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The Garretts And Their Circle: UPDATED: Even More Annie Swynnerton Revelations

Posted in Art and Suffrage, The Garretts and their Circle on March 30, 2023

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 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.

[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, 5th 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.

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Books And Ephemera By And About Women For Sale: Catalogue 208

Posted in Books And Ephemera For Sale on March 23, 2023

Woman and her Sphere

Catalogue 208

See # 12

Elizabeth Crawford

5 Owen’s Row

London EC1V 4NP

elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

This catalogue includes, in the final section, a particularly extensive ‘Women and the First World War’ list.

Index to Catalogue

Suffrage Non-fiction: Items 1-4

Suffrage Biography: Items 5-8

Suffrage Fiction: Items 9-10

Suffrage Ephemera: Items 11-54

Suffrage Postcards: Real Photographic: Items 55-92

Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic: Items 93-94

General Non-fiction: Items 95-190

General Biography: Items 191-262

General Ephemera: Items 263-280

General Postcards: Items 281-282

General Vaudeville Sheet Music: Items 283-290

General Fiction: 291-299

Women and the First World War: Non-fiction: Items 300-324

Women and the First World War: Biography & Autobiography 325-339A

Women and the First World War: Ephemera 340

Women and the First World War: Fiction 341-345

Suffrage Non-fiction

1.         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

[15387]                                                                                                                        £20

2.         FRIEZE MASTERS Women in Art History   Frieze Masters 2018

Magazine published to coincide with the Frieze Masters Fair, 2018 – the entire issue devoted to ‘women in art history’. Among the several articles is one by Jessica Lack on ‘the role of women artists in promoting the cause of women’s suffrage’. Soft covers – large format – very good – corners a little rubbed

[15215]                                                                                                                          SOLD

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

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

[1361]                                                                                                                         £20

4.         STRACHEY, Ray The Cause: a short history of the women’s movement in Great Britain  G. Bell 1928

This copy belonged to Lord McGregor – author of ‘Divorce in England’, a book that includes a very useful bibliography of works on women’s rights. He has laid in the book a collection of newspaper cuttings, from the 1950s to 1970s, relating to the position of women. The copy of the book is in good condition – but he had bought it as an ex-library copy and has added a few pencilled notes on the back pastedown. An interesting association copy.

[12059]                                                                                                                        £55

Suffrage Biography

5.         (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

6.         (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

7.         (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

8.         (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

9.         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

10.       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

11.       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]                                                                                                                        £28

12.       CERAMIC GEESE MATCH HOLDER      

Three white geese, yellow beaks wide open, the chorus ‘We Want Our Votes’ inscribed on the green base. As described on page 109 of my Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide. Very rare – I think this is the first time I have had this piece in stock this century – and I can find no evidence of another passing through the salerooms in that time. In fine condition

[15382]                                                                                                                   SOLD

13.       DYSON, Will Cartoons   The Daily Herald 1914

A Second Collection of cartoons drawn by the celebrated Australian cartoonist, Will Dyson (1880-1938), and published in ‘The Daily Herald’. Among the 40 are 6 directly related to the suffrage campaign. In fair condition  the middle 2pp have come loose from the staples and the edges are a little rubbed. Could be broken up and the prints framed individually. Large format – 36 x 26 cm – paper covers

[13801]                                                                                                                        SOLD

14.       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

#15 ‘Les Droits de la Femme en 1900’ cotton scarf

15.       ‘LES DROITS DE LA FEMME EN 1900’      

Commemorative cotton scarf, design originally printed by E. Renault, Rouen – packed with numerous delightful vignettes showing women occuping the man’s sphere. While the men mind the children, women are soldiers (from the lowest ranks to chief of the army), sailors, astronomers, financiers etc etc – and, of course, President of France. Originally printed c 1880, this ‘Reproduction d’un Document du Musée de l’impression de Mulhouse’ (ie Mulhouse Textile Museum) was  issued c. 1970. There has been no reproduction for sale since then.  Approx 80 x 68cm (31.5 x 27ins). Printed in black on white cotton, with border and internal bands in red. A rare piece, even in reproduction, of French ‘Women’s Rights’ ephemera. In fine condition.

[15381]                                                                                                                     SOLD

16.       MARY PHILLIPS ARRESTED IN CHESTER      

She is being frog marched by a policeman as the thronged crowd looks on,  having thrown a bag of flour at a cavalcade of cars, in one of which Asquith was riding. Although sentenced, her fine was paid, against her will, by a local Liberal sympathiser. On the reverse of the photograph is written ‘Please return to S. W. Newsome, 26 West End Lane, NW6’. Stella Newsome was hon sec of the Suffragette Fellowship and this photograph, a good deal battered and still bearing traces of blu tack, was once part of the display in the Suffragette Museum. 16.5 cm x 21 cm – the central image is unimpaired but the edges are frayed and parts of the crowd have lost some surface  – fair only – but interesting

[15343]                                                                                                                        £50

17.       MEMENTO OF WOMEN’S CORONATION PROCESSION TO DEMAND VOTES FOR WOMEN:  Order of March and Descriptive Programme  The Women’s Press 1911

This is the official programme for the spectacular march that was held in London on Saturday June 17 1911. ‘From the Introduction: ‘The March through London of 40,000 women has been arranged to show the strength of the deman to win Votes for Women in Coronaton year. The Procession will form up on Westminster Embankment, starting at 5.30pm and marching seven abreast in a line some five miles long, through Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, to Kensington. At the close of the march a great meeting will be held by the Women’s Social and Political Union in the Albert Hall…’ The programme lists all the suffrage societies taking part and describes in detail the different sections – such as the Prisoners’ Pageant and the Historical Pageant. The ‘Order of March’ is inset. The decorative cover is printed in greeen on good quality thick paper, In good condition – with a little rusting at the staples- a very scarce item.

[15320]                                                                                                                   SOLD

18.       MISS EMILY FAITHFULL      

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

[14029]                                                                                                                        £40

19.       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

20.       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 (Mrs Pankhurst’s secretary).. Fine

[15159]                                                                                                                      £120

21.       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

22.       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

23.       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

24.       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

25.       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

26.       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

27.       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

28.       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

29.       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

30.       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

31.       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

32.       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

33.       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

34.       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

35.       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. In very good condition – would be ‘fine’ but the ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif is very slightly faded

[14751]                                                                                                                      £350

36.       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. In very good condition – would be ‘fine’ but there is a  small crack to the surface of the saucer. This slight blemish does not penetrate through to the reverse.

[14752]                                                                                                                      £200

#37 WSPU side plate

37.       SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN      

Side plate (17 cm) 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. In fine condition

[14756]                                                                                                                      £650

#38 WSPU saucer

38.       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

[15058]                                                                                                                      £450

39.       ‘SUFFRAGETTES’ CORONATION DEMONSTRATION’ BOADICEA AND HER TWO ATTENDANTS’      

Boadicea is on horseback, her hair in two very long plaits, attended by, presumably, two men of her Iceni tribe. The part of Boadicea was played by Miss Florence Parbury. Crowds line the procession route.Photograph by General Press Photo Company Ltd, 2 Breams’ Buildings, Chancery Lane. The image is very good, the edges of the 16.5 cm x photo a little frayed

[15341]                                                                                                                      £320

40.       TEN MAGIC LANTERN SLIDES ‘The Suffragettes’ Ruse & How Bobby Peeler Foiled Them’    

The slides tell a neat little story of an attempt by suffragettes to infiltrate Parliament from the Thames. Hiding in barrels, they plan to be unloaded onto the Terrace – but two burly policemen, alert to the inability of women to resist the joys of a ‘fashion paper’, entice them out – and haul them off to Cannon [sic] Row police station.  The illustrations are lovely – beautifully drawn and delicately coloured. An allusion is made on the title slide to ‘The Graphic’. The Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource (University of Exeter) notes the set as manufactured no later than 1907 by York & Son, based in Bayswater, London. One of the partners, William York, was a ‘photographic artist’ and may possibly have been responsible for this topical number. 10 glass slides, each 3¼ inches (83mm) square and edged with passepartout.Slide no 6 has a little fracture across the top right corner (held with the passepartout) and slide 8 has a superficial crack (without breaking the glass) – all in all these humourous lantern slides – a complete set  – are in amazingly good condition considering their age and fragility. I have never before, in nearly 30 years of immersion in suffrage ephemera as researcher and dealer, seen this set -or, indeed, any other suffragette lantern-slide story. In fact, ‘The Suffragettes’ Ruse’ is the only suffrage-related item on the Lucerna website. Extremely rare

[15388]                                                                                                                   SOLD

41.       THAT RAGTIME SUFFRAGETTE SHEET MUSIC    B. Feldman & Co c 1913

written by Harry Williams and Nat D. Ayer and originally heard in the 1913 Ziegfeld Follies. It was recorded c 1913/14 by Warwick Green – a British comic singer – to very great effect, although I think he omits the second verse, which is printed in this sheet music. You can hear Warwick Green singing ‘That Ragtime Suffragette’ on youtube. I think it’s wonderful – so evocative- ‘Ragging with bombshells and ragging with bricks/ Hagging and nagging in politics’. The 4-pp of sheet music is printed ‘Professional Copy’ – in good condition, a little rubbed and scuffed; I’m sure it has been well played. Very scarce.

[15319]                                                                                                                   SOLD

42.       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

43.       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

44.       ‘THE MARCH OF THE WOMEN’      

‘Dedicated to the Women’s Social and Political Union’ by its composer, Ethel Smyth. This is an example of the ‘Popular Edition in F. (For meetings and processions, to be sung in unison)’. The 4-page song sheet, containing both music and the words, the latter written by Cicely Hamilton, was published by Breitkopf & Hartel of 54 Great Marlborough Stree, London W and was ‘To be had of The Woman’s Press, 156 Charing Cross Road, London, W.C.’ Price Threepence. ‘The March of the Women’ was premiered at a WSPU meeting, held on 21 Jan 1911 to celebrate the release from prison of WSPU militants. The back cover lists ‘Works by Ehtel Smyth, Mus. Doc.’.  The song-sheet has been folded and is a little rubbed and marked, having presumably been put to its intended use at some WSPU rally, but is in generally good condition. Very scarce

[15315]                                                                                                                   SOLD

45.       ‘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

46.       ‘THE WOMEN’S MARSEILLAISE’      

Written by Florence Macaulay (1862-1945), one-time student at Somerville College, Oxford, and an organiser for the WSPU. ‘The Women’s Marseillaise’, a marching song, was written in 1909 and begins ‘Arise, ye daughters of a land/That vaunts its liberty’. This single sheet is headed ‘The National Women’s Social & Political Union 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand, W.C.’ and was printed by ‘Geo. Barber,The Furnival Press, E.C.’ The sheet was clearly used for the purpose intended, has been folded, with a slight split at the edges of the fold. In good condition – very scarce

[15314]                                                                                                                   SOLD

47.       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

48.       ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’    

Songsheet, – the words of a song adapted from a poem by Sir Walter Scott, to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’. It begins ‘To the Lords of Westminster ’twas the suffragette spoke:-/Put us in the King’s Speech, and give us the Vote,/Let each mother’s son who loves freedom to see,/Cry ‘Votes for the Women’ let Britons be free!’. No publisher or society is credited as issuing of the songsheet, which was in circulation by April 1908.(because Campbell-Bannerman is cited, still prime minister). So quite an early example of a suffrage songsheet. Good -single sheet – some foxing

[15309]                                                                                                                   SOLD

#49 ‘A Deputation to the House of Commons’

49.       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]                                                                                                                      £400

#50 Royal Albert Hall Demonstration

50.       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

51.       WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION SONG SHEET      

Headed ‘Votes for Women’ and ‘The National Women’s Social & Political Union, 4, Clement’s Inn, Strand, W.C.’, the 4-page pamphlet contains the words of  6 songs. They are: 1) The Women’s Marseillaise by F.E.M. Macaulay 2) Rise Up Women (to the tune ‘John Brown’) by Theodora Mills 3) Women of England (to the tune ‘Men of Harlech’ 4) In the Morning (to the tune ‘John Peel’) by Theodora Mills 5) As I Came Through Holloway (to the tune ‘The Keel Row’) 6) Women of To-Day (which begins ‘The blood of maryrs is the seed from which the churches sprung,/We suffer now our martyrdom when into prison flung/’).Printed by St Clement’s Press and published by the WSPU). This songsheet probably dates from c 1908. In very good condition – very scarce

[15316]                                                                                                                   SOLD

52.       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

53.       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

#54 WSPU Neck Piece

54.       WSPU NECK PIECE      

A length of purple, white, and green woven ribbon, from which gold tassels dangle from the two ends. I hardly like to call it a tie, as this gives the wrong impression – but it was worn around the neck, as modelled by Christabel Pankhurst on 13 October 1908, when being arrested by Inspector Jarvis, along with her mother and Flora Drummond, in Clements Inn. The item is in fine condition, with no fraying, the colours vibrant. I have never seen one of these for sale before. I am including with the piece, for the sake of provenance, a comic suffragette postcard, postmarked 1913 and addressed to Miss Chapman, together with an original real photographic postcard depicting, as mentioned above, Christabel Pankhurst wearing just such a neck piece..

[15106]                                                                                                                   £3,000

Suffrage Postcards – Real Photographic

55.       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 Miss Chapman who wrote on the reverse ‘Miss Annie Kenney’. Very good – on good, thick card – unposted

[15109]                                                                                                                      £120

56.       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

57.       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 – which is in fair condition (it has a diagonal crease across the centre)  comes from Miss Chapman’s collection and is unposted. It represents one of the WSPU’s ingenious methods of fund-raising.

[15111]                                                                                                                        £20

58.       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. An unusual image. Fine – unposted

[15153]                                                                                                                      £120

59.       COUNTESS RUSSELL      

real photographic postcard – headed ‘Votes for Women’ of ‘Countess Russell Member of National Executive Committee Women’s Freedom League’. The card depicts Mollie Russell photographed in a studio setting.. She was the second wife of Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, the elder brother of Bertrand. Mollie was described by George Santyana as ‘a fat, florid Irishwoman, with black curls, friendly manners and emotional opinions: a political agitator and reformer.’ The photograph in no way belies the physical description. She and Russell were divorced in 1915.  A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted – scarce

[14612]                                                                                                                        £25

60.       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. From Miss Chapman’s collection. Fine – unposted

[15123]                                                                                                                      £120

61.       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

62.       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

63.       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. This card was purchased in the International Suffrage Shop at 15 Adam St, just off the Strand and was sent to France by Helene Putz, who lived at 10a Belsize Parade, Haverstock Hill, London NW. The 1911 census finds her living there, aged 60, and working as a foreign correspondent – dealing with patent medicines. The message, written in French, tells the recipient that Lady Con is another of the important women working ‘pour la franchise’.

[14694]                                                                                                            £120

64.       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

65.       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

66.       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

67.       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

68.       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

69.       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

70.       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

71.       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

72.       MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD      

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

[14580]                                                                                                                        £25

73.       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

74.       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

75.       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

76.       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

77.       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

78.       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

79.       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

80.       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

81.       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

82.       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. Fine – unposted

[15152]                                                                                                                      £120

83.       MRS HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D.      

photographed by Elliott and Fry in c 1909. She is sitting, full length, seen in profile. From Miss Chapman’s collection. 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

84.       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

85.       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

86.       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

87.       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. From Miss Chapman’s collection. Very good – unposted

[15138]                                                                                                                        £55

88.       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

89.       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

90.       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

91.       ST CATHERINE’S CHURCH, HATCHAM      

The church, in Pepys Road, Deptford, was burned by suffragettes on the night of 6 May 1913. On the reverse the date is written in ink in a contemporary hand ‘Tuesday June 17th 1913’. As there is no photographer or publisher given, it may be that the photograph was taken by an individual and then processed as a postcard on which they wrote that date. The arson attack was an element in the protest against the latest sentencing of Mrs Pankhurst. Shown roofless in this photograph, the church was rebuilt.

[15337]                                                                                                                      £120

92.       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 Postcards: Commercial Comic

93.       PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT      

presumably the result of enfranchising women – Wife wields poker as her husband crawls out from under the tea table. She says, ‘Come along, come along, come along do, I’ve been waiting here for you’. Good – posted from London to Wincanton on 24 June 1911

[14096]                                                                                                                        £10

94.       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

95.       REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS FROM CONNECTICUT OF THE COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION OF 1893 AT CHICAGO  Case, Lockwood and Brainard Co 1898

Fine – many photographs

[5485]                                                                                                                          SOLD

96.       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

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

Fine in d/w

[10512]                                                                                                                        £15

98.       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

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

Paper covers – very good

[5164]                                                                                                                           £5

100.     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

101.     ANON New Careers for Women: the best positions, and how to obtain them  George Newnes 1917

Articles that were first published in ‘The Ladies’ Field’, covering medicine, dispensing, dentistry, the civil service, the public librarian, accountancy, portrait photography (by Madame Lallie Charles),landscape gardening (by Gertrude Jekyll), the house decorator (one of the women cited as an example, Millicent Cohen, had been a pupil of Agnes Garrett), gardening (ny Viscountess Wolseley), landscape gardening (by Gertrude Jekyll), cookery, poultry farming, dog breeding, motoring – and much more. Very good – very scarce

[15264]                                                                                                                        £55

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

Fine

[9208]                                                                                                                         £12

103.     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

104.     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

105.     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

106.     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

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

Soft covers – mint

[11549]                                                                                                                        £10

108.     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

109.     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

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

Fine in fine d/w

[9241]                                                                                                                         £20

111.     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

112.     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

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

Fine in fine d/w

[12463]                                                                                                                          £7

114.     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

115.     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

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

Good

[2558]                                                                                                                         £15

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

Soft covers – fine

[11865]                                                                                                                        £15

118.     DINSHAW, Carolyn and WALLACE, David (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing   CUP 2003

Soft covers – fine

[11857]                                                                                                                        SOLD

119.     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

120.     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

121.     DURHAM, Edith High Albania   Virago 1985

First published in 1909. Soft covers – very good

[10802]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Paper covers – mint

[15209]                                                                                                                          £8

123.     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

124.     EVANS, Dorothy Women and the Civil Service: a history of the development of the employment of women in the Civil Service, and a guide to present-day opportunities  Pitman 1934

Dorothy Evans had been a leading WSPU organizer – and after 1918 was chairman of the Six Point Group. In the 1920s and 1930s she was a representative of the National Association of Women Civil Servants, campaigning for equal pay with their male colleagues. Fine condition – very scarce

[15233]                                                                                                                        SOLD

125.     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

126.     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

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

Very good in d/w

[9006]                                                                                                                           £5

128.     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

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

Fine in d/w

[8887]                                                                                                                         £18

130.     GARRETT, Stephanie Gender   Tavistock 1987

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

[8759]                                                                                                                           £3

131.     GATES, Evelyn (ed) Woman’s Year Book 1923-1924   Women Publishers Ltd 1924 (2nd ed)

An invaluable reference work, covering all aspects of the post-emancipation period in considerable detail. Contributors include Millicent Fawcett, Commandant Mary Allen, Lena Ashwell, Lilian Barker, Margaret Bondfield, Winifred Cullis, Margaret Llewellyn Davies, Margery Fry, Chrystal Macmillan, Hilda Martindale, Bertha Mason, Edith Picton-Turbervill, Eleanor Rathbone – among many others. Full of facts and figures, names and addresses. Women Publishers Ltd was not in business for long; this is the only Year Book they published. Very good internally – cloth grubby with library shelf mark on spine. Scarce.

