presents a series of incidents, in each of which she takes a starring role. I have little doubt that the purpose of Laugh a Defiance was to raise funds.  It doesn’t appear that Mary Richardson was ever in full-time employment and, although she had presumably inherited some money from her family,  at the end of her life the income must have dwindled. At the time of her death in 1961 she was living in a single room – in Hastings. Obviously in order for such a book to sell it did have to be packed with dramatic incident.

I can find no reviews of the book in contemporary newspapers or magazines – or, to be accurate, in ones that are now digitized. The only quote used in its publicity by the publisher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was a remark by C.V. [Veronica] Wedgwood who on the radio programme, The Critics, described it as ‘A document – ingenious and absolutely genuine’. Well, yes, ‘ingenious’ is perhaps the word to describe Laugh a Defiance  for although Wedgwood was an historian she clearly had not interrogated the accuracy of the ‘document’.

Leaving aside quibbles about who did what, when or where, the book contains laughable examples of  ‘cod history’ – such as when Mary in Holloway describes her view onto what she describes as the site, in Elizabethan times, of the banqueting hall of the Earls of Warwick. Doubting very much that those Earls had ever had a London home in Parkhurst Road, Holloway, I did a little research to try to discover what had been in Mary Richardson’s mind. The answer: that when the prison was built in the mid-19th century the architect copied the design of the gatehouse from Warwick Castle. Such is the way that the most innocuous facts  become corrupted and I’m certain that Mary Richardson’s suffragette autobiography contains many more such elisions and half-truths.  Rubbed up and polished, they presented a dashing and easily digested history designed to appeal to the general reader.

I have always wondered what her fellow suffragettes made of Mary Richardson’s  Laugh a Defiance – and of her two broadcasts. The Suffragette Fellowship, the organization to which many former members of the WSPU and the Women’s Freedom League belonged, was by no means devoid of factional infighting. Certainly she appears to have felt quite at ease when, a couple of years after the book was published (but before the radio programmes were broadcast), she attended a Suffragette Fellowship reunion at Caxton Hall (you can watch her here on a Pathe newsreel as she shows her very distinctive hunger-strike medal to a policeman. I wonder if any comments were made about the accuracy of her recollections?

For instance, as far as I can discover,  no member of the WSPU ever mentioned that Mary Richardson was, as she claimed, at the Derby watching Emily Wilding Davison as she stepped into the path of the King’s horse. Why was such a valuable first-hand account not written up in The Suffragette  or Votes for Women? Why was she not called as a witness at the inquest? In her telling the expedition to Epsom was not clandestine –  rather she was following an order from Headquarters to go there to sell The Suffragette.  She doesn’t go so far as to say that she accompanied Emily Davison but somehow out of the seething Derby crowd – the hundreds of thousands that swarmed over Epsom Downs –  she was able to spot Emily and position herself at the opposite side of the track at Tattenham Corner. Exciting reading – but is it history?

However, Mary Richardson’s account in Laugh a Defiance of her attack on the Rokeby Venus  accords very accurately with the contemporary newspaper reports.  There was, of course, no need to dress up that drama – for she was (with Venus) undoubtedly the star of that particular episode.

As this is a blog post – not an academic article – I will allow myself another flight of fancy. I live not far from Doughty Street and am a regular passenger on the No 38 bus that runs along Theobalds Road.  By 1914 this bus route had been in operation for a couple of years and, unless Mary Richardson walked to the National Gallery, may well have carried her as far as Cambridge Circus, bringing her within striking distance, as it were, of the Gallery. It is these gossamer connections – the layers of history through which we pass – that continue to amuse me. If I were sufficiently fanciful I could link Mary Richardson and the Rokeby Venus  to both the number 38 bus, on which, incidentally, I travelled part of the way to my date with her in the Woman’s Hour studio, and to Charles Dickens, the shade of whose footstep she touched as she made her determined way over the threshold of 48 Doughty Street that March morning.

P.S. Coincidentally another nude, George Clausen’s Primavera,  attacked by Maude Kate Smith in the RA Summer Exhibition in 1914, was sold by Christies on 17 June 2014, the day after my Woman’s Hour piece – for £92,500. You can listen to Miss Smith describing how she attacked the painting in a recording held by the Women’s Library@LSE.

