Posts Tagged women’s history

Suffrage Stories: The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal – Solved

Nurse Pine’s Medal ‘For Duty’ sold at auction on 26 April 2024

Very nearly 8 years ago – on 26 May 2016 – I published a post titled The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal. I knew that Nurse Catherine Pine, who had for many years attended Emmeline Pankhurst, had been given a medal by the Women’s Social and Political Union and I knew that she had bequeathed it to a now defunct nursing organisation but, as my post makes clear, I didn’t know what the medal looked like or what had happened to it.

Most satisfactorily, the mystery is now solved. The medal, resplendent with its bars, was given to Nurse Pine ‘For Duty’ (rather than ‘For Valour’, as denoted on the Hunger-Strike Medals). She did indeed leave it in her will to the ‘History Section’ of the British College of Nursing, who had it in their possession until the BCN, a charity, dissolved in chaos in 1956. It would seem that the contents of the ‘History Section’, along with the furniture and fittings of the BCN building, were sold off to any member interested – perhaps at a valuation set by Harrods, who had been appointed as valuers.

The medal resurfaced in 1990 when put up for sale at Sothebys, where it failed to sell, reappearing at a specialist medal sale in 2008 when it was bought by an American dealer. He sold it to an American collector of suffrage memorabilia, who has since died and whose collection was auctioned yesterday in Dallas, Texas, by Heritage Auctions.

I have known since the beginning of this year that the medal was coming up for sale and tried to interest various institutions in this country, but none had sufficient funds to consider acquiring it. However, for the last couple or so years I have been in touch with a US academic, Hope Elizabeth May, who has taken a legal, philosophical, and personal interest in the fate of Nurse Pine’s medal. She and I recorded a podcast about Nurse Pine and her medal a few days ago – on 21 April. You can listen to it here:

I am pleased to say that Hope Elizabeth May is now the ‘steward’, as she rather delightfully terms it, of Nurse Pine’s medal. She has interesting plans to use it for educational purposes, not only to promote interest in suffrage history but also to discuss philosophical questions about autonomy and its implications for estate law.  I think we can be assured that the intention behind Nurse Pine’s bequest to the BCN will now be honoured.

Since being able to view the medal so clearly (thanks to the auctioneer’s image) I researched the dates on all the bars and established (thanks to the information contained in the entry on Emmeline Pankhurst in my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, in which I had carefully noted from the Home Office papers the precise dates on which she was released from prison) that all except the first represented a date in which Nurse Pine had taken over the care of Mrs Pankhurst. Hope Elizabeth May suggested, and I am sure she is correct, that the first bar – engraved ’25 March 1913′ – refers to care taken of Sylvia Pankhurst, who was released from Holloway on 21 March after being forcibly fed for several weeks while on hunger-and thirst-strike.

For an article about Nurse Pine, written in the centenary year of 2018, see the City University’s City Magazine Although the nature of the medal was still then unknown to the writer – and to me – it does tell something of the life of Nurse Catherine Pine.

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.

, , , , , , ,

2 Comments

Mariana Starke and the Demon Duke: your opinion requested

What can anyone truly know of another’s life?

Was it only as the author of the leading guidebook to Europe that redoubtable Mariana Starke (1762-1838) was known to those in high places?

Might her specialised knowledge not have been allied to courage, skill, and ingenuity?

Might she not, in 1828, have unmasked the infamy of a royal duke?

And by doing so determined the complicated fates of crowns and states?

Subscribers to this website will recognise my interest and affection for Mariana Starke, ‘the celebrated traveller’. She was the author of Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent that went through a number of editions in the first three decades of the 19th century. I have researched her early life – and those of her ancestors – in detail and posted a number of articles on this website. I did consider attempting a biography, but reluctantly concluded that there was insufficient primary material covering her later years. I may well be mistaken but, instead, I have had a good deal of amusement in imagining a life for her.

The minutiae of the information she imparted inspired from me an adventure that begins when we encounter Mariana in Rome in January 1828. A malevolent figure, ‘the Demon Duke’, is orchestrating turbulence in Britain and in Hanover. But in Rome events transpire to convince Mariana that she has proof of his infamy. Can she succeed in delivering it? Can she outwit and outrun his proxies?

From Rome we accompany Mariana – and others – on journeys by land and sea, north through Italy and France to a London denouement. We live the roads on which they travel, the cities, towns, villages, and ports through which they pass, the barges, carts, ships, carriages in which they are conveyed, the inns in which they stay, and the food that they eat. Dangers lurk. Of course they do.

The whole is woven around real historical figures and real historical facts. You will know the genre.

My question is, if anyone is sufficiently motivated to venture an opinion,

Should I publish, that is, self-publish, Mariana Starke and the Demon Duke?

, , , , , ,

5 Comments

Books and Ephemera By and About Women: Catalogue 211

Woman and her Sphere

Catalogue 211

Elizabeth Crawford

elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com

See #86

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

Index to Catalogue

Suffrage Non-fiction: Items 1-13

Suffrage Biography: Items 14-20

Suffrage Fiction: Items 21-22

Suffrage Ephemera: Items 23-100

Suffrage Postcards: Real Photographic: Items 101-140

Suffrage Artists’ Card: Item 141

Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic: Item 142

General Non-fiction: Items 143-284

General Biography: Items 285-363

General Ephemera: Items 364-401

General Postcards: Items 402-409

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

General Fiction: 418-439

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

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

Women and the First World War: Fiction 464-468

Women and the First World War: Ephemera 469-471

Suffrage Non-fiction

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

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

[15444]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[15447]                                                                                                                          £4

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

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

[15466]                                                                                                                        £20

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

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

[1361]                                                                                                                         £20

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

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

[15426]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15465]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15482]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

[1592]                                                                                                                           £3

9.         REID, Marion A Plea for Woman   Polygon 1988

First published in 1843. Paper covers – fine

[4001]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Good in d/w – though ex-library

[4552]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[15527]                                                                                                                        SOLD

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

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

[15505]                                                                                                                        £95

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

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

[15446]                                                                                                                        £10

Suffrage Biography

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

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

[15443]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[15424]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Paper covers – very good

[1153]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[1205]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[14974]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

[11623]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[15066]                                                                                                                          £8

Suffrage Fiction

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

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

[15065]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[14132]                                                                                                                          £4

Suffrage Ephemera

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

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

[15494]                                                                                                                      £350

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

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

[15540]                                                                                                                        £65

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

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

[15532]                                                                                                                        £85

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

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

[15526]                                                                                                                        £55

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

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

[15535]                                                                                                                        £65

28.       CAZALET, Thelma Mrs Pankhurst    

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

[14454]                                                                                                                        £20

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

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

[15496]                                                                                                                        £95

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

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

[15486]                                                                                                                        £90

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

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

[15542]                                                                                                                        £85

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

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

[15546]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

[15463]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[15521]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15537]                                                                                                                        £65

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

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

[15533]                                                                                                                        £85

37.       INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE CONGRESS      

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

[14505]                                                                                                                        £85

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

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

[15543]                                                                                                                        £85

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

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

[13192]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[15538]                                                                                                                        SOLD

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

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

[15492]                                                                                                                      £120

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

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

[15530]                                                                                                                        £65

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

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

[15528]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

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

[15524]                                                                                                                    SOLD               

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

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

[14554]                                                                                                                      £120

46.       MISS EMILY FAITHFULL      

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

[14029]                                                                                                                        £40

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

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

[13833]                                                                                                                          £5

48.       MRS DESPARD      

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

[15159]                                                                                                                      £120

Item # 49

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

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

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

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

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

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

[15472]                                                                                                                      £500

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

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

[15495]                                                                                                                      £120

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

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

All 4 items  are in very good condition – together

[15550]                                                                                                                      £250

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

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

[15475]                                                                                                                      £200

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

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

[15487]                                                                                                                      £150

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

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

[15541]£85

Inside page of #55

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

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

[15503]                                                                                                                      £600

56.       PANKO      

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

[15412]                                                                                                                   SOLD

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

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

[15497]                                                                                                                      £200

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

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

[15459]                                                                                                                        £35

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

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

[15467]   

                                                                                                                     £12

This is what a Suffragist looks like

#60

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

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

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

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

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

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

[15409]                                                                                                                   £1,200

#61

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

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

[15473]                                                                                                                      £350

62.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14323]                                                                                                                        £12

63.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14324]                                                                                                                        £12

64.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14333]                                                                                                                        £12

65.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14334]                                                                                                                        £12

66.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14335]                                                                                                                        £12

67.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14343]                                                                                                                        £10

68.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14344]                                                                                                                        £10

69.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14345]                                                                                                                        £10

70.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14347]                                                                                                                        £10

71.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14349]                                                                                                                        £12

72.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14350]                                                                                                                        £12

73.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14351]                                                                                                                        £10

74.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14352]                                                                                                                          £8

75.       PUNCH CARTOON      

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

[14354]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15006]                                                                                                                      £100

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

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

[15529]                                                                                                                        £65

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

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

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

[15477]                                                                                                                      £150

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

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

[15336]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15547]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

[15525]                                                                                                                        £85

82.       SOUVENIR WOMEN’S THEATRE INAUGURAL WEEK      

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

[15531]                                                                                                                      £230

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

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

[15545]                                                                                                                        £85

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

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

[15488]                                                                                                                      £150

#85

85.       SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN      

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

[15058]                                                                                                                      £450

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

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

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

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

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

[15518]                                                                                                                   £1,500

# 87

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

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

[15500]                                                                                                                      £600

88.       THE CONCILIATION BILL EXPLAINED      

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

[15036]                                                                                                                      £120

89.       THE FIGHTING SEX      

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

[14074]                                                                                                                          £5

90.       ‘THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN’      

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

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

[13690]                                                                                                                      £160

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

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

[15534]                                                                                                                        £50

Inside # 92

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

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

Bound volumes of The Vote are very scarce

[15517]                                                                                                                      £950

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

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

[15325]                                                                                                                      £350

# 93A

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

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

[15513]                                                                                                            £550                                                                                                                                                                                   

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

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

[15539]                                                                                                                        £95

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

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

[15329]                                                                                                                   SOLD

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

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

[15330]                                                                                                                      £600

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

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

[15321]                                                                                                                      £400

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

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

[15317]                                                                                                                      £150

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

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

[15491]                                                                                                                         £80

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

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

[15405]                                                                                                                        £90

Suffrage Real Photographic Postcards

101.     ANNIE KENNEY      

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

[15109]                                                                                                                      £120

102.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

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

[13616]                                                                                                                        £45

103.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

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

[15111]                                                                                                                        £20

104.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

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

[15153]                                                                                                                      £120

105.     CHRISTABEL PANKHURST      

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

[15175]                                                                                                                        £25

106.     DR THEKLA HULTIN      

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

[15123]                                                                                                                      £120

107.     EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE      

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

[14571]                                                                                                                        £25

108.     EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE      

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

[14574]                                                                                                                        £25

109.     LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON      

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

[14603]                                                                                                                        SOLD

110.     MISS CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, LLB      

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

[14599]                                                                                                                        £25

111.     MISS CICELY HAMILTON      

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

[14600]                                                                                                                        £65

112.     MISS CICELY HAMILTON      

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

[14633]                                                                                                                        £45

113.     MISS GLADICE KEEVIL      

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

[14918]                                                                                                                      £120

114.     MISS MARGUERITE SIDLEY      

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

[14643]                                                                                                                        £65

115.     MISS SARAH BENETT      

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

[14631]                                                                                                                        £65

116.     MRS AMY SANDERSON      

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

[14636]                                                                                                                        £65

117.     MRS BORRMANN WELLS    WFL 

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

[15004]                                                                                                                      £120

118.     MRS BORRMANN WELLS    WFL 

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

[15005]                                                                                                                      £120

119.     MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD      

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

[14580]                                                                                                                        £25

120.     MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD      

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

[14591]                                                                                                                        £25

121.     MRS COBDEN SANDERSON    WFL 

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

[14942]                                                                                                                      £120

122.     MRS COBDEN SANDERSON    WFL 

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

[14965]                                                                                                                      £120

123.     MRS DESPARD      

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

[14569]                                                                                                                        £25

124.     MRS DESPARD      

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

[14592]                                                                                                                        £25

125.     MRS DESPARD      

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

[14616]                                                                                                                        £25

126.     MRS E. HOW-MARTYN      

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

[14609]                                                                                                                        £65

127.     MRS EDITH HOW-MARTYN      

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

[14594]                                                                                                                        £65

128.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

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

[14534]                                                                                                                      £100

129.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

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

[14640]                                                                                                                        £45

130.     MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST      

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

[15152]                                                                                                                      £120

131.     MRS HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D.      

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

[15127]                                                                                                                        £60

132.     MRS LILIAN M. HICKS      

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

[14533]                                                                                                                        £35

133.     MRS MASSY      

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

[15189]                                                                                                                      £140

134.     MRS PANKHURST      

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

[14536]                                                                                                                        £40

135.     MRS PANKHURST      

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

[15138]                                                                                                                        £55

136.     MRS PANKHURST      

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

[15346]                                                                                                                      £180

137.     MRS T BILLINGTON-GREIG    WFL 

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

[14573]                                                                                                                        £65

138.     MRS WOLSTENHOLME ELMY      

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

[14283]                                                                                                                      £100

