Woman and her Sphere
Posts Tagged Nottingham Archives
Suffrage Stories: Helen Watts And The Mystery Of The Unclaimed Trunk
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on June 19, 2015
In May I attended a very interesting seminar – ‘”I am a part of all who I have met”: Why Social Networks Mattered for Suffragette Militancy‘ – given at the Institute of Historical Research by Dr Gemma Edwards of Manchester University. In the course of this Gemma demonstrated how social network theory could be used to re-construct the networks that formed around individual suffragettes and how these networks could then be analysed to demonstrate the subject’s primary relationships and the influences likely to have been exerted on and by them. For an illuminating article by Gemma on the subject see here.
For her paper at the IHR Gemma concentrated on two known suffragettes – Mary Blathwayt and Helen Watts – and related that she had a particular connection with the latter because it was thanks to her own father that papers relating to Helen Watts’ suffragette activities are now held in Nottinghamshire Archives. I little realised when I sat there reading through the Watts’ papers in the late 1990s that they had such a romantic past (or at least romantic to an historical detective).
For, Gemma explained, in the 1980s her father, a Bristol history teacher, had set project work for his class and that one pupil had chosen as her subject the local women’s suffrage movement. She had then been sufficiently enterprising as to place an advertisement in a local paper asking for any new information. Rather amazingly a reply was received from a worker at Avonmouth Docks to say that a quantity of suffrage-related papers were held in a trunk that lay, apparently unclaimed, in a warehouse. The papers related to the suffrage activity of Nottingham-based Helen Kirkpatrick Watts. Gemma’s father was permitted to borrow and photocopy them, subsequently depositing the copies in the Nottinghamshire Archives.
Knowing nothing of this rather bizarre provenance I duly wrote an entry on Helen Watts for The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, recounting her suffragette life. I discovered, from an issue of Calling All Women, the newsletter published by the Suffragette Fellowship, that Helen had emigrated to Canada – to Vancouver – in 1965, the wording suggesting that this was a permanent move. I did like to anchor my subjects’ earthly existence with firm birth and death dates but in those pre-internet days I assumed that was as far as I could follow her – having no way then of discovering dates of death in Canada.
However, after Gemma’s seminar I pondered on the mystery of how the trunk could have lain apparently abandoned at Avonmouth. Even though she had flown to Canada and organised for her belonging to have followed her by sea Helen Watts would surely have been on tenterhooks to ensure their safe arrival. Thus it seemed doubtful that the trunk could have failed to leave Avonmouth in 1965.
In the days of my Reference Guide research all tracking of births, marriages and deaths had to be done by working through the hefty volumes held in the Family Record Office and its predecessors. Now, however, I can sit at my computer and at a click find dates in a second. So it was that, after Gemma’s talk, I entered details for Helen Watts and discovered that she had not died in Canada but in England – in Chilcompton, Somerset, aged 91 – on 18 August 1972 . Her permanent address at the time was 36 York Avenue, Hove. Her ’emigration’ had clearly not been permanent. However, one of her sisters, Ethelinda, a teacher, does seem to have taken up permanent residence in Canada, and in 1965 it was presumably Helen’s intention to live with her. Ethelinda Watts died in Vancouver three months after Helen – in November 1972.
My suggestion is, therefore, that the trunk had actually completed its return journey from Canada when it lay forgotten at Avonmouth. Possibly by then Helen Watts was too infirm to keep track of her possessions – however treasured. It is not known what has happened to the trunk and the originals of the papers – perhaps Helen Watts’ wider family (Nevile Watts has numerous descendants) were eventually made aware of them. What must have been her most valuable suffragette mementoes – her hunger-strike medal and Holloway brooch – did resurface – for they were sold at auction in London in 1999. However it is more than likely that Helen Watts carried such an iconic item with her on her journey home rather than consigning it to the trunk.
A little more investigation revealed something more of Helen Watts’ life after her brief and dramatic involvement with the Women’s Social and Political Union than was available when I wrote her Reference Guide biography. By 1911 she had left Nottingham and was living with her brother, Nevile, in Chilcompton in Somerset. He had rebelled in his own way against his family’s Anglican tradition (Helen and Nevile’s father was vicar of Lenton, on the outskirts of Nottingham), was now a classics teacher at Downside College, a renowned Roman Catholic school, and later converted to Roman Catholicism. You can read a short autobiographical article by Nevile Watts here.
Nevile Watts married, fathered five sons, published several books and continued to live in Chilcompton. Helen probably remained in the area for some years – possibly joined by her other sister, Alice. Certainly in the 1950s the ‘Misses Watts’ are listed in the phone book as living at Crosslands, Wells Road, Chilcompton.