[15240]                                                                                                                   SOLD

132.     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

133.     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

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

Soft covers – very good

[9135]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Soft covers – very good

[10519]                                                                                                                          £8

136.     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

137.     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

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

Mint in d/w

[10183]                                                                                                                          £5

139.     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

140.     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

141.     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

142.     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

143.     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

144.     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

145.     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

146.     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

147.     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

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

Fine in d/w

[1819]                                                                                                                           £4

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

Soft covers – fine

[11624]                                                                                                                        £22

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

Mint (pub price £65)

[10781]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Fine in d/w

[10599]                                                                                                                        £14

152.     MEAKIN, Annette Woman in Transition   Methuen 1907

A feminist study of a changing society.  Very good

[15220]                                                                                                                        £48

153.     MEERES, Frank Suffragettes: how Britain’s women fought & died for the right to vote  Amberley 2013

Hardcover in fine condition – in fine d/w. With many illustrations

[15211]                                                                                                                          SOLD

154.     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

155.     MILLER, Lucasta The Bronte Myth   Cape 2001

Hardcover – fine –  in very good d/w

[15216]                                                                                                                          £8

156.     MILLER, Naomi and YAVNEH, Naomi (eds) Maternal Measures: figuring caregiving in the early modern period  Ashgate 2000

Essays on a wide range of early modern caregiving roles by women in England, Italy, Spain, France, Latin America, Mexico and the New World. A wide range of scholarly and critical approaches is represented. Mint in d/w

[11038]                                                                                                                        £15

157.     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

158.     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

159.     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

160.     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

161.     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

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

Soft covers – very good

[9021]                                                                                                                           £6

163.     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

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

Mint

[10188]                                                                                                                        £18

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

Soft covers – very good – 575pp

[9007]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Soft covers – mint

[9395]                                                                                                                         £12

167.     RENDALL, Jane The Origins of Modern Feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860  Macmillan 1985

Soft covers – very good

[9461]                                                                                                                         SOLD

168.     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

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

Soft covers – fine

[11866]                                                                                                                          £8

170.     ROBINSON, Jane Angels of Albion: women of the Indian mutiny  Viking 1996

Very good in rubbed d/w

[4240]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Very good in chipped d/w

[1834]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Soft covers – very good

[15212]                                                                                                                          £4

173.     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

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

Paper covers – mint

[5302]                                                                                                                           £5

175.     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

176.     SMITH, Joan Misogynies   Faber 1990

Reprint, paper covers – mint

[15064]                                                                                                                          £4

177.     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

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

Paper covers – fine

[15210]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Pioneering research on sexism in education.  Paper covers – mint

[1667]                                                                                                                           £2

180.     STAFFORD, William English feminists and their opponents in the 1790s; unsex’d and proper females  Manchester University Press 2002

Fine in fine d/w (pub. price £45)

[11757]                                                                                                                        SOLD

181.     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

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

Very good in d/w

[9003]                                                                                                                           £5

183.     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

184.     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

185.     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

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

Soft covers – mint

[5897]                                                                                                                         £12

187.     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

188.     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]                                                                                                                          £3

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

Paper covers – mint

[5276]                                                                                                                           £5

General Biography

190.     (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

191.     (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

192.     (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

193.     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

194.     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

195.     (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

196.     (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

197.     (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

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

Good

[11045]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Excellent biography. Soft covers – fine

[10918]                                                                                                                          £6

200.     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

201.     (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

202.     (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

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

Fine in d/w

[9345]                                                                                                                         £15

204.     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

205.     (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

206.     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

207.     (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

208.     (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

209.     (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

210.     (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

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

Soft covers – 496pp – mint

[15072]                                                                                                                        £16

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

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

[12432]                                                                                                                          £6

213.     (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

214.     (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

215.     (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

216.     (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

217.     (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

218.     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

219.     (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

220.     (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

221.     (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

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

Good

[12070]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Very good internally – cover marked

[12451]                                                                                                                        £20

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

Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w

[12012]                                                                                                                          £8

225.     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

226.     (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

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

Very good  – scarce

[11033]                                                                                                                        £15

228.     (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

229.     (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

230.     (NIGHTINGALE) Eliza F. Pollard Florence Nightingale: the wounded soldier’s friend  S.W. Partridge no date [early 1890s]

In Partridge’s ‘Popular Biographies’ series and, presumably, popular as this copy is from the twelfth thousand printing. Prettily illustrated, with an illustrated cover, depicting Florence, with her lamp, tending a wounded soldier. The free front endpaper contains a an ink inscription ‘To Jane Small. In remembrance of kind attention during illness from Elizabeth Johnson New Year’s Day 1894. An appropriate gift in the circumstances. In good condition

[15251]                                                                                                                   SOLD

231.     (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

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

Very good

[3537]                                                                                                                           £8

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

A sharp memoir. Paperback – fine

[15208]                                                                                                                          £3

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

Soft covers – fine – 741pp – heavy

[12421]                                                                                                                        £10

235.     (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

236.     (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

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

Fine in fine d/w

[12020]                                                                                                                          £8

238.     (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

239.     (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

240.     (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

241.     (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

242.     (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

243.     (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

244.     (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

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

Soft covers – fine

[11950]                                                                                                                          £6

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

Soft covers – fine

[11891]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Soft covers – fine

[11991]                                                                                                                          £9

248.     (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

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

Biography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15089]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Fine in d/w

[9675]                                                                                                                         £18

251.     (TREMAIN) Rosie: scenes from a vanished life   Vintage 2018

Autobiography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15093]                                                                                                                          £4

252.     (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

253.     (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

254.     (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

255.     (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

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

Lavishly illustrated. Mint in d/w

[6510]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Very good

[1754]                                                                                                                         £15

258.     (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

259.     (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

260.     (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

261.     (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

262.     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

263.     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

264.     BEATON, Audrey Evelyn Memoirs of Guide and Brownie Days    

This handwritten ‘memoir’ covers the period September 1941 to February 1950. ‘Although I am only just fourteen and have most of my guide life still before me I want to write down on paper some of the things that have happened during my brownie and guide life before I forget. I want to read this book when I am a grown woman, and show it to my children, who, through reading some of the mistakes which I will relate in this book, will avoid them themselves….’  Audrey belonged to the 3rd Leek Girl Guides – and in time became District Captain. In the early 1950s her mother was treasurer of the Leek and District Girl Guides’ Association; Audrey dedicates her ‘Memoir’ to ‘Mum and Dad without whose help and support nothing good would have been accomplished.’  Here, in devoted detail, is every minute of Audrey Beaton’s early Brownie and Guiding career – a glimpse into that mysterious post-Second World War world. An excercise book – 177 pages – clearly written, in ink – with numerous illustrations – photographs, newspaper cuttings, certificates – laid in. In good condition

[15361]                                                                                                                   SOLD

265.     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

266.     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

267.     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

268.     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

269.     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

270.     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

271.     GIRL’S OWN PAPER, Oct 1885-Sept 1886      

Good in decorative binding – front hinge a little loose – some foxing. The lead serial story is ‘Folorn, Yet Not Forsaken: the story of a nursery governess’.  Articles include ‘Photography for Girls’, The Law of Mistress and Servant’, ‘On Copying the Old Masters’ – plus many articles on dress, music, gardening etc – with masses of illustrations

[4152]                                                                                                                         £25

272.     GIRL’S OWN PAPER, Oct 1887-Sept 1888      

Includes articles on ‘Reform in Underclothing’ – as well as the usual articles on dress – on the typewriter and type-writing, on how girls should spend the year for pleasure and profit, stories by Mrs Linnaeus Banks and Mary Cowden Clarke etc etc.With the Extra Summer Number bound in. Good in chipped publisher’s binding

[4153]                                                                                                                         £25

273.     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

274.     NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE CONTRIBUTION BOOK      

for Ethel Leach, a member of the Amalgamated Association of Card, Blowing and Ring room Operatives c1912. Ethel Leach lwas born in 1898 and lived at

2 Alder Street, Bolton, with her parents (her father was a basketmaker) and her brother and sister. When the 1911 census was taken she was 13 and still at school – but by the time this Contribution Book was issued she was a ‘Cardroom Operative;. The 8 printed pages of the book detail the Table of Weeklly Contributions, Contributions Paid, and the Benefits that will accrue.- as well as much detail about the operation of the National Health Insurance at that time. An unusual item. Card covers – very good

[14975]                                                                                                                        £12

275.     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

276.     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

277.     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

278.     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

279.     WOMEN’S PRINTING SOCIETY (LIMITED)      

Advertising card for this very interesting business, founded in 1876. Coincidentally, I was commissioned to write an article on the WPS to accompany the BL’s ‘Unfinished Business’ exhibition. You can find it here https://www.bl.uk/womens-rights/articles/the-womens-printing-society. This trade card dates from the early years of the WPS, before 1893,  when it was in Great College St, Westminster.

[15080]                                                                                                                   SOLD

General Postcards

280.     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

#281 Hull Postcard

281.     MYSTERY ‘WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION’ POSTCARD      

I bought this card in 2004, but it was only as a result of Lockdown Research that I had the time – and patience – to work out why a large group of women were arrayed in front of a camera in Hull. The answer lay on their lapels – white ribbon badges = Hull Temperance. For details of the detective work, see the piece about it on my website – https://wp.me/p2AEiO-1Br

[8145]                                                                                                                         £20

General (Cross-Dressing) Vaudeville Sheet Music

282.     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

283.     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

284.     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

285.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Lawrence Wright 1929

sings ‘Home in Maine’ and is photographed in sailor attire on cover of sheet music. Good

[10688]                                                                                                                          £6

286.     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

287.     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

288.     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

289.     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

290.     AITKEN, David Sleeping with Jane Austen   No Exit Press 2000

Facetious crime novel. Soft covers – very good

[12417]                                                                                                                          £4

291.     BULKIN, Elly (ed) Lesbian Fiction: an anthology   Persephone Press (Massachusetts) 1981

Soft covers – very good

[15079]                                                                                                                          £8

292.     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

293.     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

294.     LEVERSON, Ada Love’s Shadow   Chapman & Hall 1950

Reprint of the 1908 edition. Good

[3086]                                                                                                                           £4

295.     MARTIN, Valerie The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories   Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2006

Soft covers – fine

[10469]                                                                                                                          £4

296.     SIGOURNEY, Mrs (ed. F.W.N. Bailey) The Poetical Works of Mrs L.H. Sigourney   G. Routledge 1857

Neatly rebound in cloth

[2428]                                                                                                                         £10

297.     SPENDER, Dale The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys   Grafton 1991

Elizabeth gives her account of life with Samuel. Soft covers – very good

[11232]                                                                                                                          £8

298.     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

299.     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

300.     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. Scarce.

[15225]                                                                                                            SOLD

300A 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 Midlan Counties Home for Incurables Castel Froma Lillington Road Leamington Spa’. Very scarce

[15261]                                                                                                                        £45

301.     ANON [Katherine Evelyn Luard] Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front 1914-1915   William Blackwood 1916 (2nd imp)

‘This Journal was written with no idea of publication. As it was thought that some of it might interest others outside the Author’s family, for whom the Journal was kept, these selections – which are given exactly as they were written – are published.’  Kate Luard’s experience nursing in France during the first two years of the First World War. She was born in 1872 and died in 1962, one of the many children of an Essex vicar – educated at Croydon High School when Dorinda Neligan was headmistress, and was twice mentioned in despatches during the War. Very good – very scarce

[15237]                                                                                                                   SOLD

302.     BILLINGTON, Mary Frances The Red Cross in War: woman’s part in the relief of suffering  Hodder & Stoughton 1914

Good

[15273]                                                                                                                        £20

303.     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

304.     CABLE, Boyd Doing Their Bit: war work at home  Hodder and Stoughton, 2nd imp 1916

Includes a chapter on ‘The Women’. Good

[15232]                                                                                                                        £28

305.     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

306.     COSENS, Monica Lloyd George’s Munition Girls   Hutchinson, no date (1916)

Anecdotal account of the work of the women munition workers in the First World War. Good – covers faded –  very scarce

[15230]                                                                                                                        £55

307.     COWPER, Col Julia.Margaret A Short History of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps   WRAC Association no date (c 1967)

Soft covers – very good (ex-WRAC Museum). Scarce

[15241]                                                                                                                        £30

308.     DENT, Olive A V.A.D. in France   Grant Richards 1917

Description of life as a volunteer nurse in France – with attractie line drawings by R.M. Savage and others. The ink inscription on the free front endpaper, dated 13 September 1919, is ‘To Jeanie, with love,…from one who was in the hospital at Rouen 1916’. Good – with pictorial cloth cover – a little rubbed, bumped and shaken. Scarce

[15274]                                                                                                                   SOLD

309.     DIXON, Agnes M. The Canteeners   John Murray 1917

The story of the Cantines des Dames Anglaises (run under the aegis of the French Red Cross) by one who worked for them in France during the First World War. Good – with photographs

[15228]                                                                                                            SOLD

310.     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

311.     FOXWELL, A.K. Munition Lasses: six months as Principal Onlooker in Danger Buildings  Hodder & Stoughton 1917

An account of work at Woolwich Arsenal during the First World War. With 10 photographs. Good – scarce

[15227]                                                                                                                   SOLD

312.     GRANT, Marjorie Verdun Days in Paris   Collins 1918

Work, from 1916, in a war canteen in Paris. Good – extremely scarce

[15276]                                                                                                            SOLD

313.     GWYNNE-VAUGHAN, DAame 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

314.     HAMILTON, Cicely Senlis   Collins 1917

Her experience in France during the First World War. Good – with 11 photographs – and scarce

[15275]                                                                                                                        £75

315.     HARGREAVES, Reginald Women-At-Arms: their famous exploits through the ages  Hutchinson no date [1930]

Chapters on, amongst others ‘Mother Ross: the Amazon dragoon’, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, Hannah Snell, Dr James Barry, and, from the First World War, Dorothy Lawrence: the Sapper of the B.E.F., and Flora Sandes. Good, with 12 illustrations,  in original cloth – tho’ ex-library

[15268]                                                                                                            £12

316.     JESSE, F. Tennyson The Sword of Deborah: first-hand impressions of the British women’s army in France  Heinemann 1918

She was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to write this book in March 1918. ‘For we should not forget, and how should we remember if we have never known?’ Good – with the faint outline of a ‘Boots’ shield on the front cover – quite scarce

[15236]                                                                                                                        £48

317.     MACPHERSON, Maj-Gen Sir W.G. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Medical Services: General History: Vol 1  HMSO 1921

‘Medical Services in the United Kingdom; in British Garrisons Overseas; and During Operations against Tsingrau, in Togoland, the Cameroons, and South-West Africa’. 463pp – many maps, charts etc. In good condition (one page of the Index is loose). Very scarce

[15284]                                                                                                            £140

318.     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

319.     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

320.     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

321.     STOBART, Mrs St Clair War and Women   G.Bell & Sons 1913

An account of her adventures with the Women’s Convoy Corps that she took out to Serbia during the Balkan Wars in 1912. With 32 photographs. Good – in original red cloth, with white cross on front board. Scarce

[15270]                                                                                                            SOLD

322.     STOBART, Mrs St Clair The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere   Hodder & Stoughton 1917 (2nd ed)

The redoubtable Mrs Stobart formed her own hospital unit during the First World War, taking it in 1915 to Serbia. Dramatic adventures. Very good – with many photographs, a pull-out map, and a dramatic emblematic cover. Scarce

[15246]                                                                                                                   SOLD

323.     TAYLER, Henrietta A Scottish Nurse At Work: being a record of what one semi-trained nurse has been privileged to see and do during four and a half years of war  John Lane 1920

She served with the Anglo-French section of the British Red Cross in Flanders, France and on the Italian Front. The latter section is particularly interesting because there are comparatively few accounts of that Front. Good internally – in original decorative cloth – ex-university library. With 7 illustrations. Extremely scarce

[15287]                                                                                                                        SOLD

324.     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 and Autobiography

325.     (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

326.     (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

327.     (DEARMER) Mabel Dearmer Letters From a Field Hospital: with a memoir of the author by Stephen Gwynn  Macmillan 1915

In April 1915 Mabel Dearmer, wife of the Christian Socialist Rev Percy Dearmer, went out with Mrs St Clair Stobart, as a nurse, to Serbia – and died there in July. These are the letters she sent home. Good internally – cover marked, spine chipped – withdrawn from the John Crerar Library, Chicago.. Scarce

[15303]                                                                                                                        £55

328.     (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

329.     (GEORGE) Gertrude A. George Eight Months with the Women’s Royal Air Force   Heath Cranton 1920

Large format, with many delightful full-page illustrations by the author, Gertrude Alice George (1886-1971). She had been an art teacher in St Albans before the First World War. WRAF records show that she joined up on 29 October 1918 and that she was employed at the London Colney RAF airfield. Very good – scarce

[15255]                                                                                                                   SOLD

330.     (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

331.     (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

332.     (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

333.     (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

334.     (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

335.     MCLAREN, Barbara Women of the War   Hodder & Stoughton 1917

Biographical essays of women and their work in the First World War. – beginning with Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora Murray and ranging through Lilian Barker, Dr Elsie Inglis, Lady Paget, Commandant Damer Dawson, Lena Ashwell, Violetta Thurstan, Miss Ethel Rolfe and the Women Acetylene Welders, among many others.   With many photographs and a coloured frontispiece by Edmund Dulac.  Very good (corner has been torn from the free front endpaper) – scarce

[15265]                                                                                                                   SOLD

336.     (SALMOND) Monica Salmond Bright Armour: memories of four years of war  Faber, 2nd imp 1935

Autobiography of the sister of Julian Grenfell; she began training as a nurse on 19 August 1914 and worked, in both England and France, for the duration of the First World War. Good – a little foxing. It was once, I think, in the lending library run by Owen Owen, the Liverpool department store. Extremely scarce

[15247]                                                                                                                        SOLD

337.     (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 – scarce

[15231]                                                                                                                   SOLD

338.     (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

339.     (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

339A   WALTERS, E.W. Heroines of the World-War   Charles H. Kelly 1916

Chapters on Edith Cavell, Sister Myra Ivanovna: a Russian Joan of Arc, Mabel Dearmer, Sister Joan Martin-Nicholson, The Retreat in Serbia, Women Doctors and War Decorations., Women Soldiers etc. Very good – the endpapers bear the stamp of ‘Southampton General Hospital’. Surprisingly scarce

[15288]                                                                                                                   SOLD

Women and the First World War: Ephemera

340.     COX, Michael Women at War: on old picture postcards  Reflections of a Bygone Age 2014

‘A selection of picture postcards featuring the roels of women in World War One, with informative captions’. 38pp – mint

[15214]                                                                                                                          £4

Women and the First World War: Fiction

341.     BORDEN, Mary The Forbidden Zone   Heinemann 1929

Stories, sketches and poems written between 1914 and 1918, during four years of hospital work with the French army. Mary Borden (1886-1968), American-British novelist, daughter of a wealthy Chicago family, educated at Vassar, married a Scottish missionary, had three daughters, in England became a suffragette and on the outbreak of the First World War went to France as a VAD. During this time she had an affair with a Brigadier-General, whom she married after a divorce.  Quite a life. Fine in very good dustwrapper. Scarce

[15280]                                                                                                                     SOLD

342.     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

343.     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. Very good – clean and tight – with only slight bumping to corners

[15262]                                                                                                                        £75

344.     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

345.     RATHBONE, Irene We That Were Young   Chatto & Windus 1932

With a preface by E.M. Delafield.. Irene Rathbone (1892-1980) had been a young suffragette and in the First World War worked in YMCA camps in France and as a VAD in London. A semi-autobiographical novel of  ‘the lost generation’. The free front endpaper carries the ownership signature of ‘H. Thomas 193’ and the comment ‘Twenty Years After’. The back pastedown bears the small label of the bookseller – ‘Higginbothams Booksellers Madras and Bangalore’. First edition -very good – extremely scarce

[15289]                                                                                                                      SOLD

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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

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

I have stock of Art and Suffrage and Enterprising Women. Copies of all my books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.