139.     REV R.J CAMPBELL      

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

[14652]                                                                                                                        £65

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

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

[15354]                                                                                                                         £65

Suffrage Artist Postcard

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

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

[15150]                                                                                                                      £150

Suffrage Postcard: Commercial Comic

142.     THEM PESKY SUFFRAGETTES WANTS EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES      

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

[14000]                                                                                                                        £20

General Non-Fiction

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

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

[8230]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Paper covers – mint

[5226]                                                                                                                           £5

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

Fine in d/w

[10512]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[9010]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Paper covers – very good

[5164]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[10963]                                                                                                                        £20

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

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

[9504]                                                                                                                           £9

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

Soft covers – fine. Heavy

[9986]                                                                                                                         £12

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

Very good

[13467]                                                                                                                          £4

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

Fine

[9208]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[15454]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[11769]                                                                                                                        £12

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

An interesting collection of essays, Soft covers – mint

[11668]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

[9035]                                                                                                                         £48

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

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

[15418]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[13693]                                                                                                                        £35

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

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

[15213]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Soft covers – mint

[11549]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[15423]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[11034]                                                                                                                        £24

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

Soft covers – mint

[9353]                                                                                                                         £12

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

Fine in d/w

[9679]                                                                                                                         £18

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

Very good internally – slightly marked cover

[9606]                                                                                                                         £15

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

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

[8076]                                                                                                                         £50

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

Widely researched and beautifully illustrated. Fine in d/w

[14420]                                                                                                                        £55

168.     CAVENDISH, Ruth Women on the Line   Routledge 1982

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

[10001]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Soft covers – mint

[8707]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Fine in fine d/w

[9241]                                                                                                                         £20

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

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

[10288]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[9736]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Fine in fine d/w

[12463]                                                                                                                          £7

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

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

[12419]                                                                                                                        £25

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

Soft covers – good internally – covers rubbed and bumped

[8311]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[15386]                                                                                                                        £25

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

Good

[2558]                                                                                                                         £15

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

Soft covers – fine

[8704]                                                                                                                           £8

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

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

[15440]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Soft covers – fine

[11865]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Mint

[11667]                                                                                                                        £25

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

Fine in fine d/w

[9600]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[10562]                                                                                                                          £5

184.     DURHAM, Edith High Albania   Virago 1985

First published in 1909. Soft covers – very good

[10802]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Paper covers – mint

[15209]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

Good in original decorative cloth

[11234]                                                                                                                        £48

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

Paper covers – fine

[15049]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[8026]                                                                                                                         £25

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

Very good in d/w

[9006]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[7435]                                                                                                                         £28

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

Fine in d/w

[8887]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[9391]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[9974]                                                                                                                           £6

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

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

[13478]                                                                                                                        £45

195.     GARRETT, Stephanie Gender   Tavistock 1987

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

[8759]                                                                                                                           £3

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

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

[2779]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[11532]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[10297]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Very good in d/w

[15434]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[8709]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Soft covers – very good

[9135]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Soft covers – very good

[10519]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[3020]                                                                                                                         £30

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

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

[1311]                                                                                                                           £5

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

Very good – scarce

[9243]                                                                                                                         £45

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

Mint in d/w

[10183]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[15456]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Fine in fine d/w

[9537]                                                                                                                         £15

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

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

[9604]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[15455]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[10511]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[12107]                                                                                                                        £25

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

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

[11037]                                                                                                                        £18

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

Soft covers – very good

[11759]                                                                                                                        £12

215.     KING, Brenda Silk and Empire   Manchester University Press 

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

[9845]                                                                                                                         £25

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

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

[10954]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[13436]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[7441]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[10872]                                                                                                                          £6

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

Fine in d/w

[8310]                                                                                                                         £16

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

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

[7995]                                                                                                                         £35

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

Paper covers – mint

[5219]                                                                                                                          £10

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

Mint in d/w

[14429]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

[15450]                                                                                                                        £20

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

Fine in d/w

[1819]                                                                                                                           £4

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

Soft covers – fine

[11624]                                                                                                                        £22

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

Mint (pub price £65)

[10781]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Fine in d/w

[10599]                                                                                                                        £14

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

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

[13479]                                                                                                                        £25

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

Very good in d/w

[3801]                                                                                                                         £12

231.     MILLER, Lucasta The Bronte Myth   Cape 2001

Hardcover – fine –  in very good d/w

[15216]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Mint in d/w – heavy

[9987]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[10964]                                                                                                                        £15

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

A study of the Secular movement in Victorian England. Fine

[7447]                                                                                                                         £18

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

Paper covers – mint

[5281]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[9612]                                                                                                                         £15

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

Soft covers – fine

[9092]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[13423]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[13432]                                                                                                                        £20

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

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

[11572]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Soft covers – very good

[9021]                                                                                                                           £6

242.     PERKIN, Joan Victorian Women   John Murray 

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

[4254]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Good in card covers – though ex-library

[13124]                                                                                                                        £10

244.     PICHLER, Pia Talking Young Femininities   Palgrave 2009

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

[11525]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Mint

[10188]                                                                                                                        £18

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

Hardcovers – mint

[15176]                                                                                                                        £20

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

Soft covers – very good – 575pp

[9007]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Soft covers – mint

[9395]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[13413]                                                                                                                        £32

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

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

[15419]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[7577]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Soft covers – fine

[11866]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[15451]                                                                                                                          £3

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

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

[2465]                                                                                                                           £8

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

Very good in chipped d/w

[1834]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Very good in d/w

[15431]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Soft covers – very good

[15212]                                                                                                                          £4

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

Soft covers – fine

[8708]                                                                                                                           £8

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

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

[10955]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Paper covers – mint

[5302]                                                                                                                           £5

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

A collection of essays. Fine in d/w

[3501]                                                                                                                         £28

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

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

[8588]                                                                                                                         £18

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

Soft covers – very good

[9430]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[9327]                                                                                                                         £12

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

Soft covers – mint

[8711]                                                                                                                           £4

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

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

[13420]                                                                                                                          £8

267.     SMITH, Joan Misogynies   Faber 1990

Reprint, paper covers – mint

[15064]                                                                                                                          £4

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

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

[10484]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Paper covers – fine

[15210]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Pioneering research on sexism in education.  Paper covers – mint

[1667]                                                                                                                           £2

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

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

[8231]                                                                                                                         £12

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

Very good in d/w

[9003]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[15432]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[1699]                                                                                                                         £15

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

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

[15457]                                                                                                                          £3

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

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

[8090]                                                                                                                         £11

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

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

[13417]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Soft covers – very good

[11223]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[2388]                                                                                                                         £25

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

Soft covers – mint

[5897]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[11065]                                                                                                                        £25

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

Paper covers – mint

[5276]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[2312]                                                                                                                           £0

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

Paper covers – very good

[14940]                                                                                                                          £4

General Biography

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

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

[15283]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[11995]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[11044]                                                                                                                        £45

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

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

[15290]                                                                                                                        £38

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

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

[8552]                                                                                                                         £15

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

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

[1043]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[8886]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[15068]                                                                                                                          £3

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

Good

[11045]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Excellent biography. Soft covers – fine

[10918]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[13199]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[15257]                                                                                                                        £55

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

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

[12030]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Fine in d/w

[9345]                                                                                                                         £15

299.     CLAYTON, Ellen English Female Artists   Tinsley Brothers 1876

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

[15078]                                                                                                                        £50

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

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

[5413]                                                                                                                           £5

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

Soft covers – 536pp – fine

[12408]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w

[11963]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[15207]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[9339]                                                                                                                         £28

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

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

[8520]                                                                                                                         £38

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

Soft covers – 496pp – mint

[15072]                                                                                                                        £16

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

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

[12432]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[8409]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[15091]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[15266]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[6083]                                                                                                                         £30

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

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

[11054]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

[12594]                                                                                                                        £75

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

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

[15253]                                                                                                                        £20

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

Very good in d/w

[15252]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Hardcover – fine in fine d/w

[11892]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Good

[12070]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Very good internally – cover marked

[12451]                                                                                                                        £20

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

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

[13170]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w

[12012]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[15452]                                                                                                                        £30

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

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

[15413]                                                                                                                          £6

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

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

[6071]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[14222]                                                                                                                        £10

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

Very good  – scarce

[11033]                                                                                                                        £15

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

Biography of the intrepid Lady Mary. Good

[8548]                                                                                                                           £9

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

Fine in very good d/w -424pp – heavy

[12426]                                                                                                                        £15

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

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

[13675]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

[11112]                                                                                                                        £45

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

Very good

[3537]                                                                                                                           £8

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

A sharp memoir. Paperback – fine

[15208]                                                                                                                          £3

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

Soft covers – fine – 741pp – heavy

[12421]                                                                                                                        £10

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

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

[11981]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[5444]                                                                                                                           £5

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

Fine in fine d/w

[12020]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[9338]                                                                                                                         £40

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

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

[15433]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Very good in d/w

[13200]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[4276]                                                                                                                           £4

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

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

[2667]                                                                                                                         £12

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

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

[10642]                                                                                                                          £3

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

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

[10643]                                                                                                                          £3

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

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

[9824]                                                                                                                           £8

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

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

[15071]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[15074]                                                                                                                        £12

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

Soft covers – fine

[11950]                                                                                                                          £6

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

Soft covers – fine

[11891]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Soft covers – fine

[11991]                                                                                                                          £9

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

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

[13335]                                                                                                                        £38

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

Biography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15089]                                                                                                                          £8

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

Fine in d/w

[9675]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[15414]                                                                                                                          £5

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

Autobiography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint

[15093]                                                                                                                          £4

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

Very good in rubbed d/w

[9324]                                                                                                                         £10

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

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

[9599]                                                                                                                         £28

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

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

[12024]                                                                                                                          £4

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

Mint in d/w

[6509]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Lavishly illustrated. Mint in d/w

[6510]                                                                                                                         £10

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

Very good

[1754]                                                                                                                         £15

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

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

[4013]                                                                                                                           £5

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

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

[6081]                                                                                                                         £18

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

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

[9609]                                                                                                                         £35

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

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

[15077]                                                                                                                        £35

General Ephemera

364.     The Home Friend (New Series)   SPCK 1854

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

[8313]                                                                                                                         £45

365.     VICTORIA LEAGUE – BATH BRANCH – AWARD OF MERIT    

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

[13771]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[14163]                                                                                                                          £5

367.     AUTOGRAPHS – THE GUILDHOUSE      

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

[13061]                                                                                                                        £45

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

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

[9158]                                                                                                                         £18

369.     BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION      

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

[8762]                                                                                                                           £3

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

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

[15519]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[9244]                                                                                                                         £28

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

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

[14100]                                                                                                                        £14

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

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

[14099]                                                                                                                        £12

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

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

[14993]                                                                                                                          £4

375.     CITIZEN HOUSE, CHANDOS BUILDINGS, BATH      

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

[14978]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

[14524]                                                                                                                        £18

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

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

Photograph – in very good condition

[15523]                                                                                                                   SOLD

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

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

[14995]                                                                                                                          £4

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

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

[14999]                                                                                                                          £2

380.     EVERYWOMAN      

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

1991 July/Aug

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

In good condition. Each

[14923]                                                                                                                          £8

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

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

[14979]                                                                                                                        £25

382.     GIRLS’ FRIENDLY SOCIETY KALENDAR 1908      

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

[15520]                                                                                                                          £5

383.     HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS BOLTON      

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

[14898]                                                                                                                        £25

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

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

[14996]                                                                                                                          £5

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

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

[14987]                                                                                                                          £8

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

‘An appeal to the ladies and gentlemen of every class in the county to aid in the formation and management of evening schools adapted to local industrial conditions.’ Mr Mellors was an alderman on Nottinghamshire County Council. 20-pp pamphlet – good – ex-Board of Education library

[13024]                                                                                                                          £4

387.     MINISTRY OF RECONSTRUCTION Report of the Women’s Advisory Committee on the Domestic Service Problem together with reports by sub-committees on training, Machinery of distribution, organisation and conditions  HMSO 1919

Among those involved in the committee were Margaret Tuke, Winifred Mercier, Clementina Black, Katherine Furse, Mrs C.S. Peel, and the Marchioness of Londonderry. The recommendations cover training, contract of service, scale of wages, employment exchanges and registry offices.  Probably missing blue paper covers, otherwise very good -36pp

[14994]                                                                                                                        £20

388.     NATIONAL BOARD FOR PRICES AND INCOMES The Pay and Conditions of Service of Workers in the Laundry and Dry Cleaning Industry   HMSO 1971

A 100-page report. Good – ex-library

[14424]                                                                                                                          £2

389.     PAOLO AND FRANCESCA      

programme for the production of ‘Paola and Francesca’ by Stephen Phillips staged by George Alexander at the St James’s Theatre in March 1902. The cast included Elizabeth Robins, Henry Ainley, Lilian Braithwaite and Evelyn Millard. The programme conmprises, as well as the cast list, a long history of the story of Paola and Francesca, notes on the costumes, the scenery, and the music. Good condition

[14423]                                                                                                                          £5

390.     PICTURE POST      

Issue for 13 May 1939 -includes 5pp on ‘The Call for Women’ -‘If war should come, the women who live in big cities or in vulnerable districts will be in the first line of defence.’ – full of photographs. Very good