The moral of this tale is that papers related to the suffrage movement can turn up in the most unexpected places. If you come across any do let me know…
Copyright
Helen Watts, Lenton, Nevile Watts, Nottingham Archives, Nottingham Suffragette
Recent Posts
- Suffrage Stories and The Garretts and their Circle: Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings – Zoom Talk
- Something A Little Different: Furrowed Middlebrow Books, August 2022
- Books And Ephemera By And About Women For Sale: Catalogue 207
- The Garretts And Their Circle: Quite A Week: ‘Millicent Fawcett: Selected Writings’ And Two Plaques For Fanny Wilkinson
- The Garretts And Their Circle: Millicent’s Writings (soon to be published) And Agnes’ Furnishings (work in progress)
Archives
- Join 2,738 other subscribers
All My Books
- Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists
- Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary
- Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle
- Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette – ebook available on iTunes
- Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette – ebook available on Amazon
- Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings, co-edited with Melissa Terras
- The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide
- The Women's Suffrage Movement: a regional survey
Articles
- 'Hunger Striking for the Vote'
- 'Women do not count, neither shall they be counted': Suffrage, Citizenship and the Battle for the 1911 Census (co-authored with Jill Liddington). History Workshop Journal
- BBC History: Women: From Abolition to the Vote
- Emily Wilding Davison: Centennial Celebrations. Women's History Review
- Introduction to 'Bewildering Cares' by Winifred Peck
- Introduction to six novels by Elizabeth Fair
- Introduction to three novels by Rachel Ferguson
- Police, Prisons and Prisoners: the view from the Home Office. Women's History Review
- The Bloomsbury Project: A Woman Professional in Bloomsbury: Fanny Wilkinson, Landscape Gardener
Audio/Audio Visual
- 'Collecting The Suffragettes': A Fully-Illustrated Video Talk
- 'Collecting The Suffragettes': A Fully-Illustrated Video Talk
- 'Furrowed Middle-Brow Fiction'
- 'Suffragette': the making of the film. Q & A discussion hosted by the Women's Library@LSE
- BBC Radio 3: Kitty Marion: Singer, Suffragette, Firestarter
- BBC Radio 4 1913: The Year Before: The Women's Rebellion
- BBC Radio 4 Deeds Not Words: Emily Wilding Davison
- BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour: The Garrett Andersons: Pioneering Mother And Daughter
- BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour: Who Won the Vote for Women – the Suffragists or the Suffragettes?
- BBC Radio 4: Archive on Four: The Lost World of the Suffragettes
- BBC Radio 4: Great Lives: Millicent Fawcett
- BBC Radio 4: Millicent Fawcett, Votes for Women and British Liberalism
- BBC Radio 4: Things We Forgot To Remember: Suffragettes
- BBC Radio 4: Votes For Victorian Women
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Suffragette Mary Richardson Who Slashed the Rokeby Venus
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour Suffragette Special 26 July 2013
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour: Emily Wilding Davison and the 1911 census boycott
- BBC Radio 4: Woman's Hour: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms (starts c 27 min in)
- BBC Two 'Ascent of Women'
- BBC World Service Lost World of the Suffragettes
- Channel 4 TV: Clare Balding's Secrets of a Suffragette
- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Fawcett
- Endless Endeavours: from the 1866 women's suffrage petition to the Fawcett Society: The Women's Library@LSE Podcast
- Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle.
- Fanny Wilkinson: A Talk
- ITV: The Great War The People's Story Episode 2 (including Kate Parry Frye and her diary)
- No Vote No Census. National Archives talk on the suffragette boycott of the 1911 census
- Parliamentary Radio: Interview in the House of Commons about Emily Davison on 4 June 2013
- The Royal Society of Medicine: Talk on 'Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and her Hospital'
- UK Parliament Videoed Talk 'Vanishing for the Vote', together with Dr Jill Liddington and Prof Pat Thane
- UK Parliament: Videoed talk in the House of Commons: Campaigning for the Vote: from MP's Daughter to Suffrage Organiser – the diary of Kate Parry Frye
Guest Blogs
- British Library Untold Lives: Emily Wilding Davison: Perpetuating the Memory
- Feminist & Women's Studies Association Blog: Kate Frye: A Feminist Foot Soldier
- History of Government Blog: No 10 Guest Historian Series: We Wanted To Wake Him Up: Lloyd George And Suffragette Militancy
- History Workshop Online: Campaigning for The Vote: Kate Parry Frye's Suffrage Diary
- OUP Blog: Why Is Emily Wilding Davison Remembered As The First Suffragette Martyr?
View Books for Sale