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ANNIE SWYNNERTON: My Podcast for the Pre-Raphaelite Society

Posted in Art and Suffrage, The Garretts and their Circle on March 8, 2023

Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton

Following on from my previous post on Annie Swynnerton – ‘New Revelations’ – the Pre-Raphaelite Society have released, for International Women’s Day, my podcast talk on Annie – and Isabel Dacre.

The podcast is in two parts and you can listen here:

https://the-pre-raphaelite-podcast.podbean.com

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For International Women’s Day: ‘Shout, Shout, Up with your Song’

Posted in Books And Ephemera For Sale on March 8, 2023

A few rousing items for sale to mark International Women’s Day 2023

  1. MEMENTO OF WOMEN’S CORONATION PROCESSION TO DEMAND VOTES FOR WOMEN:  Order of March and Descriptive Programme  The Women’s Press 1911

This is the official programme for the spectacular march that was held in London on Saturday June 17 1911. ‘From the Introduction: ‘The March through London of 40,000 women has been arranged to show the strength of the deman to win Votes for Women in Coronaton year. The Procession will form up on Westminster Embankment, starting at 5.30pm and marching seven abreast in a line some five miles long, through Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, to Kensington. At the close of the march a great meeting will be held by the Women’s Social and Political Union in the Albert Hall…’ The programme lists all the suffrage societies taking part and describes in detail the different sections – such as the Prisoners’ Pageant and the Historical Pageant. The ‘Order of March’ is inset. The decorative cover is printed in greeen on good quality thick paper, In good condition – with a little rusting at the staples- a very scarce item.

[15320]                                                                                                                      £700

2. THAT RAGTIME SUFFRAGETTE SHEET MUSIC    B. Feldman & Co c 1913

written by Harry Williams and Nat D. Ayer and originally heard in the 1913 Ziegfeld Follies. It was recorded c 1913/14 by Warwick Green – a British comic singer – to very great effect, although I think he omits the second verse, which is printed in this sheet music. You can hear Warwick Green singing ‘That Ragtime Suffragette’ on youtube. I think it’s wonderful – so evocative- ‘Ragging with bombshells and ragging with bricks/ Hagging and nagging in politics’. The 4-pp of sheet music is printed ‘Professional Copy’ – in good condition, a little rubbed and scuffed; I’m sure it has been well played. Very scarce.

[15319]                                                                                                                      £120

3. THE MARCH OF THE WOMEN

‘Dedicated to the Women’s Social and Political Union’ by its composer, Ethel Smyth. This is an example of the ‘Popular Edition in F. (For meetings and processions, to be sung in unison)’. The 4-page song sheet, containing both music and the words, the latter written by Cicely Hamilton, was published by Breitkopf & Hartel of 54 Great Marlborough Stree, London W and was ‘To be had of The Woman’s Press, 156 Charing Cross Road, London, W.C.’ Price Threepence. ‘The March of the Women’ was premiered at a WSPU meeting, held on 21 Jan 1911 to celebrate the release from prison of WSPU militants. The back cover lists ‘Works by Ethel Smyth, Mus. Doc.’.  The song-sheet has been folded and is a little rubbed and marked, having presumably been put to its intended use at some WSPU rally, but is in generally good condition. Very scarce                                                                             £250

4. ‘THE WOMEN’S MARSEILLAISE’      

Written by Florence Macaulay (1862-1945), one-time student at Somerville College, Oxford, and an organiser for the WSPU. ‘The Women’s Marseillaise’, a marching song, was written in 1909 and begins ‘Arise, ye daughters of a land/That vaunts its liberty’. This single sheet is headed ‘The National Women’s Social & Political Union 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand, W.C.’ and was printed by ‘Geo. Barber,The Furnival Press, E.C.’ The sheet was clearly used for the purpose intended, has been folded, with a slight split at the edges of the fold. In good condition – very scarce

[15314]                                                                                                                      £120

5. ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’    

Songsheet, – the words of a song adapted from a poem by Sir Walter Scott, to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’. It begins ‘To the Lords of Westminster ’twas the suffragette spoke:-/Put us in the King’s Speech, and give us the Vote,/Let each mother’s son who loves freedom to see,/Cry ‘Votes for the Women’ let Britons be free!’. No publisher or society is credited as issuing of the songsheet, which was in circulation by April 1908.(because Campbell-Bannerman is cited, still prime minister). So quite an early example of a suffrage songsheet. Good -single sheet – some foxing

[15309]                                                                                                                      £120

6. 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

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If interested in buying any of these ephemeral items – do email me – elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com . 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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The Garretts And Their Circle: Annie Swynnerton: New Revelations

Posted in Suffrage Stories, The Garretts and their Circle on March 6, 2023

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

[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, 5th 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.

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One Artist – ‘Mary Katherine Constance Lloyd’ – Dismembered To Create Two: or The Importance Of Biography

Posted in Women Artists on February 6, 2023

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 20th 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 20th-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 4th 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 7th 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 18th-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, probably painted to mark their retirements in 1940 and 1953 respectively. 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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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

[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.

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Suffrage Stories and The Garretts and their Circle: Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings – Zoom Talk

Posted in Suffrage Stories, The Garretts and their Circle on October 5, 2022

Here is a link to the recording of the Zoom Book Launch of Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings.

My co-editor, Prof Melissa Terras, and I discuss, in some detail, Millicent Fawcett’s life, work, and writings – and the importance of the digital to the archival as a means of undertaking this act of feminist interpretation and exposition. There are pictures!

We are in conversation with Prof Fiona Mackay (University of Edinburgh School of Political Science), the event hosted by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings is published by UCL Press and is available to download, with free open access, or to buy in hard copy – for details see here.

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Something A Little Different: Furrowed Middlebrow Books, August 2022

Posted in furrowed middlebrow on August 12, 2022

To get in a holiday mood you could do no better than play this Dean Street Press trailer for The Marble Staircase. Unlike most ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ titles this is not a reissue, but a novel written by Elizabeth Fair c 1960, the typescript of which languished for 60 years in a black tin trunk until her literary heirs, inspired by the success of Dean Street Press’s reissues of her published novels, thought to mention its existence. Once read, there was no hesitation in adding it to the Furrowed Middlebrow list and I was delighted to be asked to contribute a foreword, building on those I have written for all Miss Fair’s other novels.

Elizabeth Fair, photographed by Angus McBean

The research was absorbing, allowing me to pick up clues from Elizabeth Fair’s diary, study in detail the topography of a Lancashire seaside town, linking that to the lives of her antecedents, while relishing the effect visits to Lake Como and Florence had on the life of the novel’s heroine. ‘Liberation of the mind’ is the theme, Italy the catalyst, a combination familiar to readers of E.M. Forster and Elizabeth von Arnim, but given an entirely individual rendition by Elizabeth Fair.

And here is the trailer for more Dean Street Press August largesse – 12 novels by ‘Susan Scarlett’, aka Noel Streatfeild. Again, I was delighted to be commissioned to write the foreword to these reissues, detailing how the author, now mainly remembered for her books for children, came to write these light novels that did so much to brighten the lives of her readers during the Second World War. The first, Clothes-Pegs, was published in 1939 and the last, Love in a Mist, in 1951, and, between them, allow us to enter worlds all well known to the author – those of fashion, concert parties, ballet, munitions (this novel has perhaps the best title, at least to those of a certain age – Murder While You Work), and even that of the film studio, all set against the background of ordinary lives in wartime and post-war England.

In the course of my research, I reread Angela Bull’s biography of Noel Streatfeild, as well as the author’s various autobiographies, and very much enjoyed mining digitized newspapers for obscure details of her early years, all grist to the mill. But a particular source of information was one that, as a sometime publishing house employee, I particularly value – the ledgers of ‘Susan Scarlett’s publisher, Hodder. These very heavy and unwieldy objects are held, most conveniently for me, in the London Metropolitan Archives and I would make a bold guess that it is many decades since anyone else has looked at the sales and profit and loss accounts for the novels of Susan Scarlett. It always gives me great pleasure to investigate prime records such as these that bring to life the facts behind the books.

‘Susan Scarlett’ during the Second World War

Dean Street Press have served a veritable ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ feast this summer. Enjoy.

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The Garretts And Their Circle: Millicent’s Writings (soon to be published) And Agnes’ Furnishings (work in progress)

Posted in The Garretts and their Circle on March 8, 2022

This International Women’s Day I would like to celebrate, once again, the work of the women of the Garrett family.

In a couple of months’ time UCL Press will be publishing Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings on which I have had the pleasure of working, alongside the lead editor, Prof Melissa Terras. In the volume, which will be open access as one of the publishing options, 35 texts and 22 images are contextualised and linked to contemporary news coverage, as well as to historical and literary references. This is the first opportunity to study in one volume Millicent Fawcett’s thinking on a range of topics concerning the advancement of women, of which the women’s suffrage campaign is only one.

In the photograph we chose as the cover for the book you see Millicent Fawcett seated at her desk in a corner of the first-floor front drawing-room of her home at 2 Gower Street, Bloomsbury. It may be the very same desk as that of which we catch a glimpse, to the right of the fireplace in the illustration below, taken from Suggestions for House Decoration (1876) by Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. Many years ago, after visiting 2 Gower Street when researching Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle, I came to the conclusion that the illustrations in House Decoration were taken directly from real life, that is they were pictures of the rooms in 2 Gower Street, as arranged by Rhoda and Agnes. Recently I have been delighted to have my educated guess vindicated by discovering that Lady Maude Parry, a friend of the Garretts, stated in an obituary article on Rhoda, published in Every Girls’ Annual 1884, that in Suggestions for House Decoration ‘are illustrations of their house in Gower Street’.

Rhoda died in 1882, but Agnes carried on the business of ‘R & A Garrett’, house decorators, until 1905, although in 1899 the lease on the firm’s warehouse in Morwell Street came to an end, necessitating the sale of its contents and, presumably, a reduction in the work undertaken. Incidentally the Morwell Street building and its neighbours has recently, 2022, been approved for demolition, to be replaced by a 6-storey building. When I first noted it c 2000, the Garrett’s ‘warehouse’ retained its original façade (illustrated in Enterprising Women), which has subsequently been altered – now another Garrett link will be utterly obliterated. However, that furniture sale, held at Phillips, Son and Neale on 27 July 1899, has provided me with considerable scope for research – allowing me to identify a number of individuals keen to buy furniture and house accoutrements that had the Garrett seal of approval – in that they had passed through Agnes’ hands – and to muse a little on the state of the ‘house furnishing’ market at the end of the 19th century. That research will appear in a subsequent post on this website.

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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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Collecting Suffrage: Suffragette Fakery

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on December 2, 2021

Over the years I have expressed concern about the practice of dealers and auctioneers in labelling as ‘suffragette’ any piece of jewellery that combines stones approximating to suffragette colours of purple, white and green. I explained in another post [see https://wp.me/p2AEiO-nd] that such jewellery would have had no association with the suffragette movement, the colours were merely harmonious and fashionable, which was why they had been chosen by the Women’s Social and Political Union as their ‘brand’. This practice is, I am afraid, still rife, but at least I have tried to warn the trade and the public.

However, I am now increasingly worried by the number of deliberately faked suffragette objects that are being sold both on eBay and by British auction houses, often for high prices. Fake ‘suffragette’ flags, watches, cigarette cases, car badges, defaced coins, and woven cloth badges are the latest items to appear in auction house sales. Having specialised in suffrage ephemera – as an historian and a dealer – for over 35 years I can assure my readers that most of these objects either never existed in the ‘suffrage’ years and are being dreamed up – and manufactured – by unscrupulous sellers, or are modern copies. I do occasionally protest to terrestrial auction houses about individual items and they then invariably withdraw them from sale – but I cannot hope to stem the tide alone.

While I hate the idea of private buyers being duped, not only by spending large sums but also by thinking, erroneously, that they own an artefact with a real connection to the suffrage movement, my principal fear is that such objects will end up in public collections; indeed, I know this to have happened. If the institution is made aware of its mistake and removes the object from display, it has lost money; if the object passes into the collection unchallenged, it is legitimising a fiction. I would ask potential buyers to think carefully – and even consult an expert – before spending money on artefacts labelled as ‘suffragette’. Better still, research the movement carefully so that you can exercise your own judgment. There are still plenty of ‘right’ objects to be found but, as ever, this maxim holds: ‘If an item looks too good to be true, it probably is’.

Caveat Emptor

To see something of the marvellous range of suffrage artefacts that were actually produced by suffrage societies do consult Ken Florey’s site. Although treating, in the main, items produced to publicise the US suffrage movement, he also includes a wide range of British items.

My website also includes a number of articles that may prove useful – under the ‘Collecting Suffrage’ heading. And, if you would like advice about an item you are thinking of buying, you can always ask for my opinion.

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Suffrage Stories: Suffrage in South Devon – Watch My Zoom Talk

Posted in Suffrage Stories on September 29, 2021

Mrs Pankhurst on the Majestic as she sailed into Plymouth on 4 December 1913 – just before the police arrived to arrest her. With her are the American journalist, her ghostwriter, Rheta Childe Dorr, and Joan Wickham, her secretary.

Here is a link to the Zoom talk on the women’s suffrage campaign in South Devon that I gave on 25 September as part of Torbay’s Heritage Lecture Day. The fully-illustrated talk traces suffrage activity in the area from its beginnings in 1866 – through the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Suffrage Stories: Suffrage In South Devon – Zoom Talk

Posted in Suffrage Stories on September 20, 2021

‘Plymouth is so very backward that what we have gained represents a very real advance’: the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign in South Devon in the 19th and 20th centuries is the title of a Zoom talk I am giving on Saturday 25 September at 1.30pm. The fully-illustrated talk covers the women’s suffrage campaign in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The talk forms part of Torbay’s Heritage Lecture Day – for full details of which see here. N.B. click on the ’10 am’ option to buy a ticket for the Virtual Talk. You can watch the talk from anywhere in the world!

The talk will make clear the meaning of this photograph

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‘Collecting The Suffragettes’: A Fully-Illustrated Video Talk

Posted in Collecting Suffrage, Suffrage Stories on July 23, 2021

If you are interested in discovering something about the wide range of objects produced during the course of the women’s suffrage campaign in the 19th and early 20th centuries, you may like to view a talk I gave recently, hosted by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association and the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Click here to watch.

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Collecting Suffrage: Free Online Talk 22 June

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on June 15, 2021

On Tuesday 22 June at 6pm London Time I shall be giving a free online (Zoom) talk on ‘Collecting Suffragettes’,, under the auspices of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association and the Institute of English Studies (University of London.

The very fully illustrated talk will discuss suffrage memorabilia – of all types – created in the course of the women’s suffrage campaign that ran from 1866 until all women in Britain were granted the parliamentary vote in 1928.

If interested, you can book here

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The ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ Fiction: Recording of LSE Talk

Posted in furrowed middlebrow on May 27, 2021

Laura Jesson in Boots Booklovers’ Library – still from Brief Encounter

A recording of my talk on The ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ Fiction: novels by and for women, 1920s to 1950s is now available here It was hosted by LSE Library and delivered via Zoom on 20 May.

I discussed some of the ‘middlebrow’ novels written by women that were available to borrow from public and circulating libraries in the 1920s to the 1950s, making special reference to those by novelists such as Margery Sharp, Celia Buckmaster, Stella Gibbons and Elizabeth Fair that have recently been republished by Dean Street Press under their ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ imprint. I have written introductions to about 35 of the reissues.

The talk ties in with the current LSE Library online exhibition Making Modern Women: Women’s Magazines in Interwar Britain – which you can view here

You might also like to consult The Furrowed Middlebrow blog and The Middlebrow Network.

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The ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ Fiction: novels by and for women, 1920s to 1950s

Posted in furrowed middlebrow on May 17, 2021

Hosted by LSE Library, I’ll be giving a free online – Zoom – talk – The ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ Fiction: novels by and for women, 1920s to 1950s – on Thursday 20 May, from 1-2pm.

I’ll be discussing some of the ‘middlebrow’ novels written by women that were available to borrow from public and circulating libraries in the 1920s to the 1950s. I’ll be making special reference to those by novelists such as Margery Sharp, Celia Buckmaster, Stella Gibbons and Elizabeth Fair that have recently been republished by Dean Street Press under their ‘Furrowed Middlebrow’ imprint. I have written introductions to about 35 of the reissues.

For full details of my talk – and how to register – see here.

The talk ties in with the current LSE Library online exhibition Making Modern Women: Women’s Magazines in Interwar Britain – which you can view here

You might also like to consult The Furrowed Middlebrow blog and The Middlebrow Network.

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Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes And Their Dress

Posted in Suffrage Stories on May 6, 2021

The apotheosis of suffragette dress

The term ‘suffragette’ was invented in 1906 by the Daily Mail, as a belittling epithet, and was then adopted as a badge of honour by the women it sought to demean. These women – the suffragettes –campaigning for the parliamentary vote –  were members of what are termed the ‘militant’ suffrage society – the Women’s Social and Political Union, led by Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters.

It would be possible to approach the subject of suffragettes and their dress chronologically because during what we think of as the Edwardian years, that is from 1901 to 1914, women’s dress did alter decisively, from the curvy, rather fussy outline, topped by a large hat, of the early years to the more tailored look in the year or so before the outbreak of war. It could be argued that this was not unconnected to the growing importance and popularity of the campaign for ‘votes for women’. However, I thought it would be interesting to approach the topic from a different angle – to see whether the suffragettes used dress as a weapon in their campaign and, if so, why and how.

The suffragettes were by no means the first women in Britain to campaign for the right to vote in parliamentary elections. That campaign had begun 40 years earlier, in 1866, when John Stuart Mill, then MP for Westminster, presented a petition to the House of Commons asking for the vote for women on the same terms as it was granted to men. Why were women barred from voting? The one reason – unarguable in its unreasonableness – was simply that in the mid 19th c the act of voting was gendered male – just as the army, the navy and the church were male. The ballot was not secret, votes were bought with beer, and the hustings were notorious for scenes of drunken brawling.  Women who claimed a right to enter this world were transgressing the gender divide. In consequence, such women were either regarded, negatively, as insufficiently womanly – the jibe was that they must want the vote to make up for their lack of charms – or as positively masculine – as women aping men. Either way the popular verdict was that these ‘women’s righters’ were embarrassments –  figures of fun.

As dress may be taken as the outer signifier of inner thought, the appearance of women who campaigned for the vote was always a matter to be given serious consideration.– both during the 19th century and then during the Edwardian campaign.

This is Punch’s view of the presentation of that first petition. The representation of the women – the ‘persons’ – whom Mill is leading – does reflect something in demeanour and dress of the women who organised the petition. They were, on the whole, self-confident, young middle-class women  – the wearers of muffs and fashionable bonnets. The more elderly woman with glasses represented the earnestness of the movement – while the image of the old woman with the umbrella – as depicted, a member of a class of women who would have no hope of gaining the vote, which was based on property holding – was the caricature that was to feature in both 19th and 20th c popular representations of the suffrage movement, particularly on comic postcards in the Edwardian period.

Agnes and Millicent Garrett

The petition had been put together very quickly – women went round their friends, relations and neighbours asking for signatures.Here are two young women who did just that – in Aldeburgh in Suffolk. They are Millicent Garrett, sitting down, and her sister, Agnes.  As you will note they are entirely conventionally attired as young women of the 1860s. Both were to be involved in the suffrage campaign all their long lives – Millicent Garrett, as Mrs Millicent Fawcett, was to negotiate women to the ballot box in 1918.