[2325]                                                                                                                           £5

391.     RECHABITES TEMPERANCE FRIENDLY SOCIETY A JUVENILE TEMPERANCE MEETING    

Handbill for ‘A Juvenile Temperance Meeting’ to be held in the Congregational Schoolroom at Little Waltham, Essex, at which ‘Miss Hitch, D.S.J.R. will speak on The Bantam Battalion of the Temperance Army’. The current website for Little Waltham United Reformed Church mentions that there had apparently been a problem with ‘Drink’ in the village in the mid-19th century, which had led to a keen concentration on ‘Temperance’. Miss Hitch was probably Annie Emily Hitch (1881-1957), the elder daughter of George Hicks, a Writtle farmer. Her uncle had, for a time, been a Congregational missionary in Madagascar. Newspaper reports show that she was for many years involved with the youth section of the Rechabites in Essex.and in the 1939 Register was described as ‘Clerk to a Friendly Society’ – presumably the Rechabites. In very good condition – the portal to a vanished world

[15522]                                                                                                                        £20

392.     REFORMATORIES AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (COMMITTALS) Returns showing the comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools   April 1872

‘Shows comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools in 1870, with the number of cases in which the parents have been charged with such payment towards their children’s cost at such schools as may be considered equal to the expense they are saved by so throwing their children on public support, together with a comparative statement of the number of cases in which such charge has been adjudged, with that of the charges actually recovered and regularly paid.’ Raw facts. 4 foolscap pp – disbound

[9150]                                                                                                                         £28

393.     REPORT OF THE STREET OFFENCES COMMITTEE    HMSO 1928

The Committee included Margery Fry. Good – 50pp – withdrawn from the Women’s Library

[14380]                                                                                                                          £5

394.     ROSS, Alan The London Magazine, March 1970    

Special Short Story Issue. Contains essays on short-story writing by Brian Glanville, Elizabeth Taylor and William Trevor. Soft covers – good

[7308]                                                                                                                           £5

395.     SENIOR, Mrs Nassau Pauper Schools   HMSO 1875

‘Copy ”of a Letter addressed to the President of the Local Government Board by Mrs Nassau Senior, lately an Inspector of the Board, being a reply to the observation of Mr Tufnell, also a former inspector upon her report on pauper schools’. This was a follow-up to Mrs Senior’s 1874 report.

24pp – large format – disbound.

[10457]                                                                                                                        £28

396.     SOCIAL SCIENCE DEPARTMENT LSE Woman, Wife and Worker   HMSO 1960

In the ‘Problems in Industry’ series, no 10, published by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. ‘In recent years the subject of married women’s employment has been the theme of many heated arguments.’ Paper covers – fine

[14425]                                                                                                                          £5

397.     THE SPECTATOR AUGUST 6 1836      

Includes a report of a wife offered for sale at ‘the new Islington cattle market’. She fetched 26s.

[14067]                                                                                                                        £20

398.     THE UPLANDS ASSOCIATION The Uplands Circular    

The Uplands Association was an organisation pledged to reform  school life and teaching. Its first principle was ‘All types of schooling to be pursued as far as climatic conditions will permit in the open air’. They ran a Summer School each year at Glastonbury and issued a newsletter ‘The Uplands Circular’. Issue for Feb 1922. Good – 8pp – ex-Board of Education Library

[13475]                                                                                                                          £3

399.     WARWICK, The Countess Of Unemployment: its causes and consequences  Twentieth Century Press, no date (c 1906)

Pamphlet – 16pp – first published as two articles in the ‘Daily Mail’  in Feb 1906. Good internally. The rather grubby pink paper covers – with a v glamourous photograph of the author – are present  – heavily chipped – but detached. Scarce

[14117]                                                                                                                        £45

400.     A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE Abortion Law Reform Association Why we must fight the Abortion (Amendment) Bill and how to go about it   

20-pp pamphlet giving ‘Some Information about the Abortion (Amendment) Bill’ – and including a ‘List of Members of Parliament who voted AGAINST the Bill’s Second Reading, 7 Feb 1975)

[13197]                                                                                                                          £8

401.     WOMEN: A CULTURAL REVIEW    OUP 

1994 Spring, vol 5, no 1; Autumn vol 5, no 2; Winter vol 5, no 3

1995 Summer vol 6, no1; Autumn vol 6, no 2; Winter, vol 6, no 3

1996  Spring vol 7, issue 1; Autumn vol 7, no 2; Winter vol 7, no 3

1997 Sprng vol 8, no 1; Autumn vol 8. no 3

In very good condition – each

[14929]                                                                                                                          £8

General Postcards

402.     ‘BILLIE BURKE’      

American actress (1884-1970).Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse

[14744]                                                                                                                          £4

403.     CLARK’S COLLEGE, CIVIL SERVICE Preparing for the Lady Clerk’s G.P.O. Exam    

Photographic postcard of the young women preparing for this exam which, if they passed, offered a chance of bettering themselves. Very good – unposted

[9233]                                                                                                                         £12

404.     MAUDE FEALY      

American actress (1883-1971).  Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14746]                                                                                                                          £4

405.     MISS DOROTHEA BAIRD      

English actress (1875-1933). In very good condition – with traces of adhesive on the reverse – once held in a suffragette’s collection.

[14741]                                                                                                                          £4

406.     MISS LILY BRAYTON      

photograph of the actress and singer (1876-1953). Once held in a suffragette’s collection. On the reverse is written in pencil ‘Ophelia’ suggesting the image shows her in ‘Hamlet’ in which she played Ophelia in 1905. In very good condition – with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14743]                                                                                                                          £4

407.     MISS MAXINE ELLIOTT      

American actress (1868-1940).Once held in a suffragette’s collection. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse.

[14745]                                                                                                                          £4

408.     MYSTERY ‘WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION’ POSTCARD      

I bought this card in 2004, but it was only as a result of Lockdown research that I was available to work out why a large group of women were arrayed in front of a camera in Hull. For details see the piece about it on my website – https://wp.me/p2AEiO-1Br

[8145]                                                                                                                         £20

409.     RUTH VINCENT      

English actress and opera singer (1877-1955) – photograph by Ralph Dunn of 63 Barbican, London EC. Because the word ‘Amasis’ is written in pencil on the reverse of the card, I think it dates from around 1906/7 when Ruth Vincent was appearing in the lead role. In very good condition, with traces of adhesive on the reverse. In very good condition -once held in a suffragette’s collection.

[14742]                                                                                                                          £4

General (Cross=Dressing) Vaudeville Sheet Music

410.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    B. Feldman 1914

sings ‘Just One Kiss – Just Another One’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. The song was written by William Hargreaves and Dan Lipton. Very god

[10675]                                                                                                                          £7

411.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Campbell, Connelly & Co 1925

sings ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’, written by Irving King, and is photographed as an awkward young man on the cover of the sheet music. Good

[10678]                                                                                                                          £6

412.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Lawrence Wright 1925

sings ‘When the Bloom is On the Heather’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. Very good

[10681]                                                                                                                          £6

413.     MISS ELLA SHIELDS    Lawrence Wright 1929

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

[10688]                                                                                                                          £6

414.     MISS HETTY KING    Francis, Day & Hunter 1908

sings ‘I’m Afraid to Come Home in the Dark’ and is photographed on the cover of the sheet music in extravagantly elegant top hat and tails. Very good

[10684]                                                                                                                          £7

415.     MISS NORA DELANEY    Lawrence Wright 1929

sings ‘Glad Rag Doll’ and is photographed in male evening dress on the cover of the sheet music. Good

[10687]                                                                                                                          £5

416.     VESTA TILLEY    Francis, Day & Hunter 1905

sings ‘Who Said, “Girls”?’. Sheet music featuring photograph on cover of Vesta Tilley in smart male attire. The ditty begins: ‘One day on a Western claim/Miners vow’d their lives were tame, For in that lonel spot there seldom girls had been.’ Good

[10670]                                                                                                                          £7

417.     VESTA TILLEY    Francis, Day & Hunter 1896

sings ‘He’s Going In For this Dancing Now’, sheet music, written by E.W. Rogers. Very good – except that the front cover is semi-detached

[10672]                                                                                                                          £5

General Fiction

418.     Anna Wickham   Richards 1936

‘Richards’ Shilling Selections from Edwardian Poets’. Soft covers – fine

[8134]                                                                                                                         £12

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

Facetious crime novel. Soft covers – very good

[12417]                                                                                                                          £4

420.     ANON ( W.R.H. Trowbridge) The Grandmother’s Advice to Elizabeth   T. Fisher Unwin 1902

‘Suggested by the ‘Visits of Elizabeth’  by Elinor Glyn.’ Paper covers – good

[3078]                                                                                                                           £6

421.     ATWOOD, Margaret Dancing Girls and Other Stories   Virago 1987 (r/p)

Soft covers – very good

[15167]                                                                                                                          £4

422.     ATWOOD, Margaret Life Before Man   Virago 1983 (r/p)

Soft covers – very good

[15166]                                                                                                                          £4

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

Soft covers – very good

[15079]                                                                                                                          £8

424.     CLIFT, Charmian Walk to the Paradise Gardens   Harper & Bros (NY) 1960

First US edition of this Australian novel. Very good in very good d/w, which is slightly chipped at top and bottom of spine

[12458]                                                                                                                        £25

425.     DUNANT, Sarah Birth Marks   Michael Joseph 1991

A thriller – ‘as much a study in psychology as a traditional whodunnit’. Very good in very good, unclipped, d.w

[15436]                                                                                                                          £5

426.     EL SAADAWI, Nawal The Circling Song   Zed Books 1989

A novel. Soft covers – fine

[9897]                                                                                                                           £5

427.     FREELY, Maureen Mother’s Helper   Jonathan Cape 1979

Her first novel. First edition, very good in d.w – with the bookshop stamp of ‘Shakespeare & Co, Paris’ on free front end paper

[15430]                                                                                                                        £15

428.     HAWTHORNE, SUSAN (indtroduces) Differences: writing by women   Waterloo Press 1985

An anthology reflecting the diversity of women’s experience – published to mark the Women 150 Writers’ Week in Melbourne, September 1985. Writers include ‘Aboriginal women [that is the term then used in the backjacket text], migrant women from Europe and Asia, those whose works represent class strugges, and lesbian women.’ Audre Lorde and Keri Hulme were among the contributers. Soft covers – very good

[15169]                                                                                                                          £8

429.     HOLTBY, Winifred The Crowded Street   The Bodley Head 1924

Very good in original decorative cloth. The novel is dedicated to Winifred’s friend, Jean McWilliam, to whom she wrote the letters published as ‘Letters to a Friend’ (see item # ?]

[15254]                                                                                                                        £35

430.     KOPPLEMAN, Susan (ed) Old Maids: short stories by 19th-century US women writers  Pandora 1984

Soft covers – very good

[8122]                                                                                                                           £7

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

Reprint of the 1908 edition. Good

[3086]                                                                                                                           £4

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

Soft covers – fine

[10469]                                                                                                                          £4

433.     ROWLANDS, Betty Exhaustive Enquiries   Hodder & Stoughton 1993

A crime writer detects. Fine in fine d/w

[15437]                                                                                                                          £3

434.     SHEPHERD-ROBINSON, Laura Blood and Sugar   Pan 2019

Crime thriller set in late-18thc Deptford – involving the grim slavery trade. Atmospheric. Soft covers – mint

[15088]                                                                                                                          £3

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

Neatly rebound in cloth

[2428]                                                                                                                         £10

436.     SOUEIF, Ahdaf In the Eye of the Sun   Bloomsbury 1992

‘The Great English Novel about Egypt’/’The Great Egyptian Novel About England’. Very good in d/w. 791pp – heavy

[9927]                                                                                                                           £8

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

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

[11232]                                                                                                                          £8

438.     SWAN, Annie S. The Strait Gate   S.W. Partridge, no date (1890s?)

Good in decorative binding

[9706]                                                                                                                           £8

439.     TAYLOR, Kate Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen   Vintage 2004

Enjoyable novel, Canadian literary researcher in Paris – parallel portraits of old and new worlds. Soft covers – fine

[10470]                                                                                                                          £4

Women and the First World War: Non-fiction

440.     ALDRICH, Mildred On the Edge of the War Zone: from the Battle of the Marne to the entrance of the Stars and Stripes  Constable 1918

Mildred Aldrich had left the USA for France in 1898 and in 1914, when war broke out, was living in La Creste, a country house overlooking the Marne Valley. In this volume she recounts, in letter form, day-to-day life after the Battle of the Marne. The account was intended to influence public opinion, to back the entrance of the US into the war. In 1922 she was duly awarded the Legion d’Honneur. Very good

[15297]                                                                                                                        £45

441.     ANDERSON, Adelaide Women in the Factory: an administrative adventure, 1893 to 1921  John Murray 1922

‘Tells the story of the Woman Inspectorate of Factories and Workshops from its beginning in 1893, until 1921, when 30 Women Inspectors saw the fruits of the work of their branch, not only in greatly developed protection for the woman worker, but also in her own increased capacity to help herself’. Written by one of the leaders of the woman inspectorate movement, who was, incidentally, a niece of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Good, with the bookplate of the Lyceum Club, Melbourne on the free front endpaper – and a few spots on the front cover and spine, whch shows slight cracking. Scarce.

