Posts Tagged votes for women
Books And Ephemera By And About Women For Sale: Catalogue 206 – Part Two – General
Posted by womanandhersphere in Books And Ephemera For Sale on March 14, 2022
Woman and her Sphere
Catalogue 206: Part Two – General
Elizabeth Crawford
5 Owen’s Row
London EC1V 4NP
elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
Index to Catalogue
General Non-fiction: Items 120-266
General Biography: Items 267-353
General Ephemera: Items 354-394
General Postcards: Items 395-396
General Fiction: 397-431
Women and the First World War: Items 432-435
General Non-fiction
1. 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
2. AHMED, Leila Women and Gender in Islam Yale University Press 1992
Fine in d/w
[10512] £15
3. 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
4. ALLEN, Isobel Birth Control in Runcorn and Coalville: a study of the F.P.A. campaign PEP 1974
Soft covers – fine
[9020] £4
5. ALLEN, Jennifer (ed) Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures State University of New York Press 1990
Paper covers – very good
[5164] £5
6. BACK, Lee And SOLOMOS, John Theories of Race and Racism: a reader Routledge 2000
Soft covers – fine. Heavy
[9986] £12
7. BANET-WEISER, Sarah The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: beauty pageants and national identity University of California Press 1999
Paper covers – mint
[5141] £5
8. BEACHY, Robert Et Al (eds) Women, Business and Finance in 19th-century Europe: rethinking separate spheres Berg 2006
Fine
[9208] £12
9. 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
10. 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
11. 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
12. BLOOM, Stanley The Launderette: a history Duckworth 1988
Soft covers – very good
[10201] £3
13. 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
14. BROCKLEBANK, Lt Col Hugh Brocklebank A Turn or Two I’ll Walk to Still My Beating Heart: commentary on a private collection Cresset Press 1955
A most beautifully produced book – large format – lovely paper – essays on the paintings contained in the author’s collection – including works by Poussin, Richard Wilson, Murillo, and Harold Knight – among others. Each work is illustrated. Fine
[2782] £15
15. 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
16. CARTWRIGHT, Ann How Many Children? Routledge 1976
Soft covers – good
[9008] £8
17. CAVENDISH, Ruth Women on the Line Routledge 1982
Explores the relationship between sex, class and imperialism as reflected in the lives of women working on the assembly line of a large factory. The author worked on an assembly line alongside women who had settled in England from Ireland, the Caribbean or the Indian subcontinent. Paper covers – fine
[10001] £10
18. CHECKLAND, Olive Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland: social welfare and the voluntary principle John Donald Ltd 1980
Fine in fine d/w
[9241] £20
19. CHERNIN, Kim Womansize: the tyranny of slenderness Women’s Press 1983
[9440] £5
20. CHESTER, Gail And NIELSEN, Sigrid (eds) In Other Words: writing as a feminist Hutchinson 1987
Paper covers – mint
[5342] £3
21. 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
22. CLARKE, Patricia The Governesses: letters from the colonies 1862-1882 Hutchinson 1985
Fine in fine d/w
[12463] £7
23. COHEN, Cathy Et Al (eds) Women Transforming Politics: an alternative reader New York University Press 1997
Paper covers – large format – mint
[5122] £12
24. 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
25. COOTE, Anna And CAMPBELL, Bea Sweet Freedom: the struggle for women’s liberation Picador 1982
Paper covers – good
[2703] £3
26. CROSLAND, Margaret Women of Iron and Velvet and the books they wrote in France Constable 1976
Study of the French women writers who came after George Sand. Fine in d/w
[2746] £3
27. CUNNINGTON, C. Willett Feminine Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century William Heinemann 1935
Good
[2558] £15
28. DEAN-JONES, Lesley Ann Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science OUP 1996
Soft covers – fine
[11865] £15
29. DICKSON, Anne And HENRIQUES, Nikki Menopause: the woman’s view Quartet 1992
Revised and updated edition. Soft covers – mint
[9989] £5
30. DINSHAW, Carolyn and WALLACE, David (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing CUP 2003
Soft covers – fine
[11857] £12
31. DISKI, Jenny On Trying To Keep Still Little, Brown 2006
A ‘non-travel travel book’ – covering her trips to New Zealand, Somerset and Lapland – with digressions. Uncorrected proof copy. Soft covers – fine
[10569] £5
32. 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
33. DORESS, Paula And SIEGAL, Diana Ourselves Growing Older: women ageing with knowledge and power Fontana 1989
Paper covers – 600pp – mint
[5339] £7
34. DOYAL, Lesley Et Al (eds) Aids: setting a feminist agenda Taylor & Francis 1994
Paper covers – fine
[5061] £4
35. DUBY, Georges Women of the Twelfth Century: vol 1: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Six Others Polity Press 1997
Soft covers – fine
[11860] £7
36. DURHAM, Edith High Albania Virago 1985
First published in 1909. Soft covers – very good
[10802] £8
37. 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
38. 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
39. FAERY, Rebecca Blevins Cartographies of Desire: captivity, race, & sex in the shaping of the American nation University of Oklahoma Press 1999
Soft covers – mint
[5930] £8
40. FARRELL, Christine My Mother Said…; the way young people learned about sex and birth control Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care 1978
Based on over 1500 interviews with a national random sample of 16- to 19-year olds in 1974-5. Very good in good d/w – though ex-library
[8997] £10
41. 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
42. FRANCOME, Colin Abortion Freedom: a worldwide movement Allen & Unwin 1984
Very good in d/w
[9006] £5
43. 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
44. FULLER, Margaret ‘These Sad But Glorious Days’: dispatches from Europe, 1846-1850 Yale University Press 1991
Fine in d/w
[8887] £18
45. GACEMI, Baya I, Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist University of Nebraska Press 2006
The ‘autobiography’ of a young Algerian woman. Translated by Paul Cote and Constantina Mitchell.
[9974] £6
46. GARRETT, Stephanie Gender Tavistock 1987
In ‘Society Now’ series. Soft covers – very good
[8759] £3
47. GATHORNE-HARDY, Jonathan The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny Victorian (& Modern History) Book Club 1972
Good in d/w
[2578] £3
48. GATTY, H.K.F (ed) Aunt Judy’s Christmas Volume for 1877 George Bell 1877
762 pages of entertainment – stories, poetry, songs, botany, travel etc. Very good
[1246] £10
49. 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
50. GREENWOOD, Victoria And YOUNG, Jock Abortion In Demand Pluto Press 1976
Soft covers – good
[8998] £5
51. GRIFFIN, Susan A Chorus of Stones: the private life of war Women’s Press 1994
A study of the nature of war and gender, illuminating the interplay between private suffering and public tragedy. Soft covers – mint
[6217] £8
52. GUTTMACHER, Alan And MEARS, Eleanor Babies By Choice Or By Chance Gollancz 1960
Very good in d/w
[9004] £10
53. HARTLEY, Jenny (ed) Hearts Undefeated: women’s writing of the Second World War Virago 1994
Soft covers – very good
[9135] £10
54. 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
55. HOLDSWORTH, Angela Out of the Doll’s House: the story of women in the 20th century BBC 1988 (r/p)
Paper covers – very good
[4809] £5
56. 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
57. HONEY, Michael Keith Black Workers Remember: an oral history of segregation, unionism, and the freedom struggle University of California Press 1999
Mint in d/w – 482pp
[6020] £12
58. HORSFIELD, Margaret Biting the Dust: the joys of housework Fourth Estate 1997
Mint in d/w
[10183] £5
59. HOUSMAN, Laurence Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook: ten lectures on social subjects Swarthmore Press 1919
A collection of papers, originally given as lectures – including ‘What is Womanly?’ (1911) and ‘Art and Citizenship’ (1910). Very good in d/w
[1322] £10
60. 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
61. INNESS, Sherrie (ed) Running For Their Lives: girls, cultural identity and stories of survival Rowan & Littlefield 2000
Paper covers – mint
[5303] £5
62. JACKSON, James S. (ed) Life in Black America Sage 1991
Soft covers – mint
[5648] £6
63. JACOBSEN, Joyce The Economics of Gender Blackwell 1994
Paper covers – mint
[5121] £10
64. KANDALL, Stephen Substance and Shadow: women and additiction in the United States Harvard University Press 1996
Mint in d/w
[5309] £6
65. 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
66. 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
67. KENNY, Mary Woman X Two: how to cope with a double life Sidgwick and Jackson 1978
How to combine work and caring for a family. Very good in d/w
[1886] £4
68. 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
69. KESTNER, Joseph Protest & Reform: the British social narrative by women, 1827-1867 Methuen 1985
Very good in d/w
[2125] £8
70. 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
71. KING, Brenda Silk and Empire Manchester University Press
A study of the Anglo-Indian silk trade, challenging the notion that Britain always exploited its empire. Mint in d/w (pub price £55)
[9845] £25
72. KLEIN, Renate (ed) Infertility; women speaking out about their experiences of reproductive medicine Pandora
Soft covers – very good
[6593] £0
73. LARSEN, Timothy A People of One Book: the Bible and the Victorians OUP 2011
Case studies of representative figures, from Elizabeth Fry to Florence Nightingale, from C.H. Spurgeon to Grace Aguilar to demonstrate the scripture-saturated culture of 19th-century England. Mint in d/w (pub price £76)
[13407] £25
74. LAZARSFELD, Sofie Woman’s Experience of the Male Encyclopaedia Press Ltd, 8th imp 1961
Subtitled ‘ A frank statement of woman’s sexual experience in all its aspects’. With a foreword by Norman Haire. Very good in d/w
[3996] £3
75. 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
76. 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
77. LUTZ, Helma, PHOENIX, Ann And YUVAL-DAVIS, Nira (eds) Crossfires: nationalism, racism and gender in Europe Pluto Press 1995
Soft covers – mint
[10090] £8
78. (LUXEMBOURG) Richard Abraham Rosa Luxembourg: a life for the International Berg 1989
Mint in d/w
[1399] £10
79. 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
80. MACKIE, Vera Creating Socialist Women in Japan: gender, labour and activism, 1900-1937 CUP 1997
Mint in d/w
[5222] £18
81. MCKILLOP, A.B. The Spinster and the Prophet: a tale of H.G. Wells, plagiarism and the history of the world Aurum Press 2000
In 1925 a Canadian, Florence Deeks, launched a lawsuit against H.G. Wells, claiming that he had plagiarised her manuscript in the writing of ‘i The Outline of History’. Mint.in d/w
[9420] £10
82. MCLACHLAN, H. The Widows’ Fund Association (established 1764): a historical sketch privately printed 1937
Founded as ‘The Society for the Relief of the Necessitous Widows and Fatherless Children of Protestant Dissenting Ministers’ by, among others, Joseph Priestley.
[10583] £7
83. MALMGREEN, Gail Neither Bread nor Roses: utopian feminists and the English working class, 1800-1850 John L. Noyce (Brighton). 1978 (r/p)
A ‘Studies in Labour’ pamphlet – 44pp. Soft covers – very good
[9147] £15
84. MALOS, Ellen (ed) The Politics of Housework Allison & Busby 1980
Fine in d/w
[1819] £4
85. MARKS, Lara Metropolitan Maternity maternity and infant welfare services in early 20th century London Rodopi 1996
Soft covers – fine
[11624] £22
86. MARTIN, Jane Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England Leicester University Press 1999
Mint (pub price £65)
[10781] £15
87. MARTIN, John And SINGH, Gurharpal Asian Leicester Sutton 2002
An illustrated history of Asians in Leicester. Soft covers – mint
[10413] £4
88. MASON, Michael The Making of Victorian Sexuality OUP 1994
Fine in d/w
[10599] £14
89. MASSIAH, Joycelin (ed) Women in Developing Economies: making visible the invisible Berg 1993
Paper covers – mint
[5131] £10
90. 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
91. MILES, Angela Integrative Feminisms: building global visions 1960s -1990s Routledge 1996
Soft covers – mint
[6223] £9
92. 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
93. MOI, Toril Sexual/Textual Politics Methuen 1995
Soft covers – very good
[10542] £7
94. MORRIS, A.J.A (ed) Edwardian Radicalism, 1900-1914: some aspects of British radicalism Routledge 1974
Articles on ‘The Radical Press’, ‘1906: Revival and Revivalism’ (by Stephen Koss), ‘H.G. Wells and the Fabian Society’ (by Margaret Cole); ‘Socialism and progressivism in the political thought of Ramsay MacDonald’, amongst others – but no mention of the women’s movement. Times change, I doubt that such an omission would pass muster now. Very good in d/w
[1489] £10
95. 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
96. NASH, David Secularism, Art and Freedom Leicester Unviersity Press 1992
A study of the Secular movement in Victorian England. Fine
[7447] £18
97. 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
98. 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
99. 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
100. ORBACH, Susie And EICHENBAUM, Luise Bittersweet: facing up to feelings of love, envy and competition in women’s friendships Century 1987
Fine in d/w
[5077] £10
101. PATTEN, Marguerite The Victory Cookbook Imperial War Museum 1995 (r/p)
‘Over 200 recipes which helped the nation celebrate on that special day and right up to the end of rationing in 1954’. Packed with illustrations. Soft covers – very good
[10328] £8
102. 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
103. PEEL, John And POTTS, Malcolm Textbook of Contraceptive Practice CUP 1969
Soft covers – very good
[9021] £6
104. PINES, Davida The Marriage Paradox: modernist novels and the cultural imperative to marry University Press of Florida 2006
Mint
[10188] £18
105. POTTS, Malcolm, DIGGORY, Peter And PEEL, John Abortion CUP 1977
Soft covers – very good – 575pp
[9007] £8
106. PURKISS, Diane The Witch in History: early modern and 20th century representations Routledge 1996
Soft covers – mint
[9395] £12
107. RAO, S.V. Ramani Et Al Women at Work in India: an annotated bibliography vol 2 Sage Publications 1994
Fine in dustwrapper
[8702] £6
108. RENDALL, Jane The Origins of Modern Feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860 Macmillan 1985
Soft covers – very good
[9461] £15
109. 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
110. ROBERTS, Alison Hathor Rising: the serpent power in ancient Egypt Northgate 1995
Soft covers – fine
[11866] £8
111. ROBINSON, Annabel, PURKIS, John, MASSING, Ann A Florentine Procession: a painting by Jane Benham Hay at Homerton College, Cambridge Homestead Press (Cambridge) 1997
A study of the Pre-raphaelite style painting and its artist – who was a friend of Bessie Rayner Parkes. With colour reproduction of the large painting. Paper covers – mint
[2465] £8
112. ROBINSON, Jane Angels of Albion: women of the Indian mutiny Viking 1996
Very good in rubbed d/w
[4240] £8
113. RUBEL, David The Coming Free: the struggle for African-American Equality Dorling Kindersley 2005
Illustrated chronicle of one of America’s most important eras, from 1954 to 1966. Large format – mint in mint dustwrapper
[9264] £15
114. RUSHING, Janice Rushing Erotic Mentoring: women’s transformations in the University Left Coast Press 2006
Study of young women in university mentored by older scholars – who attempt to mould them into their own masculine ideals. Soft covers – mint
[9876] £10
115. SCHOESER, Mary Watts Book of Embroidery English church embroidery 1833-1953 Watts & Co 1998
Heavily illustrated. Soft covers
[9859] £12
116. SCOTT. Hilda Women and Socialism: experiences from Eastern Europe Alison and Busby 1976
Very good in dustwrapper
[8701] £6
117. SEAGER, Joni Earth Follies: feminism, politics and the environment Earthscan 1993
Soft covers – fine
[8708] £8
118. 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
119. SEIDLER, Victor The Achilles Heel Reader: men, sexual politics and socialism Routledge 1991
Paper covers – mint
[5302] £5
120. SENIOR, Olive Working Miracles: women’s lives in the English-speaking Caribbean James Currey 1991
Soft covers – mint
[6225] £9
121. 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
122. SHIVA, Vandana (ed) Close To Home: women reconnect ecology, health and development Earthscan 1994
Essays showing how women worldwide are taking action at grass-roots level in the struggle for truly sustainable community development. Soft covers – very good
[6607] £8
123. SMITH, Joan Misogynies Faber 1990
Reprint, paper covers – mint
[15064] £4
124. SPENDER, Dale Invisible Women: the schooling scandal Women’s Press 1989
Pioneering research on sexism in education. Paper covers – mint
[1667] £2
125. SPENDER, Dale And SARAH, Elizabeth Learning to Lose: sexism and education Women’s Press 1980
Paper covers – fine
[1668] £3
126. 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] £25
127. STARK, Freya East is West Century 1986
Her war-time experiences in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. First published in 1945. Soft covers – very good
[10557] £5
128. STEVENSON, Violet Gifts From Your Garden J.M. Dent 1974
Fine in d/w
[2760] £3
129. 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
130. STOPES, Marie Birth Control Today Hogarth Press, 12th ed 1957
Very good in d/w
[9003] £5
131. STOPES, Marie Carmichael Contraception (Birth Control: its theory, history and practice) Putnam, 8th ed 1952
‘A manual for the medical and legal professions’. Very good in d/w
[9002] £12
132. STOPES, Marie Carmichael Roman Catholic Methods of Birth Control Peter Davies 1949 (r/p)
Very good in d/w
[8996] £12
133. 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
134. TODD, Janet Gender, Art and Death Continuum (NY) 1993
Mint in d/w
[3972] £14
135. TRIMMER, Mrs Abridgment of Scripture History consisting of Lessons selected from the Old Testament for the use of Schools and Families Rivington, stereotyped ed 1811
One of the most popular scripture textbooks of the 19th century. Fair – good internally in original boards but missing spine strip
[3042] £10
136. 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
137. 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
138. VINCE, Mrs Millicent Decoration and Care of the Home W. Collins 1923
Mrs Vince had been a pupil of the pioneer ‘House Decorator’, Agnes Garrett. Very good in rubbed d/w
[12870] £18
139. WANDOR, Michelene Post-War British Drama: looking back in gender Routledge, revised edition 2001
Soft covers – mint
[5897] £12
140. WETZEL, Janice Wood The World of Women: in pursuit of human rights Macmillan 1993
Paper covers – fine
[5242] £5
141. WILLMUTH, Mary And HOLCOMB, Lilian (eds) Women with Disabilities: found voices Harrington Park Press (US) 1993
Paper covers – mint
[5120] £5
142. 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
143. WOLFE, Susan J. And PENELOPE, Julia (eds) Sexual Practice/Textual Theory: lesbian cultural criticism Blackwell 1993
Paper covers – mint
[5276] £5
144. 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
145. WOODHOUSE, Annie Fantastic Women: sex, gender and transvestism Macmillan 1989
Mint in d/w
[5282] £5
146. YARBORO-BEJARANO, Yvonne The Wounded Heart: writings on Cherrie Moraga University of Texas Press 2001
Study of the work of the Chicana lesbian writer. Soft covers – mint
[7057] £8
147. ZMROCZEK, Christine And MAHONY, Pat (eds) Women and Social Class – International Feminist Perspectives UCL Press 1999
Contributors include Valerie Walkerdine, Gaby Weiner and Ronit Lentin. Hardback -mint
[10095] £4
General Biography
148. (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
149. (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
150. 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
151. (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
152. (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
153. (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
154. (BEETON) Kathryn Hughes The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton Harper 2006
Excellent biography. Soft covers – fine
[10918] £6
155. 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
156. BHATTACHARYA, Rinki (ed) Janani: mothers, daughters, motherhood Sage 2006
Autobiographical writings of Indian women from all walks of life, sharing their experience of being mothers, daughters or both. Soft covers – mint
[10391] £8
157. (BIRD) Pat Barr A Curious Life for a Lady: the story of Isabella Bird Macmillan 1970
Biography of the 19th-century traveller. Very good internally in rubbed d/w
[4581] £5
158. (BRANDIS), Marianne Brandis Frontiers and Sanctuaries: a woman’s life in Holland and Canada McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006
The life of Madzy Brender a Brandis (1910-1984) – her experiences in war, as an immigrant and pioneer, wife and mother, writer and painter, and an invalid. Mint in slightly nicked d/w
[9966] £10
159. (BRETTEL) Caroline Brettell Writing Against the Wind: a mother’s life history SR Books 1999
Biography of the author’s mother, a Canadian journalist, who worked from the 1930s to the 1980s. Interesting. Mint
[10009] £8
160. (BURNEY) Janice Farrar Thaddeus Frances Burney: a literary life St Martin’s Press 2000
Soft covers – very good
[10546] £8
161. (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
162. (CAMERON) Victoria Olsen From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian photography Aurum Press 2003
Fine in d/w
[9345] £15
163. (CASSON) Elizabeth Sprigge Sybil Thorndike Casson Gollancz 1971
Biography of the actress. Good internally – ex-school library
[4444] £2
164. CHAPMAN, Barbara Boxing Day Baby QueenSpark Market Books 1994
She was born in Brighton on Boxing Day in 1927. Soft covers – 34pp – very good
[10402] £4
165. 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
166. (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
167. 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
168. (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
169. (DISRAELI) Janet Hindersley Mr Disraeli’s ‘Rattle’ JHA Publications 2004
Biography of Mrs Disraeli. Soft covers – mint
[8524] £5
170. (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
171. (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
172. (EUGENIE) Joyce Cartlidge Empress Eugénie: her secret revealed Magnum Opus Press 2008
The mystery of an illegitimate child…Soft covers – fine
[13468] £5
173. EWAN, Elizabeth, PIPES, Rosie etc (eds ) The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women Edinburgh University Press 2018
Soft covers – 496pp – mint
[15072] £16
174. (GAUTIER) Joanna Richardson Judith Gautier: a biography Quartet 1986
Biography of French woman of letters – and muse. Soft covers – fine
[12432] £6
175. (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
176. (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
177. (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
178. (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
179. 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
180. HEJMADI, Padma Room To Fly: a transcultural memoir University of California Press 1999
Part autobiography, part travelogue, moving from Bombay to the Bahamas, from Japan to New England, the Greek Isles to New Mexico, tracing the elusive contours of cultural perceptions East and West. Mint in d/w
[10010] £10
181. (HOWARD) Elizabeth Jane Howard Slipstream: a memoir Macmillan 2002
Fine in d/w
[10523] £8
182. (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
183. (HUNT) Swanee Hunt Half-Life of a Zealot Duke University Press 2006
Her life ‘reads like a novel. Born into a powerful, conservative, and patriarchal American family, a young girl grows up to use her part of that power to support the powerless and to encourage peace and women’s leadership around the world.’ Mint in d/w. Heavy
[9962] £8
184. (JAMESON) Clara Thomas Love and Work Enough: the life of Anna Jameson Macdonald 1967
Good
[12070] £10
185. (JAMESON) G.H. Needler (ed) Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe OUP 1939
Very good internally – cover marked
[12451] £20
186. (JEBB) Alice Salomon Eglantyne Jebb Union Internationale de Secours Aux Enfants 1936
Short study in French. Paper covers – 53pp – very good
[13170] £5
187. (KATERI) Margaret Thornton Kateri: the maid of the Mohawks Alexander Ouseley no date (1934)
Hagiography of A 17th-century Indian Catholic ‘holy girl’. Good
[10849] £3
188. (KNIGHT) Roger Fulford (ed) The Autobiography of Miss Knight: lady companion to Princess Charlotte William Kimber 1960
Born in 1757, Ellis Cornelia Knight was appointed to the household of Queen Charlotte in 1805. Very good in torn dustwrapper
[8543] £12
189. (LEIGH) Michael and Melissa Bakewell Augusta Leigh: Byron’s half-sister – a biography Chatto & Windus 2000
Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w
[12012] £8
190. 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
191. (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
192. (MARY) Hugo Vickers (ed) The Quest for Queen Mary Hodder 2018
The story behind James Pope-Hennessy’s official biography of Queen Mary, consort of Goerge V. ‘The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his [Pope-Hennesy’s] notes were to be kept private for 50 years.’ A very good read
[15090] £4
193. MAVINGA, Isha McKenzie And PERKINS, Thelma In Search of Mr McKenzie: two sisters’ quest for an unknown father Women’s Press 1991
An intriguing search to find their black father – their mother was white and Jewish. Soft covers – good
[10418] £5
194. (MAYNARD) Catherine B. Firth Constance Louisa Maynard: mistress of Westfield College Allen & Unwin 1949
Very good – scarce
[11033] £15
195. (MONROE) Fred Lawrence Guiles Norma Jean: the tragedy of Marilyn Monroe Mayflower 1971
Paper covers – good
[2816] £2
196. (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
197. (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
198. NEWNHAM COLLEGE REGISTER 1871-1950 privately printed
packed with biographical information on students and staff. Soft covers – 2 vols – good – although backing on vol 1 is coming unstuck and outermost cover of vol II is missing- internally very good – scarce
[11776] SOLD
199. (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
200. (NORTON) Jane Gray Perkins The Life of Mrs Norton John Murray 1910
Very good
[3537] £8
201. (OAKLEY) Ann Oakley Taking it Like a Woman Cape 1984
Fine in d/w
[5442] £3
202. PARRY, Melanie (ed) Chambers Biographical Dictionary of Women Chambers 1996
Soft covers – fine – 741pp – heavy
[12421] £10
203. (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
204. (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
205. (PLATH/HUGHES) Diane Middlebrook Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: a marriage Little,Brown 2004
Fine in fine d/w
[12020] £8
206. (PORTER) Pamily Petro The Slow Breath of Stone: a Romanesque love story Fourth Estate 2005
Extremely interesting biography of Kingsley and Lucy Porter who in the 1920s documented the Romanesque abbeys of south-west France. Using these photographs and Lucy’s journal the author retraces their steps and their lives. Fine in d/w
[10461] £8
207. (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
208. (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
209. (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
210. (SHAN) Sharan-Jeet Shan In My Own Name: an autobiography Women’s Press 1985
Life of an Indian woman living a complicated life in India and in Britain. Soft covers – mint
[6761] £4
211. SICHERMAN, Barbara et al (eds) Notable American Women: The Modern Period Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1980
Soft covers – 773pp – heavy – very good
[12418] £12
212. (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
213. (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
214. (SOYER) Ruth Cowen Relish: the extraordinary life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian celebrity chef Weidenfeld 2006
Chef and kitchen designer to the Reform Club and reformer of army catering. Mint in d/w
[9824] £8
215. (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
216. (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
217. (ST TERESA OF AVILA) St Teresa of Avila by Herself Penguin Classics 1957 (r/p)
Soft covers – fine
[11950] £6
218. (STEAD) Chris Williams Christina Stead: a life of letters Virago 1989
Soft covers – fine
[11891] £8
219. (STOWE) Joan Hedrick Harriet Beecher Stowe OUP 1994
Soft covers – fine
[11991] £9
220. (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
221. (TAYLOR) Nicola Beauman The Other Elizabeth Taylor Persephone 2009
Biography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint
[15089] £8
222. (TENNYSON) James O. Hoge Lady Tennyson’s Journal University Press of Virginia 1981
Fine in d/w
[9675] £18
223. (TREMAIN) Rosie: scenes from a vanished life Vintage 2018
Autobiography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint
[15093] £4
224. (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
225. (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
226. (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
227. (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
228. (VICTORIA) Dorothy Marshall The Life and Times of Victoria Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1992 (r/p)
Lavishly illustrated. Mint in d/w
[6510] £10
229. WALLER, Maureen Sovereign Ladies: the six reigning queens of England John Murray 2007
Soft covers – mint
[11023] £6
230. (WARWICK) Charlotte Fell-Smith Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick (1625-1678), her family and friends Longmans, Green 1901
Very good
[1754] £15
231. (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
232. (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
233. (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
234. (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
235. 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
236. ANGLO-WELSH REVIEW, Vol 9: No 24 Dock Leaves Press no date [1958?]
Soft covers – good
[7306] £2
237. ASSOCIATION OF ASSISTANT MISTRESSES Education Policy (with special reference to Secondary Education) AAM no date (1920s?)