 

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, 1889 – doctor, founder of the New Hospital for Women, dean of the London School of Medicine for Women, wife and mother

Millicent and Agnes very much looked up to their elder sister, Elizabeth, who, in spite of many difficulties put in her way, had in 1866 managed to become the first woman to qualify in Britain as a doctor. She was one of those in London who were organizing the suffrage petition. Again, all her life she made no particular statement about her looks – but dressed in such a way that, within the bounds of conventional fashion, she could carry out her work as a doctor in the hospital she founded and as lecturer and eventually dean of the London School of Medicine for Women.  Like Millicent, she was, at this time, very much of the view that women would get the vote by proving themselves worthy – not by upsetting the establishment. One aspect of this was that from the very beginning of the campaign it was recognised that women were more likely to be taken seriously – or at least, not dismissed out of hand – if in outward appearance  – in dress and demeanour – they conformed to the general ‘look’ expected of women – that is, if they placed themselves firmly on the female side of the gender divide and  avoided looking either unwomanly or mannish.  For instance, when in 1870  public suffrage meetings was being planned in London, Elizabeth Garrett, who was something of a cynic, suggested that it would be a good idea to make sure that only pretty, well-dressed women filled the front row.

At a time when it was still exceptional for a well-brought up woman to speak on a public platform, suffrage speakers quickly made their mark and by 1874 Punch had already made up its mind on the subject of the dress of a typical suffrage campaigner. Here the cartoonist has elected to depict her as positively masculine. Now, just such a woman as Punch was referring to – a famous champion of women’s rights, although by all accounts very much more attractive in the flesh – was Rhoda Garrett – who was not only the cousin of Agnes, Elizabeth and Millicent, but also the partner, both in an interior design business and in life, of Agnes. 

An engraving of Rhoda speaking at a London public meeting in 1872, shows her wearing an outfit such as that in the Punch cartoon –  a loose jacket and skirt. She is hatless and her hair is loose and she certainly doesn’t look to be corseted. Rhoda was on the radical wing of the suffrage movement – her attire reflecting her freer approach   She was prepared, for instance, openly to support the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts. Millicent Fawcett, on the other hand, believed that it was dangerous to the suffrage cause to mix it in the public mind with any mention of prostitution. You can see Millicent here on the left, with hair braided, shawl draped.

Rhoda Garrett died in 1882 – when barely 40 – and is now little remembered. If she had lived she might well have made a very interesting figurehead for the suffrage movement – both in terms of the substance of her speeches and in her idiosyncratic style of dress.

But by the beginning of the 20th century, despite the hundreds and hundreds of meetings, petitions presented and bills debated, women were still denied the vote – even though by then the act of voting only meant, as it does now, putting a piece of paper into a box, the electoral hustings no longer involved hard drinking and unseemly brawls and women had already won the right to vote for many local government bodies.

Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst

In October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst decided to form her own pressure group – the Women’s Social and Political Union – to make a determined effort to move the campaign forward.  She had been involved with the suffrage movement since the 1880s when living with her husband and children in Manchester. Despite spending some years moving in London Arts and Crafts circles, Emmeline always remained more a figure rendered by Tissot than Burne-Jones. She preferred Parisian modes to Pre-Raphaelite drapery. By the time she founded the WSPU she was a widow, back living in Manchester.  It took a couple of years to gather steam and it was when the WSPU began to make itself seen and heard in London that the term ‘suffragette’ was coined. By 1906 the difference between the suffragettes and the original campaigners – the ‘suffragists’ – had become clear.

Emmeline Pankhurst arrested, 1908

The WSPU were prepared to demonstrate in an increasingly militant fashion, while the suffragists, members of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies – known as the NUWSS – led by Millicent Fawcett, remained ‘constitutional’ – that is they would not contemplate breaking any aspect of the law.  Even when under arrest Mrs Pankhurst contrived to look elegant and womanly.

Christabel Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst was soon joined in the WSPU by her eldest daughter, Christabel. The photograph above dates from c 1908 – her dress is rather more ‘artistic’ than her mother’s – the brooch may have been designed by C.R. Ashbee.

Christabel Pankhurst, by ‘Spy’

In the Vanity Fair ‘Spy’ cartoon from a couple of years later she appears to be wearing the same gown – which we can now see is green, a favourite colour. Grace Roe, who was to become a life-long friend, has left a description of the first time she saw Emmeline and Christabel speaking – at a WSPU rally in Hyde Park in 1908. Although she was interested in the women’s suffrage movement she had been put off by the press reports and was afraid that Emmeline and Christabel might be ‘unwomanly women’. However, she was delighted to discover that, on the contrary, ‘There was Mrs Pankhurst, this magnificent figure, like a queen’ and Christabel who ‘had taken off her bonnet and cloak, and was wearing a green tussore silk dress. She was very graceful, had lovely hands and a wonderful way of using them.’

Christabel Pankhurst, 1909

And here is Christabel again, photographed  at the Women’s Exhibition – a WSPU bazaar that was both fund and image-raising – held in Knightsbridge in 1909. And that is a hat that is intended to disarm – to secure her as a ‘womanly woman ‘ and disprove any association with the Shrieking Sisterhood. The photographs of Emmeline and Christabel– as were many others of the leaders – were reproduced on postcards, which were sold by the WSPU. By doing so they not only advertised that they conformed to accepted views of womanhood, but raised money in the process.

Sylvia Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst’s second daughter, Sylvia, was an artist, and had trained at Royal College of Art. She eventually broke away from Emmeline and Christabel to pursue the campaign for the vote from a base among the working women of the East End. She always appears conventionally, if carelessly, dressed and in 1911 the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, characterised her as too busy to be ‘bothered about her hair, or the hang of her skirt.’  Another suffragette described her as dressing ‘like a Quakeress in sober browns and greys’. But when the occasion demanded even she, radical that she was, was prepared to make an effort. During an American tour in 1911 a reporter in Des Moines described her arriving at a suffrage meeting, a ‘pink-cheeked slender girl clad in a trailing gown of creamy silk, [who] dropped modestly into a seat on the platform and raised her blue eyes to meet the hundreds in the audience.’

Emmeline Pethick Lawrence

Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and her husband, Frederick, were wealthy philanthropists –  working philanthropists- who brought both money and organisational skill to the WSPU, joining the Pankhursts as its leaders. Mrs Pethick Lawrence was particularly disturbed by the exploitation of girls working in the London dress trade and in the early years of the 20th century founded a club for them. In fact, in the mid-19th century, right at the very beginning of the suffrage campaign, it had been concern for what were then termed ‘needlewomen’ that had dominated much of the discourse. Although, of course, such women would not be emancipated under the terms for which the vote was being demanded, middle-class women thought that if they had the vote they would be able to improve the lives of their working-class sisters. The irony of women slaving to provide new fashions for other women was not lost on the campaigners. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence set up not only a club, but also a tailoring co-operative – ‘Maison Esperance’ – to free at least a few girls from exploitation. It was based first in Great Portland Street and then in Wigmore Street. As you see, Emmeline Pethick Lawrence favoured rather loose, flowing garments – richly embroidered, tasselled – floating scarves. I think they qualify as artistic; she was certainly rather fey and spiritual.

Annie Kenney with Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy

These women were, of course, all middle-class, but the WSPU also had its working-class icons – the most important of whom was Annie Kenney. Until swept up by the Pankhursts, she had been a mill girl in Lancashire – and for many of her early public appearances she was dressed in shawl and clogs – for effect, I may say. That is not how she would have chosen to dress. In the photograph on the left she appears in the mill girl guise, alongside Mrs Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, who had been one of the earliest of the suffrage campaigners. Mrs Elmy was impoverished – what money she had was spent on campaigning – and totally unworldly – her ringletted hair was styled as it had been in her youth  – but was well aware that it would never do, as she said, to ‘look a scarecrow’ when appearing in public. So friends united in providing her with a new gown when necessary, ensuring that her appearance was commensurate with her importance in the movement.

Annie Kenney

Rather than shawl and clogs Annie Kenney much preferred the type of garments that those with whom she now associated wore – such as she wears in the above photo. Thus, in December 1906, for a dinner given at the Savoy by Mrs Fawcett and the NUWSS  to celebrate the  release of WSPU prisoners, Annie recorded that ‘Mrs Lawrence bought me a very pretty green silk Liberty dress for the occasion, and I wore a piece of real lace. I was so pleased with both.’

Flora Drummond, Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst arrested 1908

For by the autumn of 1906 WSPU militancy now involved arrest and imprisonment. This photograph was taken a couple of years later – at the WSPU office in Clement’s Inn in the Strand and shows the leaders being arrested by Inspector Jarvis of the Yard. From this we can get a good indication of their normal daywear. From left to right they are Mrs Flora Drummond – Mrs Pankhurst – and Christabel. Annie Kenney looks down from the poster on wall

Pageantry

But alongside militancy that led to arrest was militancy that merely involved making a peaceful, public demonstration. Although the WSPU’s first London march in 1906 comprised women from the East End, many carrying their babies, the WSPU did not pursue its involvement with working-class women. Wealthier women were more able to contribute not only funds but a more glamorous presence on the streets. It was they who were mustered for the spectacles of pageantry that the WSPU in successive years mounted in London – and in provincial cities. These displays gave the photographers material to record. Both still and moving cameras were used – for newsreel of the occasions was shown in cinemas.

Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, June 1908

The WSPU staged the first of their major pageants in Hyde Park in June 1908. It was estimated that a quarter of a million people attended. In order to make as dramatic an effect as possible Mrs Pethick Lawrence suggested that women should wear white –  and, of course, – as we see here – did so herself.  .One suffragette, Jessie Stephenson, has left a description of how ‘my milliner and dressmaker took endless pains with my attire. A white lacy muslin dress, white shoes and stockings and gloves and, like an order, across the breast, the broad band in purple, white and green emblazoned “Votes for Women”, a white shady hat trimmed with white’. The mother of another WSPU member, Mary Blathwayt from Bath, recorded in her diary that Mary was dressed ‘in white muslin with the scarf  crosswise over her shoulder’.– as the woman on the left wearing .

The scarf was a new piece of merchandise – a motoring scarf in the new WSPU colours of purple, white and green – a combination devised by  Emmeline Pethick Lawrence to represent the WSPU brand – and with which the WSPU is still associated. The colours were used on programmes, rosettes, flags and banners and on the sashes the women draped across themselves.

Even Mrs Wolstenholme Elmy wore a sash, standing alongside Mrs Pankhurst. She has left us details of the bouquet she was given to carry –advertising the WSPU’s colours in a composition of ‘ferns, huge purple lilies and lily of the valley’.

Christabel, 1910 – in THAT coat

The colours were not only employed in the course of the pageants. In Nov 1910 Christabel Pankhurst was one of the leaders of a deputation of all the women’s suffrage societies to Asquith and Lloyd George and for the occasion dressed in a coat with wide satin lapels in purple, white and green. The journalist Henry Nevinson commented in his diary that it was ‘fine – but a little overdone for the morning.’

WSPU Shop – Putney

In order to sell the merchandise, the local WSPU societies opened shops – taking short leases on high street properties, just as charity shops do today. This is the one run by the Putney society. They produced a wide-range of tempting goods  – from board and card games, to ‘Votes for Women’ tea and soap and ‘Emmeline’ and ‘Christabel’ bags. The Pankhursts were the Alexa Chungs of their day. But one of the most popular type of merchandise was what might be loosely termed ‘jewellery’. This ranged from mass-produced badges to hand-wrought items. One WSPU diarist recorded that the local society ‘had taken a shop in the central part of the town, and decorated it beautifully with purple, white and green flags. On a counter I saw piles of leaflets, pamphlets and Suffragette literature, also very pretty little brooches in the colours, one of which I bought and intend always to wear’

Jewish League for Women’s Suffrage – badge

The WSPU had very quickly developed the idea of creating such symbols to be worn to indicate support for their cause. Soon all the suffrage societies, ranging through the Women’s Freedom League, the Actresses’ Franchise League, the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, the NUWSS, the  Men’s League and, as here, the Jewish League all  had their own colours and badges.

Something of an irritating mythology has gathered around the concept of ‘suffragette jewellery’, fostered by dealers and auction houses who like to claim that any piece with stones approximating to the colours purple, white and green, must be of suffragette association. Although, at the height of the WSPU campaign, such pieces certainly were manufactured both by commercial and craft jewellers, it is now very difficult to identify them with any certainty as suffragette – amethysts, pearls and demantoid garnets or emeralds were very commonly used in Edwardian jewellery. We do know that some pieces were made with the WSPU in mind. For instance, in December 1909 Mappin and Webb issued a catalogue of ‘Suffragette jewellery’.

And this silver and enamel pendant using a design by Sylvia Pankhurst was certainly made and sold in WSPU shops. And in Votes for Women craft workers advertised jewellery made up in the colours and the numerous fund-raising bazaars provided ample opportunity for purchasing such items of jewellery associated with the movement.

Pendant made by Ernestine Mills

We also know that one-off pieces of suffragette jewellery were made.In 1909 Ernestine Mills, an enameller who was a WSPU supporter, was commissioned by the Chelsea WSPU to make a pendant for one of their members on her release from prison. In silver enamel, it depicted the winged figure of Hope singing outside the prison bars and was held by a chain made up of purple, white and green stones. Above is a pendant made by ernestine Mills for an Irish suffragette.

The symbolism of both jewellery and of military decoration is realized in a portrait of Flora Drummond, painted in 1936, that now hangs in the Scottish Portrait Gallery. She was a Scots woman living in Manchester who along with, or despite, her husband and young son, was swept into the WSPU in its very early days. As you can see, she took to it with a will –and was known as General Drummond. .For her portrait  she wore a large pendant of purple, white and green stones alongside the WSPU equivalent of the Victoria Cross – the hunger-strike medal.

As you can see from this photo, held by the Museum of London, the WSPU by 1908 or so had, alongside its desire for its members to be seen as womanly women, begun to embrace a more military ethos. Uniform – or at least uniformity – were important elements when producing pageantry and processions – in creating a spectacle. Here we see a suffragette acting as a standard bearer You will note how like a uniform she has made her outfit – although all the individual pieces are, I imagine, conventional

l-r Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, Christabel Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst, and Emily Wilding Davison, Hyde Park, 1910

For the major suffragette demonstration in Hyde Park in 1910 the WSPU paper,Votes for Women, asked those taking part to march eyes front, like a soldier and ‘to remember you are just a unit in a great whole’. Hints were also given on how to dress.  ‘Don’t wear gowns that have to be held up. Don’t wear enormous hats that block the view. Do wear white if possible. Do in any case keep to the colours.’ .Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who was probably responsible for this edict, took her own advice. She wore a lovely dress – with a hem that was perhaps weighted in someway, to bell out a little, clearing the ground. She wears a loose lacy long jacket over the dress – also white. Her hat may have been purple or green – although of course one cannot tell from the photograph – and is neat and close fitting. Her gloves are white and she carries a little bag – again probably in purple or green. Sylvia is holding one of the placards she had designed that were a feature of this procession –a  convict’s arrow was superimposed on the House of Commons portcullis – symbolising the lengths that women were prepared to go to gain the vote. Christabel is in academic dress – she had graduated in 1906 with a first-class degree in law from Manchester University. In all the major processions graduates marched as a group –   emphasising the fact that, although they had attained scholastic heights, they were still denied the vote.

Emily Wilding Davison

Emily Wilding Davison is the other figure in academic dress in the Hyde Park photo and on a separate occasion sat for a studio photographer in academic dress – she had gained her degree in the 1890’s. The photograph can be dated to some time after 1908 by the fact that she is wearing a particular brooch – the WSPU Holloway badge – given to women who had been imprisoned. This was the photograph that the WSPU chose to publish in the press and on postcards after her death at the Derby in 1913 – the image chosen to reinforce the idea of intellectual achievement – of noble womanhood sacrificed.

In 1911, Britain having badefarewell to King Edward the previous year, prepared to celebrate the coronation of the new king. The suffragettes, in a spirit of truce, held back on their militant campaign to stage perhaps their most spectacular procession – and demonstrate, in mass, their womanliness. 

For this procession the WSPU organized separate contingents representing different groups –their dress making specific statements.

This is the Indian contingent.

 Nurses – who always received a warm welcome from bystanders as they marched past

Members of Cymric Suffrage Society – the welsh suffrage society – dressed in their regional costume

Cicely Hamilton, seen here (3rd from left) carrying the Women Writers Suffrage League banner, was very much a lady who favoured the tailor rather than the dressmaker. In her autobiography she wrote: ‘A curious characteristic of the militant suffragette movement was the importance it attached to dress and appearance, and its insistence on the feminine note. In the WSPU all suggestion of the masculine was carefully avoided, and the outfit of a militant setting forth to smash windows would probably include a picture hat.’

But be that as it may, there were some women who were able within the WSPU to adopt a role that allowed them to wear clothing more masculine than was otherwise acceptable. Here we see Vera – also known as Jack –  Holme, the WSPU’s chauffeur.  Involvement with the WSPU allowed her very much more scope to lead the kind of life she wanted – previously she had been an actress in the D’Oyly Carte. As Mrs Pankhurst’s chauffeur she wore a striking uniform in the WSPU colours, with a smart peaked cap decorated with her RAC badge of efficiency – atop her decidedly short hair.

Advertisement from ‘Votes for Women’

She lived with the Hon Evelina Haverfield  who appeared in the pages of Votes for Women in 1912 giving her imprimatur to the Omne Tempus raincoat – an ideal coat for town, county and campaigning.

As the suffrage battle grew more ever more physical, so the imagery became more military – if of a feminised kind. This poster was used after 1912 to advertise the Suffragette,the successor paper to Votes for Women. By now, Joan of Arc was often invoked as a role model

And, paradoxically, it was the womanly skills of WSPU members that were used to make many of the banners, flags and pennants that were carried by the marchers into the suffrage battle. And to raise funds for what was actually called ‘The War Chest’, the WSPU held grand bazaars. Of these the grandest was the one held in Knightsbridge in 1909. Here, in this photograph held by the Museum of London, we see Mrs Pankhurst manning the hat stall there – she had appealed for hats, veils, scarves, hair ornaments etc’. Hats clearly had their part to play in the woman’s struggle – although hat ornamentation could arouse strong feelings. Some suffragettes, many of whom combined interests in anti-vivisection and vegetarianism with their support for votes for women, were involved in a campaign to prohibit the wearing of feathers in hats.

But hat-wearing was de rigueur – even when setting out to commit arson. To have been hatless would have been to attract attention. When Emily Wilding Davison ran in front of the King’s horse in 1913–  she was wearing a hat. Newsreel, that you can watch here, shows it bowling across the grass as she fell.

After Emily Wilding Davison’s death – the WSPU gave her a magnificent funeral. You can see the women dressed – very femininely -in white –  guarding the coffin, holding their lilies like swords. One rank and file member, Alice Singer,  recorded in her diary the day before the funeral that she had just bought a black armband to wear as she watched the procession from the pavement. And Kate Frye (who’s diary I have edited) bought a black hat specifically for the occasion.

This was the last big pageant –soon the WSPU was being harried by the police – it had to move out of its office, many of its leaders were in prison and Christabel had fled to France to avoid arrest. The society no longer had the resources to devote to pageantry

But whatever the suffragettes did to construct an image of co-ordinated determination, even if they might not always have achieved the ultimate goal of grace and nobility,  the popular view of them had changed little. The Edwardian era saw the flourishing of the postcard trade and suffragettes were a boon to illustrators.

Their stereotypical attributes were glasses, big feet, tailored clothes, collar and tie, a billycock hat and an umbrella.

Lady Constance Lytton as ‘Jane Wharton’

The image was even accepted as ‘authentic’ by the suffragettes themselves. When Lady Constance Lytton wished to ensure that she would be arrested – which, on account of her family connections, would not have happened if she had been recognised – she disguised herself as a stereotypical ‘suffragette’ – and was duly imprisoned.

Daily Life as suffragette supporter

[pic] But life as a suffragette was not all processions, marching and pageantry. It’s clear from a wide range of photographs that rank- and- file suffragettes came in all shapes and sizes and in daily life favoured a variety of ‘looks’. As I have noted, depending on the taste of the wearer, these ranged from the feminine and fancy, through the artistic, to the tailored. This range in style is reflected in the advertisements that appear in Votes for Women.