[15225]                                                                                                                        £58

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

Good

[15273]                                                                                                                        £20

443.     BOWSER, Thekla Britain’s Civilian Volunteers: authorized story of British Voluntary Aid Detachment Work in the Great War  McClelland, Goodchild & Steward (Toronto) 1917

This is the US/Canadian title of ‘The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War’ – the text of both editions is the same. With 18 photographs. Very good – in d.w.

[15269]                                                                                                                        £45

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

Includes a chapter on ‘The Women’. Good

[15232]                                                                                                                        £28

445.     GWYNNE-VAUGHAN, Dame Helen Service With the Army   Hutchinson, no date (1940s)

A history of women’s involvement with the British army in the First and Second world wars – by one who played a key role in both. Good – scarce

[15260]                                                                                                                        £45

446.     HAMILTON, Cicely Senlis   Collins 1917

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

[15275]                                                                                                                        £75

447.     LUARD, K.E.  Unknown Warriors: extracts from the letters of K.E. Luard, R.R.C., nursing sister in France 1914-1918   Chatto & Windus 1930

With a preface by Viscount Allenby. For four years Kate Luard ran advanced Casualty Clearing Stations within a few miles of the front line. In the form of letters she gives in this account a detailed picture of nursing through the battles of Arras, Passchendale, and others. Fine – scarce

[15299]                                                                                                                        £95

448.     MARKHAM, Violet R. Watching on the Rhine   George H. Doran (NY) 1921

Violet Markham was a member of the Army of Occupation in Germany immediately after the First World War. Very good. (The English edition was entitled ‘The Watcher on the Rhine’).

[15256]                                                                                                                        £25

449.     THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR VOL XVII    The Times 1918

This large, heavy volume includes a section on ‘Women’s Work: War Service’ that includes numerous photographs. Other sections on, for instance, ‘Medical Science and the Pests of War’, ‘The Conquest of Rumania’, ‘The Arab Uprising’, ‘The Boy Scouts’ etc. Very good – scarce

[15306]                                                                                                                        £65

Women and the First World War: Biography & Autobiography

450.     ANON The Letters of Thomasina Atkins: Private (WAAC) on Active Service   Hodder & Stoughton no date (1918)

With a foreword by Mildred Aldrich. This is one of those books about which it is difficult to be entirely sure – are the letters genuine – or is it fiction? The general consensus – of reviewers in 1918 and of academics in the 21st century – is that they are real letters, written by a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to a woman friend (‘Peachie’). The only clues as to the author’s identity are that she had previously been an actress and that  she was considerably younger than Mildred Aldrich (author of ‘Hilltop on the Marne’ and other accounts of the War), who had known her since she was a child.  Good – with a damp stain along bottom of free front endpapers – ownership inscription (1918) and stamp of the ‘Royal Midland Counties Home for Incurables Castel Froma Lillington Road Leamington Spa’. Very scarce

[15261]                                                                                                                        £45

451.     (ASHWELL) Lena Ashwell Myself a Player    

Autobiography of the actress and manager, in the years before the First World War, of the Kingsway Theatre – where she staged and starred in Cicely Hamilton’s ‘Diana of Dobson’s’.  During the First World War she was a member of the Women’s Corps – and entertained the troops. Very good

[15219]                                                                                                                        £48

452.     (BAGNOLD) Enid Bagnold A Diary Without Dates   Heinemann new impression, March 1918

Diary of her life as a VAD in the First World War. Good internally – split to spine cloth – very scarce

[15300]                                                                                                                        £65

453.     CORBETT, Elsie Red Cross in Serbia: a personal diary of experiences, 1915-1919  Cheney & Sons 1964

Eyewitness account of nursing in the Balkans during the First World War. Very good,although free front end paper removed and cover cloth a little mottled – a  presentation copy to the author

[15244]                                                                                                                        £65

454.     DOUGLAS-PENNANT, Violet Under the Search-Light: the record of a great scandal   Allen & Unwin 1922

In June 1918 Violet Douglas-Pennant was appointed Commandant, Women’s Royal Air Force – only to be dismissed two months later ‘by direction of Lord Weir and Sir Auckland Geddes on the advice of Lady Rhondda, who acted without enquiry on secret information supplied to her, as well as to Mr Tyson Wilson MP, and Miss P. Strachey, by Mrs Beatty and others’. How intriguing. The book takes 463 pp to cover the ‘scandal’. Douglas-Pennant wrote it as her self-justificatory account of events “so that my name & honour may at last be vindicated.” Includes recollections of her ten weeks’ in charge, a Who’s Who of the personalities involved & full details of the House of Lords Inquiry into her dismissal. Good

[14129]                                                                                                                        £85

455.     (FORBES) Lady Angela Forbes Memories and Base Details   George H. Doran (NY) 1922

Born in 1876, she was the half-sister of Daisy, Countess of Warwick, and full sister to Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Much about her aristocratic up-bringing but the other half of the book (well over 100 pages) is devoted to her work during the First World War – organising hospitals in France. Very good -scarce

[15221]                                                                                                                        £48

456.     (HUTTON) Isabel Hutton Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace   Heinemann 1960

Studied medicine at the Women’s Medical School in Edinburgh (not Sophia Jex-Blake’s one) – much about her medical education – then with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in the First World War – and a lifetime’s work after. Very good in d/w

[15245]                                                                                                                        £55

457.     (INGLIS) Lady Frances Balfour Dr Elsie Inglis   Hodder & Stoughton no date (c 1919)

Biography of  Dr Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), Scottish doctor – and suffragist. Founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. In good condition

[15286]                                                                                                                        £35

458.     (JOHNSTON) Agnes Anderson ‘Johnnie’ of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps   Heath Cranton no date (c. 1919)

Elizabeth Johnston joined the WAAC in Dec 1917 and died, bizarrely, on Christmas Day 1918, having fallen from the tower of the church of St Ouen in Rouen.  Her year’s work in France is detailed from the letters she sent home to Fife. Very good -very scarce

[15259]                                                                                                                        £65

459.     (KENNARD) Lady Kennard A Roumanian Diary, 1915, 1916, 1917   William Heinemann 1917

Joins a Red Cross Hospital in Roumania in 1916. With photographs. Good condition -very scarce –

[15238]                                                                                                                        £65

460.     (MCARTHUR) Josephine Kellett That Friend of Mine: a memoir of Marguerite McArthur  The Swarthmore Press 1920

Memoir of a young woman, educated at Newnham, who in 1914 worked for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society and then, after the outbreak of war, first in the War Office and then in France, in Etaples, with the YMCA. She was still working there when she died, of influenza, aged 26 in February 1919. Fine  – presentation copy from her sister

[15277]                                                                                                                        £35

461.     SINCLAIR, May Journal of Impressions in Belgium   Macmillan (NY) 1915

Her description of her journey to the front line with the Motor Ambulance Corps. Very good – extremely scarce

[15248]                                                                                                                        £75

462.     (SQUIRE) Rose Squire Thirty Years in the Public Service: an industrial retrospect  Nisbet 1927

She was one of the first women inspectors of factories – appointed in 1896. Section on work in factories during the First World War. Good -but free frontpaper removed – scarce

[15231]                                                                                                                        £48

463.     (STIMSON) Julia C. Stimson Finding Themselves: the letters of an American Army Chief Nurse in a British Hospital in France  Macmillan (NY) 1927

She arrived in Liverpool in May 1917, moved on to London where she met society women now devoting themselves to running hospitals etc. She was in France, working alongside British nurses, by 11 June and was still there when the book ends, in April 1918. Good condition – very scarce

[15291]                                                                                                                      £120

464.     SUTHERLAND, Millicent, Duchess Of Six Weeks At The War   The Times 1914

She left England on 8 August 1914 to join a branch of the French Red Cross – and then went on to form her own ambulance unit and took it into Belgium.With photographs. Soft covers – good – spine a little nicked

[15239]                                                                                                                        £55

465.     (VIDAL) Lois Vidal Magpie: the autobiography of a nymph errant  Little, Brown 1934

Daughter of the vicarage, she was all for adventure. She worked in the War Office, and then went to France as a war worker in France during the First World War, then was a governess in Corsica, then to Canada – and then back to England. Packed with interesting social comment. Good

[15229]                                                                                                                        £28

Women and the First World War: Fiction

466.     FORBES, R.E.(pseudonym of Ralph Straus) Mrs Holmes, Commandant   Edward Arnold 1918

The printed dedication is: ‘Dedicated with feelings of the profoundest respect to the Detachment’. By which is meant the ‘Voluntary Aid Detachment’, for this is a novel (humourous) about the setting up of a VAD hospital in a small English town. First edition in good condition – and very scarce

[15258]                                                                                                                        £45

467.     MARCHANT, Bessie A Transport Girl in France: a story of the adventures of a W.A.A.C.  Blackie no date [reprint c earl 1930s]

With pictorial cloth cover:  the original design was still in use c 15 years after first publication. Free front endpaper bears a presentation label from Gosport Education Committee showing that the book was awarded to ‘Netta Gladys Smith of St John’s Girls’ School for Good Conduct, Industry and Progress in Standard VIII. Position in Class: 1. 1934.’ The label is annotated in ink: ‘Mayor’s Special Prize’ and signed by the Mayor. Good – with illustrations by Wal Paget. Very scarce.

[15262]                                                                                                                        £75

468.     MARCHANT, Bessie A V.A.D. in Salonika   Blackie, no date c 1917/18

Good – with pictorial cover (she is in uniform, pushing a motor bike, with minarets and domes in the background.) Has an birthday gift inscription on free front endpaper – 15 February 1918

[15242]                                                                                                                        £45

Women and the First World War: Ephemera

469.     ALEC-TWEEDIE, Mrs A Woman on Four Battle-Fronts    1919

‘written May 1919, reprinted August, 1919, by kind permission of the Editor ‘Marshall Syndicate’, USA and the ‘Yorkshire Post’. This records her journey of 991 miles across France and Belgium in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. She had been a very successful fund-raiser for the YMCA during the war, in the course of which one of her sons had been killed. This booklet is double-columned and print is small, so packs a lot in. She reports conversations with the inhabitants of towns and villages and gives her own account of the state of the country over which she is, with some difficulty, travelling. With 2 maps and 7 photographs. Soft covers – 30pp – very good

[15548]                                                                                                                        £55

470.     BIBESCO, Princesse La Revue de Paris extrait du numero du 15 mai 1934: Lettres de Combattants Anglais  Paris 1934

A lengthy review, in French, of ‘War Letters of Fallen Englishmen (Lettres de guerre d’hommes anglais qui sont tombès) compiled by Laurence Housman. She reviews it at length (24pp), quoting from letters of both the well -known (Julian Grenfell, Edward Tennant) and the unknown. The intriguing Princess Bibescco (nèe Elizabeth Asquith, daugher of  H.A. Asquith) was a novelist of some repute,Very good – paper covers – offprint of the journalpaign

[15029]                                                                                                                        £10

471.     A MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL FILLING FACTORY, HAYES, MIDDLESEX TO THE WOMEN OF ENGLAND    HMSO no date [c 1915]

Come and Enlist in the Munition Army and Help to Win the War.’ A pamphlet, with photographs, encouraging women to come and fill shells – ‘The shell you fill may sink the submarine that sank the “Lusitania”‘. ‘If you cannot fight for your country, work for it.’ Has been folded and is somewhat rubbed – well-studied, perhaps. Scarce

[15507]                                                                                                                        £85

****

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 may be interested in books I have published they are ~

NEW-ish

Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings

ed. Melissa Terras & Elizabeth Crawford

Reproduces Fawcett’s essential speeches, pamphlets and newspaper columns to tell the story of her dynamic contribution to public life. Thirty-five texts and 22 images are contextualised and linked to contemporary news coverage as well as to historical and literary references. These speeches, articles, artworks and photographs cover both the advances and the defeats in the campaign for women’s votes. They also demonstrate a variety of the topics and causes Fawcett pursued: the provision of education for women; feminist history; a love of literature (and Fawcett’s own attempt at fiction); purity and temperance; the campaign against employment of children; the British Army’s approach to the South African War; the Unionist cause against Home Rule for Ireland; and the role of suffrage organisations during World War I. Here is a rich, intertextual web of literary works, preferred reading material, organisations, contacts, friends, and sometimes enemies, that reveals Fawcett the individual throughout 61 years of campaigning. The first scholarly appraisal of Fawcett in over 30 years, this is essential reading for those wishing to understand the varied political, social and cultural contributions of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

UCL Press

Available free to access and download. Also to buy in print editions – see https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/161045

                                                                        ***

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 £89.99 – Ebook £80.99

The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: a regional survey

Elizabeth Crawford

Crawford provides meticulous accounts of the activists, petitions, organisations, and major events pertaining to each county.’ Victorian Studies

Routledge, 2008 320pp paperback £38.99, Ebook £35.09

Enterprising Women: The Garretts and their circle

Elizabeth Crawford

‘Crawford’s scholarship is admirable and Enterprising Women offers increasingly compelling reading’ Journal of William Morris Studies

For further details see here Francis Boutle, 2002 338pp 75 illus paperback £25

Copies of all of these books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.