4-pp leaflet. Good – ex-Board of Education library
[13042] £2
238. ASSOCIATION OF TECHNICAL INSTITUTIONS Collection of Proceedings at the Annual General Meetings
Proceedings of the meetings held in 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902. Each c 34pp, in original paper covers (some covers present but detached). As a collection
[13223] £20
239. 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
240. BATESON, F.W. (ed) Essays in Criticism, July 1951, October 1960 and July 1962 Basil Blackwell
My, it was a male-centric world back then. The July 1951 issue contains an article on Alexander Pope by W.H. Auden.An interesting anthropological study might be made of the state of Eng. Lit in the 1950s/early 1960s by way of these 3 well-preserved issues – together
[8742] £3
241. 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
242. BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
Memorandum of the Articles of Association, and by-laws of the British Medical Association, together with a few other items sent with a letter, dated 17 July 1922, welcoming Dr Gladys Stableforth, Moorfields, Fenham, Northumberland as a member of the BMA.
[8762] £3
243. 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
244. CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY D.R. Sharpe Centralised Registration of Assistance COS 1911
Paper read on 31 May 1911 at the Annual National Conference of Charity Organisation Societies. Paper covers – 14pp pamphlet – good – unusual
[9236] £18
245. CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY Miss Pike Friendly Visiting and Personal Service COS 1911
Paper read on 1 June 1911 at the Annual National Conference of Charity Organisation Societies. Paper covers – 11pp – good – a little foxing – unusual
[9238] £20
246. 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
247. COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY INTO INDUSTRIAL UNREST: Report of the Commission for Wales HMSO 1917
50pp – good reading copy – bound into later card covers – ex-Board of Education Library
[13215] £12
248. CORNHILL MAGAZINE, May 1912 Smith, Elder 1912
Includes an article by Ella Sykes, ‘At a women’s hostel in Canada’. Ella Sykes was a member of the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women and visited Canada, in the guise of a ‘home help’, on the League’s behalf to spy out the land. Soft covers – very good
[7968] £8
249. 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
250. 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
251. 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
252. 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
253. 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
254. 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
255. HUTCHINS, B.L. Woman’s Industrial Career Sheratt & Hughes Oct 1909
Reprinted from The Sociological Review. Paper covers – good
[3631] £9
256. LEHMANN, John (ed) The London Magazine Oct 1955
Contributions from, among others, Peter Quennell, Leonard Woolf, John Wain and Charles Causley. Soft covers – good
[7303] £3
257. MATHIEU, Nicole-Claude Ignored by Some, Denied by Others: the social sex category in sociology Women’s Research and Resources Centre Publications 1977
Paper covers – very good
[2870] £4
258. 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
259. 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
260. REGULATIONS FOR THE CATHOLIC GIRLS’ SCHOOL AT UGBROOK Printed by J.E. Searle (Chudleigh) 1841
‘Approved by the Rt Revd the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of England, for the Catholic Girls School at Ugbrook, in the County of Devon, under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Joseph’.’The Catholic girls’ school at Ugbrook is intended by Lord Clifford to be henceforth solely for the education of the female children of those who are or have been tenants, servants, or labourers on his estate, or tradesmen in the employ of his family at Ugbrook…’ Together with ‘Catholic Confirmation at Ugbrook’, reprinted from ‘The Western Times’, 8 January 1842. ‘Thinking that a report of the proceedings [the Confirmation] would be interesting to our readers, on account of the peculiar form of the ceremony itself…and more especially on account of the inroad made into the Protestant flock of the deserted vicarage of Chudleigh..’ Two items – card covers which seem to be original- very good – together
[2052] £55
261. REVIEW OF REVIEWS
edited by W.T. Stead. the first volume, January-June 1890. As Stead spotted, here was a gap in the market, enabling the interested observer to keep a finger on the pulse of the world. With v useful indexes to articles in current periodicals. Very good
[3887] £25
262. ROBERT BROWNING HALL SERIES OF SOCIAL TRACTS: nO 2 The Labour Movement in Religion
Talk by the Warden, Herbert Stead on 6 Jan 1895. Paper covers – 8pp – fair – ex-Board of Education Library
[13227] £3
263. ROBERT BROWNING HALL SOCIAL TRACTS: NO 1 The State and the Unemployed by Sir John Gorst MP
A speech delivered by Gorst on 9 May 1895 in Robert Browning Hall, Walworth. 8-pp leaflet – fair – ex-Board of Education Library
[13226] £4
264. 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
265. 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
266. TEACHERS’ GUILD Helps to Self-Help for Teachers by Assurance and Investment through the Teachers’ Guild 1901
Paper covers – 28pp – good – ex-Board of Education Library
[13221] £3
267. TEACHERS’ GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND Collection of Annual Reports
Reports for 1896-1897; 1897; 1899; 1900; 1901-1902; 1904-1905; 1905-1906; 1906; 1907-1908; 1908; 1909-10; 1910; 1911-12. The Guild represented both male and female teachers. With much detail of local branches. Each Report c 90pp, in original paper covers (the occasional cover present, but detached) – all in good condition. Together – 13 items
[13217] £20
268. TEACHERS’ GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND List of Members Alphabetically Arranged 1913
Names and addresses – very useful. Women teachers appear to be in the majority. Soft covers – good – ex-Board of Education Library
[13218] SOLD
269. THE EDUCATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE TEACHERS’ GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND A Catalogue of the Historical Section 1896
A list of the costumes, tables, charts, photographs, maps and lantern slides that were available for hire by teachers. Interesting. Paper covers – 20pp – fair – ex-Board of Education Library
[13219] £8
270. THE LAUNDRY INDUSTRY EDUCATION BOARD Education, Training and Scholarships in the Laundry Industry Laundry Industry Education Board 1953 (revised)
A vanished world of work. Paper covers – 16pp – good – ex-Board of Education Library
[13214] £5
271. THE TEACHERS’ GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND Scheme of Proposed Teachers’ Guild Friendly Society (Sickness and Accident Fund) 1897
Insurance for teachers. The contributions for women teachers is set higher arising ‘from the fact that amonst women the frequency, if not the duration of sickness, is very much greater than amongst men of coresponding ages, and to provide for both on the same terms would be inequitable and unsafe.’ Soft covers – 12pp – good – ex-Board of Education Library
[13220] £8
272. A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE Abortion Law Reform Association Why we must fight the Abortion (Amendment) Bill and how to go about it
20-pp pamphlet giving ‘Some Information about the Abortion (Amendment) Bill’ – and including a ‘List of Members of Parliament who voted AGAINST the Bill’s Second Reading, 7 Feb 1975)
[13197] £8
273. 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
274. WOMEN & LITERATURE, VOL 3, NO 2 Fall 1975
This issue contains the 1974 Bibliography of Women in British and American Literature, 1660-1900 – and articles on ‘The “Female Virtuoso” in early 18th-c English drama’, on Willa Cather, and on Wollstonecraft, Godwin and Rousseau. Soft covers – very good
[7868] £6
275. 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] £35
General Postcards
276. 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. Millicent Fawcett wrote an excellent article, published in Atalanta, describing how her husband, Henry Fawcett, opened up this examination to young women.Very good – unposted
[9233] £12
277. MYSTERY ‘WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION’ POSTCARD
I bought this card in 2004, but it was only as a result of Lockdown research that I was available to work out why a large group of women were arrayed in front of a camera in Hull. For details see the piece about it on my website – https://wp.me/p2AEiO-1Br
[8145] £20
General Fiction
278. AITKEN, David Sleeping with Jane Austen No Exit Press 2000
Facetious crime novel. Soft covers – very good
[12417] £4
279. ANON ( W.R.H. Trowbridge) The Grandmother’s Advice to Elizabeth T. Fisher Unwin 1902
‘Suggested by the ‘Visits of Elizabeth’ by Elinor Glyn.’ Paper covers – good
[3078] £6
280. BARKER, Pat Double Vision Penguin 2005
A novel centring on a war reporter returning from Afghanistan. Soft covers – fine
[10468] £3
281. BULKIN, Elly (ed) Lesbian Fiction: an anthology Persephone Press (Massachusetts) 1981
Soft covers – very good
[15079] £8
282. 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
283. DONNELLY, Jennifer A Gathering Light bloomsbury 2004
Set in the Adirondack mountains at the beginning of the 20th century. Soft covers – fine
[10478] £3
284. DUNSFORD, Cathie Ao Toa: Earth Warriors Spinifex 2004
A New Zealand eco-thriller. Soft covers – mint
[10137] £5
285. EL SAADAWI, Nawal The Circling Song Zed Books 1989
A novel. Soft covers – fine
[9897] £5
286. FLETCHER, Beryl The Blood Wood Gain Spinifex 1999
An Australian novel. Soft covers – fine
[10053] £4
287. FLETCHER, Beryl The House at Karamu Spinifex 2003
A New Zealand novel. Soft covers – mint
[10136] £5
288. FOUR ONE-ACT PLAYS Basil Blackwell 1923
The plays are: ‘Double Demon’ by A.P. Herbert; ‘St Simeon Stylites’ by F. Sladen Smith, ‘Thirty Minutes in a Street’ by Beatrice Mayor, and ‘Pan in Pimlico’ by Helen Simpson. The plays were selected for publication by the Reading Committee of the British Drama League. Good
[15145] £3
289. GAWSWORTH, John (ed) The Poetry Review, March-April 1951
Contributors include A.E. Coppard and Viola Meynell. Soft covers – good
[7266] £2
290. GREGORY, Philippa A Respectable Trade HarperCollins 1995
A novel set in Bristol in 1787 – a Bristol booming on the back of the slave trade. Proof copy – fine
[10466] £3
291. HITE, Shere The Divine Comedy of Ariadne and Jupiter Peter Owen 1994
Mint in d/w
[5462] £3
292. LEIGHTON, Rachel Clothes Mangled Here, or, A Serious Laughter Matter Abel Heywood & Sons no date [1910?]
A play for 4 women amateur actors. An Irish washerwoman is involved. Paper covers – with extensive listing of other plays for amateurs from this Manchester publisher
[15144] £2
293. LEVERSON, Ada Love’s Shadow Chapman & Hall 1950
Reprint of the 1908 edition. Good
[3086] £4
294. LINGARD, Joan Encarnita’s Journey Allison & Busby 2005
A novel interweaving the life of the writer Gerard Brenan – who arrives in Yegen, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in 1920 – with that of Encarnita, a young Spanish woman. Other Bloomsberries, Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, the Woolfs and Lytton Strachey, pass in and out. Soft covers – fine
[10465] £4
295. MACDONALD, M.P. Trefoil: the story of a girl’s society Thomas Nelson no date (c 1908?)
An Australian (Melbourne) girls’ story. Good
[2489] £5
296. MARTIN, Valerie The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2006
Soft covers – fine
[10469] £4
297. NOEL, Lady Augusta From Generation to Generation Elkin Mathews 1929
First published in 1879. Very good
[2838] £5
298. ROBERTS, Denis Kilham (ed) Penguin Parade no. 1 Penguin Aug 1938 (reprint)
The lead short story, ‘Witches’ Sabbath’, is by I.A.R. Wylie, sometime lover of suffragette Rachel Barrett. The book also contains a woodcut by Gwen Raverat. Soft covers – very good
[7263] £3
299. SEWELL, Mrs Poems and Ballads Jarrold no date (1880s?)
With a memoir of the author by Miss E.B. Bayly. Good internally – covers marked – in 2 vols
[1636] £8
300. SHEPHERD-ROBINSON, Laura Blood and Sugar Pan 2019
Crime thriller set in late-18thc Deptford – involving the grim slavery trade. Atmospheric. Soft covers – mint
[15088] £3
301. SHERWOOD, Mrs The Happy Family Houlston & Sons, new edition no date
A little tract – paper covers. Fine
[3607] £5
302. SIGOURNEY, Mrs (ed. F.W.N. Bailey) The Poetical Works of Mrs L.H. Sigourney G. Routledge 1857
Neatly rebound in cloth
[2428] £10
303. SMEDLEY, Agnes Daughters of Earth Virago 1984
Soft covers – fine
[8731] £3
304. SOUEIF, Ahdaf In the Eye of the Sun Bloomsbury 1992
‘The Great English Novel about Egypt’/’The Great Egyptian Novel About England’. Very good in d/w. 791pp – heavy
[9927] £8
305. SPENDER, Dale The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys Grafton 1991
Elizabeth gives her account of life with Samuel. Soft covers – very good
[11232] £8
306. 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
307. THE ENGLISH REVIEW
Issue for April 1913 – containing, among other items, a short story by E.H. Young (published quite early in her writing career) and an essay, ‘Seeing Life’, by Arnold Bennett. Paper covers – good internally but back paper cover present but detached.
[2882] £5
308. THE LONDON MERCURY April 1936
Includes contributions from Laurence Housman, James Bridie, Robert Donat, John Gielguid, and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies – an article on D.H. Lawrence by Freda Gurling and wood engravings by Gwendolen White and Pamela D’A. Nathan. Paper covers – good
[15142] £3
309. WELSH, Kate The Wages of Sin Tinder Press 2017
Murder mystery in 19thc Edinburgh with Sarah Gilchrist, who is training to be a doctor, as the heroine. Soft covers – mint
[15083] £3
310. WOOD, Mrs Henry Mrs Halliburton’s Troubles Richard Bentley 1893
Good reading copy
[2863] £4
311. YONGE, Charlotte M. A Book of Golden Deeds T. Nelson, no date, reprint
Good reading copy
[9698] £5
312. YONGE, Charlotte M. The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest Macmillan 1908 (r/p)
Very good
[9700] £6
Women and the First World War
313. 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
314. MUNITION WORKERS
– mainly women -pose for the photographer. They are wearing their caps and the triangular-shaped munition workers badge can be seen pinned to many of the overall dresses. Young men sit at the front – displaying the fruits of their labours – shells.There were a number of munitions factories in Bradford, including the Low Moor munitions factory that suffered a large explosion in 1916. There’s no clue as to the name of the factory in the photograph. The card bears the imprint of the Belle Vue Studios, Bradford – which was one of the best-known in the city and was in business until 1985. Good condition – appears to have been cut down by about 1 cm at some time
[14442] SOLD
315. YOUR KING & COUNTRY WANT YOU a woman’s recruiting song Chappell & Co 1914
Sheet music – words & music by Paul A. Rubens. The cover is illustrated by John Hassall. ‘The entire profits from the sale of this song will be devoted to Queen Mary’s “Work for Women” Fund’. ‘Oh! we don’t want to lose you but we think you ought to go. For your King and your Country both need you so; We shall want you and miss you but with all our might and main. We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you when you come back again’. Makes the spine creep. 6-pp – very good
[14390] SOLD
316. GROUP PHOTOGRAPH OF WOMEN
– members of the Welfare Department of the Gretna Munitions Factory c 1917. Joan Wickham is seated on the ground, in the centre, next to ‘Ping’, a pekingese?. I can supply the names of the other women. Once owned by Joan Wickham, the photograph is in reasonable condition – with a crease across one side
[15161] SOLD
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.
****
In case you are interested in books I have written (that are still in print) they are ~
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
**
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
***
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 £74.99 – Ebook £70
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 £30, Ebook £26
Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle
Elizabeth Crawford
‘Crawford’s scholarship is admirable and Enterprising Women offers increasingly compelling reading’ Journal of William Morris Studies
For further details see here Francis Boutle, 2002 338pp 75 illus paperback £25
Copies of all of these books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.
Books And Ephemera By And About Women For Sale: Catalogue 206 – Part One – Suffrage
Posted by womanandhersphere in Books And Ephemera For Sale on March 14, 2022
Woman and her Sphere
Catalogue 206
Part One: Suffrage
Women’s Freedom League sash see #56
Elizabeth Crawford
5 Owen’s Row
London EC1V 4NP
elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
Index to Catalogue
Suffrage Non-fiction: Items 1-5
Suffrage Biography: Items 6-10
Suffrage Fiction: Items 11-12
Suffrage Ephemera: Items 13-64
Suffrage Ephemera from the Isabel Seymour Collection Items 65-69
Suffrage Postcards: Real Photographic: Items 70-115
Suffrage Postcards: Suffrage Artist Card: Item 116
Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic: Items 117-119
Suffrage Non-fiction
1. KENT, Susan Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 Princeton University Press 1987
Fine in d/w (which has one slight nick)
[1361] £20
2. PROBERT, Laura Women of Kent Rally to the Cause: a study of women’s suffrage in East Kent 1909-1918 Millicent Press 2008
Soft covers – fine
[15067] SOLD
3. 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
4. VAN HELMOND, Marij Votes for Women: events on Merseyside 1870-1928 National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside 1992
Soft covers – fine
[1745] £15
5. PANKHURST, Christabel Unshackled: the story of how we won the vote Hutchinson 1959
Edited by Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and published after Christabel Pankhurst’s death, this is her ‘take’ on the suffragette campaign. This copy once belonged to Joan Wickham, a some-time secretary to Emmeline Pankhurst and WSPU organizer. First edition, very good in torn d/w. This edition is now quite scarce.
[15165] £75
Suffrage Biography
6. (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
7. (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
8. (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
9. (TYSON) Anne Ward No Stone Unturned: the story of Leonora Tyson, a Streatham suffragette Local History Publications 2005
She was a very active member of the WSPU. Soft covers – 28pp. Scarce
[10921] £15
10. (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
11. 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
12. 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
13. [ARTISTS’ SUFFRAGE LEAGUE] CALENDAR FOR 1913
This bears one of my all-time favourite ‘suffrage’ designs – a blindfolded infant flying on the back of a mother goose over wintry roofs through the night-time sky and distributing ‘votes’ as he goes – and in my ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’ I identified the artist as [Susan] Beatrice Pearse, later well-known as the illustrator of the ‘Ameliaranne’ books. That image is mounted on card, which also bears a monthly tear-off calendar for 1913. The loop by which the calendar could be hung up is still present. The calendar was printed by the Women’s Printing Society Ltd. It is somewhat battered around the edges but is another amazing survivor. ASL material such as this is extremely scarce
[15185] SOLD
14. CAZALET, Thelma Mrs Pankhurst
An article about Mrs Pankhurst by Thelma Cazalet (MP for Islington East) in ‘The Listener’ (6 Nov 1935) in a series ironically titled ‘I Knew A Man’. See also item ??. A 4-pp article – including photographs. The late-lamented ‘The Listener’ was a substantial journal in those days – this issue is 55 pages – in goodish condition – the front page is present but detached.
[14454] £20
15. CLAYTON, Joseph Militant Methods in History The Woman’s Press no date [1911]
With an introduction by H.W. Nevinson. The British Library catalogue dates this WSPU pamphlet to 1913, but my research shows it was first published in March 1911, having first appeared as a series of articles in ‘Votes for Women’. Paper covers – 36pp – in very good condition. This copy bears on the cover the stamp of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
[15183] SOLD
16. CROYDON NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES – SPECIAL EFFORT WEEK
A flyer for the consciousness- and fund-raising activities mounted by the Croydon NUWSS between 9 and 12 Nov 1909. The flyer, printed in red on white paper, gives details of the society’s objects and methods and of the Committee organizing the events,. In very good condition – mounted on red card. Unusual. See also items 17, 73 and 74.
[15193] SOLD
17. CROYDON NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES – SPECIAL EFFORT WEEK
A flyer advertising Croydon NUWSS’ ‘Red-and-White Sale’, opened by Miss Alice Abadam in the Pembroke Hall, Croydon, on 10 November 1909. Printed in red on white paper. The leaflet is mounted on card alongside a photograph of a woman that I have identified as Miss Ethel Crickmay, hon sec of the Croydon NUWSS. In very good condition. See also items 16, 73 and 74.
[15194] SOLD
18. 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] £85
19. ELMY, Elizabeth Wostenholme Woman’s Franchise: the need of the hour ILP 2nd ed, no date [1907]
A campaigner for women’s suffrage since the mid-1860s, she had put aside a lifetime’s aversion to party politics and joined the Manchester ILP in 1904. This article was originally published in the ‘Westminster Review’. In her concise style she analyses the events of the previous 40 years and demands that Liberal MPs who profess to support women’s suffrage honour their pledges. Very good – withdrawn from the Women’s Library (duplicate)
[15002] £35
20. 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
21. MISS EMILY FAITHFULL
studio photograph by W & D Downey, 57 & 61 Ebury Street, London, together with a printed brief biography.
[14029] £40
22. 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]
23. MRS PANKHURST PORTRAIT BADGE
A well-known photograph of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst printed as a badge. She is shown wearing, at her throat, her ‘Holloway badge’. The reverse of the badge still contains the paper backing – printed with ‘Votes for Women Women’s Social and Political Union Clement’s Inn Strand WC’. 2cm in diameter.In very good condition – extremely scarce –
[15177] SOLD
#24
24. NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES BADGE
circular, enamel. The upper half is red and carries the words ‘National Union Of”, the middle horizontal section is white with ‘Women’s Suffrage’ and the bottom half is green with ‘Societies’. The maker’s name is W.O. Lewis of Howard St, Birmingham. In very good condition – ready to wear
[14879] £750
#25
25. NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETIES LARGE, HEAVY WOODEN SHIELD
Across the top of the shield a painted banner, in red on white, reads ‘NUWSS North-Eastern’ with the number ’25’ encircled in green on the right-hand side. Underneath is painted the well-known NUWSS ‘tree’ showing the branches of the NUWSS federations, each with a number attached, these relating to the number of societies that comprised each federation.The ’25’ indicates that at this time the North-Eastern Federation was composed of 25 societies. Eighteen federations are shown, suggesting to me that the shield dates from c 1913. ‘Founded 1867’ is painted at the base of the ‘tree’. The shield is 53.5cm (21″) at its widest and is 49cm (19.5″) high – a substantial object. I wonder if every federation had a similar shield?The NUWSS paper, ‘Common Cause’, 22 March 1918, reveals that when decorating the Queen’s Hall for the ‘Victory’ celebrations, there were 21 federation sheilds available, ‘with heraldic devices’ -soquite different from this one with the NUWSS ‘tree’ image. A shield certainly unique to the North-Eastern Federation – in good condition.