For instance, regular advertisers included Maud Barham, Artistic and original dresses, hand embroideries, djibbahs, coats and hats;

Amy Kotze, Artistic dresses and coats – for women and children –  and Miss Folkard, Artistic dress and mantle maker. One woman who did favour the artistic look was prepared to make a sacrifice for the cause. On 2 November 1911 Alice Singer wrote in her diary that ‘I sold my Liberty smock to Vera Wentworth [she was another WSPU member]– proceeds 5/- to WSPU’

 As for the tailored look, Alfred Day, ladies’ tailor, of Regent’s Park, was a regular advertiser, while the more conventional dresser was addressed by Madame Rebecca Gordon, court milliner and dressmaker.

This shop appealed directly to suffragettes in London to take part in the 1911 WSPU Coronation Procession

Major stores such as Debenham and Freebody, Whiteleys and Pontings clearly thought it worth their while to advertise a variety of styles  – tying in their advertising to current suffragette activities – whether  electioneering or processing.  Other advertisers included Regal Corset Parlor, whose slogan was – at least in Votes for Women – ‘Support the Women’.

However, whatever style was favoured, the wearing of the colours in everyday life was the sign of a committed suffragette. One writer mentions that in her experience a white costume, green straw hat and purple scarf was a very appropriate outfit for a WSPU member. In another, perhaps fictional, diary, when the suffragette heroine is persuading someone who is becoming interested in the WSPU, but does not want to fight with policemen, she tells her that ‘Derry and Toms have charming hats in the colours – they are really most becoming’ – thereby suggesting that she could participate in the fight for the vote by merely wearing the correct hat.

Other suffragettes were prepared to make a very much more public display of themselves. Many elderly suffragettes have recorded how, as gently-brought up girls, selling Votes for Women in the street took considerable courage. In the above photo we see that Vera Wentworth (to whom, as I mentioned, Alice Singer sold her Liberty smock) is the centre of attention as she advertises a WSPU procession.

Prison

 But, increasingly, being a suffragette required more than social courage  – it also involved the risk of being sent to prison. Before arrest, confrontations with the police could lead to physical manhandling and for one notorious scrum in Parliament square in November 1910 women altered their usual attire by stuffing cardboard down their fronts – armour indeed.

Mrs Pankhurst in a mocked-up prison cell, in prison dress

Many suffragettes have left memories of their time in gaol. The clothes are particularly remembered. One wrote ‘We wore a uniform – a green dress, thick serge, a little white cap on one’s head, an apron of blue and white check cotton and a round disc the colour of wash leather which had a number.’ Others remembered that in the early years underclothing was patched, stained and foul smelling – a particular horror.

But they put their prison dress to good use. Replica costumes were run up and were worn when campaigning at by elections, for  parades, to show solidarity when meeting released prisoners at Holloway or, as in the photo of Mrs Pankhurst (above), at bazaars.

In November 1911 members of the WSPU adopted a new tactic and organised a mass breaking of windows in the West End and Knightsbridge. It was now thought that conventional methods of campaigning had achieved nothing and that violence – of a sort – was the answer. They called it the argument of the broken glass. Kate Frye, who did not actually wield a hammer, wrote in her diary on 21 November 1911, ‘I went in to Lyons and had coffee and a sandwich. Who should I happen to sit next but Miss Ada Moore [a popular actress and suffragette] and 2 ladies – ready for the fray. I wonder I wasn’t arrested as one – for I soon realized I was dressed for the part to the life. Long cloth ulster or coat, light hat and veil was the correct costume – no bag purse – umbrella or any extra.’ Muffs were a fashionable accessory at the time and were useful for concealing the hammer used to smash the windows. Three months later some members of the Chelsea WSPU adapted their dress by sewing special pockets to hang down inside their skirts in which to conceal stones to throw at windows. The attack on the very stores of which they were the main customers began shortly before closing time.

Alice Singer wrote in her diary on 24 February 1912 – ‘Wrote to offer myself as window breaking for 4th March, if Mrs Pankhurst thinks I shan’t disgrace the Cause’. And on the 27th February wrote’ Walked about the Suburb [that is Hampstead Garden Suburb] trying to find someone to make me a new frock to wear when I return from Holloway Gaol’. That certainly demonstrates a certain insouciance.

Holloway brooch – as awarded to Alice Singer for her imprisonment. She did not go on hunger strike

Hunger-strike medal in its presentation box

But it was not only imprisonment that women were prepared to face. Many also adopted the hungerstrike. Women who had undergone imprisonment and forcible feeding received recognition from the WSPU. The Holloway badge was given for imprisonment – and the medal – a metal disc inscribed with name and date suspended from a military style ribbon – for those that went on hunger-strike.  These were awarded with some ceremony. For instance, on 15 June 1912, after the sentences incurred by the window breakers had been served, Alice Singer wrote in her diary, ‘rousing meeting at Albert Hall. All the 1st and 4 March prisoners released to date marched in two specially reserved places. I wore my prison-gate brooch for first time.’ These decorations were very much treasured. I’ve already mentioned that Flora Drummond is wearing her hunger-strike medal in her portrait – and many of the other leaders – Mrs Pankhurst, Lady Constance Lytton, and Mary Gawthorpe are ones that come immediately to mind – made sure that when they are photographed their Holloway badge and/or hunger-strike medal is prominently displayed.

Suffragettes photographed in prison

Interestingly, for all the significance given to prison uniform, many of the women who were imprisoned and on hunger-strike in 1912 and later – were able to wear their own clothes. This was after the government had passed a rule allowing them special treatment. These photographs were taken in the exercise yard at Holloway by a hidden photographer. They were wanted by Scotland Yard to send out to museums, galleries and other likely sites of suffragette attack. The photographs are interesting as in them we can see what women of the period looked like when not dressed up for the camera. I imagine that they may not have been very useful in identifying likely attackers  – as presumably when approaching a gallery or some such place the women would be rather more carefully dressed – and have regained some of their lost weight. Some WSPU members would allow nothing – not even prison – to interfere with their standards of dress. .Janie Allan, a wealthy Scot imprisoned in Holloway, was remembered as ‘always correctly dressed for Exercise in hat and lemon kid gloves’

Grace Roe, Christabel’s deputy, was arrested in 1914 – wearing this rather becoming tailored suit.

Mrs Pankhurst arrested outside Buckingham Palace, May 1914

Whereas Mrs Pankhurst, arrested a couple of months later while leading a violent protest outside Buckingham Palace, still retains something of her Parisian style. She took size 3½ in shoes – they look so dainty dangling there – belying all the crude postcard caricatures. In 1910 she had lost one in a scuffle with police – and it is now held by the Museum of London.

Christabel Pankhurst – relaxing in Paris

And it was to Paris that Christabel had escaped in March 1912 – just after the window-breaking campaign – to avoid arrest on a charge of criminal damage. She spent the final 2 and a half years of the campaign there – clearly very relaxed – while those who followed her militant policy were imprisoned and on hunger strike.

The WSPU campaign ended with the outbreak of war. It was the NUWSS, led by Millicent Fawcett, that in 1918 negotiated women – or at least women over 30 – to the ballot box – and to the opportunity of sitting in parliament.

So, to summarise, we have seen that the suffragettes did use dress as a weapon in their campaign.  They were encouraged to dress in such a way as to define themselves as womanly –  but united. To this end the WSPU attempted to impose its brand on its members – encouraging them to wear its merchandise and colours, both as they went about their daily life and when they took part in the society’s spectacular processions. The WSPU never sought to be at the avant-garde of fashion but the tailored look that became increasingly popular in the couple of years before the outbreak of war coincided with the increasingly physically-militant tactics of the suffragette campaign. Women could still be fashionable – and therefore womanly – yet present themselves in a more streamlined – less curvaceous – way than in the past. This more tailored silhouette echoed the increasingly masculine – physical force – argument that the WSPU was now professing.

I will end with an image we saw earlier – of the suffragette as a feminine warrior – a rather dainty Joan of Arc – as first depicted on the WSPU poster and here, to the right in the photograph, in the shape of a dress made by Leonora Cohen, a Leeds suffragette, to wear in 1914 to the Leeds Arts Club Ball. The paper designs, presumably cut from the poster, are pasted on the dress which is made of turquoise rayon. The dress, now preserved in Leeds City Museum, recently conserved – and rather more sophisticatedly displayed – is testament to the willingness of at least one suffragette to clothe herself in her cause.

This blog is based on a talk that I gave to the Costume Society in 2010.

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Suffrage Stories: Murder, Suicide, and Dancing: Or What Might Have Brought Mrs Pankhurst to 62 Nelson Street?

Posted in Suffrage Stories on March 31, 2021

60 (on the right) and 62 Nelson Street, Manchester – The Pankhurst Centre

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 19th-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 19th 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.   

Concert at Schiller Anstalt Institute, 1895 (courtesy of Manchester Central Library Collection)

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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Suffrage Stories: Aileen Preston: Mrs Pankhurst’s first ‘lady chauffeuse’

Posted in Suffrage Stories on March 16, 2021

Vera Holme, Mrs Pankhurst’s subsequent chauffeur, is behind the wheel in this photograph. But I think this is the car in which Aileen Preston drove Mrs Pankhurst in 1911

Aileen Chevallier Preston was born in 1889 in co. Armagh, one of the 6 children of John Preston, who had been a captain in 4th Royal Irish Rifles, and his wife Edith (nee Chevallier), whose family lived at Aspall Hall, Debenham, Suffolk. Of her 5 siblings, two of her brothers died in childhood and a sister in 1905.  Her father was for some years the resident magistrate in Athlone, co. Westmeath, before his death in 1907.  In 1903 Mrs Edith Preston, was the Irish Ladies Croquet Champion, in 1906 won the UK Ladies’ Croquet Championship, and as late as 1915 was the holder of the Ladies’Championship at her local club, Roehampton.

After the death of Capt. Preston his widow, Aileen and her brother and sister moved to England and by 1911 were living at 11 Kew Gardens Road, Richmond.  As head of the household Mrs Preston did complete the 1911 census form but wrote ‘Unenfranchised’ in the ‘Infirmity’ column against the entry for each female member, including the three young servants. Although we do not know whether Aileen Preston and her mother were at this time active members of any suffrage society, this amendment to the census form makes their attitude to women’s right to the vote quite evident.

As noted, Aileen’s mother was most definitely ‘sporty’, a star of the ladies’ croquet world; Aileen’s game was golf. I suspect that Mrs Preston encouraged a practical bent in her children. In 1914 Aileen’s younger brother was training as a civil engineer while, as she later explained in an interview in Votes for Women, she, too, had always taken an interest in machinery. In a delightful BBC radio interview (listen here), recorded in 1962, she explained how, to much derision, she entered a motor works in order to learn all about the workings of the internal combustion engine and the maintenance of a vehicle. It was only after she had acquired this knowledge that she took driving lessons, becoming the first woman to gain a Royal Automobile Certificate.

Now fully qualified, she placed an advertisement in the Morning Post, offering her services as a ‘Lady Chaffeuse’. The most appealing response came from’Mrs Pankhurst’s secretary (probably Mrs Mabel Tuke) and, after an interview, Aileen was hired to drive Mrs Pankhurst around the British Isles on a five-month-long campaign.

Although her mother was, as we have seen, in favour of ‘Votes for Women’, Aileen later remembered that ‘My family were livid. They thought I was going straight into the dark arms of Hell – to be going to that dreadful woman, as her chauffeur. It was an awful blow, but I thought it was the most wonderful job. At a pound a week it was wealth’ [From Raeburn, The Militant Suffragettes]. In the radio interview Aileen mentioned that the pay was ‘all found’, so presumably she had her board-and-keep while on the road, as well as the £1 a week.

Her engagement began in April 1911, probably just after the Census. The WSPU had promised to put a hold on militant action in the run-up to discussion in Parliament of the Conciliation Bill; Mrs Pankhurst was using the time to spread the suffrage message throughout the country. in the radio interview Aileen gives a wonderful description of driving Mrs Pankhurst and her associates, together vast quantities of ‘literature’, over the un-tarmacked roads of Britain during that long, very hot summer. She tells just what it was like driving that car up and over the Kirkstall Pass.

For Aileen was driving a large, heavy Wolseley, given to the WSPU by Mary Dodge, an ardent suffrage supporter and heir to a US copper mining fortune.  A ‘lady chauffeuse’ was every bit as responsible as a chauffeur for the very necessary running repairs and it was nothing to experience several punctures during the course of a day. There was always the danger that the low-slung petrol tank would rupture, caught by a stone on the rustic roads and, with the brakes working directly onto the tyres, there was always the danger of a blow-out while driving down a steep hill. Garages were few and far between; the ‘lady chauffeuse’ had to be resourceful, with nerves of steel.

Sometime after her engagement ended, Aileen Preston set up her own motor school. However, she maintained her link to the WSPU, and was the subject of an article in the 26 September 1913 issue of Votes for Women in which she mentioned that when setting out on her career she had had to overcome a good many difficulties and prejudices. It was for this reason that she thought other women would benefit from learning to drive and maintain a car at a school owned by a woman.

The school was based in St Mary Abbott’s Place, Kensington and, although giving lessons to what she termed ‘amateurs’ , Aileen was particularly keen to take pupils who wanted to take up motoring as a profession. As she told Votes for Women ‘The modern girl is admirable suited for the life, and as a chauffeur should receive a salary of 30s to £2 a week – the same, of course, as that paid to a man,’ She advertised regularly in Votes for Women and Common Cause through 1913 and 1914, until the outbreak of war. Business was so good that she took a partner, a Miss Carver.

Aileen joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and served from 23 October 1914 until 23 April 1915. She married John Graham-Jones (1880-1946), an army doctor, in July 1915 and was again advertising her motor school around this time. However from 25 April 1916 to 19 September 1916, she rejoined the VAD, hired as a ‘Chauffeuse”. She was put in charge of the first autonomous women’s ambulance unit, based at a hospital in northern France, in charge of 13 women drivers, and was mentioned in despatches.

Aileen’s daughter was born in July 1917 and a son in 1920. By 1939 she and her husband, now retired, were living at Lower Bockhampton, Dorset, and she was a member of the Dorchester ARP. She must have maintained contact with other erstwhile suffragettes and was interviewed by Antonia Raeburn for her book, The Militant Suffragettes (1973)

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BAME Research: Hidden Stories

Posted in BAME Research on February 9, 2021

I recently noticed that the London Metropolitan Archives has launched a new database – Switching the Lens – Rediscovering Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous Heritage, 1561 to 1840. This is an aspect of history that captured my imagination some time ago [see, for instance, Suffrage Stories: Black And Minority Ethnic Women: Is There A ‘Hidden History’?]  and I was interested to see whether this new database would make the uncovering of individual histories any more possible. Through the centuries there have always been some men and women of BAME heritage living in Britain whose lives have, for one reason or another, been recorded in some degree of detail; the great majority, however, have hitherto remained untraceable.

The database has its inherent limitation in that the 2600 names listed are drawn, over a period of nearly three centuries, from Anglican parish registers. As such it deals only with those who were baptised, married or buried in a parish church in the London area. Nevertheless it contains a wealth of information.

Because I was particularly keen to see if information available on Switching the Lens could be amplified by that already held on genealogical sites such as Ancestry and Findmypast, I concentrating on reading entries in the later period covered by the database, running from 1801-1850. Would it be possible to follow up the lives of any of those people on the Switching the Lens database by, for instance, finding them on the census (from 1841) or identifying them on other national registers?

At a first glance the answer, briefly, is probably not. In general, names are too common or the information is too scanty  for it to be possible to identify individuals with any certainty in later official registers. But that is only my finding after a cursory scan. It may well be that keen application will bear fruit. And I shall certainly take a closer look.

However, I have had some success and the following posts are based on entries found in the Switching the Lens database. It is such a pleasure to uncover the lives of these individuals, all, so far, of mixed African or Indian heritage, and try to see them in the context of their times.

Switching the Lens – And Discovering Myra Jane Monk

Switching the Lens – And Discovering Eliza Catherine Herbert

Switching the Lens – And Discovering Elizabeth Purves

Switching the Lens – Beyond Elizabeth Purves

Switching the Lens – And Discovering William Antonio, A Black Butler

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Something A Little Different: Furrowed Middlebrow Books January 2021

Posted in furrowed middlebrow on February 1, 2021

It has been my Lockdown pleasure to write more forewords to novels reissued by Dean Street Press under the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. The following 11 novels (6 by Margery Sharp and 5 by Stella Gibbons) were all released in January 2021. It was blissful escapism to read them all, delve into the lives of the authors, and demonstrate how elements in the novels related to Real Life.

When I began selling books by women, it was just these titles that I searched for in bookshops around the country. Isn’t it odd how life works out?

Here are the delicious Dean Street Press covers. Full details of all Furrowed Middlebrow titles can be found here.

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Lockdown Research: Switching The Lens – And Discovering William Antonio, A Black Butler

Posted in Lock-Down Research on January 7, 2021

Original page containing the baptismal entry for William Antonio, 17 March 1833

I recently noticed that the London Metropolitan Archives has launched a new database – Switching the Lens – Rediscovering Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous Heritage, 1561 to 1840. This is an aspect of history that captured my imagination some time ago [ see, for instance, Suffrage Stories: Black And Minority Ethnic Women: Is There A ‘Hidden History’?]  and I was interested to see whether this new database would make the uncovering of individual histories any more possible. Through the centuries there have always been some men and women of BAME heritage living in Britain whose lives have, for one reason or another, been recorded in some degree of detail; the great majority, however, have hitherto remained untraceable. I gave details of the Switching the Lens website in my previous post and can now tell something of another life I encountered there, represented by a single entry in the database.

This image at the head of this post is, in fact, the first record of William Antonio’s baptismal entry in the register of St Peter’s Church, Regent Square, in the northern section of Bloomsbury, London. For whatever reason, the whole page was amended and in the process the entry for William Antonio was slightly altered.

Amended page containing the baptismal entry for William Antonio, 17 March 1833

As you’ll notice, the original entry described William Antonio as ‘a slave’. That epithet was removed when the entry was finalised, although I doubt that was the reason for the page being rewritten.

At the time of his baptism William, who was born of unknown parents in Africa, though where we do not know, was reckoned to be about 27 years old, indicating a birth c. 1806. His age and, of course, that date varied a little in the censuses taken over subsequent years and when he died in 1868 his birth date was estimated as 1808.

As you will see, at the time of his baptism William Antonio was living as a servant in a house in Wellington Square, now demolished but then very close to the church in Regent Square. Although we don’t know for which family he was then working, in 1841 he can be found on the census as the only live-in manservant in the home of James Fordati in Upper Bedford Place, Bloomsbury. In the years between his baptism and the 1841 census he had married ,the wedding having taken place in 1834 at St Giles in the Fields. The bride was a widow, Mary McDonald, and the marriage register reveals that neither party could write. However, by the time of the next census in 1851 William Antonio is now a widower, although I cannot find a record of the death of his wife.

It would seem that for at least some of his marriage William Antonio lived in the home of his master and, presumably, his wife lived elsewhere as she is not recorded in the 1841 census for the Fordati household, However, the 1841 census gives no indication of marital status and it could, of course, be that she was already dead. James Fordati was a general merchant living, with his young family, in a Bloomsbury town house, close to Russell Square.

By 1851 William Antonio had moved households. On census night, however, he was not in post but was a visitor in the home of Robert Whurl, a tailor, at 2 Colbridge Place, which appears to have been a section of Westbourne Park Road, Paddington. William Antonio is described as a widower, aged 34, born in Africa, and by occupation a butler. My supposition is that he may at this time been butler in the household of Anselmo de Arroyave, a merchant living at ‘7 Palace Gardens, Paddington’, now known as 7 Kensington Palace Gardens. For, although on census night a manservant and a page were present in that house, no butler is recorded. It was most definitely a household that would require the services of a butler and my deduction is that this merely happened to be William’s night off.