****

, , , ,

2 Comments

Mariana Starke: ‘A Tissue of Coincidences’: Lady Mary De Crespigny And Hortense De Crespigny

11 The Beacon, Exmouth, onetime home of Mariana Starke
(Photo courtesy of Sylvia Morris and Historic England)

As I mentioned in my last ‘Mariana Starke’ post (The De-Ciphering of Mrs Crespigny’s Diary), I don’t know if, or for how long, the friendship continued between Mariana Starke and Mary Crespigny after Mariana set out for the Continent on 25 October 1791. The last evidence I have found of contact between the two women is the entry Mrs Crespigny records in her 1791 diary, noting she had received letters from Lyons on 3 December – presumably from Mariana and her party. I am sure the correspondence would have continued, at least for a while, but, with no surviving letters or other evidence, I have no proof.

I did wonder if relations between the two women had at some point faltered only because there is no mention, as far as I remember, of Mary Crespigny in any of Mariana’s surviving letters or of Mariana Starke  – either in the flesh, as a direct correspondent, or even as an off-stage character – in Mary Crespigny’s one other surviving diary – that for  1809/1810. At this time Mariana was back in England, living in Exmouth, and Lady de Crespigny (as she now was) was meeting regularly, in London and in Bath, friends they once held in common. But, again, the absence of a mention is no proof of any discord.

In fact, the name ‘Starke’ is not entirely absent from Mary de Crespigny’s 1809/10 diary, for on 25 August 1809, while enjoying a protracted stay in Brighton, Lady de Crespigny mentions that she ‘had a present of a turtle from Mr Starke’. There is no suggestion that Mr Starke – this must surely be Richard, her erstwhile lover – was in Brighton at the time – so presumably he had arranged for her to be sent this prime delicacy, Lady de Crespigny doesn’t describe how Mr Starke’s turtle was served, but later in the diary, back in her London house, she does detail a dinner she hosted at which another turtle was the centrepiece of the meal.  As turtle was the most expensive and desirable food of the period, a gift such as this would appear to indicate that there had been no lasting rift between Richard Starke and the de Crespignys.

And, from another, rather remarkable source, I think we can infer that, whatever the relations between the two women, Lady Mary de Crespigny was still very much present in Mariana Starke’s thoughts – and speech.

For, in 1840 there appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany,  a short story, ‘Are There Those Who Read The Future?’: A Tissue of Strange Coincidences’ in which ‘Mrs Mariana Starke – the celebrated tourist’ features, alongside a mysterious foreigner to whom the author gave the name ‘Hortense de Crespigny’.  I could not believe that the conjunction of the names was purely coincidental, so undertook a spot of sleuthing.

The story’s seaside setting of ‘Sunny Bay’ was known to be based on Exmouth, and was, for that reason, reprinted in Memorials of Exmouth (1872) The author of the story was anonymous, merely described as ‘Author of “Recollections of a Prison Chaplain”’. But it did not require much research to reveal him to be the Rev. Erskine Neale [1804-83], the son of Adam Neale (d.1832), onetime physician to the forces. In  1812 one of Erskine Neale’s younger brothers was born in Exmouth and I conclude that the family – at the least the mother and children – spent some time there – at the seaside – before settling in Exeter when Adam Neale returned from the Peninsular War.

Lady Nelson’s House, 6 The Beacon, Exmouth
(Photo courtesy of Exmouth Journal)

In the story another of the real-life characters involved with Hortense de Crespigny is Lady Nelson, the unfortunate widow of Horatio. Erskine Neale appears very au fait with Nelson family affairs, as well he might; his younger brother was married to Frances Nisbet, Lady Nelson’s granddaughter. When Erskine Neale was young,  Lady Nelson was living a few doors  away from Mariana Starke on The Beacon and I am imagining – yes, imagining – that Mrs Neale was present at ‘Afternoons’ in one or either of the houses and her son was either told – or overheard – scraps of conversation by or about the older women. He must also have encountered Mariana Starke in person, for his depiction of her attire and style of speech accords with the memories of other of her contemporaries.

My thinking is that, as a boy, Neale noted that ‘Lady de Crespigny’ featured frequently in Mariana’s conversation and, many years later, when searching for a suitably foreign name for his mysterious character, ‘de Crespigny’ sprang to mind. Erskine Neale accorded Hortense de Crespigny with the ability to foretell the future and, at the end of the tale, suggests she may have acted for the British government in some ‘cloak and dagger’ capacity. I doubt that it was in those terms that Mariana Starke discussed Lady de Crespigny but, let me just say that the tale is a ‘Tissue of Strange Coincidences’ on more than one level. A mysterious remark on which I may elaborate before too long.

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.

, , , , ,

1 Comment

Suffrage Stories: An English Heritage ‘Blue Plaque’ For The Women’s Freedom League

Photo courtesy of English Heritage

On 19 September 2023, together with members of the Feminist Society of Ibstock Place School, I unveiled the 1000th English Heritage Blue Plaque. It commemorates the Women’s Freedom League and is mounted on the wall of their sometime headquarters, 1 Robert Street, Strand.

This was 116 years and 5 days after the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) was formed  at a meeting held close by – in the very popular Eustace Miles vegetarian restaurant. Vegetarianism was very much a WFL ‘thing’.

The meeting had been called by some women, erstwhile members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who had protested Mrs Pankhurst’s unilateral action in abolishing the WSPU constitution and cancelling their annual conference. They did not care for the fact that the Pankhursts intended, in effect, to rule the WSPU by dictat.

Mrs Charlotte Despard was voted into the chair and among others present at that first meeting were Teresa Billington (later Billington-Greig) and Edith How-Martyn – all strong individuals –with  strong views – believing particularly in democracy and socialism.

Charlotte Despard, born into an Anglo-Irish family and long a widow, had since the 1890s devoted herself to social work with women and children in an impoverished area of Battersea, hemmed in by the Thames and railways. Most unusually, she chose to live there – at least during the week – only returning to her country home at Esher at the weekend. Teresa Billington-Greig – the WFL’s political theorist – had been a teacher before devoting herself to the WSPU suffrage campaign – while Mrs Edith How-Martyn, a young science graduate – was an effective and practical campaign organiser.

The three leaders were all supporters of the Independent Labour party and had been particularly troubled by the Pankhursts’ decision, announced earlier in 1907, not to support Labour candidates at elections. They were not women who took kindly to autocracy and were all to give a lifetime commitment to the WFL – and to its campaigns for social justice for women.

It took a  little time for matters to resolve themselves, but in November 1907 the new society was given a new name –the Women’s Freedom League – chosen democratically by a referendum to members. The other suggested names were all associated with emancipation and rights – but Women’s Freedom League was good choice. It was not a name tied only to suffrage, but encompassed all kinds of freedom – appropriate to an agenda that changed over time to meet changing conditions. The thread running through the WFL’s long active life was – Equal citizenship, equal pay, equal opportunity, and equality under the law.

 After a year in a temporary office, the WFL moved to 1 Robert Street in September 1908 – into 4 rooms on the first floor – staying  until 1915, when they moved to High Holborn. Their presence there is marked by a plaque, although not the esteemed ‘Blue’ one.

Although considered a militant society, unlike the WSPU the WFL didn’t carry out acts of physical protest. Its members were not arsonists or bombers but, influenced by the teachings of Gandhi, they conducted campaigns of  passive resistance, such as protesting in Police Courts that women were tried by laws made only by men, and in 1909 conducting a 5-month continuous picket of the House of Commons, ‘The Great Watch’.

One WFL tactic was to attempt to present petitions to the King.

It was WFL members, Helen Fox and Australian Muriel Matters, who attracted publicity in 1908 by chaining themselves to the grille in the Ladies’ Gallery in the House of Commons – and Muriel Matters, again, who hired an airship from which to drop leaflets over London. It was the WFL who first had the idea of boycotting the 1911 census, and whose members set up the Tax Resistance League, refusing to pay taxes and then creating publicity when their goods were seized and auctioned.  

Local branches were set up throughout the country – the WFL was notably strong in Wales and in Scotland – but at both a local and a national level the WFL always struggled financially. To support their work the WFL relied on generous donors and on their own, time-consuming, fund-raising activities. Seen as of particular importance was raising enough money to ensure the publication of their weekly paper, The Vote, in which they were very successful as it ran from 1909 until 1933 and is an invaluable source of information on the changing nature of feminism in the first three decades of the 20th century. As well as its newspaper, the WFL’s main archive is held just across the Strand from Robert Street in the Women’s Library @LSE.

Women Police Volunteers, December 1914

Although they called a halt to militant protests during the First World War, the WFL continued to campaign for women’s rights –  for instance, its members were associated with the founding of the first women’s police force.

In the early years of the war the WFL ran a toy factory in Hackney, providing work for women, particularly those who had hitherto been employed in the garment trade.

Although most members of the WFL were pacifists the organisation managed to avoid a schism on the subject, such as beset the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Indeed, WFL members were generally adept at putting aside differences –including party differences – and instead concentrating on working for their shared causes.

Mrs Edith How-Martyn

Several members of the WFL were candidates in the  November 1918 general election, the first in which women over 30 could vote and at which women could stand for Parliament  Charlotte Despard, who stood for Labour in Battersea, was one and Edith How-Martyn, who stood as an Independent in Hendon, was another –  but all were unsuccessful. In one way the fact that not all women were granted the vote in 1918 had a positive effect in that it gave a society such as the WFL the impetus to continue the campaign – for an equal franchise was an obvious goal– while also working for gender equality across all aspects of political, educational, work, and social life.

During the interwar years new WFL branches were formed, while old ones maintained a loyal following – many members who had held posts in the pre-war years continuing to do so right through the 1920s. One such was Mrs Sarah Whetton , honorary secretary of the Portsmouth branch, where the WFL was particularly active as a pressure group, influencing local government on housing, education and health – all areas of special concern to women.

The WFL spanned the lifetime of its early members, only dissolving itself in 1961 after the death of its president, Marian Reeves, who had joined the organisation as a young woman in 1909. The WFL had run its course. Back in 1907 the founders had announced ‘we hope to fight to the finish as members of the Women’s Freedom League’ – and we were there in 2023 to vindicate their hope.

With many thanks to English Heritage for arranging such an engaging event – and commiserations to Dr Claire Eustace, who would have been my fellow speaker but who was prevented by illness from attending.

If you have a BBC account already, or sign up to one, you can listen to me speaking, very briefly, about the WFL on the Radio 4 Today programme (at 50 mins in). There was also a well-researched piece on the BBC 1 Local News.

Copyright

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

, , , , ,

Leave a comment

Suffrage Stories/Collecting Suffrage: The Evolution Of The Hunger-Strike Medal

Here we see Emily Wilding Davison, one of the most famous suffragettes, wearing her Hunger Strike Medal c. 1912. Now, well over a century later, these medals are a familiar sight, appearing surprisingly often at auction, as the price they attract tempts descendants to sell. But the history of the WSPU Hunger-Strike Medal is not uncomplicated.

My research would indicate that the first WSPU members to be awarded medals as a reward for hunger striking stood in the dock at Bow Street Police Court on 30 June 1909, 114 years ago today. The previous evening they had been arrested when taking part in a deputation to the Houses of Parliament, led by Mrs Pankhurst, who was carrying a petition from a large WSPU meeting in Caxton Hall.

WSPU flyer advertising the 29 June deputation (from my collection)

The case was adjourned and on 12 July thirteen women were found guilty of stone-throwing – breaking windows in Whitehall. They duly served their sentence in Holloway and, following the example of Marion Wallace-Dunlop, who had recently been imprisoned for a a different offence, went on hunger strike. Like Wallace-Dunlop, the 13 hunger strikers were released without being forcibly fed. The authorities had not yet arrived at the solution to that particular problem.

I will now take you back to an event that took place a few weeks earlier, on 16 June 1909, when WSPU member Patricia Woodlock, who had been imprisoned for three months in Holloway – but had not been on hunger strike – was presented with a ‘For Valour’ medal at a ceremony described in Votes for Women (18 June 1909, p. 810). I think that this was the very first medal presented to a WSPU ‘foot soldier’ and, although there is now no trace of it, I assume that it took its name from ‘For Valour’ engraved on the medal’s top bar.

Although I can find no contemporary reference to the sequence of events, my thinking is that when the women who had taken part in the 29 June 1909 deputation were eventually released, after their hunger strike, the WSPU chose to honour them with medals identical to that designed for Patricia Woodlock.  

Ada Wright’s ‘Holloway’ medal (Image courtesy of Bonhams)

These medals were presented by Mrs Pankhurst at a ceremony at St James’ Hall, Great Portland Street, as reported in Votes for Women, 6 August 1909. Two of the medals have resurfaced. That awarded to Theresa Garnett is held by the Museum of London and that to Ada Wright was recently sold at auction. This batch of medals makes no mention of the hunger-strike (unlike the later, more common, more famous version); instead,  the roundel depending from the bottom bar is engraved with the word ‘Holloway’. The fact that the recipients had been on hunger strike was not yet commemorated in the medal wording.

However, in early November 1909 another medal presentation ceremony took place, held in Birmingham Town Hall (see Votes for Women 5 Nov 1909, p 84) . As far as I can discover this was only the second such medal presentation. The recipients were WSPU members who had protested at the meeting held by Asquith in Bingley Hall in September, had been arrested, sentenced and had gone on hunger strike and been forcibly fed in Winson Green Prison.