[14890] £2,500
26. 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
27. 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
28. 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
29. 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
30. 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
31. 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
32. 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
33. 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
34. 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
35. 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
36. 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
37. 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
38. 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
39. 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
#40
40. SUFFRAGETTE BANNER – ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN IN 1912’
AN AMAZING FIND – a banner bearing the legend ‘Votes for Women in 1912’ The banner was created for the 14 July 1912 demonstration organised by Sylvia Pankhurst in Hyde Park to mark Mrs Pankhurst’s birthday.Still attached to it is a luggage-type label bearing the information ‘Platform 2′ Votes for Women 1912’. This, however, doesn’t refer to a railway platform but to the Hyde Park Platform 2, chaired by Georgina Brackenbury at which the speakers were Mrs Cameron Swan, Mrs Massy and Miss Amy Hicks. The banner is 193 cm (76 inches) at its widest x 111 cm (44 inches) high, with a machine-stiched pocket running down the right-hand side into whiich a stiffening rod was presumably inserted. Small rings have been hand-sewn to the top and the bottom of this pocket. The left -hand side of the banner is shaped as a sideways ‘V’ – all the better to flutter in the wind. The material is a cream cotton and the lettering is painted on in green.
‘Votes for Women’, 19 July 1912, p 686 gives details of those who worked on the banners for the demonstration. The main work was carried out in the studio in the garden of 2 Phillimore Terrace, Kensington, the home of Mrs Ferguson, mother of Rachel. Particular mention is made of Norah Smyth, who ‘was responsible for 100 flags wiith painted mottoes’ and of Olive Hockin, who took over when Norah was absent. Could either of them have painted this banner?
With another similar, the banner was discovered some years ago by a vintage clothes dealer at the bottom of a bag of garments she had purchased from a house in Old Brompton Road, Chelsea..In nearly 100 years they hadn’t moved far. I wonder who had taken them home from Hyde Park?
The banner is in surprisingly good condition – in that it is intact, no moth holes, the painted lettering is still quite bright. The marks that it does show are consonant with having been carried in a great demonstration – a little muddied and marked..
[14921] £8,400
41. 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
42. 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
#43
43. 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 initials ‘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
#44
44. 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
45. SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN
Cup, saucer and small plate 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 with a green handle to the cup. 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. One each of cup, saucer and plate – a trio. The cup has a tiny chip to the inside and a couple of hairline cracks near the handle – none of which would show if displayed with the Angel of Freedom device facing out. The plate and saucer are in fine condition. Together-
[15147] £1,500
46. 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
47. ‘THE END OF THE HUNGER STRIKE. SHE COULDN’T RESIST THAT! PLASMON OATS’
Advertisement for Plasmon Oats, showing the hunger striker in her cell, a bowl of oats – and its packet – on bench beside her. The vapour is steaming towards her spelling out the message ‘(V)Oats for Women’. The young woman is dressed in a white blouse with purple and green trim and a purple skirt trimmed in green, so the message that she is a suffragette is not missed. A prison guard looks through a barred window into the cell to view the effect of this hot, nourishing dish (round the rim of the bowl is written ‘70% more nourishment than any other oats’. Plasmon was a proprietory dried milk that was added to various products including oats..hence, Plasmon Oats. The artist was Anita Reed, who was born in Finsbury Park in 1891 and in 1911 (around the time of this item) was still only 20. On the 1911 census she is described as an artist and was living at home in Twickenham with her parents and younger brother. There is not much information available about her..but by 1925, still an artist, she had emigrated to Canada, to where returned at the end of that year after a visit to the Twickenham home.
I think thisversion of the image dates from the 1960s, reproduced on a calendar, from which it has been removed and tben framed – the frame now very riickety. The poster is 30cm x 18cm and, with the wooden frame, the item measures 33cm x 22 cm. Another example of the adaptability of a suffragette trope. I note that the V & A holds an example of the image which is described as a ‘poster’, although their catalogue doesn’t give dimensions. In good condition – most unusual
[14909] SOLD
48. 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
49. THE MARLBOROUGH THEATRE, Holloway Road, London
Theatre programme for the Boxing Day 1910 performance of ‘The Musical, Mirthful, Spectacular Pantomime DICK WHITTINGTON’ – a most appropriate choice as Dick Whittington is very much a local hero in Holloway. In this production the cook to Alderman Fitzwarren is ‘Eliza, a Suffragette’, played by Dan Crawley (1872-1912), an Irish comedian who had considerable success as a pantomime dame. Clearly at this time the idea of a ‘suffragette’ was a good fit for a cross-dressing humourous character. Incidentally, the Marlborough Theatre was designed by the renowned Frank Matcham and had opened in 1903. The programme is packed with advertisements for local businesses, including one for the Dimoline Piano Co whose owners were members of the WSPU and regular advertisers in ‘Votes for Women’. In good condition, with decorative cover
[14439] SOLD
50. ‘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 affecting the good, clear image of Crucikshank’s cartoon.
[13690] £160
51. TIME AND TIDE MAGAZINE – ADVERTISING POSTER
Large, lovely, colourful, art-deco poster, dating from the 1930s, advertising ‘The review with independent views – Edited by Lady Rhondda. Some recent contributors: G.B. Shaw, Rebecca West, St. John Ervine, Sylvia Lynd, Wickham Steed, Edith Sitwell. Every Friday Price 6 d’. T’ime and Tide’, a political and literary review magazine, was founded in 1920 by Margaret Mackworth, Lady Rhondda (1883-1958), Welsh peeress, businesswoman and active suffragette. 76cm x101cm. In good condition – with folds and a few nicks. A rather amazing find – as copies of ‘Time and Tide’ itself are so scarce
[15195] SOLD
52. VOTES FOR WOMEN CALENDAR FOR 1911
A tiny, 18-page calendar issued by the Women’s Social and Political Union. It comprises 4 pages setting out postage rates and then has a page for each month of 1911. The back cover carries an advertisement for the WSPU paper, ‘Votes for Women’. The calendar is 4cm wide and 5cm high and the covers are printed in green on pinkish paper -with an embossed insignia for 1911 printed in purple. Yet another amazing survivor – I have never seen another.
[15181] SOLD
53. VOTES FOR WOMEN HOOKS AND EYES
is emblazoned across the front of this small box – now bereft of its ‘3 Doz spring hooks and eyes. Guaranteed rustproof’. The cardboard box is purple, and the front is printed in white and green. ‘Votes for Women’ is noted as a ‘Trademark’. There was a firm, ‘Smart’s’, that advertised its hooks and eyes regularily in the WSPU paper ‘Votes for Women’, but this box does not carry any such maker’s name, so I did wonder if little boxes such as this were perhaps packaged to be sold in WSPU shops and at bazaars. ‘Votes for Women’, 16 December 1910, while extolling the Christmas present wonders to be found in the Woman’s Press Shop mentions that among all the other goods are ‘boxes of pins…done up so as to bring the Suffrage colours before purchasers.’ This little box is an amazing survivor; linking the WSPU to a womanly home occupation – dressmaking. The box is 4cm long x 2.5cm wide x 1cm deep and is in very good condition.
[15178] SOLD
54. [WOMEN WRITERS’ SUFFRAGE LEAGUE] LETTER FROM BESSIE HATTON
to ‘Miss Winifred Graham’ inviting her to join the ‘Literary Suffragist League now being formed’. The letter was written from Bessie Hatton’s home,15 Sandringham Court, Maida Vale, London, on ’28 April’. The year was probably 1908, at the formation of what was to be the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, of which Bessie Hatton was the secretary. The letter was presumably one of many in a similar vein written by Hatton to literary women, Winifred Graham (1873-1950) was a popular novelist; I can find no evidence that she did join the WWSL or, indeed, that she supported the suffrage campaign. Along the margin of the letter are a few words (not in Hatton’s extravagant hand) that may be a theme for Graham’s response. They are difficult to decipher but appear to say ‘singular fragility & energy….’ 4pp – in very good condition
[15184] SOLD
55. WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE BIRTHDAY BOOK
This was a fund-raising venture undertaken by the Scottish Council of the Women’s Freedom League. In a Preface, Eunice Murray, who was president of the Glasgow branch of the WFL wrote that ‘Besides members of the League many well known supporters of the movement have sent a quotation to it as a practical sign of their sympathy with the Woman’s Cause.’, And indeed every day of the year has set against it a quotation supplied by a sympathiser – some well known, such as Ann Cobden Sanderson, Mrs Borrmann Wells, Alexia Jack, Edith How-Martyn and Charlotte Despard, and many others whose involvement is now forgotten. The Scottish Council of the WFL was formed in early 1910, based at 302 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, the address printed in the Birthday Book, which was, I think, issued in the autumn of 1910 – at least, the WFL was then advertising in ‘The Vote’ the sale of ‘Birthday Books’ (priced at 1 shilling), Only one name was allotted to a birthday date by the original owner – that of ‘N.L. Hutchison’ against 24 February. But the many names (although some are noted only by their initials) of those who submitted quotations would afford excellent scope for research – particularly into Scottish supporters of the WFL.
The book – the cover of which is rendered in the WFL colours of green, white and gold – is in very good condition. Very scarce – I have never seen another
[15179] SOLD
56. WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE SASH
An original Women’s Freedom League sash – made of heavy grosgrain-type material. The words ‘Women’s Freedom League’ are shown in black block capitals across the white. The ends of the sash are tapered into a point and sewn down. I think the sash could, with adaption, have been worn either acoss the shoulder or as a belt. It measures 104 cm in length and is 5cm in width. The sash is in amazingly fine condition – the colours bright. For a pic see first page of this catalogue.
[15180] SOLD
57. WSPU A WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION TO WELCOME MRS PANKHURST ON HER RETURN FROM AMERICA.
Held at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday Dec 9, 1909 at 8 o’clock. Speakers were Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst. 4-page leaflet printed in purple on white paper, with Sylvia Pankhurst’s device of the women emerging from the prison gates printed in purple, white and green. On the second page is a list of the women to whom Mrs Pankhurst presented ‘the medal for vvalour’ – ie the hunger-strike medal, who ‘during her absence in the United States, have suffered Imprisonment, carried through the Huner Strike, and, as a consequence, have in many cases endured the terrible ordeal of Feeding by Force.’ There follows a list of c 40 names. Page 3 calls for helpers in the upcoming General Election and for money to run the campaign – highlighting the necessity of selling copies of ‘Votes for Women’ to raise funds. The 4th – back -page gives notice of Free Public Meetiings every Monday afternoon at the Queen’s Hall and on Tursday evenings at St James’s Hall, Great Portland Street. An important, lovely, and scarce leaflet – in fine, bright condition
[15141] SOLD
58. WSPU CORONATION PROCESSION – 17 JUNE 1911
Souvenir tissue printed by Mrs Sarah Burgess, 18 York Place, Strand, to commemorate the WSPU’s Coronation Procession. It reproduces images of many of the speakers and gives details of the contingents taking part – including the Historical Pageant of Women – and gives details of the route. The border is a blaze of brightly coloured patriotic flags linked by now rather faded floral devices. The tissue is in good condition and has already been framed. I don’t think I have ever previously had such a commemoration of the Coronation Procession for sale.
[15023] SOLD
59. WSPU PROGRAMME AND SOUVENIR
commemorative WSPU paper tissue souvenir for the demonstration in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908 – reproducing portraits of the speakers -including Mary Gawthorpe, Annie Kenney, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Emmeline Pankhurst, Adela Pankhurst, and Nellie Kenney. At the centre of the piece is a map of Hyde Park, showing the positions of the 20 platforms for the speakers. Interestingly this tissue souvenir differs from the one, printed by Mrs S Burgess, that we more usually see. The edges of this paper souvenir are deckled and the images of the speakers are reproductions of real photographs (rather than Mrs Burgess’ line-drawings). It was this design that was used on posters advertising the demonstration. See also item ??. It’s interesting that there were two different souvenir programmes issued.. A supremely ephemeral annd scarce piece- already framed, protecting its fragility
[15022] SOLD
#60
60. 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.
The neckpiece originally belonged to a Miss Louisa Chapman, who lived at 11 Bristol Gardens, Maida Vale, London, whom my research indicates was probably an early supporter of the WSPU. 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
61. ZANGWILL, Israel The Sword and the Spirit The Woman’s Press no date [1910]
The text of a speech given by Zangwill at the very successful WSPU meeting in the Royal Albert Hall on 10 November 1910. ‘Votes for Women’ reported that ‘Mr Zangwill’s speech, which was a great literary treat,..was punctuated with almost continuous applause and laughter.’ The pamphlet was on sale by 25 November 1910. In good condition – with a little foxing -20pp – paper covers
[15182] SOLD
62. MRS DESPARD
portrait photograph by Lena Connell, 50 Grove End Road, NW – mounted on stiff brown card – published by The Suffrage Shop, the card embossed with the shop’s monogram. This once belonged to Joan Wickham. Fine
[15159] £120
63. MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST
– a beautiful, head and shoulders, photograph taken in New York in 1913 at the Underwood and Underwood Studio and signed in ink ‘E. Pankhurst’. This was clearly treasured by its owner, Joan Wickham, who had arranged Mrs Pankhurst’s tour of the US. In fact, she probably organised the visit to the photographer’s studio. She had framed the photograph – but the passe partout around the edges of the frame is now, after 107 years, no longer fit for purpose and the photograph will benefit from the attention of a professional framer. Extremely scarce – with a provenance that could hardly be more interesting and relevant
[15162] £900
64. SYLVIA PANKHURST
an informal snapshot, probably taken by John Hodgson in the mid-1920s. Once owned by Joan Hodgson (nee Wickham). Very good
[15155] £80
Isabel Seymour’s Suffrage Collection
Marion Isabella Seymour [known as Isabel Seymour] (1882-1968) was born in Mayfair, London, the eldest child of Charles Read Seymour (1855-1935), a barrister, and Marion Frances Violet Seymour [née Luxford] (1855-1900). In 1891 the Seymour family lived at The Elms, Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. Isabel now had two younger brothers and a sister and the household was attended by a governess, six servants, and a coachman. Another sister was born in 1893. Charles Seymour was a Justice of the Peace and chairman of the parish council.
At the beginning of the 20th century the family moved to a new house, Inholmes Court, Hartley Wintney, designed for them in 1899 by an architect friend, Robert Weir Schulz. The move may have taken place just after the death of Isabel’s mother on 21 October 1900.
In 1902 Charles Seymour remarried. His new wife, Adelaide Bentinck, the daughter of a Hampshire neighbour, was 28 years old, only about eight years older than Isabel. There were to be two more children of this second marriage.
We know nothing of Isabel’s education other than she was fluent in German and that her spelling in English could be a little erratic. She was probably educated at home for a time by a series of governesses – of which one may perhaps have been German? Her slightly younger sister, Elinor, was a pupil at a girls’ boarding school at Southbourne, Hampshire, in 1901 and it may be that Isabel did attend that school, or a similar establishment, for the final years of her education.
There is no trace of Isabel in the 1901 census; it may be that she was abroad. It is likely that at this stage of her life Isabel was supported by her father but that, later, as his finances grew more precarious (he only left c £600 when he died in 1934), she did have to provide something towards her own living costs. Certainly, by the time Isabel Seymour became involved with the WSPU she was living In London, at an address, 36 Chenies Street Chambers [address sourced from a letter from her in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 29 November 1907] that was just the place for a young woman such as her. For these ‘Ladies’ Residential Chambers’, the brainchild of Millicent Fawcett’s sister, Agnes Garrett, were intended for ‘educated working women’, a place where they could have their own room(s) away from the indignities of the boarding house. [I write extensively about the ‘Ladies’ Residential Chambers’ in my Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle – and there is one rather idiosyncratic article about the establishment on my website – see https://wp.me/p2AEiO-g2.] So Isabel was among others similarly minded, who, although most probably pro-suffrage, were less likely to be sympathisers of the WSPU but, rather, to be in favour of the constitutional methods of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
Items in Isabel Seymour’s collection suggest that she had joined the WSPU no later than mid-1906, probably earlier. Isabel Seymour was interviewed by Antonia Raeburn for The Militant Suffragettes, a book she had begun working on in 1964, although it was not published until 1973, five years after Isabel Seymour’s death. Raeburn described her as ‘a young friend of the Pethick Lawrences [who] came to work in the office [at Clement’s Inn] when it first opened. The fact that she was friendly with the Pethick Lawrences might suggest that Isabel Seymour had been involved in some kind of ‘mission’ or ‘social’ work. Certainly in 1904, when still living at home in Hampshire, she had been appointed as an assistant visitor to the children of the local Workhouse.
Interviewed by Antonia Raeburn, for her book, The Militant Suffragettes (1973), Isabel Seymour described the early days in Clement’s Inn:
‘It was very happy-go-lucky – envelope addressing, and the almost daily tea party. Mrs Pankhurst used to descend but she wasn’t permanently there. I remember the sort of feeling that she was still a bit of an outsider. But of course Christabel was always at Clement’s Inn. The Pethick Lawrences had put the spare room of their flat at her disposal. They really were like overshadowing guardian angels.’
As a full-time worker for the WSPU Isabel Seymour would have been paid; the general rate seems to have been £2 a week. By 1907 her skill as a suffrage speaker had been recognised and, as well as speaking at London meetings, she went on tours around the country, visiting Scotland on several occasions, where she was always particularly well received. In 1909 she was congratulated on her excellent German when on a WSPU speaking-tour of Germany, which she followed up with a speech in Brussels. In 1910 she took her suffrage tour to Austria and Hungary. In a reported speech in her home village of Winchfield in Hampshire she particularly mentioned ‘the benefits derived by women who had the franchise in New Zealand and Australia and she conclude by appealing to all to think over this question in their minds seriously, and ask themselves whether as women they did not wish to leave the world better than they found it, so that the next generation should have to enter the arena of the labour market handicapped and with little or no protection as was the case now. Many of them had given up ease, money, and even their lives for this great cause, because they saw the great wrongs under which many of their sisters laboured. Their cause was going forward, and truth, justice, liberty, and progress would certainly win.’ [Votes for Women, 14 April 1911 p 462]
From her earliest days with the WSPU Isabel Seymour was ‘Hospitality Secretary’, which involved finding accommodation for country members who came to London to attend meetings and demonstrations. As WSPU militancy increased in 1909 and more and more women were imprisoned and then went on hunger strike, she handed over this post to another WSPU activist and instead became ‘Prisoners’ Secretary’. Thus more onerous task involved dealing with all aspects of WSPU imprisonment – attempts to get bail, the treatment of prisoners once incarcerated, dealing with enquiries from prisoners’ families, keeping track of prisoners and their sentences, informing readers of Votes for Women of the prisoners still held in any one week, and helping organise the ‘release’ demonstrations.
It is not known when she left England but in September 1916 Isabel Seymour was living in Canada, her address being the Okangan Gate Ranch, Enderby, British Columbia. Other than that she was living there with a friend, it is not clear what had brought her to Enderby, a very small town, with a population of 700+ in 1921, However, on 15 September 1916 Isabel Seymour wrote a letter to the Woman’s Dreadnought ( a paper edited by Sylvia Pankhurst) revealing that ‘yesterday I became a voter’. She explained how the British Columbia had ‘decided to have a Referendum on “Women’s Suffrage and Prohibition” – the first Referendum ever held here. There has been but little time to carry propaganda out, and therefore this vote has come as the result of the genuine conviction on men’s part that we have earned our vote I may say that the work the women have done in England since the war had a great effect on the result here. Personally I have been speaking on the platforms of both candidates in our constituency, and they were only pleased to have me. There has been no opposition at all and I never met any man who was going to vote against the suffrage. We have had encouragement and help all the time.
I never thought to get a vote here; when we came it was so far away and no one cared. How is the W.S.F.? If I ever come back to England I shall come and work for you, but now I feel as if my work were starting out here…’
However Isabel Seymour did not remain in Canada but returned to England after the death of the friend with whom she lived. She sailed into Southampton from New York, on 27 December 1920 and by March 1922 was elected a member of the Hampshire County Council, as representative of the St Paul and St Thomas ward in Winchester. She was now living in the town, with her father and step-mother in Bereweeke House, a large Edwardian house standing in spacious grounds. She remained a councillor for many years, serving for some time on the Education Committee, taking a special interest in trying to achieve equality for women head-teachers.
Isabel’s father died in 1934 and it is likely that the Bereweeke household then broke up. Certainly by 1939 Isabel, still a county councillor, was living with Dorothy Pearce, an old friend from Hartley Wintney, at Littlemount, 7 Bassett Row, Southampton. After Dorothy’s death in 1963 Isabel continued to live in the house until her own death in 1968. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence had remained a friend all her life, leaving Isabel Seymour a bequest in her will.
The following items all once belonged to Isabel Seymour.
65. [1906] WSPU VOTES FOR WOMEN LEAFLETS NO 4 A CAMPAIGN FUND
Leaflet printing a letter sent by the London Central Committee of the WSPU to the editor of ‘The Tribune’, noting that the WSPU were raising a ‘propaganda fund of £1000’ and explaining that ‘our organization consists of women of all classes working shoulder to shoudler to secure the enfranchsement of their sex’. ‘In the Canning town branch alone 150 women are pledged to go to prison if need be, and the same spirit prevails in all the branches.’ This must have been one of the first WSPU appeals for money – because Sylvia Pankhurst has put her name to the letter as hon sec. and, although Emmeline Pethick Lawrence is treasurer, the WSPU office has not yet been opened in Clement’s Inn. In good conditon – a little creasing around the edges
[14861] £250
66. [1910 15 JANUARY] DRUMMERS’ UNION
At the Rehearsal Theatre, Maiden Lane, Strand, WC on Saturday January 15 at 7.45 An Entertainment given by the Drummers’ Uniion Proceeds to be given to the WSPU A Fairy Play entitled ‘The Dream Lady; by Netta Syrett. A new Suffrage Play ‘The Reforming of Augustus’ – also a Cockney Dialogue. Those taking part were Miss Rachel Ferguson, Irene and Janet McLeod, Hazel Roberts and Walter Cross and others. Irene McLeod was 18 at the time and her sister Janet, and Rachel Ferguson (whose entry I wrote for the ODNB) were 17. Single sheet, in good condition except for small tear at bottom edge. Any material related to the Drummers Union is extremely scarce
[14871] SOLD
67. LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON
cyclostyled notes, perhaps produced by Isabel Seymour as the WSPU’s Prison Secretary, detailing the arrests and punishment meted out on Lady Constance both as herself and as,, in disguise, as Jane Warton. It’s not clear what was the purpose of the document – it may have been intended for newspaper editors
[14850] SOLD
68. ROYAL COURT THEATRE PROGRAMME ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN! A DRAMATC TRACT IN THREE ACTS BY ELIZABETH ROBINS
4-page programme for one of the 8 matinée performances in April and May 1907 of this so-popular play, staged at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, under the joint management of John Vedrenne and Harley Granville Barker,. The programme includes the cast list, of course, and a notice that ‘At these Matinées, Ladies are earnestl requested to remove Hats, Bonnets, or any kind of head dress. This rule is framed for the benefit of the audience…’ Kate Frye (suffrage diarist) saw the play on 16 April and wrote in her diary ‘I loved the piece – it is quite fine – most cleverly written and the characters are so well drawn. Needless to say the acting was perfection as it generally is at the Court Theatre and the second act – the meeting in Trafalgar Square – ought to draw the whole of London. I was besides myself with excitement over it ‘ This is presumably Isabel Seymour’s own programme, folded into her pocket or handbag and then kept for the rest of her life.In good condition – exteremely scarce
[14864] £250
69. ‘THE SPEAKERS’ CLASSES UNDER THE DIRECTION OF MISS ROSA LEO
will be resumed on Friday the 26th inst at 4 Clement’s Inn, at 7.45 sharp – short cyclostyled notice – to which Winfred Mayo has added a comment ‘Will you enlarge on this & say how necessaryy it is for us to get new speakers etc.’ A glimpse behind the WSPU scenes. 1 sheet – a little creased
[14852] £50
End of Isabel Seymour Collection
Suffrage Postcards – Real Photographic
70. 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
71. 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
72. CHRISTABEL PANKHURST
photographed by Lizzie Caswell Smith, 309 Oxford Street, London W. Head and shoulders oval portrait, The caption is ‘Miss Christabel Pankhurst The Women’s Social and Political Union 4 Clement’s Inn, London WC. It was published by Sandle Bros. The card has been pinned up at its four corners and then roughly removed leaving holes – but in no way affecting the image. Another example of the same card, also a little nicked and creased. This soulful image seems be have been the most venerated. Each
[14217] £10
73. CROYDON NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETY
a photographic postcard, postmarked ‘Croydon 17 Nov 1909’, of the ‘red-and-white sale’ mounted by the Croydon NUWSS as part of their ‘Special Effort’ that ran from 9-12 November 1909. The sale was held in the Pembroke Hall and was opened by Miss Alice Abadam on Wednesday 10 November. On the previous evening a procession had wound its way through Croydon’s streets, with women carrying the emblems devised earlier in the year for the NUWSS ‘Women’s Trades and Professions’ Procession to the Royal Albert Hall. An article in the18 Nov 1909 issue of the ‘Common Cause’ (the NUWSS paper) tells us The Croydon society had been lent the ‘big red-and-white banner of the National Union’ to head the procession and that the Croydon banner brought up the rear. You can see in the photograph that banners were then used to decorate Pembroke Hall for the subsequent meetings and the sale. The card was sent by one of the organizers of the Special Effort to a Miss Morrison, who lived in Matheson Road, West Kensington, but whose mother clearly lived in Croydon. Miss Morrison was thanked for her help and, amusingly, the writer ends by saying, presumably of the procession, ‘the crowd thought we were church people carrying images’. Very good – most unusual – posted. See also items 16 and 17.