PPS Readers who have been kind enough to visit from the Persephone Books website and are of a ‘Persephone mind’ (although equipped with non-Persephone technology – ie an e-book reader) will, I hope, find a GOOD READ in the life of Kate Parry Frye – who was very much a ‘Persephone’ woman. Read all about her here.

The Actresses’ Franchise League  was founded in December 1908. Its purpose was to stage propaganda plays, the majority of which were specially written by members, hold meetings, sell suffrage literature and give lectures. Kate Frye, who considered herself a professional actress, attended her first meeting of the AFL on 23 March 1909.

The venue for this first meeting, 3 Bedford Street, Covent Garden – just a few steps from The Strand – was very familiar to Kate. For on 11 December 1901 she had gone through that door and climbed the stairs to the studio and office near the top of the building where actor/manager Ben Greet ran his Acting Academy. There and then Kate had enrolled as a drama student. The story of her time at the Academy and her subsequent stage career is told in The Great War: The People’s Story – Kate Parry Frye: Edwardian actress and suffragette – which ITV will be publishing as an e-book in August to coincide with their The Great War: The People’s Story series.

Of that first AFL meeting Kate wrote in her diary:

‘Tuesday March 23^rd 1909

[Afternoon] went by bus to Bedford Street, Strand – the old Ben Greet Academy Room where we used to rehearse – to the Actresses’ League for Women Franchise meeting. Who should be there but Miss [Ada]  Moore, who introduced me to Eva Moore and as she is going to be on our Dance Committee we shall meet again on Monday. She didn’t seem to like me much but I am used to treating all Suffrage women as merely women not little Queens. I had a long talk to Miss Moore who was charming as ever.

 

Kate had known Ada Moore quite well since the late 1890s – and was rather entranced by all the Moore sisters. During her time as a suffrage organizer, she often arranged meetings at which another Moore sister, Mrs Emily Pertwee, was the speaker. Eva Moore had obviously been a little too distant for Kate’s liking when they met on this occasion. She eventually resigned from the AFL after a play written for them by her husband, H.V. Esmond, was deemed too light-hearted for its propaganda purpose.

Although the lower half of the building appears to be empty at the moment – and a little sad – it’s not difficult to imagine the tyro actors and actresses – numbering among them Sybil Thorndike – climbing  the stairs to the top of the building to be put through their paces by Ben Greet. Or the members of the AFL  feeling at home in a building decorated with wreaths and swags.

 

 

A month later – in April 1909 –  the AFL began to hold their meetings in the Criterion Restaurant. Kate was a regular attender at these meetings, often acted as a steward and faithfully recorded in her diary her impression of the occasions. For more about the AFL at the Criterion see here.

For more about Kate Frye and her involvement in the suffrage campaign see here.

 

 

This article was published in the March 2003 issue of Antiquarian Book Review.

‘Deeds Not Words’ was Mrs Pankhurst’s motto. The slogan flourished in the early 20^th century – it was even embroidered on a banner – a reaction to the apparently unproductive campaign for the enfranchisement of women that had already been waged for nearly 40 years.

The debate as to whether the vote was won by the slow drip of reasoned argument or by the sharp crack of breaking glass is one that still occupies historians. Although it is the deeds of Mrs Pankhurst’s suffragettes – the spectacle of processions, the breaking of windows, the burning of houses and churches – that has coloured the popular perception of the suffrage campaign, without the ‘words’ that had over many years shaped the idea that women had an equal right with men to citizenship, the ‘deeds’ would have been committed in a vacuum. The women’s suffrage campaign was, during its entire 62 years, underpinned by ‘Literature’ in all its guises.

Works written in support of women’s enfranchisement had little difficulty in achieving publication. The instigators of the movement were members of the articulate radical middle class and were in close contact with communicators. A tentative beginning had been made in 1851 with Harriet Taylor’s article The Enfranchisement of Women, which, shortly after her marriage to John Stuart Mill, was published anonymously in the Westminster Review ( a journal of which Mill had in the past been editor). This was followed in 1855 by a pamphlet, The Right of Women to the Elective Franchise, written by Agnes Pochin, wife of a future Liberal MP, and published by John Chapman, that ‘Publisher of Liberalisms’.

Among the names of the 1500 women who signed the suffrage petition that Mill presented to parliament in June 1866 (marking the formal beginning of the campaign), were several with connections to the publishing or bookselling trades – including  Elspet Strahan, sister of Alexander Strahan, a liberal with a zeal for social reform and the publisher of the eponymous publishing house. He had recently launched the Contemporary Review, in which he published an article on ‘female suffrage’ in March 1867, written by Lydia Becker.