Mabel Capper’s medal, commemorating her hunger strike, presented to her in Birmingham in November 1909

Although the medal is described in Votes for Women as the ‘For Valour’ medal, I am sure this was the first occasion on which the medal with the  ‘Hunger Strike’ roundel was presented – for research reveals a photo of the medal presented on this occasion to Mabel Capper, with the ‘Hunger Strike’ inscription on the roundel.

By the way, if you wonder what happened to Emily Wilding Davison’s hunger-strike medal, you might like to read a piece I wrote about it a while ago

And be very careful to research for authenticity any hunger-strike medal offered for sale.

Copyright

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

, , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Collecting Suffrage: Fake Flags – Or Why Researching Material Culture Matters

Led by Miss Kerr, who is carrying a WSPU flag, suffragettes parade outside the WSPU offices in Clement’s Inn (image courtesy of Women’s Library@LSE)

When I started in business nearly 40 years ago as a dealer in books and ephemera, specialising in the lives of women, there was little need to think twice about the authenticity of any appealing object. I do remember being very careful to check that a signature on, say, a photograph of Mrs Pankhurst was penned rather than printed but, in those days, ‘women’ as a class had not attracted the attention of scammers. How times have changed. And that change is particularly manifest in objects associated with the suffragette movement.

Nowadays I take extreme care, perhaps bordering on paranoia, to check the authenticity and provenance of any object before I add it to stock. For unscrupulous dealers are now ridiculing the suffragette movement by creating and selling objects that claim to be associated with the WSPU. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the NUWSS has not attracted this attention, scammers knowing where lies the popular appeal.

This trade disturbs me on several levels. I am upset to see those with no knowledge or interest in the suffrage movement  traducing the historical record, I am upset to see buyers disappointed when, thinking they have acquired an original object, they discover they have not, and I am particularly worried when, as has happened, a public collection acquires a spurious suffrage artefact.

It may be useful to present the history of one element of suffragette material culture that currently concerns me: the phenomenon of the WSPU flag currently flooding the market.

It was probably three or four years ago that a purple, white, and green flag first appeared on an eBay site. Along the white side selvedge strip was printed the legend ‘WPSU 3 & 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand W.C.’. I have not kept a record of the price this object fetched, but it was, if memory serves, several hundred pounds. Another book dealer contacted the seller to point out that this flag was unlikely to be original, as the initials were incorrect – ie ‘WPSU’ rather than ‘WSPU’. He did not receive a reply, but answer was made in kind as another flag then appeared – with the middle two letters cut out – leaving only the ‘W’ and the ‘U’ – and the (correct) address. Laughable, really. In fact, at the moment (June 2023) one of these flags is available for sale on eBay – for £260 – although now the whole of ‘WPSU’ has been raggedly removed, leaving only the address.

Most of the flags now boast a ‘Votes for Women’ slogan across the central white stripe and have a variety of marks on the white webbing at the side. Currently (June 2023) there are 7 WSPU flags for sale on eBay: one is marked with ‘1912’, two with ‘London 1908’, one with ‘London 1910’, and two with ‘1910 WSPU’ (both of these listed by the same dealer). The flags are priced at between £149 and £895.

Between March and June 2023 27 ‘original’ WSPU flags were sold on eBay– their prices ranging from £58 to £310. Again, they are printed on the selvedge with dates and places –  such as ‘Bath 1912’, ‘London 1914’ etc. They variously claim to have been found in ‘a box at an antiques fair’ or from ‘a deceased estate’.

A number of these flags have moved from eBay to terrestrial auctions and, on the whole, auctioneers do remove them from a sale once doubts are expressed as to their originality. I note that one auctioneer who initially refused to withdraw one of the flags from sale – and has since sold several more – does at least now note that their authenticity cannot be guaranteed. The flags have, of course, moved out of salerooms and are now to be found at antiques markets and fairs and I accept that, as they move further from their source, vendors may well not realise that they are selling fakes.

I have not inspected any of these flags in person – my reasons for knowing that they are not ‘right’ is based on my many years of archival research and on my hard-acquired knowledge of the trade in suffrage ephemera.  At the most basic level, if you study the Flickr account of the Women’s Library@LSE, perhaps the most extensive photographic record of the suffrage movement available to view on the internet, you will note that there is no evidence of the WSPU flag as is currently being traded. At the head of this post is one of the few photographs  to show a WSPU flag (we presume it is purple, white, and green but, of course, the photograph is in black and white). However, you will note that the orientation of the stripes is such that one of the colours (purple or green?) lies against the carrying pole,  whereas on that of the fake flag all the colours meet the pole. That is to say, the stripes on the flags currently being sold are lying horizontally, whereas they should  be positioned vertically. In addition, I do not remember seeing a ‘Votes for Women’ slogan imposed on a purple, white and green flag; they are invariably plain. I suspect that any analysis of the material and method of manufacture would indicate a 21st rather than early-20th century provenance.

The Women’s Library photographs do, of course, contain innumerable images of all manner of other banners and it was exactly because I am always so worried about fakery that when, in 2017, I spotted an amazing Manchester banner coming up for sale at a little-known auction house,  I alerted first the Working Class Library and, through their archivist, the People’s History Museum because I thought it essential for a textile expert to inspect it in person in case somebody had taken it upon themselves to fake it. Fortunately, it was ‘right’ and now hangs in pride of place in the PHM. 

The Manchester WSPU banner (image courtesy of the People’s History Museum)

And that is why I hope that no well-meaning donor will think of  presenting their local museum with one of the spurious ‘Votes for Women’ flags for, by allowing the scammers to muscle in on our history, we are demeaning everything that is ‘right’.

Cynic that I am in such matters, I only hope this post does not encourage scammers to create more accurate reproductions.

Copyright

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

, , , , , , , , ,

1 Comment

ANNIE SWYNNERTON: My Podcast for the Pre-Raphaelite Society

Louisa Wilkinson by Annie Swynnerton

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

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

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

, , , , , , ,

Leave a comment

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

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

, , , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Campaigning For The Vote: Kate Frye and ‘Black Friday’, November 1910

Kate Frye coverKate Frye was present on so many important suffrage occasions – including ‘Black Friday’ – 18 November 1910.  On this day the suffrage societies learned that the Conciliation Bill, on which they had pinned their hopes, would be abandoned as, with the two houses of Parliament locked in confrontation over Lloyd George’s budget, Parliament was to be dissolved. The police were out in force and employed brutal tactics to break up the women’s demonstration.

Only a short excerpt of Kate’s ‘Black Friday’ diary entry appears in Campaigning for the Vote because it occurred in the period before Kate began work as a paid organizer for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. There was, alas, just too much material in her diary to make a book out of her whole suffrage experience. So, for those who would like more, here are full details of Kate’s experience that momentous day. 

Kate's invitation from the WSPU to attend the protest, Friday November 1910

Kate’s invitation from the WSPU to attend the protest, Friday 18 November 1910. Just imagine how many of these fragile flyers lay torn and trampled on the ground at the end of ‘Black Friday’. Kate carefully preserved hers, took it home and laid it in her diary

Friday November 18th 1910

Up in good time. Brushed Mickie [her dog] then took him for a walk – then started at 10.30 for the Caxton Hall. Train from Notting Hill Gate to St James’ Park. I got there about 12 – and the hall was already full and the crowd hanging about were soon after turned out of the vestibule – so I stood some time on the steps. Then from there we were turned into the street and I waited there, chatting with different women, till about 12.40 when the 1st deputation left the Caxton Hall for Parliament Square.

They were soon swallowed up in a seething mob and I simply flew with many other women by short cuts to Parliament Square where I landed more or less by chance in the thick of it. One could hardly see the plan of it all amid the hurly burly excitement, shouts, laughter applause & rushes of the enormous crowd which grew every minute. I was almost struck dumb and I felt sick for hours. It was a most horrible experience. I have rarely been in anything more unpleasant – it was ghastly and the loud laughter & hideous remarks of the men – so called gentlemen – even of the correctly attired top-hatted kind – was truly awful. It made all the men and women seem mad together. And the poor women – the look of dogged suffering & strain on their faces.

Spread - with newspaper cuttings laid in -  from Kate's Black Friday' diary entry

Spread – with newspaper cuttings laid in – from Kate’s Black Friday’ diary entry

I first reached the wall of the moat [round the Houses of Parliament] at the angle so I could see the door plainly and Mrs Pankhurst and the elderly lady [Elizabeth Garrett Anderson] – over 70 years of age – with her. Then I saw policemen breaking up the little standards held by a group of women. I saw deputations pass along and ugly rushes and ever the crowd grew.

I stood some time but I had to give up my place by the wall people pushed so and I was awfully afraid of getting crushed. So I got out to the road and there watched the deputations come along and saw the horrible hustling by the crowds of roughs and overheard the hideous laughter and remarks of the men looking on. Half of them made the remark that it was the funniest thing they had ever seen in their lives – all had their mouths open in an insane grin. One or two were so horrible that I just gazed upon them till they noticed me and moved away, not liking I suppose to be overheard. Several spoke to me – many indignant: ‘What good do you suppose this will do?’ ‘What else would you suggest?’ said I. Then he began the usual – that the militant methods had disgusted all nicely feeling people etc. I turned his attention to my two badges – constitutional societies, as I told him – and asked ‘What help have you ever given us?’ He walked away. Not one man did I hear speak on the women’s side. There may have been some, but not near me.

I saw Captain Gonne led off & heard afterwards of his doings. Many women there were of the WSPU – and a few London Society [ie members of the constitutional NUWSS society] – all standing about perfectly wretched & green – cheering them on to battle and off to Cannon Row when arrested. One poor lady in her wheel chair [probably Rosa Billinghurst]– propelled by hand – followed in the wake of a deputation – generally 6 to a dozen people – she rang her bell violently and the crowd gave way before her – it was a funny but dreadfully tragic sight.

As the crowd grew and the crowd kept being pressed back – I moved away and once, seeing some fighting women & policemen on the pavement coming my way, I stood back to the railing expecting them to go by. But, oh no – a burly policemen, taking me for one of a deputation, caught hold of me with an ‘Out you come’ and for some minutes I was tossed about like a cork on an angry sea, turning round and round – sometimes bumped on to a policeman – sometimes on a hospital nurse, who was fighting for all she was worth – pale to the lips but determined (and I afterwards saw her led off arrested ) – until I was with the others pushed out of the danger zone.

The others went back but I sat down by the railing for a few minutes. I can’t say the man actually hurt me and I was too excited to realise quite what was happening and I was so thickly dressed as not to feel the bumps much – but it wasn’t nice. I don’t know I could have spoken if I had wished to – but I didn’t wish and I didn’t speak. What I felt was – I am not going to get out of the trouble by saying I am not one of them for I am in heart and anyway he will probably think I am trying to trick him and it will do no good and if these women can stand so much I can stand this little. And of course it was nothing really – only a new experience.

Two ladies – one quite elderly came out of their first battle determined not to go back into it. They were a pitiable spectacle – their nerve had gone. One felt so sorry – they were beside themselves and were not aware they had in fact turned ‘coward’. A little lady – evidently there to plead with the faint hearted – spoke quietly to them, urging them to go when they felt rested. ‘But we couldn’t’, they said, ‘we have been half killed’. ‘Oh, but you must – you must go back again and again and again’ and so on. And I spoke to them – thinking an outsider’s word might turn their attention. Their eyes were brimming. They told me that they were supposed to go on till their strength was exhausted – they thought theirs was – but it wasn’t. But poor souls – their fight – of course they had never realised the awfulness of the business and what they would have to endure until they should fall fainting or injured. I wonder if they went back. Perhaps courage did come back to them but who could blame them – they were very saddening.

On the next page of the diary entry Kate laid in the WSPU's pamphlet prepared as a result of 'Black Friday'

On the next page of the diary entry Kate laid in the WSPU’s pamphlet prepared as a result of ‘Black Friday’

I couldn’t seem to leave even when I had crossed to the station side. I stood and watched the arrested being led off – & gave them a send off – but soon after 2 I gave it up and, leaving the horrid spectacle, went in to Westminster Bridge station. They were beginning to clear the Square of people. Hundreds of policemen were arriving and one could less than ever see the plan of it all. A lot of Yankee sailors had been mystified but delighted and a lot of people were frankly puzzled by it all – and it was a sad business explaining to them. I got back cold to the bone – fetched my lunch on a tray – and was glad of hot soup.

After a visit to friend for tea on way home] grabbed up some evening papers then home. Couldn’t keep my mind off the morning’s experience and we talked of little else. 105 have been arrested. It was about the most bitterly cold night I have ever been out in.’

As a result of what she had witnessed on ‘Black Friday’ Kate Frye joined the WSPU

receipt 001

Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford. Now, alas, out of print

 Campaigning for the Vote cover

‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers

, , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery At The UNISON Centre

ALAS, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT THE GALLERY HAS FAILED TO  REOPEN AFTER COVID CLOSURE. PLEASE PHONE UNISON TO ENQUIRE.