[15190] SOLD
74. CROYDON NATIONAL UNION OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE SOCIETY
photographic postcard, probably of the ‘At Home’ held on Friday 12 Nov 1909 in Pembroke Hall during the ‘Special Effort’ week mounted by the Croydon NUWSS Although the report in the 18 November 1909 issue of the ‘Common Cause’ states that tea was available during the ‘red-and-white’sale on 10 and 11 Nov, the beautifully-decorated tea tables shown in this photograph are in the very place where the tables were laid out with sale items in # 73. Many banners are in evidence, including one to George Eliot. The photograph was taken by H. Ward of West Croydon. Fine – most unusual – unposted. See also items 16 and 17.
[15191] SOLD
75. 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
76. 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
77. 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
78. MRS COBDEN SANDERSON WFL
Mrs Cobden Sanderson is shown, head and shoulders, in profile on this most unusual card. The photo is by Max Parker and the caption is: ‘Mrs Cobden Sanderson. Women’s Freedom League’. I would imagine that this is quite an early card -c 1908. Fine – unposted
[14942] £120
79. 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
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 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
82. MRS MANSEL
photographic portrait, captioned ‘Mrs Mansel Women’s Social and Political Union 4 Clement’s Inn WC’. I think she is holding a copy of ‘Votes for Women’. Mrs Mildred Ella Mansel (1868-1942) was the daughter of Mrs Adeline Chapman (president of the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage) by her first marriage – to Ivor Guest, at one time Liberal Chief Whip and a vehement anti-suffragist. Mildred Mansel most definitely favoured her mother’s politics, rather than her father’s and joined the WSPU in its early years. She was a particular friend of Lady Constance Lytton. In 1910 Mrs Mansel became the local organizer for the WSPU in Bath, renting a house in Lansdowne Crescent in April 1911 in which members could evade the census. Later that year she spent a week in Holloway. The Mansels lived at Bayford Lodge, Wincanton, Somerset, and this photograph was taken by ‘Goodfellow, Wincanton’. Fine – unposted – unusual
[15188] SOLD
83. 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
84. 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
85. ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ TRAIN
The train is steaming along, a ‘Votes for Women’ banner displayed on its engine. My thinking is that this is one of the special trains bringing women to London for a major WSPU demonstration. Although I have read in ‘Votes for Women’ details of the arrangements for the special trains, I have never seen another image like this. In fine condition – unposted
[15187] SOLD
86. WHITEKIRK CHURCH (Lothian)
A photograph of the church before it was burned down by Fanny Parker on 26 Feb 1914 – in retaliation for the forcibly feeding of Ethel Moorhead
[11067] £6
87. 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
88. 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
89. 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
90. 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
91. 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
92. 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
93. 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
94. 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
95. MISS ALISON NEILANS WFL
Alison Neilans was an organizer for the Women’s Freedom League. In this photograph she is wearing the WFL’s Holloway badge. She served several terms of imprisonment and during one in 1909 went on hunger strike. Issued by the Women’s Freedom League, this is a very scarce card. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14561] SOLD
96. 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
97. 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
98. 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
99. 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
100. MISS SARAH BENETT
photographed by Lena Connell. In this studio photograph Sarah Benett is wearing her WFL Holloway brooch; she was for a time the WFL treasurer. She was also a member of the WSPU and of the Tax Resistance League. The card was published by the WFL and is from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.
[14631] £65
101. MR AND MRS PETHICK LAWRENCE AND MISS CHRISTABEL PANKHURST GOING TO BOW STREET, OCTOBER 14 1908
Christabel was on trial, charged with inciting crowds to ‘rush’ the House of Commons – but she and the Pethick Lawrences look very cheerful. Published by Sandle Bros for the National Women’s Social and Political Union. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted – scarce
[14646] £45
102. 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
103. MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD
photographed in profile -seated. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14580] £25
104. 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
105. 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
106. 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
107. 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
108. 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
109. 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
110. 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
111. 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
112. 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
113. 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
[14567] £65
114. 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
115. 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
Artists’ Suffrage Card
116. JANE BULL ‘NO WOMAN ADMITTED!
No wonder the place is in such a state. High time for a good Spring clean!’ ‘Jane Bull’ now prepares to knock on the door labelled ‘The People’s House (No Women Admitted)’. She balances a mop and in her hand is her bucket labelled ‘Reform’. The artist is Isabel Pocock and the card was published by the Suffrage Atelier in 1909. For info on Pocock see my ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’. Fine – unposted
[15186] SOLD
Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic
117. ONCE I GET MY LIBERTY, NO MORE WEDDING BELLS FOR ME!
says harrassed dad as his wife walks out the door, leaving him to care for the babies. On the wall is a ‘Votes for Women’ poster. This is an American card sent from Washington to Illinois – but the message carried in the picture is very similar to those of British cards
[13999] £25
118. 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
119. THEM PESKY SUFFRAGETTES WANTS EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES
says old man confronted with a door labelled ‘For Ladies Only’. A US postcard. Fine – unposted
[14000] £20
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In case you are interested in books I have written (that are still in print) they are ~
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
**
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
***
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 £74.99 – Ebook £70
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 £30, Ebook £26
Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle
Elizabeth Crawford
‘Crawford’s scholarship is admirable and Enterprising Women offers increasingly compelling reading’ Journal of William Morris Studies
For further details see here Francis Boutle, 2002 338pp 75 illus paperback £25
Copies of all of these books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.
Collecting Suffrage: Suffragette Fakery
Posted by womanandhersphere 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.
Suffrage Stories: Suffrage in South Devon – Watch My Zoom Talk
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on September 29, 2021
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.
Collecting Suffrage: 1907 Programme For ‘Votes for Women’, Play By Elizabeth Robins
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 19, 2020
4-page programme for one of the 8 matinée performances of this so-popular play, staged in April and May 1907 at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, under the joint management of John Vedrenne and Harley Granville Barker.
The programme includes the cast list, of course, and a notice that ‘At these Matinées, Ladies are earnestly requested to remove Hats, Bonnets, or any kind of head dress. This rule is framed for the benefit of the audience…’
Kate Frye (suffrage diarist) saw the play on 16 April and wrote a long entry that night in her diary where, including, amongst other comments, ‘I loved the piece – it is quite fine – most cleverly written and the characters are so well drawn. Needless to say the acting was perfection as it generally is at the Court Theatre and the second act – the meeting in Trafalgar Square – ought to draw the whole of London. I was besides myself with excitement over it ‘
This programme belonged to Isabel Seymour, an early worker in the WSPU Clement’s Inn office, She folded the programme into her pocket or handbag and then kept it for the rest of her life.
In good condition – extremely scarce £500
Email me if interested in buying – elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
THIS ARTICLE AND PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY COPYRIGHT.
PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU WISH TO USE ANYTHING POSTED HERE.
Suffrage Stories: Sussex Violets And ‘Votes For Women’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on March 3, 2017
One of the businesses that over a number of years advertised very regularly in Votes for Women, the newspaper of the Women’s Social and Political Union, was that of the Violet Nurseries run by ‘The Misses Allen-Brown, F.R.H.S.’ at Henfield in Sussex. I was intrigued by the idea of the intensive farming of violets – that most Edwardian of flowers – and the fact that the women apparently also manufactured violet-scented unguents and perfume and thought I’d do a little delving.
When skimreading through Votes for Women I had just assumed that the ‘Misses Allen-Brown’ were sisters but once I began researching I quickly discovered that they were, separately, a ‘Miss Allen’ and a ‘Miss Brown’.
Ada Eugenie Brown (1856-1915) was born in Liverpool, one of the six children of Aaron (1814-1883) and Lydia Brown. Her father was a ‘provision merchant’ – a ship’s store dealer and ship’s chandler -working from premises in Chapel Street, Liverpool. The family lived in ‘Hartfield’, a large Italianate house in Allerton that still stands, now incorporated into Calderstones School. By 1871 the family was sufficiently prosperous to be tended by at least five servants, including a butler and a footman, and probably also kept a coachman. By the time he died in 1883 Aaron Brown had moved from Allerton to the very smart area of Princes Park. He left over £22,000 but I haven’t investigated his will and don’t know what share of this went to Ada. By 1899 she was living in ‘Holmgarth’ (now known as ‘Providence Cottage’) on Henfield Common North Road in Henfield, Sussex.
Decima Mary Katherine Allen (1869 – 1951) was born at Burnham in Somerset, one of the eleven children born to Elizabeth Allen. When the 1871 census was taken her mother was a recent widow and described herself as ‘a farmer’. As her name would suggest, Decima was the tenth child born of her parent’s marriage. However on her 1911 census form Elizabeth Allen states that she had given birth to eleven children (of whom seven were by then dead). Her 11th child, Sybil, would appear to have been born in London in 1873 and, if so, it seems impossible that her late husband, John Allen, could have been the baby’s father. From birth onwards a cloak of mystery covers much of Sybil’s life. She became a writer, known as Sybil Campbell Lethbridge – you can read about her here. In 1871, when Decima was still the youngest child, the Allen family lived on their farm at Charlinch in Somerset, together with five house servants plus a German governess and a farm bailiff. By 1901 Decima was living with Ada Brown at ‘Holmgarth’ – there is no information as to how they met.
Initially Ada and Decima ran a small general plant nursery but around 1905 sold this and, instead, began farming violets on an acre of land around their house. An April 1907 article in The Graphic headlined ‘A ladies’ violet farm’, reported that: ‘The two ladies who farm the Henfield acre will tell you that no manner of earning a living, or of adding to a slender income, is more delightful than theirs. They work all the year round, planting, transplanting, rearing, tending, weeding, picking, doing all the skilled labour themselves. A little hard digging, only a fortnight’s in the twelvemonth, is done by men…
Here at Henfield are no stream-margins, no banks whereon the violets grow to please themselves. They have to be made to grow to please others. Picking and sending to the English markets goes on from October to April ..All this means the two ladies have to spend long hours in the open air. They are up at five every summer morning, and at seven in the winter. The morning’s harvest is taken to the house for packing and despatch to all parts of the world. You can see violets from Henfield in Egypt and India. The demand for the beautiful long-stemmed Henfield violets is increasing, though all the old blue china pots in England might be filled from there already.’
Other reports make clear that, apart from the short-term hired male labour, Ada Brown and Decima Allen did not do all this work alone but that throughout the year they employed other women to whom they gave a training in horticulture. They even gave some thought as to the best outfit to be worn by these young women while working out-of-doors: ‘We think our students have accomplished the feat of clothing themselves both suitably and picturesquely. A short, straight skirt of some stout material, a green baize or brown leather apron with capacious pocket , a woollen jersey and waterproof Wellington boots; add to this a sou’-wester and a sailor’s mackintosh, and the worst winter weather may be defied.’
Readers will not be surprised to learn that there is no trace of Ada Brown and Decima Allen in the 1911 census. This would suggest that they were willing to support the Women’s Social and Political Union by committing an act of civil disobedience as well as by placing regular advertisements in Votes for Women. The women were friends with the actress and novelist Elizabeth Robins, to whom they dedicated their Violet Book. A prominent WSPU supporter and activist, she lived nearby at Backset (sometimes Backsett) Farm, Henfield. She, too, boycotted the census – it has been possible to track down the census form on which she refused to give information. However I have not yet found a form for ‘Holmgarth’. Elizabeth Robins’ 1923 novel, Time is Whispering features an estate that is devoted to the training of women horticulturalists, a theme that Angela Johns, Elizabeth’s biographer, suggests was inspired by the way of life led by the ‘Misses Allen-Brown’.
That way of life encompassed both visits from royalty, for Ada Brown and Decima Allen prided themselves on their royal patrons such as Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary, and from the less exalted – such as Alfred Carpenter who wrote to his brother, Edward, from Henfield on 3 July 1916 that ‘It is interesting to learn that Kate & Lina were here on the Violet-farm working hard – Miss Allen is still going strong & has many happy pupils – many of them are worshippers of yours & hailed my arrival (before they met me!) with joy – Their carnations are certainly a wonder & they seem to have a great demand for them notwithstanding the War.’ It is good to have evidence that the workers amongst the violets and carnations were followers of Edward Carpenter, socialist poet, philosopher, and advocate of sexual freedom.
The violets were packed and soaps and perfumes were manufactured in Lavender Cottage, an ancient building adjacent to Homgarth, although I am no further forward as to how they actually made soap and perfume in these presumably somewhat primitive premises.
After Ada Brown died in 1915 Decima Allen went into partnership with Ellen Rachel Dyce Sharp. The Violet Nurseries expanded and around 1929 the women bought another 3.5 acres which lay a short distance away from the main plot. You can watch a short 1935 Pathé film about the Violet Nurseries here. It looks as though by then they were giving employment to more men.
The nursery was eventually sold to Allwood Brothers of Wivelsfield, a nursery that had long specialised in growing carnations. Ellen Sharp died in 1950 aged 64 and Decima Allen in 1951 aged 81.
Copyright
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: Following In Kate’s Footsteps: Norfolk
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary, Suffrage Stories on October 14, 2013
It was in this house, 65 Commercial Road, East Dereham, that on Thursday 16 March 1911 Kate Frye embarked on her career as an organizer for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage
65 Commercial Road, East Dereham
In 1911 this was the home of Mrs Alice West, a widow, who lived here with her young daughter, Hilda, and was able to accommodate at least two paying guests. Over the next couple of years Kate was to be a frequent lodger, describing the rooms on that first night as ‘So nice – comfortable and so clean and a fire in my room to unpack by.’
I was paying a flying visit to Norfolk (to view ‘Houghton Revisited’, the once-in-a-lifetime rehang of Walpole’s pictures at Houghton Hall) and took the opportunity to follow Kate Frye around Dereham, Fakenham and Burnham Market. These were all places in which, between 1911 and 1913, she worked hard to spread the suffrage message.
During the several months that she spent, on and off, in Dereham, there were occasions when it was not possible for her to stay with Mrs West and she then took up residence around the corner from Commercial Road – at 63 Norwich Street, the home of another widow, Mrs Martha Cox. Kate gives the impression that this house was in a poorer condition and caused Mrs Cox, who was most well-meaning and attentive, a great deal of hard work to keep clean and in good order.
For instance, from Kate’s diary: ‘9 May 1912 I am really comfortable here, Mrs Cox is ever so good, too good and I hate to think of her work all day long in this rotten old house.’ I, therefore, wasn’t much surprised, as we walked down Norwich Street, to find that Mrs Cox’s house has been demolished.
Formerly the Dereham branch of the London and Provincial Bank
On the day that Kate commented on Mrs Cox’s ‘rotten old house’, this is where she had spent the afternoon – in the apartment above this bank – then the London and Provincial. Here lived the most reliable suffrage sympathisers that Kate encountered in Dereham – the family of the bank manager, Charles Cory. And, on that afternoon – 9 May 1912 – it was in their drawing room that Kate succeeded in setting up the Dereham branch of the New Constitutional Society. The Corys’ daughter, Violet, was honorary secretary. When compiling The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide I had wondered why this small Norfolk market town was one of the few places to boast a branch of the NCS.. Kate’s diary provides the answer. It was to Dereham that she was sent and so it was here that she went to work. Why, out of the whole of England, Dereham was selected by the NCS still remains a mystery.
A year earlier, less than a week after arriving in Dereham, Kate organised her first public ‘Votes for Women’ meeting. It was held in Dereham’s 18th-century Assembly Rooms. On 22 March 1911 Kate wrote in her diary: ‘I was over at the hall at 7. We opened the doors at 7.20 and in very little time the place was full. I had to stand at the door and kept the youths and maidens out till the police officer arrived and then went up to sell Literature.
Entrance to the Assembly Rooms, Dereham
Here is the door outside which Kate stood that evening in March 1911.
Having formalised the presence of the NCS in Dereham by setting up its branch, Kate lost no time in arranging another public meeting. The evening of Wednesday 12 June 1912 turned out to be one of the most personally exciting she ever enjoyed – she certainly kept evidence of it and occasionally referred to it in diary entries many years later.
Assembly Rooms, Dereham – front view
It was only by visiting the Assembly Rooms that I made proper sense of Kate’s description. Of that evening she remarks that ‘Miss Cory sold tickets downstairs and I was the doorkeeper and spoke to everyone coming in.’ I now realise that the main hall is upstairs – behind the windows in the first floor in this photograph. (A slimming club was using the hall when I visited and, in the circumstances, I didn’t like to take a photograph of the interior!). That evening Kate was probably stationed upstairs – welcoming the audience and waiting with bated breath for the arrival of the main speaker, the Rev Hugh Chapman. She had already met him at the station and taken him to the King’s Head in Norwich Street, where he was to stay, and had been swept off her feet (as she had in the past) by the apparent fervour of his greeting.
Chapman eventually arrived – brought along from the King’s Head by a fellow clergyman.. The two were friends – the Rev Harold Davidson, rector of nearby Stiffkey, was to become notorious in later years when, after having been defrocked, he met his death at Skegness when a lion turned on him while he was performing as ‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den’. It would appear that Kate could spot a wrong ‘un, describing Davidson, after this one brief meeting, as ‘a frivolous clergyman with a frivolous wife and a beyond-all whopping frivolous young lady – destined for the stage – the whole party seemed quite mad.’ Clearly an apt summation. Anyway that was just the beginning of what was to be for Kate a memorable evening in Dereham.
A month previously – in May 1912 – Kate had lived for a few weeks in Fakenham, campaigning for the NCS at a by-election. She stayed in digs at 1 Carlton Villas, Queen’s Road – an address that I wasn’t able to identify with certainty when I visited. The 1911 census is not very helpful – the Queen’s Road enumerator having failed to give addresses on the cover of the forms in his area.
Queen’s Road, Fakenham
But if I don’t know exactly where in Queen’s Road she stayed, I do know that she must have passed this jeweller’s shop – still here a hundred years later – as she walked to and from the centre of Fakenham each day.
W. Parker and Son, Norwich Street, Fakenham
The shop’s owner told me that the clock, too, has been there all that time -the only difference being that it now runs on a battery.
Fakenham Church
On Sunday 19 May 1912, while lodging at Carlton Villas, Kate wrote in her diary ‘Had a great scramble to get to Church by 11 o’clock but I did it. I always think Suffragettes look such heathens if no one goes. I was the only representative. ‘
A few days earlier Kate had made a recce visit to Burnham Market – finding it ‘Such a quaint pretty spot’. She did all the things that a good organiser should do – identifying a room available for hire, the name of the local policeman, the name of likely supporters etc. These included Mr Hammill, the local doctor, who lived in this lovely house, and whom she described as ‘political’.
Burnham House, Burnham Market
Burnham House is just over the way from the Hoste Arms, where we stayed the night – most comfortably.
Hoste Arms, 2013
And It was in the Hoste Arms- on 23 May 1912 that Kate enjoyed a brief flirtation with a couple of Irish politicians – anti-Home Rulers. You can read more of this in a previous post – Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Wrestles With North Norfolk, 1912 and much more about Kate Frye in 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 £14.99. Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk or from all good bookshops.
Armed with Campaigning for the Vote you, too, can follow in Kate’s footsteps – not only in Norfolk, but also in London, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Suffrage Stories: Marjorie Hamilton: An Unknown Suffrage Artist
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on August 6, 2013
I have long admired this image, created to advertise the 1911 ‘Women’s Coronation Procession’. This particular item was carefully laid by Kate Frye between the pages of her diary. She was proud to be marching that day in the Actresses’ Franchise League contingent.
However I have only just discovered the name of the artist of this appealing flyer was and have immediately set about trying to find out what I can about her.
The name was delivered to me by Ken Florey who, in his superb Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: an illustrated Historical Study, mentions the image, naming the artist as ‘Marjorie Hamilton’. The US suffrage society, the Women’s Political Union, had clearly recognised an appealing design when they saw it and used it to advertise a meeting held by Mrs Pankhurst in New York’s Carnegie Hall (see Votes for Women, 5 January 1912). Marjorie Hamilton’s name doesn’t appears in Lisa Tickner’s Spectacle of Women – and I must admit that I had not come across it in my own researches into women suffrage artists.
However, now that I have looked into the matter, I see that on 9 June 1911, in the issue that immediately preceded the Procession, the cartoon that appears the front page of Votes for Women was drawn by Marjorie Hamilton. Moreover, I actually hold a copy of the front page of this issue in my bookseller’s stock – I just hadn’t looked sufficiently closely at the image to notice the signature.
Front page of 9 June 1911 issue of ‘Votes for Women’
To have been given this position on the front page of Votes for Women was, indeed, something of an accolade – the paper’s usual artist, ‘A Patriot’ [Alfred Pease], had made way for her. Marjorie Hamilton’s ‘cartoon’ is, in fact, an advertisement for the Procession, with the lead character in her drawing dressed in the same way as the suffragette on the flyer. The latter, however, makes a very much bolder impression – the image greatly strengthened by the use of colour. While the Votes for Women front-page picture is signed with her full name – that is, ‘Marjorie Hamilton’ – the flyer carries only initials – but these do appear to read ‘MH’. When describing the artist responsible for the image on the cover of the lavish Programme produced for the occasion of the Procession, Votes for Women is rather coy – referring to her only as ‘an artist member of the WSPU’. So who was Marjorie Hamilton?
My research indicates that she was born in Derbyshire in 1882. Her father, Arthur Hamilton, was a banker – a partner in S.Smith & Co’s Bank, Derby. Her mother, Georgina (nee Stokes) had been born in South Africa. Marjorie had a slightly younger sister, Vera, and in 1891 the family lived, presumably in considerable comfort, with three servants and a live-in (young) governess, at The Mount, Duffield Road, Derby. Ten years later, in 1901, the family was living above the bank premises at 7 Market Head, Market Place, Derby, along with six domestic servants and a bank clerk. However, less than a year later Arthur Hamilton, now described as of ‘The Grange’, Ewell, Surrey, died, leaving £10,800. It was in 1902 that Smith’s Bank lost its individual identity when it merged with the Union Bank of London.
Georgina Hamilton, with her daughters, may have moved to Canada c 1906. Certainly Marjorie noted on a subsequent Canadian immigration form that she had lived in Canada from 1906-1908. Her sister, Vera, married in Vancouver in 1908 and in 1911, when the Canadian census was taken, was living there with her mother, her husband and two young children. Even though she was a member of the WSPU, Marjorie Hamilton, luckily for us, did not boycott the 1911 UK census and can be found, describing herself as an ‘art student’, as a boarder at 4 Mills Buildings, Knightsbridge, an 18th-century court on the north side of Knightsbridge High Road, close to the Barracks. At this time Mills Buildings was a rather raffish address, although her fellow boarders all appear very respectable.
The census was taken on 2 April 1911 and it must have been very soon after, while Marjorie Hamilton was living here, that she was given the rather important ‘Coronation Procession’ commission. Marion Wallace-Dunlop and Edith Downing were in charge of the artistic design of the Procession, which was being executed at 12 Smith Street, Chelsea. Perhaps it was they who spotted her talent for graphic design. Incidentally on the night of the 1911 census those resident at this address were Miss Dean, a 27-year-old artist’s model, together with a young secretary and a shop assistant whose surroundings, with 8 rooms, between the three of them, were rather more spacious than those of their neighbours. I wonder if they let out one or two of those 8 rooms to the WSPU? It is clear from the reports in Votes for Women that there was a great deal of activity going on at 12 Smith Street in May and June 1911.
Alas, however, that is about all I can discover of Marjorie Hamilton’s career as an artist – except that in 1913 she was advertising that she would be happy to take order for water-colour sketches of country homes.