I am making the suggestion that William Antonio was by 1851 a member of de Arroyave’s household based on a reading of his will, dated 21 September 1868, four days before his death. By this document William Antonio left a number of items he prized to Anselmo de Arroyave, his ‘old master’, and other members of the family. This, I feel, indicates a very close association with this particular family over a considerable period of time.

So, to recap, we know that in 1841 William Antonio was a manservant in a merchant’s household in Upper Bedford Place and that by 1851 his position had been elevated to ‘butler’, probably to the de Arroyave family. I know that in 1843 the de Arroyaves were living in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, and my guess is that it was around this time that William Antonio changed masters. I feel it would have been unlikely that he would otherwise have looked for a new situation outside the area of London with which he had, for at least ten years, been familiar.

6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens

The de Arroyaves moved to 7 Palace Gardens in 1847, as the first occupiers of the grand, stuccoed house that is now part of the Russian Embassy. And then in 1852/4 de Arroyave built 9 Palace Garden, a similarly imposing pile, into which the family moved. A butler would have played a very important part in running a house such as this; William Antonio was clearly a man o’parts. It might have been fashionable for an owner of a grand London house to employ a black page or footman, considering them a decorative asset, but I’m sure a butler would only have been appointed on his merits.

But it is clear that, however well-positioned he was as a butler in a wealthy household, William Antonio had a dream of becoming independent. For by 1861 he had left a life ‘in service’ and set himself up. the census tells us, as a ‘bath chairman’. He had moved only a very short walk away from Palace Gardens and was now living at 10 Royal Hill, the name then of the southernmost stretch of Queensway, leading down to Bayswater Road. William Antonio was now a lodger in the home of Charles Pendal (sometimes spelled Pendall), a trunk maker, and his wife, Matilda. He had, presumably, saved sufficient money to purchase at least one bath chair, offering his services to those sufficiently incapacitated as to require some vehicular assistance.

A 19th-century bath chair

William Antonio had picked a good position from which to carry out his new business – situated as he was just across the road from Kensington Gardens. One can imagine that a bath chairman would be much in demand with invalids (so plentiful in the mid-19th century) wishing to take a breath of fresh Kensington air. In fact, his business did prosper, enabling him to purchase a second bath chair and, presumably, employ another man as a chair pusher.

Until a few days before his death we know no more of William Antonio, other than at some point after 1861 he moved to 85 Moscow Road, a few minutes walk away from Kensington Gardens. The house was multi-tenanted and it is doubtful that he occupied more than one room. He did, however, value his few possessions and took great care, on his deathbed, to apportion them to those he esteemed.

The first few lines of his will deal with items he is leaving to members of the de Arroyave family. Just to give a little background: Anselmo de Arroyave (1778-1869) was a merchant, born in Spain and naturalised in Britain in 1833. By his second marriage (his first wife had died young) he had four daughters who survived infancy. One incident in his long life is particularly apposite in connection to William Antonio’s circumstances for in 1843 de Arroyave was one of several character witnesses for the defendant in the trial at the Old Bailey of another Spanish-born British merchant, Pedro de Zulueta, who was charged with slave-trading. Zulueta was, in the event, acquitted, but there was a general feeling that this was only because of the difficulty of proving his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. And the doubt seems to have most certainly been there in the minds of anti-slavery campaigners, such as Thomas Clarkson, who cross-examined de Arroyave as to the extent and nature of his support for Zulueta.

But, whatever the rights or wrongs of that trial, there is no doubt that de Arroyave was held in considerable regard by his one-time butler, himself a former slave. For in his will William Antonio left de Arroyave ‘my watch and appendages’ and to Mrs de Arroyave ‘one of my Bath Chairs’. To the former Inez de Arroyave, now Mrs Travers, the youngest daughter of the family, he left ‘one gold pin’, to Major Puget, the husband of another daughter, Florence, he left ‘one gold pin and two scarves‘, and to another daughter, Georgiana, he left a ‘silk umbrella’. I do hope these bequests were received in the spirit in which they were given. William Antonio’s estate was valued at under £100; when Anselmo de Arroyave died the following year he left the equivalent of £2 million.

William Antonio itemised many other of his possessions, for instance leaving his ‘pictures, window blind and wash stand’ to ‘Mr Casey’, who I think must be Henry Casey, gas fitter, who in 1871 was living at 85 Moscow Road. The executor of the will was William Jackson, a watchmaker, who lived at 2 Queens Road (that is, Queensway), and to him was left £10 and a ‘frock coat and plaid scarf‘, and to his daughter, ‘the cane armchair’. Other names are mentioned, but they are either too common or else the legal hand has rendered them too illegible for me to be able to identify them with any certainty. After all the bequests, William Antonio asked one of the women mentioned ‘to dispose of [the residue] in charitable purposes’. By the tone of the will it would appear that William Antonio took a quiet satisfaction in remembering his friends and patrons. The will, signed only with his mark, as he obviously never did learn to write, is a testament to the life of a survivor, a man who emerged out of slavery and then out of ‘service’ to lead an independent life.

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Lockdown Research: Switching the Lens:Beyond Elizabeth Purves

Posted in Lock-Down Research, Uncategorized on December 18, 2020

In my previous post, ‘Discovering Elizabeth Purves’, I described something of the life of the Anglo-Indian daughter of Richardson Purves, who, c. 1806, having made his fortune in India, had brought her with him when he returned to England. While undertaking this research I was intrigued to discover that he had left behind at his indigo plantation in Tirhoot a man named John Purves, who had been listed in the New East India Kalendars for 1801 and 1804 as being in his employ. I thought it might be interesting to see what I could find about this branch of the Purves family, for it really would be too extraordinary if John Purves, who records show had arrived in India in 1797 specifically to assist Richardson Purves at Tirhoot, were not related to him in some way.

What I do know is that John Purves did remain in Tirhoot as an indigo planter, dying there in 1820. In the accounts drawn up after his death there is note of a payment to be made to ‘Bebee Razoo’, ‘bebee’ or ‘bibi’ being the term for an indigenous female companion/mistress. This is the only entry for a payment to an Indian woman. As I noted in my previous post, the name of Elizabeth Purves’ mother was rendered on the entry in the St Giles Cripplegate baptismal register as ‘Rajoo’. I did just wonder if that could have been a mis-transcription and perhaps the name should have been ‘Razoo’ (the name in John Purves’ accounts is written with a long tail to the ‘z’). That is, could the woman who appears as a payee in the 1820 accounts of John Purves be the mother of Elizabeth, the payment an indication of long-term maintenance ? Or, after Richardson’s departure, could she have then become the ‘bebee’ of John Purves? Or was she, perhaps, ‘bebee’ to John Purves, but an entirely different woman? Well, as usual with these attempts to peer behind the curtain that separates us from a different time and a different culture, who knows?

However, digging into the digitized India Office records I did find further evidence of the continuing existence of members of the Purves family in Bengal. For there is an entry for the baptism in 1825 of Mary, ‘daughter of John Purves, indigo planter, and a native mother’. There is no other mention at this time in the records of any John Purves other than the indigo planter at Tirhoot and I think it is safe to assume that the father of Mary is the man who was in the employ of Richardson Purves twenty years earlier.

John Purves died intestate so an inventory of his goods, as compiled for auction after his death, is the only surviving record of his life, providing a fascinating insight into the goods with which an indigo planter was surrounded. His extensive library, in particular, interested me. How did one amuse oneself in Tirhoot in the first decades of the 19th c? Why, by reading the Spectator, Edinburgh Review, Blackstone’s Commentaries, Smollett’s Works, Godwin’s Political Justice, Sporting Magazine, Debrett’s Peerage, Poems of Ossian, Smith’s Wealth of the Nations, Swift’s works, Farley’s Cookery etc etc – and numerous Voyages, Gazetteers and atlases. The household inventory does not, however, make any reference to Mary or any other child.

Seven years later the accounts drawn up, in a similar fashion, after the death of another Tirhoot indigo planter, Edward Egerton, do reveal something further about members of the Purves Indian diaspora. The first thing to note is that an 1829 announcement in the London Gazette discloses that one of the two men nominated as Egerton’s next-of-kin was his uncle ‘in England’, Richardson Purves. And, secondly, Edward Egerton’s accounts mention sums paid for the board and tuition of Miss Mary Purves, Mr William Purves, Mr James Egerton, and Miss Fanny Egerton. Extrapolation leads me to surmise that Edward Egerton was a relation of the late John Purves and, since his death, had been charged with care of his children.

I have explained that I’m pretty certain of the parentage of Mary Purves, who must have been born sometime before the death of John Purves in 1820, but what of William Purves? I can find no record of his birth or baptism but from the record of his death at Allahabad in 1870 I think we was born c 1812/1813 and, because he is recorded in Egerton’s accounts alongside Mary Purves, I cannot help thinking he must be her brother, another child of John Purves and ‘a native mother’. There is no record of John Purves having been married to a European woman.

Edward Egerton’s accounts reveal that in the early months of 1828 Mary Purves and Fanny Egerton received board and tuition from a Mrs M. Moore, but that, after November 1828, their care was transferred to Theophilus Reichardt. A little research showed that he was the Rev Reichardt, who had been born in Wurttemberg, trained in Basle, and had arrived in Calcutta in 1822 as a missionary under the aegis of the Church Missionary Society for India and the East. This was the society to which Richardson Purves and his family were generous donors. However, just at the time when he undertook the tuition of Mary and Fanny, Reichardt had left the Mission after a disagreement. He and his wife had then, as his obituary in the Calcutta Christian Observer (1836) reported, ‘entered upon the conduct of a seminary for young ladies in the city [Calcutta] where ‘he spared no toil, no pains, no watchfulness, to promote the improvement and comfort of his young charges’. I was pleased to note that the obituarist particularly mentions that ‘his was no stinted board at which his pupils fed sparingly’. Reichardt clearly remained close to Fanny Egerton for in the records of her marriage in Calcutta Cathedral in 1835 he stood as her ‘Next Friend’.

In 1840 Mary Purves married Richard Thaddeus Rutter and had two daughters – Mary, 1844, and Ellen, 1848. James Egerton was born in 1821, the son of James Egerton, an indigo planter. This information comes from his baptismal record, a ceremony he undertook late in life, in 1862. For this record he chose to give his father’s name, but not his mother’s. I think this indicates that he was certainly illegitimate and I am assuming that, therefore, his mother was Indian. I can find no trace of Fanny Egerton’s birth or baptism, but suspect she was sister to James. Her husband, Edmund Watterton Johnson, died in 1839. She had one son, born in 1837 and named for his father. She never remarried and died in 1872.

Edward Egerton’s accounts show that c.1828 young William Purves and James Egerton were receiving board and tuition from ‘Messrs Drummond and Wilson’. David Drummond was a Scotsman whose Calcutta school, Dhurmotollah Academy, offered the best English education, open to both European and mixed-race boys. Equipped with this excellent education William Purves entered government service, rising to become Registrar of the Board of Revenue in Allahabad. He married Harriette Ereth and had a numerous family, among whom the names ‘Richardson’ and ‘Egerton’ are threaded. One son, Robert Egerton Purves (1859-1943) became a renowned hydraulic engineer in the Punjab. I suspect that an effort was made to eliminate knowledge of an Indian ancestor; in his ‘Who’s Who’ entry Robert Egerton Purves merely described his parentage as ‘European’. He retired to England in the mid-1920s, bringing his family ‘home’ and ending an involvement with India that had lasted c 120 years. Although accompanied by children, unlike Richardson Purves he had made no fortune.

I daresay this post seems a little pointless, a good deal being, if not guesswork, then informed conjecture. But I have found the research instructive; on the way I’ve read something about the place of indigo in the 18th and 19thc Indian economy, the way in which the indigo factories were managed, and gleaned something of the position of those then known as ‘Eurasians’ and now as ‘Anglo-Indians’. Although I have absolute proof of the mixed parentage of Mary Purves, I cannot be sure of that of William Purves, or of Fanny and James Egerton. But it has been interesting attempting to unravel the truth. I wonder if Elizabeth Purves, an illegitimate Anglo-Indian living in England, knew anything of relations in India? There is a fascination about lives lived on the cusp of two civilisations.

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Suffrage Walks

Posted in Suffrage Stories, Walks on December 12, 2020

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.

Lincoln’s Inn House 2013, former headquarters of the WSPU

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

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Lockdown Research: Switching The Lens – And Discovering Elizabeth Purves

Posted in Lock-Down Research on December 10, 2020

Baptism of Elizabeth Purves at St Giles, Cripplegate, on 28 August 1807.

I recently noticed that the London Metropolitan Archives has launched a new database – Switching the Lens – Rediscovering Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous Heritage, 1561 to 1840. This is an aspect of history that captured my imagination some time ago [ see, for instance, Suffrage Stories: Black And Minority Ethnic Women: Is There A ‘Hidden History’?]  and I was interested to see whether this new database would make the uncovering of individual histories any more possible. Through the centuries there have always been some men and women of BAME heritage living in Britain whose lives have, for one reason or another, been recorded in some degree of detail; the great majority, however, have hitherto remained untraceable. I gave details of the Switching the Lens website in my previous post and can now tell something of another life I encountered there, represented by a single entry in the database.

This entry in the St Giles baptism register tells us that Elizabeth Purves, born on 19 October 1799, was the daughter of ‘Richardson Purves, Merchant, and Rajoo, a Native of Hindostan’. But what is her story?

Richardson Purves, born c1764, perhaps in Scotland, was by 1789 an employee of the East India Company working in Bengal. By 1797 he was overseeing the Company’s indigo works at Patnah (now Patna, capital of Bihar province). Indigo was a very lucrative product and by 1801 Purves had established himself as an indigo planter at Tirhoot (450km from Patna). He remained there until about 1806 but then ‘retired to England with a considerable fortune derived from the indigo manufacturies’ (as quoted in a footnote in Singh, History of Tirhoot, 1922).

A view from ‘Middleton’s Complete System of Geography’, 1779

So it was as a nabob that, after c 17 years in the East, Purves returned, accompanied not only by a fortune but also by a 7-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. We know nothing of her mother other than the one name ‘Rajoo’, which was probably her surname. As in the case of Africa-born Eliza Herbert, we don’t know for certain whether Elizabeth Purves’ mother had died, or whether, when the child’s father decided to return to England, she had felt compelled to part with her daughter. However, in such cases it is obvious that the contest was unequal; the wealthy European father held all the cards. In my next post I will attempt to shine a tiny glimmer of light on the situation, over two hundred years ago, at Tirhoot after the departure of Richardson Purves. But I think it is incontestable, and is as poignant now as then, that Elizabeth was old enough when she sailed from India to carry with her clear memories of her mother, whom she would never again see.

It would appear that Richardson Purves was a diligent father, wasting little time after his arrival in England in arranging the baptism of his daughter. She could, of course, have been baptised in India but, for whatever reason, he had waited until the ceremony could be conducted in London. Because I have been unable to uncover reliable details of his parentage I cannot guess why he chose ‘Elizabeth’ as her name. It would have been interesting to know if it was a family name, his mother’s perhaps.

Three years later, on 24 October 1808, Richardson Purves married Jane Hyde (1781-1853) in St Margaret Pattens, Eastcheap. At the time he was a resident in the parish of St James, Clerkenwell, and it is to be presumed that young Elizabeth had been living with him since their return from India. Richardson Purves proceeded to father two legitimate daughters, Jane in 1810 and Frances in 1813. The latter was born in the family’s town house in Bedford Place, Bloomsbury, they moved later to Harley Street. With his Indian fortune Richardson Purves had also purchased a large estate, Sunbury Place, at Sunbury-on-Thames. That house, now known as Sunbury Court, still stands, owned for the last 100 years by the Salvation Army.

Sunbury Place, shortly before it was bought by Richardson Purves (courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum)

There were, of course, no censuses during the first third of the 19th century to give us proof that Elizabeth Purves was living with the rest of the family, but I believe she was. She certainly acted in concert with the other members, included, along with Mrs Jane Purves, Miss Jane Purves, and Miss Frances Purves, as a generous donor to a number of worthy causes, such as the Anti-Slavery Reporter (1831), to which she gave a two-year donation of four guineas, and to the Church Missionary Society to Africa and the East.

In 1841, when the first census was taken, Elizabeth Purves is listed at home with the rest of the family in their Harley Street house. However, when, in 1848, Richardson Purves died he made no mention of Elizabeth in his will, while going to considerable lengths to settle money on the unmarried daughters of another family, the Boldings. I have been unable to establish why this was but there must have been some underlying family or business connection that resists my attempts to tease it out. Provision must have been made for Elizabeth Purves in some arrangement that lay outside the terms of her father’s will because there is no suggestion whatsoever of anything other than that she was a completely integrated member of his family. When the 1851 census was taken Elizabeth is a ‘visitor’ at Sunbury Place, living there with the two Janes, her stepmother and half-sister. But yet again, when the senior Jane Purves died in 1853 there is no mention of Elizabeth in her will.

The mid-1850s saw the marriages of both Purves half-sisters. They were now in their mid-fifties and I had wondered if illegitimacy and her Indian heritage had hindered Elizabeth’s marriage prospects – but Jane, too, despite what I know to be her sizeable inheritance, had, for whatever reason, not married before now. Thus, on 4 July 1855 Jane Purves married a widower, Alexander Beattie, and on 31 July 1856 Elizabeth Purves married John Parker Bolding, widower of Mary* (nee Richardson). Mary’s brother, William Richardson, was the husband of Eleanor, John Bolding’s sister, at whose wedding Richardson Purves had been a witness. It is obvious that the Bolding, Richardson, and Purves families (very much including Elizabeth) had been closely entwined over a period of many years.

Elizabeth Purves was married in the parish church at Tunbridge Wells, the witnesses being Elizabeth Bolding (John’s sister) and Sidney Roper Curzon. Both Elizabeth Bolding and the Beatties lived in Tunbridge Wells, Elizabeth Bolding at Osborne House and the Beatties at Sunbury Place (presumably named in honour of Jane’s former home) and it was presumably with one or the other that Elizabeth Purves was staying at the time of her marriage. The Hon Sidney Roper Curzon, son of the 14th Baron Teynham, was the husband of the bride’s half-sister, Frances. I imagine that Richardson Purves, the nabob, was gratified that one of his daughters had married into the aristocracy, albeit into its lower echelons.

John Parker Bolding was a solicitor and the couple, with his three young children, lived for a time in Croydon, in a house named ‘Eversholt Lodge’. Eversholt in Bedfordshire was the parish in which John Bolding had been born and where his father had held an estate [see here for more about the Bolding family]. They later moved to 3 Bromfield Gardens, Richmond where, in 1888, John Parker Bolding died.

Sometime after Elizabeth moved to a house in Cambridge Road, Norbiton, a few minutes’ walk from the home, ‘Norbiton Place, London Road, of her widowed half-sister Frances. Elizabeth, supported by a cook and a parlour maid, lived alone, dying there in 1898. She left over £14,000, her executors being her stepson and the two stepsons of her half-sister Jane. Frances when she died shortly after, left only something over £200. Aristocratic connections had presumably proved expensive.

It was not, perhaps, unusual for a man in Richardson Purves’ position to choose to bring his child by an Indian woman back to England, but it would appear that the great majority of the offspring of such relationships did remain in India after the father’s departure. Moreover, a brief survey of the literature available to me (during a period when I cannot access a library) leads me to the conclusion that Elizabeth Purves was more fully integrated into her father’s subsequent family than many other mixed-race children. (See, for instance, here). This could have been a factor of wealth – Richardson Purves could certainly afford to support his illegitimate daughter – but it also must have been a matter of temperament.

Although Richardson Purves made his fortune in India and then returned ‘home’, there were certainly members of the East India Company connected to him wo continued to live and work in India in the second half of the 19th century and early years of the 20th. I wonder if Elizabeth Purves knew anything about them? I will do what I can in my next blog to follow the shadows they have cast, as revealed in documents created in India in the 19th century.