The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery at the UNISON Centre tells the story of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, of the hospital she built, and of women’s struggle to achieve equality in the field of medicine.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson when young

HAElizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was determined to do something worthwhile with her life. In 1865 she qualified as a doctor. This was a landmark achievement.  She was the first woman to overcome the obstacles created by the medical establishment to ensure it remained the preserve of men.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson then helped other women into the medical profession, founding the New Hospital for Women where women patients were treated only by women doctors.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, by her example, demonstrated that a woman could be a wife and mother as well as having a professional career.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson worked to achieve equality for women, being especially active in the campaigns for higher education and ‘votes for women’.

In the early 1890s the New Hospital for Women (later renamed the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital) was built  on the Euston Road and continued to treat women until 2000. For some years this building then lay derelict until a campaign by ‘EGA for Women’ won it listed status. UNISON has now carefully restored the building, bringing it back to life as part of the UNISON Centre.

Two important rooms in the original 1890 hospital building have been dedicated to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery. One is the

ORIGINAL ENTRANCE HALL

of the hospital which has been carefully restored to its original form. Here you can study an album, compiled specially for the Gallery, telling the history of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in words and pictures, while, in the background you can listen to a soundscape evocative of hospital life. This is  interwoven with the reminiscences of hospital patients, snippets from the letters of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and sundry other sounds to stimulate your imagination.

The main gallery

The main gallery

The other Gallery room is what was known when the hospital opened as

THE MEDICAL INSTITUTE

This was a room, running along the front of the hospital, parallel to Euston Road, set aside for all women doctors, from all over the country, at a time when they were still barred from the British Medical Association. It was intended as a space in which they could meet, talk and keep up with the medical journals.

Here you can use a variety of media to follow the story of women, work and co-operation in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A BACK-LIT GRAPHIC LECTERN RUNS AROUND THE MAIN GALLERY:

allowing you to see in words and pictures a quick overview of the life of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and of her hospital.

AT INTERVALS ARE SET SIX INTERACTIVE TOUCH-SCREEN MONITORS

-named –  Ambition, Perseverance, Leadership, Equality, Power in Numbers and Making Our Voices Heard – allowing you to access more information about Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, about the social and political conditions that have shaped her world and ours, and about the building’s new occupant – UNISON..

Each monitor contains:

TWO SHORT VIDEO SEGMENTS.

‘Elizabeth’s Story’. Follow the video from screen to screen. Often speaking her own words, the video uses images and voices to tell the story of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s life.

‘UNISON Now’ UNISON members tell you what the union means to them.

and four

INTERACTIVES 

‘Campaigns for Justice’ and ‘Changing Lives’.

 Touch the screen icons to discover how life in Britain has changed since the birth of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.

 AMBITION

Campaigns for justice

Victorian Britain: a society in flux

Victorian democracy: who could vote, and who couldn’t

Did a woman have rights?

Workers organised

Changing lives

The people’s lives in Victorian Britain

The medical profession before Elizabeth Garrett

Restricted lives, big ambitions: middle-class women in the Victorian era

Women workers in the first half of the 19th century

PERSEVERANCE

Campaigns for justice

The changing political landscape

Widening the franchise: can we trust the workers?

Women want to vote: the beginnings of a movement

Trade unions become trade unions

Changing lives

A new concept of active government: Victorian social reform

Women as nurses and carers

Living a life that’s never been lived before: women attempt to enter medicine

International pioneers: women study medicine abroad

LEADERSHIP

Campaigns for justice

Contagious Diseases Acts

Trade unions broaden their vision

Women and education

Women trade unionists

Changing lives

The middle-class century

Working women in the second half of the 19th century

Social reform, philanthropy and paternalism

Women doctors for India

EQUALITY

 Campaigns for justice

The women’s suffrage movement

The Taff Vale decision hampers the unions

The founding of the Labour party

The People’s Budget

Changing lives

Work and play

Marylebone and Somers Town

Did the working classes want a welfare state?

1901 – Who were the workers in the NewHospital for Women?

POWER IN NUMBERS

Campaigns for justice

The General Strike – 1926

The first Labour governments

Feminist campaigns between the wars

1901: The lives of working women in London

Changing lives

Work of women doctors in the First World War

Can we afford the doctor? Health services before the NHS

Wartime demand for social justice

The creation of the National Health Service 1945-1948

MAKING OUR VOICES HEARD

Campaigns for justice

Equality campaigns

Public sector unions before UNISON

UNISON brings public service workers together

Are trade unions still relevant?

Changing lives

The National Health Service becomes sacrosanct

Did the welfare state change the family?

Women’s equality today

Women in medicine now

IN THE CENTRE OF THE GALLERY YOU WILL FIND:

ENTERPRISING WOMEN

 an interactive table containing short biographies of over 100 women renowned for their achievements in Britain in the 19th-21st centuries. Up to four visitors can use the table at any one time.  Drag a photograph towards the edge of the table to discover details of that individual’s life. Or search by name or vocation, using the alphabetical or subject lists.

ON THE WALLS OF THE GALLERY

PROJECTIONS

show a changing display of pictures of the hospital as it was and of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and some of the other women whose stories the Gallery tells.

Garrett LaburnumTHE GARRETT CORNER

is designed in the style associated with the work of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s sister, the architectural decorator Agnes Garrett, who was in charge of the original interior decoration of the hospital in 1890. The Gallery’s fireplace is the only surviving example of Agnes Garrett’s work. Next to this hangs a length of wallpaper, ‘Garrett Laburnum’, re-created from one of her designs.

In the Garrett Corner a display case and a low table contain a small collection of objects relevant to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the hospital and early women doctors.

While here do sit down and browse the library of books. These relate to the history of women – in society, in medicine, in the workplace, and in trade unions  – and to the Somers Town area.

Plaque commemorating a substantial donation to the hospital by Henry Tate, industrialist and philanthropist

Plaque commemorating a substantial donation to the hospital by Henry Tate, industrialist and philanthropist

ACROSS FROM THE GARRETT CORNER IS A DISPLAY OF CERAMIC PLAQUES

Decorative plaques that used to hang beside patients’ beds, each commemorating a donor’s generosity.

You can read in detail about the work of the Garrett family in the fields of medicine, education, interior design, landscape design, citizenship and material culture in Elizabeth Crawford, Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle, published by Francis Boutle Publishers, £25. The book can be bought direct from womanandhersphere.com or click here to buy from the publisher

DO VISIT:

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery at the UNISON Centre

130 Euston Road

London NW1 2AY

Telephone: 0800 0 857 857

Open Wednesday to Friday 9.00am to 6.00pm

and the third Saturday of every month 9.00am to 4.00pm 

Admission Free

, , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments

Suffrage Stories: ‘From Frederick Street to Winson Green’: The Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Campaign

On 13 October 2008 I gave the following talk in King’s Norton, Birmingham. It was part of a series of lectures to commemorate the restoration of the Old Grammar School and the Saracen’s Head, which in 2004 had won the BBC’ ‘Restoration’ television series.

 

I chose the title ‘From Frederick Street to Winson Green’ because it is interesting to trace the growth of the women’s suffrage movement in Birmingham through the streets and buildings in which the men and women of the city conducted their campaign. We will see that this campaign moved slowly from a domestic environment, from the villas (particularly the drawing rooms) of its main protagonists – into the public buildings and then the streets of Birmingham. And it was in Winson Green, the city’s castellated jail, that in 1909 the campaign which had begun 43 years earlier, took on a completely different and very much more dangerous aspect, that for which it has become notorious, when it was in there that suffragettes were forcibly fed for the first time in Britain.Winson Green

 

But to begin at the beginning – it is worth bearing in mind that the campaign for women’s enfranchisement was just one among many in which liberal-minded men and women of the mid-19th century were interested. The campaigns for, example, land reform, anti-vaccination, compulsory education, early closing, and the Sunday opening of museums and art galleries were ones to which equal attention was devoted by their adherents. In 1866 the country was aware that parliamentary reform was in the air. It was over 30 years since the last attempt at reform and those who had industrialised Britain were determined that their exclusion from the franchise should be remedied.  John Bright, who from 1858 had been Birmingham’s Radical MP, was at the forefront of this agitation. It was not, however, around Bright, who, unlike the rest of his remarkable family, was never in favour of giving any women the vote, but around another Radical MP, John Stuart Mill,  that the campaign to include women in this potentially enlarged electorate was to centre. When Mill was elected to the Westminster seat in 1865 it was on a manifesto that included women as a category in a proposed enlarged franchise

A year later, in June 1866, he presented to Parliament a petition, signed by 1499 women, asking that the vote should be given to women on the same terms as it was given to men. This did not, of course, mean that all women should have a vote – any more than it meant all men – the capacity to vote was still to be determined by a property qualification. This petition includes only three names definitely from the Birmingham area – one woman lived at King’s Heath and two in Hockley. None of these women played any significant part in the ensuing campaign and it is likely that they were each asked to give their signature by a friend or relation from outside the area. There was clearly not yet an existing ‘feminist network’ in Birmingham, although this situation was soon to be remedied by the arrival at  10 Chad Road,

10 Chad Road (with thanks to Carole McKeown)

10 Chad Road (with thanks to Carole McKeown)

Edgbaston in c. 1867 of William Taylor and his young family. He was a member of a family that was closely involved both by business and marriage with the Courtaulds, manufacturers in Essex of that most eminently Victorian material – crape. Courtauld and Taylor fortunes were built on the backs, literally, of mourning Britons. William’s brother, Peter Alfred Taylor, was the very wealthy and very radical MP for Leicester. P.A. Taylor’s wife, Clementia, had been very active in the campaign to abolish slavery – as well as in numerous other radical causes – and was a member of the committee that organised that first women’s suffrage petition.  William Taylor’s wife, Caroline, had signed the petition while they were living in Bridgwater. The family was Unitarian (as were so many others of their fellow campaigners of this period) and William is described in the 1871 census as an iron merchant and manufacturer.

The 1867 Reform Bill, when passed, did not, of course, include women in the enlarged franchise and groups of men and women in London and Manchester slowly formed themselves into the nuclei of a continuing campaign to put further petitions before parliament.  At the time this was seen as the correct way in which to exert pressure on parliament; methods were to change over the years.

A committee of this National Society for Women’s Suffrage was formed in Birmingham on 21 April 1868 ‘in accordance with the request of Mrs P. Taylor, the Secretary of the London Suffrage Society, who had urged Mrs William Taylor, of Birmingham, and Miss Johnson to take up the matter’.  A month later the committee held its first public meeting at the Exchange Rooms in New Street. William and Caroline Taylor were from the first members of the Birmingham executive committee and in 1868 Caroline was its treasurer.  The first secretary was Mary Johnson, who had already been subscribing to the main London suffrage society in 1867.  She lived with her parents, George and Fanny Johnson, at 90 Wheeley’s Road in Edgbaston.  George Johnson is described in the 1871 census as an Independent minister. Lydia Becker, who was secretary of the very influential women’s suffrage society in Manchester, acted as Mary Johnson’s mentor, giving her guidance in setting up and running the society.

However in 1870 after her marriage, Mary Johnsonmoved to West Bromwich and was succeeded as secretary by Eliza Mary Sturge who lived at 17 Frederick Street (long ago renamed ‘Frederick Road’).  She was the 28-year-old daughter of Charles Sturge, alderman of the city, brother of Joseph Sturge. The latter was by then dead, but very much alive in the Birmingham municipal memory. In the 1820s he had been one of the most vociferous campaigners against slavery and had been secretary of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society – even going out to the West Indies to inspect conditions there for himself. In the 1840s Joseph Sturge had been a leading campaigner in favour of the repeal of the Corn Laws, had throughout his life been an ardent supporter of free trade, peace and temperance, an advocate of manhood suffrage, founder of the Complete Suffrage Union, but, like John Bright, was not prepared to include women in any proposed enlarged franchise.

Sturge statue

Sturge statue

After his death, in 1862 a fountain and statue had been dedicated to his memory at Five Ways, in Edgbaston  and it is still there, despite all the road alterations. His brother, Charles, who worked in business with him as a corn merchant, was also involved in Joseph’s philanthropic endeavours but, unlike him gave practical, financial, support to the women’s suffrage movement. In 1871 he lived with his two daughters, Eliza and Maria, at 17 Frederick Street and it was from her home that Eliza conducted the business of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society. The Sturges were Quakers and were related to the Clark family – the Quaker shoe makers – of Street in Somerset, who with other Sturge cousins were influential in the Bristol women’s suffrage society.

Having taken over the role of secretary in Birmingham, Eliza quickly became an active speaker in the suffrage cause. It was the policy of the suffrage societies around the country to attempt to influence both the existing, male, electorate and the women of the country by holding public meetings, using both local and imported speakers to lay out the arguments for women’s right to a vote in pithy speeches. In December 1871 there had been such a meeting in Birmingham, held in the Masonic Hall and described as crowded and highly successful.