I next catch sight of her in February 1917 at Liverpool, embarking on the SS Carmania for New York. Her address is given as ‘Cranleigh, Surrey’ and her occupation is ‘artist’. So, in the six years that had elapsed she had presumably had – or at least had attempted to pursue – art as a career.
I did wonder why, in the midst of a war that made Atlantic travel so dangerous, she was making this journey. And then I realised that her final destination was not New York but Victoria, British Columbia and that she must have been going out to be with her mother – who died a month or so after her arrival.
Another seven years go by until in 1924 I found her again, once more about to enter Canada. However this time it is not as an artist but as the prospective matron of the Waifs and Strays Society Receiving Home at 661 Huron Street, Toronto. This was Elizabeth Rye House – a home to where girls were sent from England to be trained for domestic service. On the immigration form Marjorie Hamilton gave her present occupation as ‘matron’, which may, or may not, indicate that she had found that art did not pay and that she had to find an other means of earning her living.
And there the trail for the moment ends. I know that the Toronto home closed in 1931 – but don’t know if Marjorie Hamilton was still there then. Did she return to England – or remain in Canada. I know that her sister died in Sussex in 1943 – but can find no further trace of Marjorie.
And all this is what comes of wondering who was the artist responsible for a delightful purple, white and green flyer produced something over 100 years ago.
Suffrage Stories: Radio 4 ‘Document’: Votes For Victorian Women
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on March 19, 2013
On Monday, 18 March 2013 Radio 4 broadcast, in the series ‘Document, an interesting programme to which I made a small contribution. Below is the description of the programme that appears on the BBC website. The programme is available on iPlayer for a year – that is until March 2014 – click here to listen.
‘Votes for Victorian Women
- Duration:
- 28 minutes
- First broadcast:
Monday 18 March 2013
Popular history tells us that women did not get the vote until 1918.
Though they could technically vote in local elections before that, many historians have argued that in practice they had no vote until the 1860s at the earliest. And evidence that they ever did vote has proved almost impossible to find.
But now a poll book, discovered in a box of papers in a local record office, clearly shows 25 women voting in elections for important local posts in Lichfield in 1843.
In this week’s Document, the historian Sarah Richardson follows the trail of these women, to reveal a picture of Victorian women’s involvement in politics which challenges many of our assumptions.
She discovers that they represented a surprising cross-section of society – old and young, poor and prosperous – and attempts to trace their descendants today.
She finds out how, when even universal manhood suffrage was seen as a radical, dangerous idea, these women may have been just a few of many more who could vote at a local level.
Coronation Procession 1911: The Historical Pageant
And she explores how, decades later, campaigners for Votes for Women at the Westminster level had to contend with this complex legacy.’
[Left – the photograph that Sarah and I are looking at when discussing the way in which 20th-century suffrage campaigners were keen to legitimise their claim to the franchise by looking to the power, occasionally electoral, exercised by women in the past.]
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: Where And What Was ‘The Votes For Women Fellowship’?
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on November 12, 2012
Red Lion Court. The site (on the left) of the offices of the Votes for Women Fellowship
To mark the very welcome co-operation planned for the future between the Women’s Library and the London School of Economics the next few ‘Suffrage Stories’ will demonstrate the past importance to the women’s movement of streets and buildings in the vicinity of Houghton Street.
In previous posts I described how the Women’s Social and Political Union came to have its offices in Clement’s Inn and to have its campaign publicised in the weekly paper owned and edited by Frederick and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence – Votes for Women – which was printed close by at the St Clement’s Press In October 1912 the Pethick-Lawrences, who had been recuperating abroad after enduring a term of hunger-striking imprisonment, returned to England to be told by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst that they, as Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence herself put it, had ‘no further use for them’. In her autobiography Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence records that she never saw or heard from Emmeline Pankhurst again.
During the Pethick-Lawrences’ absence Mrs Pankhurst had moved the WSPU from Clement’s Inn to Lincoln’s Inn House on Kingsway (about which I will write in a later post). In fact I rather think, from studying the relevant rate book, that the WSPU may actually have been evicted from Clement’s Inn. After their expulsion from the WSPU the Pethick-Lawrences took back their paper, Votes for Women, and continued to publish it, on their own account, from a new office. Again, it may have been that after their imprisonment they were no longer welcome to the Clement’s Inn management company.
For whatever reason, the Pethick-Lawrences moved a little to the east of Clement’s Inn and set up office in 4-7 Red Lion Court, one of the quaint passages off the north side of Fleet Street. Despite the redevelopment that has swept away their office, the narrow court is still atmospheric. The office was close to Votes for Women‘s new printer in Whitefriars Street, off the south side of Fleet Street. The first issue of Votes for Women published from this address was that of 25 October 1912.
In addition, in Red Lion Court, on 1 November 1912, the Pethick-Lawrences made their paper the centre of another suffrage society, the Votes for Women Fellowship. This group, made up of former members of the WSPU who were no longer in sympathy with the Pankhursts’ tactics, aimed to promote the paper and its policies rather than stand as a new militant organisation. In Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence’s words the Fellowship was ‘giving full expression to the awakened militant spirit of womanhood, that they should associated themselves in various plans for carrying the message far and wide, until in every town and village of this land women realise that they are a living part of a spiritually militant sisterhood that is at war under the triple banner of liberty, compassion, and purity against every form of evil dominance. (Votes for Women, 8 November 1912). The Fellowship’s emblem was of a lady with a lamp and its motto was ‘To spread the Light’.
Without the backing of the WSPU, Votes for Women had a greatly diminished circulation and in 1914 the Pethick-Lawrences gave the paper to the newly-founded United Suffragists. Although there was an overlap of membership, it would be a mistake to construe the United Suffragists as a direct descendant of the Votes for Women Fellowship. Despite being for most of the time in dire financial straits, Votes for Women continued to be published throughout the First World War only ceasing publication in February 1918 when the vote was (partially) won.
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: St Clement’s Press
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories, Walks on October 22, 2012
St Clement’s Press, c. 1959, courtesy of LSE Library
To mark the very welcome co-operation planned for the future between the Women’s Library and the London School of Economics the next few ‘Suffrage Stories’ will demonstrate the past importance to the women’s movement of streets and buildings in the vicinity of Houghton Street.
In the last ‘Suffrage Story’ I described why and how, from the autumn of 1906, the Women’s Social and Political Union came to have its offices at Clement’s Inn, a few hundred yards from the London School of Economics which, since 1902, had taken up residence in premises in Clare Market and Houghton Street.
In the previous post I also mentioned that Frederick Pethick Lawrence had had some experience as a newspaper proprietor and editor. It was, therefore, natural that he and his wife, Emmeline, should consider it useful for the suffrage society with which they were now so closely associated to have its own proselytizing organ. This would both broadcast the aims and actions of the WSPU and serve as a point of focus for its swiftly expanding membership.
The first issue of ‘Votes for Women’
The first issue of Votes for Women, as the new paper was unequivocally named, appeared on 16 October 1907. It was financed and edited by Emmeline and Frederick Pethick Lawrence and published from the WSPU office at 4 Clement’s Inn.
The Pethick Lawrences had not had to look far for a printer for their new paper. Housed in ‘Newspaper Buildings’, at the junction of Clare Market and Portugal Street, opposite the end of Clement’s Inn Passage (now St Clement’s Lane), the late-19th-century bulk of St Clement’s Press towered over the maze of narrow streets bounded by the Strand and the swathe of Kingsway, still a raw building site. The Press had begun business in 1889 and was to be printer to a variety of other organisations sympathetic to the suffrage cause – from 1909, for instance, responsible for the Anti-Vivisectionist Review.
Votes for Women was published monthly until April 1908, after which it took on a larger format and became a weekly. This increase in frequency and size was a direct reflection of the WSPU’s great success in attracting members and creating interest in its campaign. By early 1910 Votes for Women had a weekly print run of c. 30,000 copies.
Grace Chappelow, a WSPU member from Essex, selling ‘Votes for Women’. Courtesy of Chelmsford Museum
The paper was sold in newsagents but also by members of the WSPU who were prepared to stand in the gutter (to stand on the pavement counted as obstruction) and sell it to passers by. St Clement’s not only printed Votes for Women but also a variety of posters to advertise the paper – such as this one, held in the Women’s Library collection.
This arrangement continued for three and a half years until March 1912. At the beginning of that month WSPU members embarked on a dramatic window-smashing campaign, attacking shops and offices in London’s West End. As a result Emmeline Pankhurst and Frederick and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence were all arrested on the charge of conspiracy to commit criminal damage. Christabel Pankhurst escaped from Clement’s Inn and fled to Paris. The first issue of Votes for Women to be issued after the arrests – the number for 8 March – appeared with blanks in the text. There was a note on the front page:”The Editors who are responsible for “Votes for Women” in the absence of Mr and Mrs Pethick Lawrence beg to inform their readers that the blank spaces in this week’s issue do not represent lack of interesting matter for publication, but mark the suppression by the printers of articles, comments, and historical facts considered by them to be of an inflammatory nature.’
Whether it was because the temporary editors considered it impossible to continue working with a printer who felt unable to print all the material supplied, or whether it was that St Clement’s Press declined to be associated with a publication that might bring them into direct conflict with the law – for whatever reason the 15 March 1912 and subsequent issues of Votes for Women were no longer printed by the St Clement’s Press but by Walbrook & Co of 14 & 15 Whitefriars Street, off Fleet Street.
After the Pethick Lawrences were ousted from the WSPU in the autumn of 1912 they retained ownership of Votes for Women, still printed by Walbrook, making the paper the focus of their new organisation, the Votes for Women Fellowship. I will discuss this organisation in a subsequent post.
The Economists’ Bookshop, viewed from Kingsway
The site of the St Clement’s Press is now occupied by Waterstone’s Economists’ Bookshop, very much an LSE institution.
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: Where And What Was Clements Inn?
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on October 15, 2012
To mark the very welcome co-operation that now exists between the Women’s Library and the London School of Economics the next few ‘Suffrage Stories’ will demonstrate the past importance to the women’s movement of streets and buildings in the vicinity of Houghton Street.
In previous posts I have described the Tea Cup Inn, which was in Portugal Street in the building which, for the time being at least, houses the LSE Chaplaincy, and the Aldwych Skating Rink, in which the WSPU organized its grand 1911 census boycott meeting. In the latter post I remarked that, all but abutting onto the back of the Skating Rink, were the offices of the WSPU at 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn.
A commemorative plaque, placed on a building now occupied by LSE. marks the site, citing the words of Christabel Pankhurst: ”Clement’s Inn, our headquarters, was a hive seething with activity… As department was added to department, Clement’s Inn seemed always to have one more room to offer.’ [9 February 1907]
But what was ‘Clements Inn’?
The history of the late-19th-century Clement’s Inn buildings are surprisingly sketchy – although I daresay that archival research would uncover more detail. In its original incarnation Clement’s Inn had been one of the original Inns of Chancery, but its purpose and its buildings were swept away sometime during the second half of the 19th century. The exact date of its removal is vague; Pevsner merely puts it between 1868 and 1891, presumably meaning that it was demolished in stages. Suffice it to say that towards the end of the 19th century – probably in the 1880s – large blocks designed for both office and residential use were built on the site of the old Inn. They stretched in a line, just west of the Royal Courts of Justice – and on the west side of Clements Inn Passage – north from the Strand up to Clare Market. These blocks were given the name ‘Clement’s Inn’ and housed a medley of solicitors, architects, chartered accountants, surveyors, publishers and even, at 5 & 6 the Uruguayan Legation and Consulate. The southern-most blocks were numbered ‘1 & 2 Clement’s Inn’ and were still standing in 1977. By then the more northerly blocks – 3 & 4 – had already been demolished.
Extraordinary as it seems, photographs of the exterior of 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn seem all but non-existent, the one above one of very few I’ve been able to track down.
The photograph shows the Clement’s Inn buildings to have been rather imposing – five storeys high, rising in places to seven. They were built of brick – presumably once red, doubtless very quickly blackened in the London atmosphere, with facings of stone around the windows and doors. Detailing was gothic, doubtless a nod to the adjacent Royal College of Justice buildings. The ‘look’ was not unlike that of nearby Old Square, Lincolns Inn, where in later years Frederick and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, who are specifically noted on the WSPU plaque, had a flat.
For it was entirely due to the Pethick Lawrences that the WSPU office came to be sited at 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn. Frederick Pethick Lawrence first appears on the London electoral register at 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn in 1904. He and Emmeline – they had married in 1901 -were living in what is termed in the rate book as ‘a residential suite’ – to differentiate this type of apartment from the offices that were also available for rent. The apartments were serviced; the Clement’s Inn building included a servants’ hall, servants’ dormitories and a kitchen in which meals were cooked for delivery to the tenants. This, I would imagine, was a style of living that entirely suited the Pethick Lawrences whose many interests surely precluded any time for domesticity.
The Pethick Lawrences had presumably chosen Clement’s Inn as their London address – they did also have a house in Surrey – because it was close to the office, at 19 St Bride Street, of The Echo, a newspaper bought by Frederick Pethick Lawrence c 1902. It had been a Liberal paper – with a bias towards the Liberal Unionist section of the party- but, under Pethick Lawrence was re-directed towards the Labour movement, with Ramsay MacDonald among its contributors. However The Echo ran at a loss and in 1905 Pethick Lawrence closed it and in May launched a new monthly publication, the Labour Record and Review. Pethick Lawrence was also the publisher of the Reformers’ Yearbook (called, before 1905, the Labour Annual and Reformers’ Yearbook). In the 1905 edition of the Yearbook, printed from information supplied in 1904, the ‘Directory of Useful Addresses’ lists the ‘Women’s Union’ , the secretary of which is Mrs Rachel Scott of Woodbine, Flixton, Manchester. This was the recently formed Women’s Social and Political Union. Its founders, Mrs E. Pankhurst and Miss C Pankhurst, of 62 Nelson St, Manchester, are also listed as ‘Useful’.
In her autobiography Emmeline Pethick Lawrence records that it was from her roof garden in Clement’s Inn that in January 1906 she saw the general election results ‘as they were thrown by a lantern-slide on the elevated-whitened board in the Strand’. This new technology was displaying a Liberal landslide. But it was, however, the success of Keir Hardie and the Labour Party that particularly pleased the Pethick Lawrences. A month later Hardie introduced Emmeline Pethic -Lawrence to Emmeline Pankhurst as ‘a practical and useful colleague who could develop in London the new society she had founded in Manchester’ – the WSPU.
Later that year the embryonic London campaign, which had been spearheaded by Annie Kenney and which for several months had held its business meetings around kitchen tables in various hospitable London homes, was given office premises by Frederick Pethick Lawrence in 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn. In the relevant rate book the WSPU is shown as taking up its tenancy at Michaelmas (29 September) 1906 in rooms 68,69 and 70.
This apartment was separate from number 119 shared jointly by the Pethick Lawrences; Frederick had given Emmeline the luxury of ‘a room of her own’.
When, in July 1906, Christabel Pankhurst came to London, after gaining her first-class law degree in Manchester, she lived with the Pethick Lawrences – perhaps in Emmeline’s separate apartment. The rate books show that over the years the Pethick Lawrences occupied several different sets of rooms, the quantities and configuration varying from year to year.
When, in October 1908, warrants were issued for the arrest of Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst after the WSPU had urged Londoners to ‘Rush the House of Commons’, the pair were photographed hiding from the police on Emmeline Pethick Lawrence’s roof terrace.
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst photographed on Clement’s Inn roof terrace, 1908 (courtesy of LSE Library)
After ensuring that their evasion had been captured on camera, they then went downstairs and were photographed in the course of being arrested by Inspector Jarvis.
Other WSPU offices were photographed on other occasions. Here is Mrs Pankhurst’s. Note the pictures, posters, flowers, and mantlepiece items.
This ‘seething hive of activity’ is pictured in at least one contemporary novel. For in Ann Veronica, published in 1909, H.G. Wells furnishes the offices of the Woman’s Bond of Freedom – the suffrage society that sweeps his heroine off her feet and into prison – with ‘notice boards bearing clusters of newspaper slips, three or four posters of monster meetings..and a series of announcements in purple copying ink, and in one corner …a pile of banners’. Wells had no need to rely on photographs for his information; during the years when the WSPU was working from Clement’s Inn, it was doing so in close physical proximity to the Fabian Society, of which Wells was a leading member and which had been responsible for the founding of the LSE. Knowing from the rate book that the WSPU’s basement office was next door to that of the Fabian Society, it requires little stretch of the imagination to envisage Wells finding a reason to combine a visit to one with a brief sortie into the other, the result being good ‘copy’ for his novel.
It would be surprising if there had not been some tension between the two offices – the one campaigning for votes for some, not all, women while the other backed the cause of adult suffrage. For although, when they agreed to support the WSPU, the Pethick Lawrences were still committed to the Labour cause, as the women’s suffrage campaign developed its tactics changed and the association with Labour was considered by the Pankhursts no longer to be advantageous. Despite this, there were many connections between the WSPU, the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. For instance, Beatrice Sanders, working from an office in Clement’s Inn as financial secretary to the WSPU, was the wife of William Sanders, a Fabian Society lecturer, LCC alderman and Labour parliamentary candidate. Mrs Sanders was herself a member of the Fabian Women’s Group. However, William Sanders was one of what Wells termed the ‘Old Gang’ that ranged itself against him when he attempted to reform the Fabian Society and, in retaliation, probably took Sanders as his prototype for ‘Alderman Dunstable’ in Ann Veronica. Wells certainly found plenty to mock in the WSPU and its activities and, unsurprisingly, although Ann Veronica was listed among ‘Books Received’ in the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, it never received the accolade of a review.
A very powerful propaganda tool for the WSPU, Votes for Women was brought to life each week in a building even closer to Houghton Street than Clement’s Inn and will be the subject of the next of my ‘Suffrage Stories’.
Copyright All the articles on Woman and Her Sphere and are my copyright. An article may not be reproduced in any medium without my permission and full acknowledgement. You are welcome to cite or quote from an article provided you give full acknowledgement.Kate Frye’s Diary: Learning the ‘Two Step’ for Suffrage
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on September 19, 2012
Another extract from Kate Frye’s manuscript diary. An edited edition of later entries (from 1911), recording her work as a suffrage organiser, is published as Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary.
Working for women’s suffrage involved taking part in many different kinds of social activities. In the first month of 1908 Kate danced, stewarded and was lectured by Ford Madox Hueffer – all in the suffrage cause.
The flyer produced – presumably by the Wrights – for the lecture that Ford Madox Hueffer gave in their house. I wonder if the error in the spelling of his middle name was pointed out to them?
Dramatis personae for these entries:
‘Mrs Wright and the girls’: Mrs Lewis Wright and her daughters, Alexandra and Gladys, who then lived at 10 Linden Gardens. It was under their influence that Kate had joined the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, a constitutional suffrage society.
Geoffrey Stanger: the son of H.Y. Stanger, Liberal MP for North Kensington, who had introduced a women’s suffrage bill into the House of Commons.
Miss Mason: Bertha Mason, honorary treasurer of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Socities – a suffragist of long-standing.
Miss Frances Sterling: joint honorary secretary of the NUWSS.
Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford): author, then living in Kensington with Violet Hunt.
Friday January 10th 1908 [London: 25 Arundel Gardens, North Kensington]
I sat over the fire and had another little rest and got dressed early in my white satin dress. It is pretty – a charming frock – the nicest I have ever had, it seems to me. I did my hair Greek fashion with a silver and turquoise band round it which I have made myself – and though it’s me what says it and shouldn’t ‘I did look nice’. Even Mother said I did, I heard after from Agnes. Agnes’s dress was pretty too. And Mother has made hers beautifully but it hadn’t on a trace of style and she really did not look very nice……We had a private omnibus to the Grafton Galleries and got there about 9.15. Met Mrs Wright and her party just inside but by the time our four men had helped themselves we hadn’t many dances left. The girls introduced me to a few but I thought theirs rather a scratch lot – one boy wasn’t bad and Geoffrey Stanger, but one or two others I had I lost as soon as possible. It was a great pack – too many people for dancing in comfort somewhere about 300 and they have made for the London Society of Women’s Suffrage about £70…We stayed to the bitter end and I danced every dance except a few extra at supper time .. I learnt to do the Two Step with Mr Stanger and loved it. We reached home at 3.20 and were able to stir the fire into a blaze. John went off before 4 o’clock but we four sat over the fire talking till 4.30 and it was 5 o’clock before I was in bed as I always like to put some of my things away and tidy the room.
Thursday January 16th 1908
Changed at 6.30 and Agnes and I went off at 7.30 to Miss Mason’s (9 Hyde Park Place) for a Drawing-room Suffrage Meeting at which we had promised to Steward and get there at 8 o’clock for 8.30. We started to walk but we were all in our best and it started to drizzle and we took a cab from the top of the hill. The speakers were the Hon Bertrand Russell, Mr Mitchell Morton and Miss Frances Sterling. She made a most excellent speech and it was a most successful meeting. We did much good work in the way of getting members for the Society and it was all most encouraging and enthusiastic. They had a meeting here last night too – 70 people – but Alexandra said they were a most cold unenthusiastic audience – they could not do anything with them. She has paid Agnes and me a great compliment in saying ‘ I always like to see Agnes and you come into a room – then I know the thing will “go”’. I suppose we have a lot of personality and a lot of electrical excitement and it does help. John is quite in the movement now – though still apt to go back on us in the society of his own sex. .. These meetings are so exciting. I never feel like settling off after them.
Friday January 24th 1908
Changed after tea and at 5.30 Agnes and I went by motor bus from Notting Hill Gate to Oxford Circus and to the Queen’s Hall for the Liberal Federation Woman’s Suffrage Meeting. As we had been asked to act as Stewards and had to be there at 6 o’clock. We stewarded up in the Balcony but there was very little to be done. A good meeting, but not very full. But the audience was a very enthusiastic one and the speeches went well. Mrs Eva McLaren in the chair. Miss Balgarnie, Mrs Conybeare, Mrs Booth and the usual Liberal Women’s Federation people. It was a meeting for women only but there were a number of men stewards. The doors were opened at 7 o’clock and it commenced at 8 o’clock. Mother was there and we met at Oxford Circus and the three of us came home together by bus.
Wednesday February 5th 1908
They had quite a dozen awful Hampstead females there [at home] so we slipped quietly away and hurried to Notting Hill Gate so as to be at the Wrights (10 Linden Gardens) punctually at 4.45. Gladys had asked us to help them I stood in the hall and looked at tickets and sold others etc and later went up to hear the lecture from 5 to 6 by Mr Ford Maddox [sic] Heuffer on the Women of the Classical Novelist of England. It was most interesting and a breezy discussion followed. We got in at 6.30 .. I was very tired but I worked till 11 o’clock directing envelopes for the South Kensington Committee of the L.S.W.S. for a meeting to be held at the Town Hall on the 25th inst.
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.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Collecting Suffrage: The Game of ‘Suffragette’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on September 17, 2012
I will shortly be issuing a new book and ephemera catalogue – number 175. It will comprise books and ephemera by and about women – with special sections on Women’s Suffrage and Women in the First World War. If you would like a copy of the printed or email version please let me know. A short time after these have been sent out, I shall post the catalogue on this website.
The Rules of the Game. ‘The Haunted House’ appears on the reverse of every card
Amongst several rare items that I shall be including in the ‘Women’s Suffrage’ section is ‘The Game of “Suffragette”‘.
This card game was invented by the Kensington branch of the WSPU, probably in the late summer of 1907, and, as such, is, I think, the earliest of the games that were marketed as a tool of suffragette propaganda. It was described in the second issue of ‘Votes for Women’, November 1907.
The first issue of ‘Votes for Women’, October 1907, had on its cover the picture of the ‘Haunted House’ by David Wilson, which had first appeared in the ‘Daily Chronicle’ in April 1907. Depicting a seated woman brooding over the Houses of Parliament, a demand for ‘Votes for Women’ in her hand, this image appears on the reverse of every card in this game – and on the base of the box. David Wilson (1873-1935) was an Irish-born illustrator, soon to become chief cartoonist for ‘The Graphic’.
The game comprises 54 cards (all present) divided into 13 sets of 4 cards each – one of the odd ones being known as ‘The Bill’ – and the other a spare which has been used to record the score of a game played long ago by 6 people, designated by their initials. All the sets have names: eg. Prominent Supporters, Arguments, Freewomen, Voteless Women etc – and each card poses a series of questions. Some of the cards also carry photographs – of Christabel Pankhurst, Annie Kenney, Mrs Fawcett, Elizabeth Robins, Israel Zangwill, and Mary Gawthorpe.
Along with the cards – and the original box – is the original, all-important, set of rules. These describe in detail the various ways in which the game can be played – it seems very inventive.