Based in Manchester, Lydia Becker was to be the driving force behind the 19^th-century campaign. Among other signatories to the petition were Louisa Farrah, wife of a radical publisher and bookseller (282 Strand, London); Eliza Embleton, a bookseller from Leeds (Burley Street);  the wife of James Renshaw Cooper, a radical Manchester bookseller (1 Bridge Street); and the wife and daughter (both named ‘Harriet’) of Edward Truelove, radical publisher and antiquarian bookseller (2240 Strand), who had been imprisoned for publishing Robert Owen’s Physiology in Relation to Morals. (See here for an interesting blog by Dr Tony Shaw about Truelove and his grave, on which the two Harriets both appear.)

Once the campaign had been launched, ‘words’ in support of women’s enfranchisement multiplied rapidly. The societies that had formed to promote the cause published a plethora of pamphlets – one of the first, of which 4500 copies were distributed, was a reprinting of the speech made by Mill to Parliament during the debate on the second reform bill in May 1867.

The accounts of the earliest Enfranchisement of Women Committee show that in its first year of existence over £94 was spent on printing. This was set against receipts from the sale of pamphlets of only £6 11s. Political publishing was not a profitable business. In reality, political publishers who were prepared to put their imprint on books and journals to promote the woman’s cause were not so unworldly as to risk their money. A study of the ledgers of companies, such as Trubner and H.S. King, reveals that many of the suffrage publications, including Lydia Becker’s The Women’s Suffrage Journal, were published only on a commission basis.

Under this arrangement, the author or the society undertook all the risk of publication, while the publishers merely provided the service of printing, binding and distribution, for which they gave the book their imprint, charged a fee and took a percentage of sales. Publishers’ ledgers, where they have survived, provide an interesting keyhole through which to view the suffrage campaign. Lists of payments make it possible to identify an author who published anonymously, the print order for a  book, journal or pamphlet can give us an idea of the ambition of the author or society; and the number of pulped gives a reason why so many of the items are now extremely scarce – and expensive.

The suffrage campaign appeared to have made such considerable progress in its first years that Mill, a canny businessman as well as philosopher, felt the time was ripe to publish the work that he had first drafted in the early 1860s on ‘the woman question’. As he wrote in a letter to The Times on 9 April 1869: ‘It is not specially on the Suffrage question, but on all the questions relating to women’s domestic subordination and social disabilities, all of which it discusses more fully than has been done hitherto. I think it will be useful, and all the more, it is sure to be bitterly attacked’. Mill knew full well the publicity value of controversy.

The Subjection of Women was published by Longmans in May 1869, went into a second edition in the same year, and has remained ever since a central text of the women’s movement.

It took until 1902 for the first history of the campaign to appear. Women’s Suffrage: a record of the women’s suffrage movement in the British Isles with biographical sketches of Miss Becker was painstakingly compiled by Helen Blackburn, who had for many years worked as secretary of the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage.

The new force that emerged in 1903, Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, did not delay so long before giving itself a distinctive history. A series of articles written by Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline, as The History of the Suffrage Movement, appeared in the WSPU’s new paper, Votes for Women, starting in the first issue in October 1907 and concluding in September 1909.

This history was, naturally, shaped to emphasise the Pankhursts’ centrality to the movement. Bibliophiles might like to note that the book that emerged from the articles, The Suffragette: the history of the women’s militant movement, was first published in America in 1911 by Sturgis & Walton and sheets where only then shipped back to Britain, where it was subsequently published by Gay & Hancock.

The publication in 1912 of Women’s Suffrage: a short history of a great movement (TC & EC Jack), written by Millicent Fawcett, did something to redress the balance. She had been involved with the campaign since its earliest days and since 1907 had been leader of those who described themselves as ‘law-abiding’ in contradistinction to the militants.

Agnes Metcalfe’s Woman’s Effort: a chronicle of British Women’s Fifty Years Struggle for Citizenship (1865-1914), published in 1917, gives a detailed overview of the campaign, concentrating on the efforts of the militants.

In 1920 Mrs Fawcett completed her history of the suffrage campaign, begun in A Short History, with another pithy summary of events that had led to the passing of the Representation of the People Act, 1918,  granting the vote to women over the age of 30.