*UPDATE: Not that it’s particularly relevant to the life of Elizabeth Purves, but I’ve now worked out that Mary Richardson (her husband’s first wife) was a cousin of John Ruskin and from the age of 15, after her mother’s death, until her marriage to John Parker Bolding, lived with the Ruskin family in Herne Hill. Ruskin’s father, John James Ruskin, was brother to Jessie Richardson, Mary’s mother.

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Lockdown Research: Who Unfurled The Manchester ‘First In The Fight’ WSPU Banner?

Posted in Lock-Down Research, Uncategorized on December 3, 2020

Manchester WSPU Banner,, c. 1908

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.

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Lockdown Research: Stella Spencer, Suffragette: From Holloway To Montevideo

Posted in Lock-Down Research on December 1, 2020

Tombstone of Stella Lavinia Spencer in the British Cemetery, Montevideo, Uruguay
(photo courtesy David Rennie)

The epitaph reads:

In Loving Memory of my dear wife STELLA LAVINIA SPENCER born in England March 9th 1884 died April 14th 1930 age 46. Her nobility of soul was shown as an an ideal wife and in her endeavours for the welfare of others. A pioneer and tireless worker for the social and political emancipation of women. Poetess and artist whose devotion to the good and the beautiful was the constant striving of her life. Even in adversity.

I recently had an enquiry, emanating from Uruguay, as to whether I knew of Stella Lavinia Spencer, who had died in Montevideo in 1930, was buried in the city’s British Cemetery, and had, perhaps, been a suffragette. Well, the short answer was ‘No’ – the name rang no bells – but a quick search showed that a Stella Lavinia Spencer was indeed listed in the Roll of Honour compiled by the Suffragette Fellowship. So the hare was ready to be chased.

Identifying her as a possible suffragette was the easy bit. The attempt to untangle the identity of Stella Lavinia Spencer has been a good deal more complicated. No-one of that name appears in the list of ‘Suffragettes Arrested’ compiled by the Home Office, nor does she appear on any census. It is obvious from the wording on the tombstone that ‘Spencer’ was her married name and the Probate Register revealed that her husband’s name was ‘Alberto John Spencer’. So the hunt was on to establish her maiden name.

One would have thought that, with the relatively unusual forenames of ‘Stella Lavinia’ and a firm birth date of 1884, this wouldn’t be difficult. But, in fact, no-one of those names appears to have been born in England (or anywhere else) in 1884. Was she perhaps a child registered before her parents had selected her name? It’s possible. Or could she have refashioned herself, selecting names more appealing than those with which she had been furnished by her parents? Again, a possibility. There’s probably a quite straightforward reason for her absence from the various registers, civil or ecclesiastical, but, if so, I haven’t found it.

However, thanks to a general Google search for ‘Stella Lavinia Spencer’ I encountered an article (‘You Are Not a White Woman’) by James Heartfield (The Journal of Pacific History, vol 38, no 1, 2003) which sketched something of my quarry’s biography – as well as telling a rather riveting story. The article concerns the trial in Fiji in 1915 of Stella Spencer, which makes clear that she was by now married. But it turns out that ‘Spencer’ was not her husband’s family name; ‘Alberto John Spencer’ was originally ‘Alberto John Sangorski’. This was a surname I knew very well, as Sangorski and Sutcliffe was the leading firm of ‘art’ bookbinders in England at the beginning of the 20th century. Research quickly revealed that Stella’s husband, Alberto Spencer, was the son of Alberto Sangorski, renowned as the firm’s illuminator and calligrapher.

Anyway, armed with this new knowledge, I was now able to search for the marriage of Alberto Sangorski and, sure enough, found that he had married in Kensington in the summer of 1910. But even now matters were complicated by a quirk in the listing on the register that didn’t make clear the name of his bride. I won’t bore you with the ramifications of my further searches but only say that I finally decided that a likely candidate was a ‘Stella L. Mahny’. Needless to say I could find no other record of a woman with that rather unlikely surname, but with this faint lead I returned to the ‘Suffragettes Arrested’ register and discovered that a ‘Stella O’Mahoney’ had been tried in Westminster on 1 July 1908. Without the tedious unravelling of the link to the Spencer surname I could not have been certain that I had the right ‘Stella’. But I am sure now that I have.

And what was it that she had done to merit arrest? Votes for Women (9 July 1908) reported that, on 30 June 1908, Miss Stella O’Mahoney had taken part in a demonstration organised by the Women’s Social and Political Union in the vicinity of the House of Commons and that, with 26 other WSPU members, had been arrested. She was ordered to give a surety of £20 not to take part in any other militant activity, but refused, and was instead sentenced to a month’s imprisonment in Holloway. At the trial she gave her address as that of the WSPU office, 4 Clement’s Inn, so, once again, I could get no closer to her.

There is no other record I can find of Stella O’Mahoney’s involvement with the WSPU but I would presume that she had been a member both before and after this incident. However, a couple of years later, soon after her marriage, she and Alberto set off for Australia, landing in Sydney on 17 November 1910.

The Heartfield article mentions that Stella Spencer had worked as a journalist, but I have been unable to find any articles written by her. The tombstone describes her as a poet and an artist, but, yet again, I can find no trace of her work in any medium.

So, Stella Spencer would remain something of an enigma were it not for the reasons behind her trial in Fiji in March 1915 that James Heartfield reveals in his article. She had arrived with her husband from Melbourne about seven months earlier because he had been employed in a new venture, the Fiji Produce Agency. This organisation had been set up as a means for Fijians to market their own produce, in competition with European traders. The background rivalry, both economic and political, was complicated, but the upshot was that Stella Spencer stood trial, accused of slapping a Fijian in the face. He was a henchman of the European faction and had accused her of being ‘a bad woman’, the implication being that she was sexually involved with a Fijian. The ensuing trial – of a white woman accused of assaulting a Fijian – was remarkable, motivated not from a desire to protect Fijians, but to punish those Europeans who failed to observe the policy of separation from the indigenous population.

Stella Spencer was found guilty but apparently, Heartfield reports, did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine levied and was, therefore, imprisoned. I have no evidence whatsoever for querying this, but did just wonder if, as in 1908, it was rather that she had refused to pay a fine. It seems very surprising that no funds could be mustered if she had been minded to pay. Stella then went on hunger strike, perhaps in emulation of the suffragette stratagem, adopted subsequent to her 1908 imprisonment. However, she abandoned the hunger strike after four days and wrote to the governor asking for passage to Melbourne for herself and her husband. This was granted at the end of April 1915. I don’t know when and why she and Alberto eventually made their home in Montevideo but he remained there for the rest of his life, dying in 1954, twenty years after Stella, and is buried in the same cemetery.

It is not difficult to detect a parallel between Stella Spencer’s interest in the emancipation of women and that of improving the lot of the native population of Fiji. Whatever her background, she was clearly imbued with a spirit of rebellion

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Lockdown Research: Switching The Lens – And Discovering Eliza Catherine Herbert

Posted in Lock-Down Research on November 23, 2020

 

I recently noticed that the London Metropolitan Archives has launched a new database – Switching the Lens – Rediscovering Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous Heritage, 1561 to 1840. This is an aspect of history that captured my imagination some time ago [ see, for instance, Suffrage Stories: Black And Minority Ethnic Women: Is There A ‘Hidden History’?]  and I was interested to see whether this new database would make the uncovering of individual histories any more possible. Through the centuries there have always been some men and women of BAME heritage living in Britain whose lives have, for one reason or another, been recorded in some degree of detail; the great majority, however, have hitherto remained untraceable. I gave details of the Switching the Lens website in my previous post and can now tell something of another life I encountered there, represented by a single entry in the database.

Above we see the entry for the baptism of:

‘Eliza Catherine Herbert, illegitimate daughter of Henry Bennett Herbert, Secretary to the Committee of Merchants trading to Africa, by a Woman of Colour passing under the name of Nance, and born 29 May 1798 at Cape Coast Castle, Africa.’  

This entry in the baptismal register of the church of St John, Wapping, made in, I think, August 1805, allows us a glimpse into the history of a London family involved in the African slave trade, a story that shuttles between Wapping and Cape Coast Castle, the ‘Grand Slave Emporium’ built on what was then known as the Gold Coast, now Ghana.

Let’s start with Henry Bennett Herbert, the father of the girl who is being baptised. His position as stated, ‘Secretary to the Committee of Merchants trading with Africa’, suggests a man of authority. However, the reality was rather different. In fact, Henry Bennett was only 22 years old and was already dead by the time he was appointed Secretary to the Committee of Merchants trading with Africa’. He had been born in 1777, baptized in St John’s, the  Herberts’ family church, and had travelled out to Cape Coast Castle in 1795, aged 18.

Henry’s father, James Herbert (1735-1789) had been a cooper (a barrel maker) who ran his business from Brewhouse Lane, Wapping, and had been a freeman of the Committee of Merchants trading with Africa. Indeed, it is possible that the family connection may go back even further as various ‘Herberts’ are noted as serving with the Royal African Company in the early decades of the 18th century. Although, I haven’t found evidence that James Herbert had any direct investment in a slaving ship, the barrels his company made would most certainly have been the means by which goods were sent out to Africa on ships that, when they returned across the Atlantic, were carrying slaves. Brewhouse Lane, where the company remained until the 1830s, is very close to the Thames at Wapping, in an area then dominated by businesses supporting maritime trade.

After the death of James Herbert in 1789 the coopering business was inherited by Henry’s elder brother, another James (1764-1830). As the younger son, Henry had to seek his fortune elsewhere and doubtless felt himself fortunate to be able, through his family connection, to offer his services to the African trade.  When approaching the Governing Committee in the Africa House he had no difficulty in finding the necessary guarantors; his brother James and another Wapping merchant put up £500, to which he himself added the same amount.

It was only after I had begun this research and was thinking about Henry Herbert’s situation that I remembered that somewhere on my bookshelves was a copy of William St Clair’s The Grand Slave Emporium: Cape Coast Castle and the British slave trade, bought when it was published in 2007. Fortunately I was actually able to find it (not an occurrence that I necessarily take for granted). Re-reading it illuminated both Henry Herbert’s short life and the near-miracle, as it seems to me, of his daughter’s appearance at the Wapping baptismal font.

When he arrived at Cape Coast Castle in, I think, October 1795, Henry Herbert’s first position was as a ‘Writer’, that is, a clerk, but within a year he had been promoted to ‘Deputy Secretary to the Committee’. Promotion was swift in Cape Coast Castle; the death rate was very high among the young men who arrived full of hope. In fact, Henry Herbert was appointed secretary to the Governor and Council on 5 April 1800 but the news of this appointment arrived only after his death. He had ‘Drown’d in Bathing at Cape Coast Castle’ on 23 March 1800. Henry Herbert had weathered the ‘seasoning’, the period during which new arrivals succumbed to the multitude of diseases infesting Cape Coast Castle, only to be felled by the surf. In fact, I found that William St Clair, too, had noticed the cause of Henry’s death and in his book mentioned that ‘there are few records of officers swimming for pleasure – Mr Herbert, who defied the dangers, was duly drowned.’ 

Cape Coast Castle (mid-19th c)

Henry Herbert’s time at Cape Coast Castle coincided with the peak of the British slave trade and, to understand a little of what he would have seen and done, I would urge you to read The Grand Slave Emporium in which St Clair describes in quotidian detail both life there and the economy, more complicated than one might imagine, on which it was based. It is perfectly clear that Henry Herbert knew exactly what was happening in the dungeons hewn into the rock several stories below his airy officers’ quarters and was complicit in sending men, women and children out through the Door of No Return to the slavers’ ships waiting in the roads. However, the notice of his appointments and death can only furnish a very general picture of his years at Cape Coast Castle. The entry in the Wapping baptismal register adds a more personal dimension.

William St Clair describes how ‘It was part of the welcome for a young officer arriving in the Castle to be supplied with a local sexual partner, one of the ways in which the British embraced local laws and customs without attempting to change them.’  He stresses that the arrangements made with ‘wenches’, as such women were known, while not regarded as marriages were certainly not informal casual sexual encounters. ‘Wenches’ were free women, not slaves. So, ‘Nance’, the woman named as Eliza Catherine’s mother in the baptismal register entry, was very likely Henry Herbert’s ‘wench’ and may have remained so for most of his time at the Castle. I noticed that St Clair, quoting from the will of a Castle officer who died in May 1795, mentions that in his will the man left a bequest to ‘my wench Nance’ and I did just wonder if she had found a new protector in Henry Herbert after his arrival a few months later. It may be a coincidence that two ‘wenches’ were named ‘Nance’, although most whom St Clair cites have African names. The Europeanised name may suggest that ‘Nance’ was of mixed race, as, naturally, there were by now numerous offspring of officers and ‘wenches’ living in and around the Castle.’ 

The news of Eliza’s birth in May 1798 must have been relayed to Wapping, a letter then taking about three months to travel between Africa and London. It is to be supposed that Henry’s mother, Elizabeth Herbert (for whom Eliza was obviously named), took a very real interest in the welfare of her grand-daughter and on hearing, in mid-1800. of the death of her son planned to bring young Eliza to England. My research leads me to think that this was probably not a very common occurrence. The Monk children, of whom I wrote here, were brought from India by their father, but in the case of Eliza Herbert it would seem that her family would have had to negotiate at a distance with ‘Nance’, if she were still alive, or, if not, with the officials of Cape Coast Castle, in order to take custody of the child and had then to arrange for her to be accompanied on the long sea journey to London. We do not know when exactly she did arrive for, although her baptism took place in 1805, she shared the occasion with a cousin, Susanna, daughter of her uncle James. It may merely have been convenient to baptise the two girls at the same time. 

Detail of John Rocque’s Map of London (1746) showing Princes Square

 

Princes Square (now renamed Swedenborg Sq) in 1921 (London Metropolitan Archives) 

But we can say with certainty that by 1805 Eliza Catherine Herbert was a most welcome member of the Herbert family and remained so for the rest of her long life. When, in 1817, her grandmother wrote her will it was to Eliza (‘the natural daughter of my son Henry Bennett Herbert) that she left all her personal and household possessions, in addition to setting up a financial trust in her favour. She also appointed guardians for her,  because Eliza was at that time a minor. The will makes clear that Eliza was then living with her grandmother in her house in Princes Square (later renamed Swedenborg Square and now erased). As Land Tax Records show that at the time Eliza was baptised Elizabeth Herbert was living on the north-west side of Princes Square, in one of the early-18th-century houses built for prosperous merchants, we can assume that Eliza had been brought here when she first arrived in London 

 

Wapping, 1896, showing, to the left of the image, Brewhouse Lane and area marked ‘Cooperage’ (Reproduced with permission from the National Library of Scotland)

The Herbert coopering business continued to be successful under the management of Eliza’s Uncle James, who in the early 19th century owned three ships involved in the British South Seas Whaling trade. The firm also, of course, produced the containers necessary for transporting the fishing products. His son, James Henry Herbert, inherited the business, moved out of insalubrious Wapping to Tottenham, and had retired by 1851, dying 20 years later by no means a wealthy man. Such is the fate of family businesses; they rise and then they fall. The unmarried women of such families have little agency in creating wealth, relying on the investments made for them. However, with the money inherited from her grandmother Eliza Herbert was able to lead what would appear to have been a reasonably comfortable life.

I cannot discover where Eliza lived after her grandmother’s death in 1827. She was now 29 years old and may have been able to continue living in the Princes Square house for a while but I next found her in the 1841 census living at 10 Holland Place, in north Brixton. The street has now vanished, but was in the area between Clapham Road and Brixton Road, south of the Oval. The 1841 census does not produce much information and we learn from this only that Eliza was of ‘Independent’ means’ and had not been born in Lambeth. At first I assumed she was living in this house as a lonely boarder but further investigation into the ramifications of the Herbert family revealed to me that Arthur French, the 70-year-old head of the household, had been a Wapping cooper, whose aunt was mentioned as a friend in the will of Eliza’s grandmother and that Anna Maria Pillar, the other woman of independent means listed as living in the house, was actually one of Eliza’s many cousins. So, although it’s ridiculously sentimental, I was pleased that she was  living among friends and family.

Ten years later Eliza was still in the same house, although the head of household had changed. (In fact Arthur French had died barely a month after the 1851 census.) She is now described as ‘Fundholder’ and her place of birth is given as ‘Africa’. I have, however, been unable to find any link between Eliza and the other two women living as boarders in the house. Life may not have been quite so comfortable as it had been ten years earlier; there was now only one servant rather than the three who had previously waited on the household.

By 1861 Eliza Herbert had moved a short distance and was living at St Ives Cottage, St Anne’s Road, now obliterated, but it was just south of Holland Place. Once again she is a boarder, now described as ‘Lady’ and with her birthplace as ‘Africa’.  Besides the householder (a commercial traveller), his wife and daughter there was only one other boarder, a teenage  ‘shipbroker’, and one servant. Ten years later she had moved again, further west to 2 Grosvenor Place, a boarding house in a terrace on Camberwell Road (now demolished, but it was opposite Addington Square)  Here she gave the 1871 census enumerator her exact place of birth, ‘Cape Coast Castle’.

Thus it would seem that for about 40 years (between the 1840s until the late-1870s) Eliza Herbert lived alone, as a boarder, occupying a room or two in the homes of strangers. This, doubtless, was the lot of hundreds of thousands of unmarried women, but I don’t think the actuality was as forlorn as it might appear because my researches show that during this time Eliza Herbert was always living close to ‘family’. For it is likely that the reason she remained in the Brixton area for so much of her life was because she was still very much in touch with the descendants of the French family, friends of her grandmother.

You will remember that in 1841 Eliza Herbert was living in the Brixton home of the former Wapping cooper, Arthur French.  Also in the household was Arthur’s daughter, Grace, who by 1861 she was married to a successful building contractor, Benjamin Gammon, and living in Loughborough Park Road, in the northern part of Brixton. Interestingly, their house was named ‘Herbert Lodge’. Grace’s son, born c 1852, had been given ‘Herbert’ as a first name, suggesting to me there was a strong connection between Grace and Eliza. 

The bond was made manifest by 1881 when the census finds Eliza Herbert, now 82 years old, living in the home of a young couple, Johanna and Robert Pearce, at 8 Church Road, Brixton. For Johanna Pearce was the daughter of Grace Gammon (nee French) and, with ‘Elizabeth’ as her second name, was Eliza Herbert’s god-daughter.  Church Road is now St Matthews Road, running between Effra Road and Brixton Hill. No 8 was a charming early-19th century villa, long since demolished.

Josephine Avenue, Brixton, photographed c 40 years after Eliza’s death. It was noted on the Booth’s Poverty Map (c. 1898) as a ‘middle-class, well-to-do’ street

By 1886, when Eliza Herbert wrote her will, she had moved with Johanna and her husband to a new house, close by, in Josephine Avenue. It was here that, on 21 March 1890, she died. Her estate amounted to over £800 (roughly £100,000+ in 2020) – suggesting that the funds she had inherited had served her quite well during her extremely long life. She left her personal effects to be divided between Johanna Pearce and Herbert Gammon. Incidentally, I can’t help wondering what happened to all the household and personal possessions she inherited from her grandmother. Did she carry any Princes Square furniture and china with her from house to house or had everything been long since scattered?

And what, you might ask, is the point of all this? Well, I suppose it shows that a child, born in a far off country, out of wedlock, to an African mother, far from being repudiated by her British family, was welcomed and cherished. Knowledge of her unorthodox origin, which transgressed early 19th-century ideas of both morality and race, does not appear to have affected her family relationships. Her grandmother, referring to her as ‘the natural daughter of my son…’, was quite open about her status. Indeed, Elizabeth Herbert allocated far more care in her will to Eliza’s wellbeing than to those of her other grandchildren, the assumption being that they would be provided for by their fathers. And, as we have seen, care for Eliza continued down through the generations of the French/Gammon family. 

