Woman and her Sphere
Posts Tagged Royal Albert Hall
Suffrage Stories: Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary, The Royal Albert Hall, And The Importance of Gas
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on March 5, 2013
The Royal Albert Hall was the scene of many grand suffrage occasions – organised by both the constitutional and the militant suffrage societies. The management of the Hall has recognised this by supporting its archivists in mounting a small display relating to its suffrage past. The display may be viewed by anyone with a ticket to an event in the hall.
Researchers use the primary sources available and Suzanne Keyte, Project Archivist at the Royal Albert Hall, has mined what is known as the Hall’s ‘Gas Book’ to recreate a list of occasions on which the Hall was rented for suffrage-related meetings. The ‘Gas Book’ records the amount of cubic feet used each time the Hall was let for a concert or a political or a religious meeting and, with certain provisos, can be used as an indication of the size of the audience.
Kate Frye witnessed several grand suffrage occasions in the Hall. Here she describes an evening stewarding for the London Society for Women’s Suffrage at a Mass Meeting of suffrage societies in support of the Conciliation Bill
I sat and sewed a red, green and white scarf for the evening. We had tea at 4.15 and I had a rush to dress and take Mickie [her dog] out and get off by soon after 5 o’clock. I was due at the Albert Hall at 5.30. Was given a job to do till 6.30 – or rather before – when we all went to our posts. Mine was Balcony – selling of programmes and ‘Common Causes’ [the NUWSS newspaper] & helping with the collections. The hall looked lovely – the banners were so beautifully arranged – but it wasn’t so full as I should have liked. The W.S.P.U. had a crowded meeting on Thursday and collected £8,000. Wonderful people one simply cannot hear from the Balcony. Mrs Swanwick was the only one I could really hear – her elocution is marvellous. It was so interesting seeing all the Societies – but [ie except for] the W.S.P.U. there – such lots of colours & badges – and I got very chatsome to some of my companions upstairs from the different societies.
When the meeting was nearly over I went down to the hall & tried to sell ‘Common Cause’. Old Major General Sir Alfred Turner, who was sporting around with Adeline Bourne, bought one of me with a beam and a handful of coin – he is a joke. It had come on to pour with rain and the Wrights insisted on bringing me as far as their place in their Taxi which was kind. ‘
The Hall’s ‘Gas Book’ shows that for this meeting the NUWSS consumed – and were charged for – 47,800 cubic feet of gas. On this November night one imagines that it would have been necessary to have lit all the Hall’s lamps. In fact, on 19 March 1908, when Kate Frye attended the first WSPU meeting to be held in the Albert Hall, that night’s gas consumption had been very similar- 46,800 cubic feet (click here to see Kate’s description of that meeting). From this idiosyncratic source we can deduce that the NUWSS did not lag behind the WSPU in ensuring that their evening meetings were brilliantly lit, even though, from Kate’s account, they were not necessarily able to muster as large an audience.
There was something to be said for staging meetings in the Albert Hall on summer evenings. For at the meeting held there that marked the finale to the NUWSS’s procession through London on 13 June 1908, gas consumption was only 16,000 cubic feet. We know when the meeting started because Kate Frye carefully noted in her diary that, after marching from the Embankment in the rearguard position which the Kensington branch had been allotted, she reached the Albert Hall at 5.10, just as the meeting was about to begin. Clearly less artificial illumination was required for a meeting held on an early evening in summer than for one in the winter, thereby reducing at least one element of the cost. (See here for the entry from Kate’s diary describing the procession).
Suzanne Keyte has identified c 30 suffrage meetings that were held at the Royal Albert Hall. By June 1913, however, after pressure had been exerted on hall owners throughout the country, the management of the Hall decided that they would refuse the WSPU any further lettings. What was in effect their last meeting had taken place a couple of months earlier, on 10 April.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops. In stock at London Review of Books Bookshop, Foyles, National Archives Bookshop.
Kate Frye, NUWSS, Royal Albert Hall, suffragette, women's suffrage
Recent Posts
- Suffrage Stories: The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal – Solved
- Mariana Starke and the Demon Duke: your opinion requested
- The Garretts And Their Circle: A Talk For International Women’s Day
- Books and Ephemera By and About Women: Catalogue 211
- Mariana Starke: ‘A Tissue of Coincidences’: Lady Mary De Crespigny And Hortense De Crespigny
Archives
- Join 2,785 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