This is an incredibly scarce item. Although I wrote of it in The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, this is the first set I have ever seen. An amazing survival.
Book of the Week: A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset
Posted by womanandhersphere in Book of the Week, Collecting Suffrage on September 12, 2012
A Nest of Suffragettes in Somerset: Eagle House, Batheaston by B.M. Willmott Dobbie for The Batheaston Society, 1979. Soft covers – very good condition (with a newspaper cutting of an obituary of Bristol suffragette, Victoria Lidiard, laid in). £26 (plus postage) For sale – from my stock of books and ephemera about the suffrage movement. To buy – email e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
‘Annie’s Arboretuem’ and the Suffragette Rest
The story of the Blathwayt family – Col Linley Blathwayt, his wife Emily and daughter Mary -who lived at Eagle House, Batheaston, where for some years they offered a haven to WSPU activists. Annie Kenney – and her sisters – were particular favourites.
Col Blathwayt organised the planting of trees to commemorate visits by both suffragists and suffragettes – such as Lady Constance Lytton.
Lady Constance Lytton photographed by Col Blathwayt
‘Annie’s Arboreteum’ and ‘Pankhurst Pond’ were just two of the features created on the estate. Col Blathwayt was a keen photographer and many of the photographs he took of visiting suffragettes are included in this book. The text includes extracts from the diaries that the Blathwayts kept and which provide us with such a disingenuous view of some of the leading suffragette personalities
For more about Eagle House (and a little about Rose Lamartine Yates and Dorset Hall, Merton, of whom, coincidentally, I wrote in yesterday’s post) see here. For ‘Suffragettes in Bath’ see here. The diaries of Col. Blathwayt, Mrs Emily Blathwayt, and dear Mary Blathwayt, who I describe in the Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, as the ‘Mr Pooter of the suffrage movement’, are held in Gloucestershire Archives.
Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: Suffragette Tea from Suffragette China
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage, Suffrage Stories on September 11, 2012
WSPU china – ‘Angel of Freedom’ design, 1909A week of posts on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ cannot end without looking at the tea rooms that the suffragette societies themselves ran – in their shops and at their fund-raising bazaars – and the china they commissioned in which to serve that tea .
The best known of the fund-raising events is probably the WSPU exhibition held at the Prince’s Skating Rink at Knightsbridge in May 1909. There the tea room was run by Mrs Henrietta Lowy, with help from her four daughters and another young upper-class suffragette, Una Dugdale. In the spirit of exuberance and professionalism that marked this the first of the WSPU’s fund-raising bazaars, a decision was taken – presumably reasonably well in advance of the Exhibition – to commission a Staffordshire pottery – H.M. Williamson of Longton – to make the china from which the tea would be served in the Exhibition’s Tea Room.
The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines, rimmed in dark green and with angular green handles. The shape is, I am sure, a Williamson standard – but how very different the WSPU pieces look from, say, Williamson’s Rosary design–in which pink and grey ribbons and roses are applied to the same shape and every edge is gilded. In contrast, the WSPU china design is pared back, almost stark.
It is more than likely that, from the range offered by Williamson, Sylvia Pankhurst chose this shape, keeping the design simple so that the ‘angel of freedom’ motif that she had designed specifically for the Exhibition should be shown to best effect. Each piece of the tea service carries this motif; behind the angel and accompanying banner and trumpet, are the initials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by thistle, shamrock, rose – and dangling chains. At the end of the Exhibition, the china – tea pots, cups, saucers, tea plates, sugar bowls etc – was offered for sale, made up into sets of 22 pieces. Many years ago, early in my ephemera-dealing days I bought – and, of course, immediately sold – a comprehensive service. Although I have subsequently sold individual pieces of the china, I have never again seen such a complete set. Ah well.
Pieces of this design are held in archives such as the Museum of London and the Women’s Library – but one variation design is not, as far as I know, represented in any public collection.
This cup – its design based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘portcullis’ motif which, used on the WSPU’s ‘Holloway brooch’, can be dated to the spring of 1909 – came from a collection that also contained items of the ‘angel of freedom’ china. I bought this wonderful haul some years ago at auction and, although the provenance was not divulged by the auctioneer, I am pretty sure that the china had once been belonged to Mrs Rose Lamartine Yates who held fund-raising teas for the Wimbledon WSPU on the lawn of Dorset Hall, her 18th-century Merton house. This ‘portcullis’ cup does not carry any maker’s mark but, as the shape is identical to the Williamson pieces, I think we can be pretty certain that they probably also made this. As, in the early 19th-century, when women set their tea trays with ‘anti-slavery’ china, so in the early 20th, suffragettes who bought these tea services could – like Mrs Lamartine Yates – use them as propaganda tools -promoting the movement, most elegantly, in a bid to convert their ‘anti’ neighbours.
I have only ever had in stock – and that only fleetingly – this cup and saucer (see left), part of the third identifiable range of WSPU-commissioned china. I believe, however, that the People’s Palace in Glasgow holds a similar two pieces . They formed part of the Scottish version of the Prince’s Rink tea service, commissioned from the Diamond China Co, another Longton pottery, for use at the refreshment stall at the Scottish WSPU Exhibition held in Glasgow at the end of April 1910. Here the ‘angel of freedom’ is allied, on white china, with the Scottish thistle, handpainted, in purple and green, inside transfer outlines. After the exhibition this china, too, was sold – Votes for Women, 18 May 1910, noting that ‘a breakfast set for two, 11s; small tea set 15s , whole tea set £2, or pieces may be had singly’. It will hardly surprise readers to learn that WSPU china – now so very rare – commands a very high price. But what a wonderful addition a piece would make to any suffrage collection.
Although the china they used was probably more basic, some of the shops and offices run by both suffragette and suffragist societies offered their members – and the general public – a tea room. For instance, the Birmingham NUWSS office at 10 Easy Row included a shop at which tea could be taken and suffrage papers read. And the Glasgow WFL shop, at 302 Sauchiehall Street, as befitting the city in which Miss Cranston perfected the art of the tea room, served tea in its ‘artistic hall’, decorated in the WFL colours. (By the way, when in Glasgow do not fail to visit the De Luxe Room in The Willow Tea Rooms, also on Sauchiehall Street, originally designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for Miss Cranston – it may be a reconstruction, but it’s lovely).
As a final thought, the WSPU not only sold their own china, but also their own tea – much advertised in Votes for Women. Unfortunately, the only reference I have ever come across to anyone buying the tea was an aside by Mary Blathwayt, who noted in her diary that she had had to return a bag that was ‘off’ to the Bath WSPU shop. But I am sure that merely reflects the fact that the hundreds of satisfied customers had no need to comment and I will end this sequence of posts by conjuring up the image of a WSPU tea party, cucumber sandwiches sitting delicately on the elegant WSPU plates, as the assembled company receive WSPU tea into their WSPU cups from the WSPU pot. How, then, could the ensuing conversation be of anything other than ‘Votes for Women’?
Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: From ‘Sheltered Anonymity’ to Sites of Protest
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary, Suffrage Stories on September 10, 2012
Advertisement for Alan’s Tea Rooms in ‘Votes for Women’.
Last week’s posts on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ were based on the research I had done for the item that aired on Woman’s Hour on 4 September. The posts gave details of a few of the London tea rooms and restaurants – – some of them vegetarian – that we know were favoured by suffragettes. I had been curious to know more about the reality – the geographical position and the look of the interiors – of the cafes whose names are scattered through the columns of the suffragette newspapers. I had wondered ‘Why were suffragettes attracted to one place rather than another?’ ‘Whose businesses were they?’ – and hope that in last week’s posts I have, at least partially, answered these questions. In the absence of any other information, I was pleasantly surprised by how much detail could be gleaned from such superficially dull sources as rate books and the files of liquidated companies. I now have a much clearer image in my mind – as I walk around London – of the places in which militant activity was discussed – and indeed practised – by suffragettes a hundred years ago.
Corner of Alan’s Tea Rooms – as pictured in ‘The Idler’, 1910
For political movements need sheltering spaces – of all sizes – in which those involved can exchange views. In the 19th century women could attend the hundreds of formal suffrage meetings and conscious-raising talks that were held in Britain’s town halls and assembly halls – or, if suitably couth, the ‘drawing-room’ meetings held in the houses of the better-off. But until the late 1880s there were very few places outside the home in which respectable women could congregate – for refreshment – to meet their friends – or to discuss politics. The coffee houses, chop houses, ale houses and public houses that had for centuries enabled men to congregate, do business and eat and drink – had been socially barred to respectable women. It was only towards the end of the century that middle-class women were able to move independently– without any vestige of social censure – out of the home and around the streets of the metropolis. One practical element lining the path to freedom was a new type of business – the café, tea room or restaurant designed with women in mind. These were places that women could visit – either alone or in company – where their presence was not seen as an invitation to molestation – where they could eat and drink – and, most importantly, use the lavatory – without breaking any social taboos.
Kate Frye – suffrage organizer and frequenter of restaurants and tea rooms
That there were indeed still taboos around the presence of a woman in some places of public refreshment, even as late as 1911, is evident in one of the entries from Kate Frye’s diary. (My edition of her suffrage diary, Campaigning for the Vote, will be published in the autuimn). She is staying in a hotel in a small Norfolk market town, while organising meetings for a suffrage society. :
22 March 1911 ‘Came in, had my lunch [in the hotel dining room] in company with four motorists. It is funny the way men come in here and, seeing me, shoot out again and I hear whispered conversations outside on the landing with the waitress. Then they come in very subdued and make conversation one to another and try not to look at me. Awfully funny – they might never have seen a woman before – but I suppose it does seem a strange place to find one.’
For, by the 1900s, the situation in larger towns and cities had changed. When not out organising meetings in the provinces, Kate lived and worked in London and there she paid daily visits to cafes, restaurants and tea rooms where she never felt out of place. Aimed particularly at the woman shopper – or woman clerical worker – here she could feel comfortable – both physically and mentally. Some of the cafes were part of chains – such as the ABC, founded in the 1880s, and Lyons in 1894. For a rare photograph of a Lyons interior – dating from the 1920s -see here. These chains catered for upper-working-class and lower- middle-class women who could enter their premises with equanimity and sit in sheltered anonymity at separate tables – and be served, not by waiters, but by waitresses. Kate Frye, belonging to a slightly higher strata of society, favoured rather smarter chain restaurants – such as Slaters’ – or tea rooms such as Fullers’. However it was in a Lyons tea room close to Parliament Square that she sat on the evening of 21 November 1911 with a group of suffragettes who were poised to embark on the smashing of the windows of government offices.
And quite apart from the chains, the first decade of the 20thcentury saw a proliferation of small refreshment rooms – ‘Tea Rooms’ – that were even more closely aimed at a female clientele. These were likely to be run – as were Alan’s Tea Rooms and the Tea
Advertisement for The Tea Cup Inn in ‘Votes for Women’.
Cup Inn – by a woman or a couple of women friends – and allowed women, who may have had no training in anything other than ‘home responsibilities’, the possibility of running a business, while at the same time allowing other women the ability to enjoy the freedom of moving around the city – or town – by providing a space in which they could pause for refreshment.
As we have seen, a few London tea rooms and restaurants were particularly favoured by suffragettes – as, similarly, were they in provincial towns. In Newcastle, Fenwick’s cafe was the venue of choice of the group of women, including Dr Ethel Bentham and Lisbeth Simm, set up the ‘Drawing-Room Cafe’ meetings where women could meet to discuss discuss politics. In Nottingham the WSPU held meetings at Morley’s Cafe, a teetotal establishment, originally opened to provide an alternative to the pub. In Edinburgh the Cafe Vegetaria was particularly favoured by the local Women’s Freedom League society – and it was on its premises on the night of 2 April 1911 that suffragettes gathered – as they did at the vegetarian Gardenia in London – to evade the census enumerator
A year later, however, although so popular with women, tea rooms were not immune from the effects of the 1 March 1912 WSPU window-smashing campaign. Two ABC shops were attacked – one in The Strand and one in Bond Street – here is the photographic evidence.
When, from the end of 1913, the WSPU campaign became ever more desperate, the tea rooms and restaurants that women had made their own themselves became sites of protest. On December 20th a suffragette dining at the vegetarian, suffrage-sympathising, Eustace Miles restaurant was able to make a long speech castigating the government’s treatment of suffragette prisoners – and was, so The Suffragette reported, listened to with eager attention, while her companion distributed leaflets. And althougb the management did eventually ask the speaker to stop she was allowed to continue with her ‘meeting’ and, afterwards, to remain in the restaurant. However, most cafes were not so amenable. When, on the same day, at Fullers’ in Regent Street, a woman began to address the crowded restaurant from the gallery and her two companions showered down leaflets, they were very quickly asked to leave. The newspaper report reveals that the subject of the woman’s address was a comparison of the treatment by the government of Sir Edward Carson and Ulster rebels with that meted on suffragettes. A few days later, when another interruption took place at Fullers’, the management had their answering tactic in place; the orchestra immediately struck up to drown out the speaker.
Soon after, The Suffragette reported an incident at a Lyons Corner House when a woman rose and spoke for a few moments – amid both applause and criticism. When two uniformed Lyons men tried to drag her roughly from the building they met with determined opposition and she finally left, the paper reported, with quiet dignity- escorted to the exit –to murmurs of ‘Isn’t she plucky’.
These protests carried on all through the spring and summer of 1914. Although similar interruptions were made in churches and theatres, it is singularly apposite that customers in tea rooms and restaurants, as they ate their lunch or tea, should have had their attention drawn to the forcible feeding of suffragette prisoners. In fact one of the very last militant action came at the end of July 1914 when women interrupted lunch at the Criterion Restaurant, imploring customers to attend a meeting to be held by Mrs Pankhurst in Holland Park. That, I think, was the final WSPU rally, before the outbreak of war in early August put an end to militancy.
Even as restaurants came under attack there were still some establishments that felt it worthwhile to advertise in The Suffragette. One such was one I had not come across before – Molinari’s Restaurant at 25 Frith Street in Soho., which advertised (January 1914) that they would ‘donate 5 % of their takings to the Cause for suffragists who wear the badge.’ Molinari’s was still advertising in suffrage papers in 1915 and I was amused to discover that in the 1920s the Home Office reported that its proprietor, Angelo Molinari, was the proprietor of ‘doubtful’ restaurants – suspected of running brothels in upstairs rooms. Thus, although the credentials of such suffrage-sympathising refreshment rooms as Alan’s Tea Rooms, the Eustace Miles and the Gardenia are beyond reproach, there were always those commercial operators prepared to take advantage of trusting suffragettes. I suspect, though, that the atmosphere of Molinari’s was not that of Alan’s Tea Rooms Angelo Molinari was not often called to donate any percentage of their profits to the Cause.
.Here is link to Woman’s Hour ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ item aired on 4 September. It begins at c 27 mins – and is available for 2 more days only.
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Eustace Miles Restaurant – and the Tea Cup Inn
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on September 7, 2012
The Gardenia Restaurant, subject of yesterday’s post, was by no means the only vegetarian restaurant favoured by suffragettes. Close by, at 40-42 Chandos Place, at the western end of Covent Garden, was the rather more famous – and successful – Eustace Miles Restaurant.
Eustace Miles was a Cambridge-educated health guru – a real tennis player – prolific author – and vegetarian. He opened the restaurant, with his wife, Hallie, – as a ‘Food Reform’ restaurant – in May 1906, a few months after their marriage. Among the restaurant’s shareholders were his close friend, the writer E.F. Benson, the headmaster of Eton, Bernard Shaw and his wife, Dr Helen Wilson, a Sheffield-based doctor and suffragist, and Mrs Ennis Richmond, a suffragette who ran West Heath, a progressive school in Hampstead.
Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edith Craig, who lived nearby in Bedford Street, sold Votes for Women from a pitch outside the Eustace Miles. It was a sensible spot to choose; vegetariansm and suffragism went hand in hand for those whom H.G. Wells characterized – caricatured – in Ann Veronica as ‘a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light’, for whom ‘ everything…was “working up”.. “coming on” – ‘the Higher Thought, the Simple Life, Socialism, Humanitarianism’.
Opening just as the WSPU arrived in London, the Eustace Miles grew up alongside the suffragette movement. In March 1907 the WSPU chose it as the venue for a breakfast celebrating the release from Holloway of the prisoners who had been arrested when taking part in the deputation from the first Women’s Parliament. Similar breakfasts were also held there– including, a year later, one for women who had taken part in the pantechnicon raid on Parliament. (another suffragette episode hijacked by Wells for use in Ann Veronica – see my article, ‘The Woman’s Bond of Freedom’: H.G. Wells, Ann Veronica and the suffragettes, published in the 2011 edition of The Wellsian, the journal of the H.G. Wells Society.)
Comic card – one of a series – poking gentle fun at the ‘Simple Life’ suffragettes
As with Alan’s Tea Rooms and the Gardenia, so the Eustace Miles had a space to rent – an offer taken up, on occasion, by those giving women-related talks. The Eustace Miles, however, went one better than the other two, offering their ‘Simple Life’ audiences ‘ozonized air’ to breathe as they listened to, for example in 1912, Miss Hoskyns-Abrahall lecture on ‘The Religion of the Great Mother’, to the accompaniment of a lantern show operated by Vera Holme. In January 1910 the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement held its inaugural meeting at the Eustace Miles – the owner surely being a member of the MPU – and in October 1914 it was the venue for committee meetings of the United Suffragists.
The Eustace Miles was by all accounts an attractive place in which to lunch or dine; Kate Frye – by no stretch of the imagination a vegetarian – often ate there – as readers of my Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary will discover. The restaurant did very well during the First World War – when meatless cookery was more or less a necessity – staying in business for over 30 years.
Alas, Hallie Miles’ Untold Tales of Wartime London, the source of the words spoken by Alison Steadman in The Great War: The People’s Story, is out-of-print. But for much more about the life and times of Kate Frye do read Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette. In this I tell the whole story of Kate – and of John Collins, her soldier husband. For details see here. I hope you will find it a Good Read.
Teacup Inn
While not specifically a vegetarian café, the Teacup Inn, much frequented by suffragettes, made sure that its vegetarian credentials were mentioned in its advertisements in the WSPU paper, Votes for Women – ‘Dainty luncheons and Afternoon teas at moderate charges. Home cookery. Vegeterian dishes and sandwiches. Entirely staffed and managed by women.’ The café was opened in January 1910 in Bank Buildings, Portugal Street, just off Kingsway, in a new building in area that was, as I have stressed in recent posts, still under development
The Tea Cup Inn occupied a ground-floor shop and basement in the building – then, as it name suggests – mainly given over to a bank – and now occupied by the Chaplaincy of LSE. In this photograph, taken c 1915, I am sure, after peering at it with a magnifying glass, that a sign ‘Tea Cup Inn’ is visible, hanging just above the smart open-topped car.
The site today of the Tea Cup inn
When it opened its owners were Mrs Alice Mary Hansell (c 1859-1923) and Miss Marion Shallard. However Miss Shallard quickly disappears and the rate books from then on show Mrs Hansell as sole proprietor. She had been born in Yorkshire, was about 52, and long a childless widow when she opened the café. Her husband, a traveller for a coal factor, had died in 1897, leaving only £87. I do not know what Mrs Hansell was doing in the intervening years – the 1901 shows her a visitor, with ‘no occupation, in a household in the Lake District..
Once the cafe was opened – certainly by April 1910- Mrs Hansell lost no time in advertising the Tea Cup Inn in Votes for Women – taking care to mention its proximity to the WSPU office in Clement’s Inn. In 1912 the WSPU moved to Lincoln’s Inn House in Kingsway, making the Teacup Inn probably the nearest place of refreshment. I am pretty certain that Mrs Hansell was a member of the WSPU; in 1909 someone of that name advertised in Votes for Women a cottage to let in Henley, but I have not been able to find conclusive evidence. Unfortunately I cannot trace her on the 1911 census – perhaps this is an indication that she was taking part in the boycott, but it may just be that her name has been mistranscribed. After the 1912 Peth-Pank split, the Teacup Inn advertised at least once in the Pankhurst paper, The Suffragette – in June 1914 – stressing: ‘Kitchens open for inspection’.
Across Portugal Street, the Tea Cup Inn faced the London Opera House (now the site of the Peacock Theatre). This theatre had opened in November 1911 and, again, handily situated for the WSPU office, was the scene of many suffrage meetings. One can imagine that the Tea Cup Inn may well have benefited from the thirsts engendered by a rousing rally.
Mrs Hansell continued running the Tea Cup Inn until her death in 1923. Her estate amounted to £2098 – which might suggest that, as her husband had left so little, she had made some money from her business. It would be good to think so.
More ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ posts to come….
Here is the link to Woman’s Hour (4 Sept) podcast that includes the item on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ (starts c 27 mins).
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Gardenia Restaurant
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on September 6, 2012
6 Catherine Street – home of the Gardenia Restaurant c 1908-13
The Gardenia Restaurant, at 6 Catherine Street, Covent Garden – off the north-western curve of the Aldwych – was, between c 1908 and 1913, a vegetarian cafe much frequented by suffragettes. Unlike Alan’s Tea Rooms – in Oxford Street – and the Criterion – at Piccadilly Circus – the Gardenia was situated in the heart of militant suffrage territory. The Women’s Freedom League headquarters lay just south of the Strand in Robert Street and those of the WSPU just to the east of Aldwych in Clement’s Inn.
The Gardenia was opened c 1908 by Thomas Smith, a young man from Morpeth, who lived with his wife and two children in rooms above the restaurant. By early 1910 it would seem that the Gardenia was in some financial difficulty because it was then formed into a limited company with three additional directors. Two of these were from the Newcastle area – and were presumably known to Smith. One was Herbert Joseph Armstrong – a chartered accountant. The other, the major shareholder, was Godfrey Hastings, a photographer from Tynemouth, a member of a Quaker family, educated at Ackworth, the Quaker boarding school in Yorkshire. The third director was Richard James, who published – and sold – temperance and vegetarian books from the Central Temperance Rooms in Paternoster Row. It would, therefore, seem safe to deduce that those running the Gardenia were advocates of vegetarianism and temperance in particular – and of social reform in general.
As I emphasise in my post on the part played by the Aldwych Skating Rink in the 1911 census boycott, this area of London was undergoing extensive redevelopment at the beginning of the 20th century. No 6 Catherine Street, a tall, rather dramatic, building, had been erected in 1905 and it is likely that the Gardenia was one of its first tenants. Its frontage of stone-banded red brick echoes that used in the construction of no 2 – which was designed in 1902 by the editor of the Builder, as offices for the journal. By now this corner of Covent Garden was taking on a rather Arts and Craftsy look – making it just the place for a vegetarian restuarant.
Unlike the Criterion – or even Alan’s Tea Rooms – I have been unable to find any image to tell us what the interior of the Gardenia looked like. However the file in the National Archives giving details of the 1913 winding up of the company does contain a list of the company’s assets – including the restaurant’s fittings. From this I think it would be safe to say that the general impression of the interior was of mahogany and mirrors. – long mahogany serving counters and quantities of mirrors. The rooms were lit with electroliers – some four-branched and others three. Customers sat at tables, marble-topped on metal stands – rather like those used today by Pizza Express.
Having noted that the Gardenia’s financial situation was somewhat precarious, one imagines that the company’s directors would have been keen to develop a niche clientele to boost passing trade. And so it was; the company accounts reveal that they hired out upper rooms in the building to societies whoe interests would seem to coincide with their own – for instance, to the Syndicalists, to a Vegetarian Club, to the National Union of Shop Assistants, and to the University Fabian Society.
The militant suffrage societies also figure regularly in the Gardenia’s accounts as customers for the hired rooms. In her autobiography, My Own Story, Mrs Pankhurst refers to the Gardenia as a place where many WSPU breakfasts and teas were held – and the accounts show specific hirings of rooms by the WFL (for instance,7 March 1912, 5 guineas). In fact the Gardenia seems to have been a particular favourite with the WFL, which did its best to advertise the delights of the restaurant. The Gardenia was included in The Vote Directory –the WFL newspaper’s list of recommended retailers – and was written up in the 6 May 1911 issue when – in the course of a suffragists’ shopping day – the author has tea at the Gardenia – ’a fragrant cup of tea and some cress sandwiches made with Hovis bread’ – [Hovis was also advertised in The Vote]’ –reporting that ‘she would eat no other.’In 1912 the WFL rented a room in the Gardenia in which to hold its weekly discussions – on such subjects as ‘Jane Eyre and its relation to the Woman’s Movement’ and Mrs Brownlow on ‘Local Government’ and on 17 February 1912 three of the Gardenia’s floors were hired by the WFL for a fundraising sit-down supper, with dancing and performances by the Actresses’ Franchise League.