All these books were bought (as ownership inscriptions found in them testify) by sympathisers to the cause, were part of the stock of the small lending libraries run by many of the local suffrage societies and also found their way into the public library systems and even into prison libraries. While imprisoned, suffragettes were able to read lives, such as those of Joan of Arc and Garibaldi, that they considered (by analogy) relevant to their cause – the cult of the ‘hero’ clearly appealed to those conscious of their role in history.

Alongside the polemics, the women’s suffrage campaign also provided a rich seam mined by writers of fiction. John Francis Maguire, MP for Cork and an active supporter of the woman’s cause, was the first, publishing in 1871, a year before his death, a three-decker, The Next Generation (Hurst & Blackett). The action was set in 1891, by which time the ‘Rights of Woman’ movement..was a wonderful success [and had] long since been accepted with satisfaction almost universal’. Eighty-nine women MPs sat in parliament and Mrs Bates was chancellor of the exchequer.

The following year, ‘Arthur Sketchley’ in Mrs Brown on Women’s Rights (George Routledge) worked what Maguire had correctly identified as a ‘fruitful theme’, and demonstrated that his comic heroine, Martha Brown, had already got the measure of ‘women’s sufferages’. Mrs Brown surveys her first suffrage meeting: ‘Why, surely no Members of Parlyment aint a-coming to sich a ‘ole as this; for I’d ‘eard Miss Snapley a-braggin’ as Professor Fairplay were a-goin’ to take up the question in the chair, along with a old lady in the name of Mill, and a good many more as all ‘oped to be in Parlyment afore they died.’

The subject also, of course, lent itself to melodrama as well as to comedy. Emily Spender published in 1871 a novel, Restored (Hurst & Blackett, 1871) dedicated to the leader of the Bath society for women’s suffrage, of which she herself was an active member. In the novel a wicked husband, repossessing his young wife, declaims ‘If you had read your Bible a bit more, and John Stuart Mill, a little less, you would have been a better woman, Frederica.’ [Incidentally Emily Spender, the great-aunt of Sir Stephen Spender, spent her later years in Italyand was the model for E.M. Forster’s ‘Miss Lavish’ in Room with a View.]

Throughout the 19^th century, a stream of novels used support for, or antipathy to, the suffrage cause as a shorthand by which to delineate characters or to put plot machinery into gear. An indication that the campaign was losing its momentum at the end of the century may be surmised from the fact that between 1900 and 1906 no ‘suffrage’ novels were published.

However, in 1907, the year after the WSPU took its campaign to London, three novels appeared. The most famous of these is The Convert (Methuen) written by Elizabeth Robins, who was a keen supporter of the WSPU and based her scenes and personalities on activities of which she had been an eyewitness. Describing a suffrage rally in Trafalgar Square she drummed home the argument for the existence of the WSPU:

‘You’re in too big a hurry’, someone shouted, ‘All the Liberals want is a little time.’

‘Time! You seem not to know that the first petition in favour of giving us the Franchise was signed in 1866…We must try some other way. How did you working men get the suffrage?, we asked ourselves. Well, we turned to the records and we say. We don’t want to follow such a violent example. We would much rather not – but if that’s the only way we can make the country see we’re in earnest – we are prepared to show them.’

The Convert was in fact Elizabeth Robins’ novelisation of her play Votes for Women!,  written during the autumn of 1906 and  first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in April 1907. For Kate Parry Frye’s description of a visit to see the play on 16 April 1907 click here.

In the years that followed, the real-life activities of the suffragettes were reflected by the derring-do of their fictional equivalents in a steady stream of novels. Novelists could now take their middle-class readers into places they might not previously have sought to enter – even the prison cell – and were given legitimate reason to describe the indignities that might be wrought on women’s bodies, whether through the horrors of force-feeding or at the hands of policemen in battle outside the House of Commons. A hero of one such tale (A. Mollwo, A Fair Suffragette) is racked by ‘the picture of [a] fragile, slender little body at the mercy of this yelling, excited crowd, torn first one way, then another, insulted by angry policemen, knocked under the feet of horses.’

All in all, the wide range of  ‘suffrage’ literature published during the course of the campaign – histories, tracts, speeches, leaflets and novels – offers historians and collectors a fascinating lens through which to view not only the political battle in all its complication, but also the changing perception of the position of women that in the end was so necessary to the winning the vote.