And what of Eliza’s appearance? Was her genetic inheritance obvious? We don’t know. She lives now only in official documents and that is not the kind of thing of which they speak. Nor do we know anything about Eliza’s attitude to her origins, other than she was quite happy to admit to having been born not only in Africa, but specifically in Cape Coast Castle. I am assuming that she left the Castle when too young to retain any memories, but she could not have escaped thinking about her mother. Was ‘Nance’ a name that Eliza knew? Was she talked of when, as a child, Eliza  lived with her grandmother in the house in Princes Square? Did Eliza subsequently take an interest in Africa, read books about it, or, perhaps, support missionary work?

As to her personality, we can only assume that Eliza was amiable, capable of maintaining family friendships throughout her long life. In her will she made bequests not only to Johanna Pearce and to Herbert Gammon, but to a number of cousins. Alas, it is the fate of single women that their memory disappears so entirely. If she had married and had children Eliza’s story might have been handed down, even surviving into the 21st century but, as it is, only an outline of her life can be resurrected, mapping a journey that brought her from Cape Coast Castle to Brixton, via Wapping.

And, of course, Brixton in the late 19th century being very different demographically, it is entirely a coincidence that this child of Africa, born above slave dungeons, should have spent her last years living a stone’s throw away from Windrush Square, now an implicit memorial to Britain’s involvement in the slave trade.

Apart from re-reading St Clair, The Grand Slave Emporium, research for this article has, of necessity, been drawn from online sources. I have, in particular, mined a plethora of records held by ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk. While doing so I realised that numerous family researchers have fatally muddled their Herbert family trees. The secret, I find, is to read all available wills. 

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.

 

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Lockdown Research: Switching The Lens – And Discovering Myra Jane Monk

Posted in Lock-Down Research on November 9, 2020

I recently noticed that the London Metropolitan Archives has launched a new database – Switching the Lens – Rediscovering Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous Heritage, 1561 to 1840. This is an aspect of history that captured my imagination some time ago [ see, for instance, Suffrage Stories: Black And Minority Ethnic Women: Is There A ‘Hidden History’?]  and I was interested to see whether this new database would make the uncovering of individual histories any more possible. Through the centuries there have always been some men and women of BAME heritage living in Britain whose lives have, for one reason or another, been recorded in some degree of detail; the great majority, however, have hitherto remained untraceable.

The database has its inherent limitation in that the 2600 names listed are drawn, over a period of nearly three centuries, from Anglican parish registers. As such it deals only with those who were baptised, married or buried in a parish church in the London area. Nevertheless it contains a wealth of information.

Because I was particularly keen to see if information available on Switching the Lens could be amplified by that already held on genealogical sites such as Ancestry and Findmypast, I concentrating on reading entries in the later period covered by the database, running from 1801-1850. Would it be possible to follow up the lives of any of those people on the Switching the Lens database by, for instance, finding them on the census (from 1841) or identifying them on other national registers?

At a first glance the answer, briefly, is probably not. In general, names are too common or the information is too scanty  for it to be possible to identify individuals with any certainty in later official registers. But that is only my finding after a cursory scan. It may well be that keen application will bear fruit. And I shall certainly take a closer look.

As a result of my first venture into the database one entry did attract my attention and I have taken pleasure in unravelling a little of the lives thereby revealed.

The entry is a baptism that took place on 26 June 1828 at St Pancras Church in the Euston Road, of ‘Miya Jane, illegitimate daughter of William Garrow Monk and Coopoo, a native of the East Indies’. In fact I quickly realised that the girl’s name had been mis-transcribed and she was ‘Myra Jane Monk’, born in India on 3 August 1826. The baptismal register identifies William Garrow Monk (1785-1859) as a ‘Judge’, living in Enfield. Born in Hertfordshire, Monk had been an employee of the East India Company from the age of 20, rising to become a judge in the Madras Presidency.  It would seem that he finally returned to England c 1828. If it had not been for the fact that the British Library is closed at the moment I would have enjoyed spending time in the East India Company archive finding our more about William Garrow Monk. 

However, the online research that I could do revealed that Myra was not Monk’s only illegitimate child –  because William Garrow Monk’s aunt, Elizabeth Monk (d 1832), in her will left money in trust ‘for the benefit of George Monk, Charles Monk and Myra Jane Monk, being the children brought from India by my nephew William Garrow Monk.‘ 

The inclusion, by name, in their great-aunt’s will, suggests that ‘the children brought from India’ were embraced by the wider family. It is not known whether or not all three children had the same mother, although I would think it right to assume that they did. But of her all that we know is that her surname was Coopoo. We do not know what position she held in Indian society, although it is likely that she was a bibi, living with William Garrow Monk in a marriage in all but name. Nor do we know if she was still alive when her three children sailed for England with their father, or, indeed, if she, perhaps, may have accompanied them to England. In his excellent book, The White Mughals, William Dalrymple relates the fascinating histories of some of the Indian wives and bibis whose lives were intertwined with those of employees of the East India Company. 

The names ‘Myra’, ‘George’, and ‘Charles’ were Monk family names – in fact, all three were the names of William Garrow Monk’s siblings. Myra’s second name, ‘Jane’, was that of William Garrow Monk’s mother, born Jane Garrow. The Garrow family had a long association with India.  It is notable that neither of the boys was named for their father. As we shall see, that name was reserved for his legitimate first-born son.

George and Charles were older than Myra, but I have not been able to trace entries for them on London baptismal registers. They may have been baptised in India or at an English church, the register of which has not been digitised. The 1891 census does reveal a Charles Monk, born in Madras in 1823,  whom I am certain was Myra’s brother. In 1841 he was living in the Chelsea home of a surgeon, apprenticed as a medical assistant. When, now a ‘chemist’, in 1846 at St Paul’s, Deptford, he married, his father’s name is given on the marriage register as ‘William Monk, Gentleman’. However, as William Monk was not one of the witnesses it is impossible to know whether or not he attended the wedding. Charles and his wife had several children and he continued to live in Deptford until his death in 1899. In the 1891 census he is described as ‘retired medical assistant’.

Of George Monk I have been unable to find any convincing trace.

UPDATE: A descendant of Charles Monk has established that George Monk emigrated to Canada sometime before 1859.

In the year before the death of Great-Aunt Eliza, William Garrow Monk had married, on 26 April 1831, Eliza Ann Archer, 20 years old to his 46  She was the daughter of Thomas Archer, principal clerk to the Treasury. Barely three months later. Archer, a widower, married Myra Charlotte Monk, sister to William Garrow Monk. 

William Garrow Monk and his wife were to have at least 6 children, the eldest being William, born in 1832. Some time after his birth the family moved to Hersham, Surrey,, to Hersham Lodge, on the south-east side of Hersham Green. It is not known whether Myra and her brothers spent any time living with their father’s new family. In the 1841 census Myra, aged 14, was boarding at a ladies’ school run by a Miss Chownes in Holly Road, Twickenham.

It is unsurprising to discover that, after her schooling ended, Myra earned her living as a governess. This was just the employment I had imagined would be her lot and was, therefore, satisfied to find her on the 1851 census with the occupation as ‘governess’, a visitor in a house in Camden Terrace, Peckham. She was still living in the area (in Camberwell New Road) in the following year (1 July 1852) when she married Arthur Turley in the church of St Giles, Camberwell,  Arthur, living in nearby Champion Grove,  was described as a ‘brewer’, although he later worked, perhaps not very successfully, as an architect and surveyor. Myra admits to no occupation. Interestingly the box on the marriage register for her father’s name has no writing – merely a line through it – although in the ‘Occupation’ column he is described as ‘Gentleman’ However her father was there in the church, signing himself ‘W.G. Monk’ as one of the witnesses. I was ridiculously pleased to know that this father appears in no way to have rejected his illegitimate, half-Indian, daughter.

Arthur Turley was originally from Yorkshire and after their marriage the couple moved north to Bradford where the aMyra was supplementing their income by running a school, presumably in their house. A year later the 1871 census shows that the family had moved to Halifax and the older three children were already in employment. Myra, the eldest (17), was a weaver, Evelyn (15) a boot stitcher, and Arthur (12) a telegraph messenger boy.

By this time Myra’s father, William Monk, had been dead for 12 years and I wondered how his legitimate family was faring without him. He had left under £1000 and by 1861, two years after his death, Eliza, his widow, and three of her now adult children had moved to a Brixton villa, The sons were all then described as ‘unemployed’ but by 1871 one was a stockbroker and his brother and sister were both ‘music professors’. The fact that the daughter, Mary, had an employment perhaps indicates a degree of financial necessity and makes her class position not much different from that of her illegitimate half-sister, who  worked occasionally as a teacher. Nevertheless Mary’s life was made more comfortable for her by the cook and housemaid whom her mother was able to employ. Myra had no live-in help.

UPDATE: A descendant of Charles Monk has established, from a codicil to William Garrow Monk’s will, that the following bequests were made: £500 to Charles Monk and £50 each to Myra and George. The latter was, however, regarded as unreliable and the money was only to be given to him in small sums. The £500 bequest to Charles does seem very generous – amounting to half his estate. The remainder went to his wife, to be passed to his legitimate children after her death. What is clear is that William Garrow Monk was intent on caring for his illegitimate Indian children.

After Arthur Turley’s death, Myra, now living in Leeds, once more became a schoolmistress, the 1881 census showing that two of her daughters were also now teachers. It is probable that she had again resorted to setting up a school in her home, with two of her daughters, Evelyne and Agnes, to help her. In the next census, in 1891, still living in Leeds but with only Evelyne now at home, Myra is described as a ‘boarding-house keeper’. Her one boarder is, however, a professor at the Yorkshire College (later University of Leeds) so one imagines she ran a house that had a slight social cachet. Her eldest son, Arthur, followed in his father’s footsteps as a land surveyor, eventually achieving the position of surveyor to the city of Canterbury.

Three of Myra’s daughters, Myra, Evelyne and Laura, married and emigrated to the USA, although Evelyne and Laura returned eventually to live in north Wales.  The US census in the early 20th century took note of race/colour and, interestingly, in all the censuses in which they feature the grand-daughters of Coopoo are classified as ‘white’.

I have found a photograph of Laura Garrow Cullmann (nee Turley), taken, with her husband, in 1920, nearly 100 years after the birth of her grandmother in India

 

 

 

 

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First World War: My Family’s First World War Story

Posted in Uncategorized on November 8, 2020

My mother, Christmas 1914. On the reverse of this postcard is written 'With Best Wishes for a Merry Xmas From Meg, Tom and the 'Wee Un'.
My mother, Christmas 1914. On the reverse of this postcard is written ‘With Best Wishes for a Merry Xmas From Meg, Tom and the ‘Wee Un’.

On 4 August 1914 my mother, Margaret Wallace, was living with her parents in Edinburgh where her father, Thomas Wallace, was a cashier in a brewery. On 2 December 1915 he joined up, aged 27.  He qualified as a signaller and telephonist (First class signalling certificate )with the Royal Garrison Artillery, was mobilized on 17 August 1916, setting sail from Plymouth for France.

Thomas Livingston Wallace
Thomas Livingston Wallace

He served in France  until November 1917 when the 289th Siege Battery was redeployed  to northern Italy. I have read 289 Siege Battery’s War Diary (held in the National Archives -WO 95/4205 289) which covers the period from Dec 1917 to May 1918 and gives a very interesting picture of army life up in the mountains above Vicenza. The officers seem to have enjoyed reasonably regular short breaks, allowing them visits to Rome.

Thomas Wallace’s army record seems uneventful. On 22 March 1918 he was admonished by the C.O. for turning up 85 minutes late to 9pm Roll Call, so I hope he had been having some fun. I doubt he ever got to Rome. On 19 April he was awarded First Class Proficiency Pay of ‘6d per diem’ and on 17 May was sent on a ‘Pigeon Course’ at General Headquarters, rejoining his Battery a week later. Three weeks later,  on 15 June, during the first day of the battle of Asiago he was killed. Army records show that his effects – comprising photos, 21shillings, metal wrist watch (broken) and signaller’s certificate – were returned to his widow, my grandmother.

The story handed down in the family ran something along the lines that, as a signaller, Thomas Wallace had been alerted to the fact that the Austrians were about to make a surprise attack, that communications had been disrupted and that he was relaying this information by travelling down the Line in person when he was killed. One is naturally very wary of ‘family’ stories, knowing full well how they get corrupted in the telling  but in records held in the National Archives, I did read, in a report of the battle of 15 June,

“289 Siege battery detached and section from them to engage suitable targets among the enemy’s advancing infantry

10.15 Runner and motor cyclists used because lines cut to brigade headquarters

Casualties in Brigade: 1 officer and 4 other ranks killed.’

The report of course doesn’t name the ‘other ranks’ but I wondered if Gunner Thomas Wallace was not one of those men.

He is buried at Magnaboschi Cemetery, a lovely tranquil spot, which when we visited some years ago we approached on foot through meadows. A fair proportion of the men buried in this small cemetery were also killed on 15 June 1918. The War Graves Commission information for Thomas Wallace is correct, whereas that created by the War Office is careless enough to have him killed in France. It just shows that one should never trust even the most official of records without corroborating evidence. Some years ago I did manage to get his entry corrected in the Roll of Honour of the Royal Garrison Artillery, contained in Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle. Wasn’t it just typical, I thought, when you know something about anything ‘They’ would get it wrong.

Thomas Wallace

That cemetery was a world away from the life my grandmother knew – the villages and small towns of Fife. I doubt she ever saw a photograph of his grave. She never seemed to recover from his death. Life on a war widow’s pension was a struggle. She kept all the letters he sent from the War – and when I was about 12 years old I was allowed to read one or two. I particularly remember one that described his crossing of the Lombardy Plain on the way to Italy. Alas, those letters disappeared around the time of her death in a nursing home in the early 1960s.

My widowed grandmother, with my mother and her brother, in the doorway of their Falkland cottage
My widowed grandmother, with my mother and her brother, in the doorway of their Falkland cottage

Like so many other children of their generation my mother and her brother, who was born in December 1917, grew up without a father. That was all they had ever known.

My mother in her University of St Andrews graduation gown
My mother in her University of St Andrews graduation gown

What were that young couple, my grandparents, saying to each other as they discussed the news of War on 4 August 1914 in their Edinburgh tenement? Did they sense the cataclysm awaiting them? Probably not.

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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Collecting Suffrage: Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, The Need Of The Hour

Posted in Uncategorized on October 14, 2020

Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833-1918) is one of my heroes of the women’s suffrage movement. She began campaigning in the north of England in the mid-1860s and proved to be one of the movement’s most ‘earnest workers’, to use her terminology.

In 1904, putting aside a lifetime’s aversion to party politics, she joined the Manchester ILP. and it was the ILP that published this pamphlet. The content was originally published as an article in the Westminster Review, and in it she analyses in her concise style the events of the previous 40 years and demands that Liberal MPs who profess to support women’s suffrage honour their pledges.

The pamphlet was published by the Independent Labour Party, and on the back lists pamphlets, books, postcards, badges and leaflets issued by the Women’s Social and Political Union.

Very good – 2nd edition – no date, but, from the evidence of the publications listed on the back cover, this edition c 1908. With markings from the Women’s Library from which it has been withdrawn (duplicate) £35

I can also offer a real photographic postcard Mrs Elmy, taken in May 1907 when the WSPU-nominated photographer called at her Congleton home for that very purpose.

In fine condition – unposted – £100 +VAT in the UK and EU.

If you are interested in buying either – or both – of them items, email me

elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com                                                                                                        

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Collecting Suffrage: The ‘Census Resisted’ Badge

Posted in 1911 Census, Collecting Suffrage on September 25, 2020

NO VOTE – NO CENSUS – CENSUS RESISTED BADGE

Metal badge worn by suffragettes who boycotted the April 1911 census. Around the outside of the badge is ‘No Vote – No Census – Census Resisted and in the centre ‘A census for Gt Britain shall be taken in the year 1911 & the census day shall be Sunday the 2nd day of April in that year’.

The census boycott was an important act of civil disobedience and you can find many posts on this website about the suffragette resisters. Just key ‘census’ into the Search Box.

The round black and grey badge still carries on its reverse the maker’s paper ‘Merchants Portrait Co.’. This badge is extremely scarce and is in fine condition £1100

If interested in buying, email elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

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Collecting Suffrage: Gladice Keevil Photographed by Lena Connell

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 21, 2020

 

Portrait photograph of Miss Gladice Keevil, The ‘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. When she arrived at Lena Connell’s St John’s Wood studio in 1908 Gladice Keevil had not long been released from prison and was soon appointed National Organizer for the WSPU in the Midlands.

She was a speaker in the WSPU’s summer campaign in Ireland in 1910 and was described by a member of one of her open-air meetings in Belfast as ‘Clever speaker and knows her subject’. She was also one of the WSPU’s prettiest activists.

Postcard in fine condition – unposted £120 + VAT in UK and EU. Email me if interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

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Collecting Suffrage: Mrs Amy Sanderson, Scottish Speaker For The Women’s Freedom League

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 18, 2020

 Mrs Amy Sanderson, born in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1906 and took part in the deputation in February 1907 from the first Women’s Parliament in Caxton Hall to the House of Commons, was arrested and served a Holloway prison term.

She actively campaigned in Scotland for the WSPU before, in October 1907, joining those who broke away to form the Women’s Freedom League. becoming for 3 years a member of the WFL executive committee. In 1908 she served another prison term.

She was a very popular speaker for the WFL and, in 1912, for the ‘Women’s March’ from Edinburgh to London.

In this photograph she is wearing her ‘Holloway brooch’, given by the WFL in recognition of her imprisonment.

The card, issued by the WFL no later than November 1909, after which date the Scottish Glasgow headquarters moved from Gordon Street to Sauchiehall Street, is in fine, unposted condition. £130 + VAT in UK and the EU.

Email me if interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

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Collecting Suffrage: Anna Munro, Organizer For The Scottish Council Of The Women’s Freedom League

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 17, 2020

 

Full-length portrait photograph of Anna Munro (1881-1962) Scottish organiser for the Women’s Freedom League. The address is that of the WFL Scottish headquarters.

Anna Munro had joined the WSPU in 1906, becoming its organizer in Dunfermline. The following year she followed Teresa Billington-Greig into the WFL, becoming her private secretary. She was imprisoned in Holloway in early 1908 before being appointed organizing secretary of the Scottish Council of the WFL.

After the First World War Anna Munro (now Mrs Ashman) became a magistrate in England and was later president of the WFL in which she remained active until its disbanding in 1961.

Photographic postcards of Scottish suffragettes are relatively uncommon. This one is in fine, unposted condition. £130 + VAT in UK and EU. Email me if interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Collecting Suffrage: Photograph Of Cicely Hamilton By Lena Connell For The Suffrage Shop

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 14, 2020

Photograph of a luminous Cicely Hamilton, writer, actor and suffrage activist, taken by Lena Connell, the renowned photographer.

The close-up photograph is mounted on stiff card, which carries the logo of The Suffrage Shop, 15 Adam Street, Strand, London. Hamilton was closely associated with the Suffrage Shop, which in 1910 published her Pageant of Great Women.

The photograph was probably taken c 1910/1911. Hamilton’s name has been scratched on the emulsion, presumably by the photographer, and it is signed by Cicely Hamilton.  SOLD

If interested in buying, do email me. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

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Collecting Suffrage: Mrs Charlotte Despard Photographed by Christina Broom

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 9, 2020

 

A lovely photograph of Mrs Charlotte Despard, leader of the Women’s Freedom League. It was taken on a rooftop, possibly at the time of the WFL’s White, Gold and Green Fair in 1909.

The photographer and publisher of the resultant postcard was Mrs Albert Broom (Christina Broom), who photographed several groups of those participating in that WFL Fair.

In fine, unposted, condition. A scarce image. Sold

Email me if interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

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Collecting Suffrage: This Is The House That Man Built

Posted in Collecting Suffrage on September 8, 2020