It was doubtless no hardship for suffragettes to attend such suppers; a vegetarian restaurant would have been particularly popular with suffragettes – many of whom had embraced this cause – and the associated anti-vivesectionist campaign – along with that of women’s rights. For Leah Leneman’s excellent article on the subject – ‘The Awakened Instinct; vegetarianism and the women’s suffrage movement in Britain’ – see here.
For its part the Gardenia management was clearly committed to the suffragette cause over and above its use as a source of income. The directors were prepared on occasion, to turn a blind eye to the use to which the WSPU put its rooms. Thus, on 2 April 1911 – census night – the Gardenia’s management allowed the restaurant to be used by suffragettes attempting to evade the enumerator. One census schedule for 6 Catherine Street shows Thomas Smith, the manager, in his flat there that night with his wife and two children, together with the restaurant manageress, two waitresses, a male chef, female cook, a male baker and a kitchen maid. But a separate Gardenia schedule, completed by the Census Office from information supplied by the police, shows that the restaurant was packed with 200 women and 30 men. These defiant evaders had moved to the Gardenia at c 3.30 am for breakfast, having spent the earlier part of the night in the Aldwych Skating Rink.
A year later the Gardenia again played its part in a dramatic WSPU publicity campaign when, on the night of 4 March 1912, women taking part in a WSPU-organinised window-smashing campaign gathered there. In her autobiography Mrs Pankhurst notes that the police thought that about 150 women went to the Gardenia that evening, arriving in twos and threes from a large meeting at the London Pavilion at Piccadilly Circus. They were followed to the restaurant by a number of detectives who then waited around outside in Catherine Street And what was it that the women were doing in the Gardenia?
At the ensuing trial Miss Jessie McPherson, a still-room maid, testifed that on the following day, 5 March, she found a dozen on so stones – on one of which was written ‘Votes for Women’ – lying in a grate in a big room on the second-floor. Godfrey Hastings, the Gardenia’s major shareholder, gave evidence that the room had been engaged by the WSPU for the afternoon and evening of 29 February and 1 and 4 March – at a charge of 45 shillings on each occasion.
The evidence pointed to the Gardenia as the WSPU’s ammunition arming station. Once they had received their supply of stones, the suffragettes led the police a merry dance.
One policeman testified that he followed Miss Wolff van Sandau and Miss Katie Mills as they left the Gardenia, went to an ironmonger’ shop in Covent Garden and then walked to Westminster, along Victoria Street to the Howick Street Post Office, where the former broke a window with a hammer and the latter with stones. It transpired in court that it was at the Covent Garden ironmongers, with the policeman in tow, that they had bought the hammer.
Another policeman reported that on 4 March he waited outside the Gardenia Restaurant for three women [Nellie Crocker, Miss Roberts and Miss Taylor]. When they emerged he followed along the Strand, to Charing Cross and then on District Line to Royal Court Theatre. A few minutes after the performance began they left and went along to 9 King’s Road – a post office – where they smashed the plate glass windows with three hammers.
Another policeman followed Elizabeth Thompson and another woman from the Gardenia to Parliament Square,where Miss Thompson threw a stone at a window of Home Office.
There does not appear to have been any legal repercussions for the Gardenia but, sadly, despite support from the suffrage movement, the business could not be made to pay and the restaurant closed in March 1913.
However 6 Catherine Street today still has a primary connection to the food trade – as the home of the Food and Drink Federation. The FDF were very generous in allowing access to their building in order to record a section of the Woman’s Hour item on ‘Suffragettes and Tea Rooms’ in the rooms where the WSPU plotted their militancy over tea and brown rice.
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: The Criterion Restaurant, Kate Frye, and the Actresses’ Franchise League
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary, Suffrage Stories on September 5, 2012
Criterion Restaurant and Piccadilly Circus c 1910
The glamorous Criterion Restaurant lies at the heart of theatreland, facing onto Piccadilly Circus. Owned by Spiers and Pond, it had been built, together with the adjoining theatre, in 1874 and during the last century and a quarter has undergone many changes – although now restored to glory. Before the First World War Spiers and Pond’s empire encompassed railway refreshment rooms as well as other large London restaurants, such as the Holborn, at the north end of Kingsway, the setting for many breakfasts held by the WSPU to celebrate the release of their prisoners from Holloway.
The Criterion today
Although the Criterion has now only one restaurant – on the ground floor – in its Edwardian heyday it offered many more spaces – not only in which to dine – but also for hire; the Victoria Hall and the Grand Hall, on the first floor, were two such spaces. The Grand Hall, magnificently decorated, ran across the front of the building, overlooking Piccadilly Circus. The lavish interiors were very much a hallmark of the Spiers and Pond establishments – renowned especially for the high standard of their ladies’ cloakrooms – a point, I would imagine, our suffagists and suffragettes would have appreciated.
The Actresses’ Franchise League was founded at the end of 1908 and by the spring of 1909 began to hold its meetings at the Criterion, which was conveniently placed so as to allow its members to spend the afternoon listening to rousing speeches and yet be close at hand to give their own performances in the evening. By all accounts the meetings were extremely well attended, the AFL having no trouble in filling either of the two main halls.
Kate Frye on tour in J.M. Barrie’s ‘Quality Street’.
Kate Frye (whose post-1911 suffrage diary, Campaigning for the Vote, is published by Francis Boutle ), was a proud member of the AFL, having spent two or three years treading the boards of provincial theatres. Her diary entries allow us to eavesdrop on some of those Criterion meetings.
‘Friday April 2nd 1909
Out at 2 o’clock – bus to Piccadilly Cicus and to the Actresses’ Franchise League meeting at the Criterion Restaurant. Miss Eva Moore was receiving and gave me a gracious handshake and Ada Moore was there. Also Eve, Mr Stanger [a sympathetic Liberal MP] and Miss [Frances] Sterling I heard speak. Lady Strachey was in the Chair and Lady Grove had spoken. I also heard Miss [Lillah] McCarthy, the Treasurer, speak and Miss Adeline Bourne, the Secretary, and I went up and spoke to Mr Stanger after the meeting.. His wife was also there. It was a huge meeting – no end of the profession there and they seemed enthusiastic but I have never got much faith in them. …
Friday February 4th 1910
Started off about 1.45 for the Victoria Hall Criterion Restaurant – went by bus. We went early as we wanted a good seat to see Miss Pankhurst. The place was packed before they began at 3 o’clock. Miss Granville took the chair and Miss Adeline Bourne as Secretary and Miss Maud Hoffman as Treasurer spoke in a more or less business-like fashion and Lt Col Sir something Turner spoke – an old dodderer. I could hardly keep my face straight he looked in such a loving fashion at the ladies but of course the thing of the afternoon was Christabel Pankhurst. She is a little wonder. So young and girlish looking – I suppose she is only 22 or 23 with such a charming way with her. She spoke very nicely too. It was not a brilliant speech but she was suiting herself to her audience I have no doubt – but it was so sincere and so fair. I have only heard her once before – at the Albert Hall – and one cannot judge like that – so I am glad to have been at such close quarters with her. She is not really pretty – has a crooked mouth and bad chin but her eyes are nice and she has a pretty forehead. Her hair was very untidy and I think would suit her so much better done low than on top in an ugly little knob. But though so faulty her face lights up so when she speaks and she has such a charming way with her that is very superior to mere prettiness….
Friday November 4th 1910
A bitterly cold day –had lunch then left at 1.15 – took a bus to Oxford Circus and went to steward at The Actresses’ Franchise League meeting at The Grand Hall Criterion. It was great fun.. A Mrs Fagan was in the Chair, Lady Constance Lytton, Mrs Pertwee , Mr Cecil Chapman and Mr M Campbell-Johnston were the speakers.. Then, amongst the audience, Hilda Fletcher – an old Ben Greet companion – the girl who helped me with the Banner at the second march and I chatted to lots of people – made 17/6 and had great fun. Two old gentlemen who were very taken with the Actresses and attending their first Suffrage meeting were most amusing.
Friday December 16th 1910
Changed my dress – at 2.15 bus to Oxford Circus and walked to the Criterion – to the Birthday Tea of the Actresses’ Franchise League. It was packed – a huge success. Eva Moore recited, Bertha Moore and daughter sang.’
The Criterion was used by women’s societies other than those campaigning for suffrage. Here is a photograph of a Women Writers’ Dinner held in the Grand Hall in 1900. Of the suffrage societies, it would seem that the AFL was the most regular user of the Criterion, although in April 1909 the WSPU held a breakfast there for released prisoners and in February 1910 and June 1911 the Women Writers’ Suffrage League held meetings in the Victoria Hall. It is interesting to note that on 26 October 1911, when the International Women’s Franchise Club held a dinner at the Criterion, a vegetarian option was chosen by a fairly high proportion of the guests – 25 out of the 130 who attended.
Although the suffrage sympathisers who attended such meetings were overwhelmingly middle class, one would like to imagine (as one can in a blog) that, through their association with, perhaps, the AFL, less well-off women would have had the opportunity to luxuriate in the splendid surroundings of the Criterion, enjoy a wash and brush up in the opulent Ladies’, and fill up on the tea that brought the afternoon to a close.
Based on her diary, I published Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary. This is now out of print. The complete collection of Kate’s diaries is now held by Royal Holloway College Archive.
WALKS/Suffrage Stories: The Suffragette 1911 Census Boycott: Where and What Was the Aldwych Skating Rink?
Posted by womanandhersphere in 1911 Census, Suffrage Stories on September 3, 2012
Roller skating was one of Edwardian Britain’s ‘crazes’ – to be enjoyed, as this comic card shows us, by all the family. One could, of course, as I did as a child in the 1950s, roller skate in the streets, but in the years before the First World War entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the craze ventured to erect roller skating rinks in towns the length and breadth of Britain.
While I am sure that many individual suffragettes and suffragists enjoyed a spin around their local rink, there was one episode of suffragette history that centred on a specific London roller skating rink. For on census night 1911 – 2 April – it was at the Aldwych Skating Rink that the militant suffrage societies – the Women’s Social and Political Union and the Women’s Freedom League, together with related societies such as the Tax Resistance League – urged their supporters to muster. Here, out of their homes, they would escape detailed enumeration.
When interviewed in the 1970s by Sir Brian Harrison (Women’s Library 8 SUF/B/024), Marie Lawson, an important figure in the Women’s Freedom League, remembered that ‘We formed immediately a census resistance group – women who said ‘we don’t count; we won’t be counted’ – that they would stay out somehow – out of a house or roof during the period when you had to be recorded. Our group took the Aldwych skating rink for the night – we hired it. Nobody was supposed to be sleeping there. We had roller skates and we spent the night on roller skates and there was no-one to declare us and when we went away in the morning we were very weary, very tired with our roller skating but we felt we had done the government out of so many names on the census resistance. It wasn’t very useful really but it was something to do. We used to grab at every little thing, you know, that we could make a protest about. It was advertising really.’
So it was that, after a late-evening rally in Trafalgar Square, the suffragettes promenaded down the Strand to the Aldwych where it was estimated by the Census Office that 500 women and 70 men gathered at the Skating Rink. Although the numbers were recorded, the identity of most of that 570 is lost – only those whose names are mentioned in the Votes for Women report (7 April 1911) can be placed there with certainty. These included Mrs Pankhurst, Ethel Smyth and, among members of the Actresses’ Franchise League who provided the entertainment, Decima Moore and her sister, Ada, Adeline Bourne, Winifred Mayo, Inez Bensusan, Rosa Leo, Sidney Keith, Miss Laing and Natalia de Meix. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence was also there. She certainly did her bit to disrupt the census, being enumerated in three separate places- once in her Clement’s Inn flat, once in her Surrey country cottage and, again, here at the Aldwych. By way of contrast, no trace of a census paper for Christabel Pankhurst has been found – but she was there in the Skating Rink, bringing the entertainments to a rousing conclusion at 3.30 am.
Here is Decima Moore photographed that night inside the Skating Rink. I am pretty certain that she is captured doing her party piece -Laurence Housman’s ‘Women This and Women That’. In the photograph we can see, behind the audience and the NWSPU ‘No Vote No Census’ banner, the walls of the skating rink – rather bare as one might expect. ‘What kind of structure was it?’, I wondered and, moreover, ‘where was it?’ ‘Aldwych’ was a rather vague address.
I discovered that the Aldwych Skating Rink was first listed in the rate books in 1911, provisionally numbered 10 Aldwych. The Kingsway/Aldwych area that to us today looks so solidly Edwardian was, in 1911, still in a state of flux.
Looking up Kingsway from the Aldwych, 1905
Kingsway had been driven through – it was formally opened in 1905 – and the curve of the Aldwych formed, but it was not until well into the 1920s that all the plots were sold and developed. Thus, from the rate book, I could see that no 10 Aldwych was surrounded by vacant lots enclosed in advertising hoardings, the hoarding company paying a rent for their advertisements.
But I was still unclear as to precisely where no 10 was. However, the rate book came to the rescue, recording that on one side of no 10 the lot was owned by the London County Council and was ‘used for advertising station on frontage line from Houghton Street to roller skating rink. On its other side –provisionally numbered no 8 – was an advertising station north-east on the frontage line east of the roller skating rink. So this seemed to establish that the skating rink was on the north-east curve of Aldwych, to the east of Houghton Street. Clement’s Inn, the WSPU headquarters, virtually abutted the rear of the plot. What more suitable venue to book for such an evening than this, probably the nearest large hall?
The owner of the skating rink was Edward Johnson Wilson who had formed his company, ‘Rinkeries’, in 1909. In 1911 the company also ran ‘ideal skating palaces’ on the Holloway Road, as well as in Exeter, Plymouth and St Leonards. Like many other roller-skating rink companies, whose liquidations, as recorded in the London Gazette, are a sad testament to so many lost hopes, ‘Rinkeries’ does not appear to have been very successful; Edward Wilson was doubtless glad of the windfall of a night’s rent from the WSPU.
But I still did not know what the skating rink looked like. It is difficult now to conjure up the appearance of that A
ldwych curve before the arrival of the imperial solidity of the buildings we see today. From looking at contemporary photographs of Kingsway, dominated by empty plots and high advertising hoardings, I could imagine that the area must have felt strange and impermanent. The old higgledy-piggledy rookery streets around Holywell Street and Houghton Street – that many of the suffragettes would have remembered – had been swept away, but the new order had not yet arrived. In this aerial photograph, probably taken c 1918 after the completion of Australia House (in the centre foreground), the Aldwych Skating Rink would have been – and perhaps still was – one of the low buildings in the bottom right of the picture.
But in 1911 the southern side of the road had not been developed at all. With few buildings to throw out light, the area was doubtless rather dark. What kind of building was it that the suffragettes waited outside that night – surrounded by, in effect, a building site – while posses of hooligans attempted to storm the rink’s doors?
I have not been able to locate a photograph, but, as luck would have it, I found the answer in the ‘Rinkeries’ file in the National Archives – its presence there a consequence of the company’s eventual liquidation. There, as a heading to ‘Rinkeries’ notepaper, was an engraving of the Aldwych Skating Rink. I could now see that it comprised four linked, gabled structures –chalet-type – single storey. The effect, for all the panache of many flying union flags, was somewhat temporary – as it was no doubt in reality. What a contrast to its successors.
During the First World War the Aldwych Skating Rink was used as a clearing house for Belgian refugees. This watercolour, in the Imperial War Museum collection, shows the building after it was hit in a Zeppelin raid on 13 October 1915. The church in the background is St Clement Danes. The Rink must have been swept away by the end of the war, to make way for the monumental buildings that still occupy the central section of that Aldwych curve. It takes an effort to reimagine its former appearance – but to do so helps us to enter the 1911 worldview of the census evaders.
To listen to a talk I gave on the suffragette boycott at a National Archives conference on the 1911 census click here
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Suffrage Stories/Collecting Suffrage: Suffragette Jewellery
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage, Suffrage Stories on August 27, 2012
Pendant made for Margaret Murphy by Ernestine Mills
‘Prison to Citizenship’ – Three pendants earned by two Irish suffragettes
In previous posts I have mentioned how necessary it is to observe the provenance of an item of jewellery in order to be able to label it with certainty as ‘suffrage’. In that way the collector is less likely of falling into the trap of buying an item – vaguely Edwardian with vaguely purple, white and green stones – that an auction house or dealer has chosen to label ‘suffragette’ In this post I will bring to your attention three items of jewellery – made for two Dublin sisters – that are indisputably ‘suffrage’.
‘Margaret’ and ‘Jane Murphy’ were the pseudonyms of two middle-class women from Dublin – whose real names were Leila (b. 1887) and Rosalind Cadiz (b. 1886). They were members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League. They both took part in the window-smashing campaign in London in March 1912 and were sentenced to two months in Holloway. They went on hunger strike (c 16 April) and were forcibly fed. They were released c 15 May. The pendant above is engraved – “Holloway Prison No. 15474, Maggie Murphy, 2 months hard Labour, E.4 Cell.12., Hunger Strike 16th April 1912, Forcibly Fed – and was made by the suffragist and enameller, Ernestine Mills. As you can see the lily motif is rendered in purple, white and green – in this case a ‘true’ use of the colours.
Margaret and Jane Murphy, top row far right and second from right, pictured in Votes for Women, 25 June 1912.
A couple of months later the Murphy sisters took part in the first window-smashing campaign in Dublin and were again sentenced to two months’ imprisonment – but in Dublin they were given the status of political prisoners.
Margaret Murphy requested to be treated by her own doctor, Kathleen Maguire, ‘as I am undergoing treatment owing to having been forcibly fed in Holloway,… Dr Maguire understands my constitution.’ To this the Medical Officer in Mountjoy replied (5 July 1912) ‘I beg to report that I regard her [Margaret Murphy] as a woman of neurotic temperament who suffers from indigestion, an ailment frequently complained of by women of this type.’
The Murphys eventually succeeded in not only getting a suffragist doctor, Kathleen Maguire, to treat them, but also in getting their own dentist. ‘Miss Jane Murphy will attend her own dentist at her own expense’ (July 1912).
The Murphys clearly had a way about them for ‘with reference to Margaret Murphy’s complaints of the possible effect of the whitewashed walls of her cell on her eyes, the governor agreed to have the walls recoloured, and to have a new gas burner fitted in lieu of the existing one, and her request for a special kind of disinfectant to be used in her cell was referred to the Medical Officer.’ 25 July 1912 Minutes of Mountjoy Prison.
Finally the sisters went on hunger strike for the last 92 hours of their sentence (along with 2 other Irish suffragettes) in sympathy with three English suffragettes (Mary Leigh, Gladys Evans and Jennie Baines) who had received harsh prison sentences in Dublin and who had not been given political prisoner status. The Murphys were not forcibly fed – the end of their sentence arriving before this became necessary. They were released, together, from Mountjoy Prison on 19 August, welcomed by members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League.
Here are the pendants that the sisters either commissioned for themselves or, more likely, with which they were presented after their release. Each pendant is of shield shape, surmounted by a green enamelled shamrock, hallmarked Dublin, Hopper and Hannay, 1912. One is engraved on the obverse “From Prison to Citizenship” and on reverse “J. Murphy 20.6.12 to 19.8.12” and the other “M. Murphy 20.6.12 to 19.8.12”. Thus do three items of jewellery commemorate the efforts of two Irish sisters to win ‘Votes for Women’.
Kate Frye’s Diary: ‘Paddington Pandemonium’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on August 23, 2012
In the following diary entry Kate describes the pandemonium that occurred at a December 1907 suffrage meeting organised by the North Kensington Local Committee of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage – the non-militant London NUWSS society – chaired by Mrs Millicent Fawcett. From Kate’s account the main culprits were medical students from nearby St Mary’s Hospital and from University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, such student having had, through the ages, a reputation for unruly behaviour. From Kate’s observation, the stories of stinkbombs and the release of mice, specifically intended to upset the genteel female audience at suffrage meetings, were all too true.
Lady Grove (1862 -1926) was a leading Liberal suffragist and author of The Human Woman, 1908. The Paddington Baths, in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, were soon to be demolished to make way for an enlarged Whiteley’s department store.
Thursday 5th December 1907 [25 Arundel Gardens, North Kensington]
‘
At 2 o’clock Agnes and I started off to Linden Gardens and called for Alexandra Wright and several of her helpers and we all walked to the Paddington Baths to help arrange the room for the meeting in the evening. There was a good bit to do – numbering the chairs – partitioning them off and hanging up banners and posters etc. Left [home again] just before 7 o’clock in a bus to Royal Oak and went to the Paddington Baths for the London (Central) Society’s meeting for Women’s Suffrage. Gladys and Alexandra have been weeks getting it up and I did no end of clerical work for it at Bourne End. We were the first Stewards to arrive after Gladys and Alexandra and were decorated with rosettes and given our directions. Lots of the women were very nervous of a row. My department was the gallery, to look after people up there and give invitations for a private meeting next week.
The people came in thick and fast and the doors were opened at 7.30 and with the first group of young men below in the free seats I knew what would happen. The place was soon hot, bubbling over with excitement, and I had my work cut out keeping gangways clear and looking after people and telling them they would be safe. We had expected an exciting evening but this realised our worst expectations. It was Bedlam let loose. A couple of hundred students from St Mary’s and University College Hospitals arrived and insisted on sitting together and never ceased all the evening singing, shouting, blowing tin trumpets, letting off crackers, letting loose mice and, what is worse, scenting the floor with a most terrible-smelling chemical.
Report from the ‘Daily Mail’ 6 December 1907, clipped by Kate and laid in her diary
From the very start they never gave a single speaker a moments hearing. Mrs Fawcett was in the Chair and Lady Groveand others spoke and they went on with the meeting to the bitter end – and bitter it must have been to the speakers. I never heard a word. I felt too angry to be frightened though I must own I did not like the fireworks and saw the most appalling possibilities in that frantic howling mob of mad animals. Agnes owns to being terrified – all the more credit to her for sticking to her place amongst them and she was with them all the evening. I felt mad at not being there in the midst of them. When I could leave I just went down and spoke to John, who I saw standing near Agnes. She had decorated him as a Steward to help in case the worst happened.
I went back to my post until I was no longer any good there and then I went into the very midst of the seething mass and talked to any of them I could get at. Just to silence them, as I did for a few minutes at a time, was a triumph. Cries of ‘Oh I think I like Suffragettes’ as I went amongst them and, then, ‘He is flirting with a Suffragette’ taken up and sung by them all. I spoke like a Mother to several and smiled at them. If they had only known my true feelings I don’t think they would have been so polite to me. Great credit to all the women in the building is due – not only the Stewards – but the audience there. There was never any excitement or panic amongst them and only one Stewardess failed us. She, poor thing, was so terrified she bolted without waiting for hat or coat – but of course we keep that dark. The men Stewards were very good but quite powerless to stop the noise and hubbub. And what could four policemen do? It was an organised ‘Rag’ and nothing but a force of police to outnumber them could have stopped them. They longed for a fight and said so – and no end of them had most terrible looking clubbed sticks which they brandished. We did the only possible thing, I consider. Kept as much order as we could and tried to avoid bloodshed. We had a little unfortunately when, after the meeting was over, they charged for the Platform, sweeping everyone before them. Very fortunately there were large exit doors each side of the platform and most of the people got out of them. I was flung aside and then followed them up. They tore down as many banners as they could and stole one and tore down all the posters. They were like wild cats. The policemen chased them round a little but we would not allow any arrests to be made. The firework ringleader was caught but allowed to go. I spoke to Mrs Wright – red with rage. Poor things, we were all either red or white. Mr Willis, Mrs and Miss Doake and several others. Mr Percy Harris was Stewarding. One man Steward got a most awful crack on the ear and was considerably blooded – he looked awful. Several of the boys had their collars torn off and became very proud in consequence. It was a great wonder and a still greater mercy that more damage was not done. I felt so responsible for the ordinary public who had paid their money. I could only hope to get over the evening safely for their sakes. Personally I wished and still wish to smash the Boys, though at times I could not help laughing. They were not nice boys – all plain and common looking – mostly undersized and no gentlemanly looking one amongst them. I was glad to notice that as I hope they are not the best we can show in our hospitals.
After the general public had gone the police sent word that it was impossible to clear the hall while there was a woman left in it so we left with Mrs and Miss Doake and all came back in the bus with Mrs Willis. Miss Doake said she had never enjoyed a night so much in her life before. I cannot say the same. It was a terrible experience. We could not lose that terrible smell from our noses and mouths. I could taste it through everything at supper. John came home with us and did not leave till after 12o’clock. Agnes and I were too excited to go to bed and sat talking of our experiences. Lots of people will be made all the keener through it, but a great many will be very disgusted I fear.’
As you can see from this note, carefully preserved by Kate, Mrs Fawcett’s meeting was re-arranged for early 1908 – to be held in the safety of Bertha Mason’s house in nearby Hyde Park Square.
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
NOW OUT OF PRINT, ALAS
KATE’S DIARIES AND ASSOCIATED PAPERS ARE NOW HELD BY ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLEGE ARCHIVE
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Suffrage Stories: ‘The Putney Caravans’
Posted by womanandhersphere in 1911 Census, Suffrage Stories on August 20, 2012
John Burns, the suffragettes and the census boycott
As I have already described here, one of the most inclusive acts of civic resistance undertaken by the militant suffrage societies was the boycott of the 1911 census. The argument was that, if the government was not prepared to grant them full rights of citizenship, women would not fulfill the duties of a citizen. On the night of the census – 2 April – those who obeyed the call either went to considerable lengths to evade the enumerator – or, like ‘Madame Mantalini’, refused to supply the required details on their census paper.
There are many stories to be told, but one of the more flamboyant adventures was that of Arthur Marshall, the WSPU’s solicitor, who with his wife, Kitty and nine other rented from a Paddington firm, Rickards, what were described as ‘smart Pullman caravans’. The caravans, horsedrawn, of course -were then driven
in the dark from Paddington and into and round Trafalgar Square, where the main suffragette protest was taking place – and then down Whitehall and out to the west, eventually coming to a halt on Putney Common.
As the journalist Henry Nevinson, writing in the suffragette newspaper, Votes for Women, wrote, ‘I had noticed three gypsy caravans….they were driven by women, who whispered me the names of woodland regions not very far off in Surrey. Whether statistics will add them to Surrey’s glorious army of vagrants I don’t know, but they vanished silently down the road, past the decorated windows of the Home Office and the Local Government Board.’ The last office was singled out for mention because it was the LGB – under its minister, John Burns – that was charged with organising the census.
Once they had arrived at Putney Common, not exactly deepest Surrey, the women – and Arthur Marshall – all appeared to have had a jolly dinner and reported that they had refused all information to the police who turned up to take their particulars. In the morning they decorated their caravans with placards saying – ‘If we don’t count we shall not be counted.’ and, thus adorned, travelled back into London.
Although this excursion doubtless attracted publicity, the police knew quite well who the leaders of that ‘suffragette party’, as they described it, were – and the Marshalls’ details were duly entered on a census form. The other nine women did, however, manage to remain anonymous.
It may be that Henry Nevinson was embroidering reality a little – and that it was not the women themselves who were driving the caravans – because a week or so later three men – presumably Rickards drivers – were charged with driving the caravans unlawfully on the turf of Putney Common. This was one of the very few prosecutions brought that related to the census boycott; women who had evaded or resisted were not charged, the government realising there was little to be gained by giving the protest the oxygen of publicity. However, the local Putney magistrate clearly thought the case a nonsense and it was dismissed with the defendants merely having to pay 2s in costs. And the image painted by Nevinson of the caravans with their bohemian crew remains in the memory.
Suffrage Stories/Collecting Suffrage: Mrs Pankhurst’s portrait
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage, Suffrage Stories on August 13, 2012
In a previous post on Suffragette Jewellery I commented on the danger of assuming that any piece of jewellery that a dealer described as ‘suffragette’ had, in fact, anything to do with the suffragette movement. However it is still possible to discover items the provenance of which cannot be doubted.
Below is one such.
PENDANT – MRS PANKHURST – ICONIC PAINTED PORTRAIT MINIATURE -presented to Mary Leigh, leader of the WSPU Drum and Fife Band, devoted friend of Emily Wilding Davison, and ardent suffragette.
The image for this original painted miniature portrait of Mrs Pankhurst is derived from the photograph of her by the Kensington photographer, Martin Jacolette (see below). In it she is wearing a Holloway brooch, which dates the photograph to no earlier than April 1909. 
The portrait miniature is very pleasingly painted and, although no artist’s signature is visible, I did wonder if it might not be by one of the Brackenbury sisters (Georgiana’s much later portrait of Mrs Pankhurst is in the National Portrait Gallery). The portrait is set in a metal pendant, on the back of which is inscribed ‘Presented to Mrs Marie Leigh Drum Major by the N.W.S.P.U. Drum and Fife Band in memory of her courageous fight for woman’s freedom December 1909’.
In the autumn of 1909 Mary Leigh had been forcibly fed while serving sentences in Winson Green and Strangeways prisons and in December an action for damages was brought on her behalf by the WSPU against the Home Secretary. The WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, reported that, on 16 December 1909, ‘Ushered to the strains of “See the Conquering Hero Comes” , played by the WSPU Band, Mrs Leigh, the Drum Major received a royal welcome at St James’s Hall. Looking rather pale but as determined as ever, she delivered a stirring address.’ As Christabel Pankhurst, who was presiding, commented, ‘The Government did not know with whom they were dealing.’ The pendant was probably presented on this occasion.
The pendant, which has its original chain, has set around its edge three little stones – one white, one purple and one green. In this case the choice of stones clearly did have WSPU relevance. The pendant is in its original box – similar in material to that used for the hunger strike medals. Contemporary painted portraits of Mrs Pankhurst are exceedingly rare and with this particular provenance – unique. I have never seen another pendant like this, but wonder whether Mary Leigh was the only recipient of such an object. Might there be others waiting to be discovered?
Collecting Suffrage: The Hunger Strike Medal
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 11, 2012
One of the most iconic items to add to a suffrage collection is a WSPU hunger-strike medal.
These medals were first presented by the WSPU at a ceremony in early August 1909, given to women who had gone on hunger strike while serving a prison sentence handed down as punishment for an act of suffrage militancy.
The medals comprise a silver pin bar engraved ‘For Valour’, a hanging length of ribbon in the purple, white and green colours, and either a silver or a striped enamel bar, from which hangs a silver circle with the name of the presentee on one side and ‘Hunger striker’ on the other. If the ribbon terminates in a silver bar, this is engraved with a date denoting the day of the owner’s arrest. The enamelled purple, white and green bars are engraved on the reverse, for example sculptor Edith Downing’s medal that I once sold is engraved with ‘Fed by Force 1/3/12’. This was the date of her imprisonment that resulted in a hunger strike and forcible feeding.
The reverse side of the medal
Some medals, such as the one Emily Wilding Davison is wearing in my 6 August ‘Suffrage Stories’ post, carry more than one bar, indicating multiple hungerstrikes.
Each medal was presented in a purple box, with a green velvet lining. As can be seen in the photograph, a piece of white silk that originally went inside the lid was printed in gold with: ‘Presented to [name] by the Women’s Social and Political Union in recognition of a gallant action, whereby through endurance to the last extremity of hunger and hardship a great principle of political justice was vindicated’.
These medals were made by Toye, a well-known Clerkenwell firm, and cost the WSPU £1 each – the medals now sell for thousands of pounds. They were treasured by their recipients who , in their old age, still proudly wore them on suffrage occasions; they are treasured today by collectors who recognise the bravery of the women to whom they were awarded.
Grace Roe (right) and Leonora Cohen (centre)wearing their hunger strike medals in 1974
Collecting Suffrage: Punch cartoon: Ulysses and the Steam Sirens
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 10, 2012
ULYSSES AND THE STEAM SIRENS -full page from 8 July 1908 issue of Punch.
Asquith is tied to the Embankment as a tug bearing suffragettes with loudhailers and a ‘Votes for Women’ saild approaches. The reference is to the boat the WSPU used to announce to the House of Commons, from the river, their forthcoming Hyde Park demonstration.
Very good condition – £12 post free. NOW SOLD
To buy contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: first canvassing
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on August 9, 2012
Kate lived in Arundel Gardens, North Kensington
Another extract from Kate Parry Frye’s manuscript diary. These entries dates from the period two years before Campaigning for the Vote – the edited version of her diary published by Francis Boutle Publishers – begins. This episode marks the first time Kate is involved in active doorstep – or, at least, letterbox – campaigning. She was to do a great deal more of it over the next few years.
Gladys Wright was a university-educated young woman, a fellow Kensington resident, and already an active suffragist, working for the London NUWSS – non-militant – society.
‘The Grove’ was Westbourne Grove, the local shopping mecca, home of Whiteleys, the Universal Provider.
Kate preserved mementoes of Whiteley’s funeral
The Fryes were – or had been – very friendly with William Whiteley, who had been gunned down in his own store just two months earlier.
Monday 19 March 1907 [25 ArundelGardens, Notting Hill]
Up to breakfast and found a letter from Gladys Wright asking me to do some work with them for the Suffrage. A Motor Bus to Strakers in the Edgware Road where I bought 500 envelopes. Changed my things and wrote letters till dinner time – then after dinner started addressing my envelopes and did about half until 11.30 when I went to bed very tired.
Thursday March 19th 1907
Changed my dress after lunch then wrote some letters till tea time. Our At Home day but no visitors arrived. After tea I sat and finished directing my envelopes.
Thursday March 20th 1907
Up at 11.30. The notices had come for the envelopes so I filled Lansdowne Road and Lansdowne Crescent. Sent Agnes [her sister] out with them. I took out ArundelGardens and Powis Square – a most awful place – high flats – and Powis something else. After lunch Agnes and I went out again delivering – more Powis and Colvilles. Colville Mansions nearly killed us the stairs were awful. We got in about 4 o’clock feeling very tired.
Thursday March 21st 1907
Mother went to Committee [Liberal] meeting in the afternoon. Agnes and I went out at 3 o’clock and delivered the last two streets of the meeting notices – then went to the Grove and did a little shopping.
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.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Collecting Suffrage: Punch cartoon
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 8, 2012
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.’
In very good condition £10 plus £1 postage.
To buy contact: e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Collecting Suffrage: Punch cartoon
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 7, 2012
PUNCH CARTOOON – 2 December 1908 – a Bernard Partridge full-length illustration shows Asquith (Andromedus) chained to his rock – beset by the sea monster taunting him with her Votes for Women triton and searching for salvation from Persea – the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League.
In very good condition £12 post free
To buy: contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
[The Women and her Sphere logo is not, of course, on the original]
Suffragette postcards: When Women Vote: Washing Day
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 6, 2012
WHEN WOMEN VOTE
Father is in the kitchen bathing baby, while his wife and her friends sit in the parlour playing cards and eating chocolates – commenting ‘Yes, my old man is a lazy old wretch’.
And that’s what will happen when women have the vote.
The card was published by Mitchell & Watkins, who had been producing postcards – both topographical photographic and artist-drawn – from c 1906.
This card was posted – on 10 September 1907 – to Miss Ida Currell – who had been born in 1882 and was one of 4 surviving children of the 10 born to a Hertfordshire farmer and his wife. The Currells farm, at 2 Ware Road, Hertford, was called ‘The Chaplains’.
The card is in very good condition and is £45 post free.
To buy: contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Suffrage Stories: What else is in Emily Wilding Davison’s grave?
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on August 6, 2012
A while ago I acquired a small collection of items that had once belonged to Mrs Mary Leigh, the leader of the WSPU fife and drum band and close friend and life-long supporter of Emily Wilding Davison. Among these was a copy of Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road, published by the Arden Press, Letchworth (1912), containing a lengthy inscription by Mary Leigh on the free front endpaper.
From studying the handwriting I deduced that her comments had been made at two different times – probably decades apart. At the top of the page is an ink inscription ‘From E.W.D. 1912’.- which, I think, was not a presentation inscription from Emily Wilding Davison, but a note by Mary Leigh to commemorate the gift to her. The Emily Wilding Davison archive held by the Women’s Library contains another volume of Whitman’s verse, given by ‘Comrade Davison to Comrade Leigh’. Whitman was clearly a favourite, a poet who spoke to the women – eulogising their bond of close comradeship – and in The Song of the Road Mary Leigh, as in the Whitman in the Women’s Library, has annotated particular verses with some vehemence. The little book itself had clearly been well used; laid in the title-page fold of this copy was a pressed flower.
However it is another piece of information that Mary Leigh added to her endpaper writings that particularly interested me. She wrote: ‘I placed one [i.e. a book] like this from L C. Lytton in E.W.D.’s hand. ‘ In biro, at a later date, as though giving a fuller explanation, she has amplified these details – so that the whole now reads: ‘1913 June 14 in her coffin at Epsom Mortuary I placed one like this (Walt Whitman) from L C. Lytton (Lady Constance Lytton) in E.W.D’s hand open at the page she loved so well. I also placed her Hunger Strike Medals and the 8 Bars of Forcible Feeding also the Medal of Jeanne D’Arc to Fight on God will give the Victory’. 
‘Fight on God will give Victory’, Joan of Arc’s assurance, given at her trial, is the message emblazoned on the banner carried at Emily Wilding Davison’s funeral, both in London and then draping the grave in Morpeth.
Here is Emily Wilding Davison wearing her Hunger Strike Medal, with still, I think, four bars, each commemorating a hunger strike and consequent episode of forcible feeding. Further imprisonment lay in the future. It is interesting that Mary Leigh specifically writes of ‘Medals’ in the plural. As well as the Hunger Strike Medal, with its 8 bars, she may have been referring to the ‘Holloway’ badge, received for an earlier imprisonment, that Emily is wearing in the photograph. In addition, I suspect, but cannot be sure, that she may also have, pinned on her other lapel, a WSPU ‘Boadicea’ brooch.
However I have not yet been able to deconstruct Mary Leigh’s mention of the ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ Medal’. As far as I know there was no WSPU medal directly associated with Joan of Arc – although, 1912 having been the 500th anniversary of her death, she loomed large in the popular – particularly suffragette – imagination, Elsie Howey rode as ‘Joan of Arc’ in Emily Wilding Davison’s funeral procession. It may have been that EWD particularly treasured a medal – there were many issued – acquired in the quincentenary year.
Mary Leigh remained Emily Wilding Davison’s champion for the remainder of her life. Out of a meagre income she arranged each year for a Morpeth florist to supply an expensive bouquet of flowers and travelled north every June- even well into old age – to lay them at EWD’s grave in St Mary’s Churchyard. The rather pathetic correspondence concerning these arrangements may be read in the Mary Leigh Papers at the Women’s Library. The florist was a credit to her profession, entirely kind and helpful.
Little would Mary Leigh have expected – although she may well have approved (you can never be sure – she was a contrary character) – that into the 21st century EWD’s grave would have become a shrine – the plot now immaculately restored. So many myths have accrued to the memory of Emily Wilding Davison that it is something of a relief to be able to produce a piece of primary evidence, in the form of this copy of Song of the Road, that allows the visitor standing in front of the Morpeth obelisk to picture, with some assurance, the moment in the Epsom Mortuary as Mary Leigh laid in the open coffin Lady Constance Lytton’s copy of this small volume of verse, together with the hard-earned Hunger Strike Medal.
Suffragette Jewellery
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 4, 2012
One of my bêtes noires is the misnaming of any vaguely Edwardian piece of jewellery that comprises stones approximating to some shade of purple (or pink or red), white and green as ‘suffragette’. I have long ago ceased remonstrating with reputable auction houses – they should know better. Ebay, of which one cannot expect very much, is, of course, rife with a lack of historical awareness.
While such pieces may be decorative and even of some intrinsic value, I would be very sorry if anyone paid over the odds for a piece of such jewellery thinking that they were buying an association with the suffrage movement. There are plenty of unscrupulous or ignorant dealers who peddle such notions. I think the term ‘suffragette jewellery’ should be reserved for pieces that have a provenance associated with a suffrage society or an individual who either made or wore it with ‘suffrage’ intent.
Above is an example of what I mean – a ‘true’ piece of suffragette jewellery – a silver and enamel pendant, bearing the ‘Angel of Freedom’ device designed in 1908 by Sylvia Pankhurst. I bought – and sold it – some years ago – and have never found another. As second best to owning the real thing, I have ever since used the image on my trade cards.
I will tell the stories of some other pieces of ‘true’ suffragette jewellery in future ‘Collecting Suffrage’ posts.
Here and here are two articles that attempt to demistify the subject of ‘suffragette jewellery’. Or you can read the entry on ‘Jewllery and Badges’ in my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide.
Suffragette postcards: ‘Who said Votes for Women!!!’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 3, 2012
Very British Bulldog – with specs and a pipe – sits foursquare against a background of the Union Jack. It doesn’t look as though he would be interested in allowing women to vote.
The handwritten message on the reverse – from Will – begins ‘Dear Alf, I think the back of this card describers the question of the age.’ Good – posted from Cowes to Rotherhithe in February 1909.
In very good condition. £12 post free. [The ‘Woman and her Sphere’ logo does not, of course, appear on the original.]
To buy: contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: 14 March 1907
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on August 2, 2012
Kate is now being swept up into general suffrage enthusiasm – as a member of the NUWSS London society. The hostess of this meeting at 60 Onslow Gardens was Mariana (c 1853-1933), wife of Hylton Dale, a coke and coal merchant.. She was a University of London graduate, a member of the Fabian Society, author of Child Labour under Capitalism and active in many causes, such as the National Association of Women’s Lodging Houses, as well as the suffrage movement. As Kate mentions, one of the purposes of the meeting was to gather signatures for ‘Miss Black’s Declaration’. 
Clementina Black [left], journalist and author and, like Mrs Dale, always concerned for the working woman, had formed a Women’s Franchise Declaration Committee four months earlier, in November 1906, in one of the many, alas futile, attempts to disprove the statement that women did not really want the vote. It sent out forms to women engaged in business and the professions and at the time of Kate’s contribution the Committee had already gathered nearly 31,000 signatures – drawn particularly from the fields of education, social work, office work, trade, and art. Needless to say, the resulting Declaration, with its 257,000 signatures, was brushed aside by the government, as had so many other attempts to reason made by suffrage societies over the previous 40 years. It is little wonder that the call to militancy met with such success.
Of the speakers, Mrs Stanbury was a member of the Fabian Women’s Group and an organiser for NUWSS; Frances Sterling, another Kensington resident, was joint honorary secretary of the NUWSS.
Thursday March 14th 1907 [25 Arundel Gardens, North Kensington]
Changed my dress after lunch and soon after 3 o’clock Agnes and I walked to Notting Hill Gate and went by train to South Kensington and went to Mrs Hylton Dale’s house in Onslow Gardens to a Woman’s Suffrage Meeting. Alexandra and Gladys Wright were to have done all the work of getting it up and asked us to act as Stewards. So we had to get there punctually at 3.45 to receive instructions, leave our coats, put on badges etc and get some tea. Tea was at 4 o’clock, the meeting at 4.30. Such a lovely house, a beautiful tea – everything so nice – and a glorious room upstairs for the meeting and it was packed. One of the doors had to be taken out and the people sat up and down the stairs and crowded the landings. Such a rich, fashionable, beautifully-dressed audience for the most part. I was busy getting signatures before the meeting began and after it was over and Gladys and I collected. It really didn’t seem to matter asking those rich people to give. We collected £3 3s and got signatures to Miss Black’s Declaration. They want a million names to it. At present there are only about the first hundred thousand. It was a most interesting meeting – such an unusual class of people and I loved working. A Mrs Stanbury was in the Chair. She was fine. Miss Clementina Black, Miss Sterling and Mr Walter McLaren MP were amongst the speakers and the questions asked and answered afterwards were most amusing. One girl I was very taken with – she really did look beautiful and her sister was most fascinating – I got them to sign and found the one was Lilias Waldegrave the actress. Agnes and I didn’t realise how tired we were till we came away – we had been standing all the time and getting so excited. We were not in till after 7 o’clock.
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
NOW, ALAS, OUT OF PRINT
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Suffragette postcards: What Women Want
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on July 31, 2012
‘WHEN WOMEN VOTE It won’t be lawful for a man to remain single’. All the men are being rushed into marriage – tweaked by the nose and carried under the arms of women – and all because they have a vote!
The card was published by Mitchell & Watkins, who had been producing postcards – both topographical photographic and artist-drawn – from c 1906.
This card was posted – in, I think, 1913 (the postmark is obscured) – to Miss Ida Currell – who had been born in 1882 and was one of 4 surviving children of the 10 born to a Hertfordshire farmer and his wife. The Currells farm, at 2 Ware Road, Hertford, was called ‘The Chaplains’.
The card is in very good condition and is £45 post free.
To buy: email e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Suffragette postcards: real photographic portrait
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on July 28, 2012
Here is an example of a real photographic postcard issued by a suffrage society – in this case by the Women’s Freedom League. Its subject is Mrs Lilian Hicks (1853-1924) who, with her daughter, Amy, was at that time of its publication a leading member of the WFL – as well as a supporter of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage, the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage and the Tax Resistance League. Both mother and daughter, by then members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, heeded the call to boycott the 1911 census.
The Hicks’ association with a wide range of suffrage societies, of which I had written a few years earlier in their joint entry in my Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, was made manifest in the magnificent collection of badges and awards – including a hunger-strike medal – that many years ago I acquired from a woman to whom they had been indirectly bequeathed. They are now held in a private collection.
Lilian and Amy Hicks lived here, at 33 Downside Crescent, Hampstead. At the other end of the street was the home – probably the rather unhappy home – of Margaret Wynne Nevinson, a fellow member of the Women’s Freedom League. I realised that a bond of friendship existed between the two women when, all those years ago, I recognised – hanging on the wall of the sitting-room in the small cottage of the woman from whom I was buying the collection of Hicks’ memorabilia – a large painting by Margaret’s son, C.R. Nevinson. It was in the guise of ‘the mother of the Futurists’ that Margaret went when she attended a dinner given by the Women Writers’ Suffrage League at the Hotel Cecil on 29 June 1914. Unfortunately there is no record of the form of dress that this witty allusion took.
The photograph of Mrs Hicks on this official Women’s Freedom League postcard was taken by Lena Connell and probably issued around 1909/10.
Mrs Lilian Hicks was a member of the Women’s Freedom League
Suffragette postcards: suffragettes and policemen 3
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on July 27, 2012
Another in this week’s theme of ‘suffragettes and policemen’.
Two burly policeman are playing games with tiny (elegant, for a change) suffragette. Waving the tools of her trade – a hammer and flags, she is held aloft by one who looks as though he intends to lob her over to the other, who is waiting with outstretched arms. A ‘Votes for Women’ placard lies on the ground between them. Published by Inter-Art Co., Red Lion Sq, London WC. Good – slightly rubbed at edges – posted in 1913. £35 post free.
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: 3 December 1906
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on July 26, 2012
Kate’s family had always taken an interest in politics; her father had been Liberal MP for North Kensington in the 1890s and into the 20th century her mother was the president of the North Kensington Women’s Liberal Association. However, the meeting described below is the first occasion that Kate mentions in her diary her attendance at a specifically ‘suffrage’ meeting and of the disturbances that had been caused by the WSPU’s ‘rowdy attacks’.
Monday 3 December 1906
At 8 o’clock [evening] Agnes [Kate’s elder sister] and I went off to KensingtonTown Hall to a Woman’s Suffrage meeting – got up by the Central Society. Lady Frances Balfour was presiding. We went by bus – when we got there the large hall was packed. Alexandra Wright was at the top of the stairs and directed us up to the overflow meeting and that was packed too. After a bit the speakers came in to us – the Hon Mrs Bertrand Russell, Miss Gore Booth, Lady Frances Balfour and Mr Cameron Corbett M.P. I heard excellent speeches all of them – they really did put the case in a nutshell and were most instructive and interesting.
Then Gladys Wright came and fetched me out and came and asked me to act as a Steward and collect – then later she went in for Agnes – and we both did what we could. We collected in the Gallery first – then later I was stationed to get the people as they came out. It was very amusing really – and I got so hot and excited – off my head with it – we certainly are in the thick of things always. Some of the people gave a lot – others shook their heads and frowned. One man said I wanted too much – to marry as well as a Vote. I had quite a flirtation on the stairs with a big smart young man – who stopped to ask me a question – he didn’t seem to know anything about anything and when he said the speaker had referred to Earl Percy as ‘half asleep’ – I said ‘That is true about a great many people’ – he did laugh.
I am afraid I felt I was more like a helper at a Bazaar than at so grave a thing as a Woman’s Suffrage Meeting – but then it is so hard for me to be serious about anything – but I am in earnest – I really do feel a great belief in the need of the Vote for Women if only as a means of Education. I feel my prayer for Women in the words of George Meredith ‘More brains, Oh Lord, more brains.’ But we are coming along and not slowly by any means. Of course all these rowdy attacks on the Ministers and these imprisonments have sounded coarse and unpleasant and the jokery made of it most bad for the cause – but women have waited patiently for so long the sort of women who have gone for the matter in this rowdy method are not the best educated or most refined amongst our members.
At this meeting every thing passed off in a most orderly dignified spirit – and the speeches from the women were delightful and must have come as a revelation to many of the audience. There was a declaration there for any working woman there who cared to sign – a number did – I did – as I have a profession [Kate was a rather unsuccessful actress]. Naturally they don’t want crowds of names without any meaning or strength in them. We came home after hearing the amount collected nearly £20 – about the cost of getting up a meeting – the reason for the collection. Bus to Notting Hill – got in soon after 10.30 – in a frenzy of excitement.
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 – elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops – and Amazon.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Woman and her Sphere 