Millicent Fawcett

Millicent Fawcett

Millicent Garrett Fawcett came from London to speak at it. Eliza Sturge herself also took to the road as a suffrage speaker.  In 1872, for instance, she was a speaker at suffrage meetings in both Bristol and Rochdale.  A speech she gave on 6 December that year at BirminghamTown Hall was reprinted as a pamphlet. In the course of this speech she mentions that ‘I know that I can go and return from public meetings alone at night without experiencing the slightest difficulty or annoyance’, which says something about the streets of Birmingham at the time and gives us an idea of how Eliza Sturge occupied her evenings! Millicent Garrett Fawcett was again a speaker and her speech was also reprinted. In it she made the point that ‘I can scarcely imagine that the Birmingham politicians, who took so prominent part in the reform agitation for the extension of the suffrage to working men, can be blind to the patent fact that all the most convincing arguments used during that agitation in favour of admitting the working classes to representation apply with equal cogency to the case of women.’  In 1873, very soon after women became eligible to stand, Eliza Sturge was elected as a member of the Birmingham School Board, of which Joseph Chamberlain was then the chairman. She was a Liberal supporter but in the 1870s despaired at the Liberal Party’s lack of interest in the woman’s cause.

As well as holding public meetings, members of the Birmingham society also undertook personal canvassing and the distribution of pamphlets in some of the wards of the city. However they were always at this time hampered by a lack of funds. At the beginning of the 1870s the society had a subscribing membership of about 30 and had only slightly increased its numbers by the end of the decade. The society’s annual reports are notably brief in comparison with those of, for instance, the Manchester or Edinburgh societies,  But in March 1873 the society did manage to move its affairs out of Frederick St and into an office in central Birmingham, at 4 Broad Street Corner and spent £3 13s on its furnishing.

In 1872, the executive committee of the society also included the  Rev Henry Crosskey and his wife, who, like the Taylors, were also recent arrivals in Birmingham. He was a Unitarian minister and had previously been living in Glasgow.

Church of the Messiah

Church of the Messiah

In Birmingham he became minister of the congregation of the  Church of the Messiah in Broad Street, a large Gothic building which reflected, as Pevsner put it, ‘the importance of Unitarians in Birmingham in the second half of the 19th century’. Under Crosskey the Church of the Messiah became an intellectual centre, a place where ideas about society were openly and critically discussed. Crosskey had long been associated with such radical causes as the Young Italy movement (Garibaldi and Mazzini were heroes to all the early supporters of women’s suffrage) and in Birmingham found a comrade in George Dawson, another independent nonconformist minister. Dawson had been a Baptist but in 1847 had opened his own church, the Church of the Saviour, in the middle of the city. His congregation included many people – Kenricks, Martineaus and Chamberlains -who were to become influential in the civic life of Birmingham. Dawson’s message was that the church should eschew fixed creeds and work towards the greater good, urging citizens to give all their talents for the service of the city. Dawson, thus, was a promoter of the ‘civic gospel’ that led Birmingham, in the 1870s and 1880s, to acquire the reputation for being the best-governed city in the world. Dawson had as early as the 1840s made clear that he was concerned about the position of women in society. It is unsurprising, therefore, to discover that his wife was also a member of the executive committee of the suffrage society at this time.

By 1878 Eliza Sturge had moved with her father and sister to Bewdley, from where, for a time she continued to act as secretary to the suffrage society. But by 1885 the honorary secretaryship had been taken over by Catherine Osler, who was finally to retire, as president of the society, 35 years later in 1920. As Catherine Courtauld Taylor, daughter of William and Caroline Taylor of 10 Chad Road, she had subscribed 1/- to the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society when it was founded in 1868; she was then 14. In 1873 she had married, in Crosskey’s Church of the Messiah, Alfred Clarkson Osler, a member of the wealthy Birmingham family of glass manufacturers.  From both their families Catherine and Alfred Osler inherited a radical liberal tradition and from about 1884 Catherine was president of the Birmingham Women’s Liberal Association.   All 4 of their children were to become active in the women’s suffrage movement. With increasing prosperity the Oslers moved to a large house in Edgbaston, ‘Fallowfields’, in Norfolk Road, the scene of a plethora of drawing-room meetings at which the question of women’s suffrage was discussed.

Mrs Osler (c) Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation

Mrs Osler (c) Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation

When Catherine Osler became secretary of the suffrage society her unmarried sister, Edith, became treasurer. It will have become clear that the 19th-century suffrage campaign in Birmingham, as in the rest of the country, was very much a middle-class affair – indeed very much an Edgbaston affair.  With the vote firmly allied to a property qualification, it would only be householders and ratepayers who would benefit from any extension of the vote. There were, however, even within the middle-class pro-suffragists, degrees of liberalism. The 19th-century campaign split in 1888 along the lines of the split in the Liberal Party over Home Rule for Ireland. In Birmingham, as in the country at large, Joseph Chamberlain was one of the most prominent of the Liberal Unionists (those against Home Rule); the Oslers, unlike most of the Birmingham industrial families, who followed Chamberlain, were members of the more radical wing – followers of Gladstone in supporting Home Rule. This schism was reflected in a split in the national suffrage society so that for most of the 1890s the suffrage movement rather lost its focus, although individual members and societies were extremely active.

In 1892 Birmingham was chosen as the venue for a national conference organized by one of the splinter societies, the Women’s Emancipation Union, perhaps the most radical of these societies, with an agenda that demanded equality with men in every aspect of life. Although it is doubtful that Catherine Osler was actually a member of this society she did chair one session of this conference and proposed a resolution supporting the inclusion of women in any reformed scheme of local government. One of the leading members of the Women’s Emancipation Union was an interesting Birmingham woman. She was Caroline Smith, the sister of  George Jacob Holyoake, Chartist and secularist, the last man in England to be sentenced on a charge of atheism.  They were the eldest children in a large family, living in the 1820s in comparative poverty at 1 Inge Street in central Birmingham. As a child George Holyoake worked as a whitesmith alongside his father in the Eagle Foundry.  Their mother had a small home workshop making horn buttons, before being put out of work by the growth of larger manufacturers. The Holyoakes were obviously an able family. However nothing is known about Caroline’s early life except that at some point she married a William Benjamin Smith, who had been born in Kings Norton around 1822. When the 1871 census was taken they were living at 19 Carpenter Road, Edgbaston. Although the Smiths’ house has now disappeared, it was presumably not unlike those that do remain – that is to say a large stucco Regency villa – a far cry from the house cum workshop in Inge Street where Caroline grew up. She was a member of the executive committee of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society in 1885 but had clearly been attracted to the more radical movement and by 1892 was the national treasurer of the Women’s Emancipation Union.

It was doubtless its central position in the country that made Birmingham a popular venue for national conferences because again it was here, in 1896, that the main suffrage societies made a concerted effort to regroup.  It was proposed that past differences be put aside and that they should unite as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, it being recognised that, after 30 years of campaigning – and the goal little nearer achievement – there was a need to present a common front from the centre. Although no parliamentary bill in favour of women’s suffrage was presented between 1897 and 1904 the suffrage movement did benefit from a more effective central organisation and this enthusiasm permeated down to the local societies.  In October 1900 the minutes of the Birmingham society record that one of its best ever drawing-room meetings had been held in a private house at which 100 ladies were present and 26 new members enrolled. In 1902 the annual meeting of the Birmingham society – held in the Grand Hotel – was addressed by Sir Oliver Lodge, principal of Birmingham University. His speech was published as a pamphlet‘ so that today we can read that he thought, ‘The vote itself is a trivial affair, but its artificial withholding is a gratuitous insult: I am not surprised that the arbitrary withholding on that small function is one that galls out of all proportion to its importance. I recognize the desirability of doing away with artificial obstacles, and giving to everyone a clear field and an equal chance – a fair share in education, an open entrance to the professions, and a fair and reasonable opportunity of service in every direction.’

By this time Catherine Osler had become president of the Birmingham society and in 1903-4, with help from paid organizers (the movement was definitely moving away from involvement on a purely voluntary basis), she had supervised the opening of new branches in Coventry, Warwick, Redditch, and Leamington.  At this time the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society thought it advisable to undertake work among working women, as was being done in Lancashire among the women textile workers. The Birmingham society began with the women chain makers of Cradley, paying for an organizer to go around from yard to yard, talking to the women about the suffrage issue.

Women chainmakers at Cradley Heath

Women chainmakers at Cradley Heath

In early 1904 they conducted another campaign amongst the Cradley nail makers.  During 1907 the society held 30 meetings in Birmingham and the surrounding district and in 1908 drew in £8 6s 3d in subscriptions – making it the second largest society (after London) in England.

The increasing activity of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society was not only due to better central organization but doubtless owed something to the impetus provided by the arrival on the suffrage scene of a new ginger group. This was the Women’s Social and Political Union, which had been founded in October 1903 in Manchester by Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, but which had only really begun to make an impact with the arrest and imprisonment in October 1905 (in Manchester) of Mrs Pankhurst’s eldest daughter, Christabel, and of Annie Kenney on charges of obstructing the police.

The WSPU determined to win the vote by what they termed ‘militant methods’, that is, in order to bring pressure to bear on the Cabinet they were prepared to do more than hold orderly public meetings and present petitions to parliament through MPs.  The political process itself had evolved since the 1860s; it was clear that individual members of parliament had little real power (that now resided in the Cabinet) and that no bill in favour of women’s suffrage would have a chance of passing into law unless it was presented as a government measure. What actually were ‘militant methods’ was never clearly defined by the WSPU –  members more or less set their own limits, and that militancy escalated as the years passed. Initially WSPU strategy was to hold large meetings at the beginning of each session of parliament in a hall, such as Caxton Hall, close to the House of Commons, and for a deputation, often led by Mrs Pankhurst herself, to attempt to present a petition to the Prime Minister, who would invariably refuse to see them. The police would attempt to prevent them reaching Parliament and brawling would ensue.

Mrs Pankhurst arrested while leading a deputation to Parliament

Mrs Pankhurst arrested while leading a deputation to Parliament

This all attracted marvellous publicity, in a way in which drawing-room meetings in Edgbaston never had. The WSPU provided newspapers with ‘news’, that is, spectacle that was recorded in the photographs that had only lately superseded the engravings with which newspapers had been illustrated, and with the kind of  behaviour that, because it was considered ‘extreme’, was, therefore, ‘news’.

Although the WSPU opened branches around the country it was increasingly autocratically controlled from Clement’s Inn, its London centre, by the Pankhursts and their fellow leaders, Emmeline and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence. The WSPU did not, like the NUWSS societies, foster local centres run by local women, Instead organizers were appointed by Clement’s Inn to the main cities and were expected to work to orders. These organizers were moved frequently around in order that they might not develop too close local attachments.

The Pankhursts’ autocratic system was not put in place without difficulty.  In the autumn 1907 one group, which perhaps might be roughly characterized as a more left-wing element, broke away from the WSPU. When first founded in Manchester the WSPU had drawn support from the local Labour party and women had been drawn into it through their interest in furthering the cause of Labour as well as of women.  When it became clear that, as well as forbidding any democracy within their own society, the Pankhursts were not interested in supporting the Labour party at parliamentary elections, a group, under the leadership of  Charlotte Despard, withdrew and formed the Women’s Freedom League.

Thus in Edwardian Britain there were three main suffrage groupings, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which sought the vote using constitutional methods, the Women’s Social and Political Union that employed militant methods, and the Women’s Freedom League that was prepared to use militant methods against the political process (such as attacking the ballot box and picketing parliament) but would not countenance harm to people or property. Interestingly, although by 1913 the WFL had 59 branches, it only had two in the West Midlands, in Wolverhampton and the Potteries, and never supported a branch in Birmingham, although on occasion, during general election campaigns, for instance, WFL speakers, such as its leader, Charlotte Despard, did come to speak in Birmingham.

Emma Sproson

Emma Sproson

The most active member of the WFL in the West Midlands was Emma Sproson, who had been a member of the WSPU in 1906, but joined the WFL after the 1907 split. She was a keen supporter of the Labour Party. Mrs Pankhurst had stayed with Emma Sproson when she visited Wolverhampton in 1906 to speak to local members of the Labour Party.

In keeping with their practice, by November 1907 the WSPU had appointed as their organizer in Birmingham Annie Kenney’s younger sister, Nell, who was based at 22 Belgrave Road, Edgbaston. She had worked from the age of 10 in an Oldham mill, until forced by ill health to leave and become a shop assistant. Now in her mid- twenties she set about organizing Birmingham. She calmly notes in her report for the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, in November 1907, ‘I am visiting most of the influential people in Birmingham and surrounding districts’. She was also holding a series of drawing-room, open-air and factory-gate meetings, besides addressing different religious societies and women’s co-operative guilds. She notes that ‘Our meetings are being run on strictly economical lines. The outdoor meetings are being advertised by chalking the pavements or ringing the bell, and the audiences so far have been orderly and sympathetic’. On 20 November 1907 a well-publicized WSPU meeting was held at Birmingham Town Hall, with both Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick-Lawrence as speakers, and Christabel Pankhurst taking the chair.   Regular, women-only meetings were held at this time on Thursdays at the Bristol Street Schools. In February 1908 a contingent of women travelled from Birmingham to London to take part in what was called ‘The Women’s Parliament’, a meeting held in Caxton Hall on the occasion of the opening of a new session of the ‘the men’s parliament’. In the ensuing fracas four women from Birmingham were among the 50 or so arrested and subsequently sent to Holloway.

Mrs Pankhurst arrested while leading a deputation to Parliament

Mrs Pankhurst arrested while leading a deputation to Parliament

Another Birmingham woman was arrested the next day while taking part in the deputation led by Mrs Pankhurst that attempted to approach the House of Commons.

In June 1908 the WSPU organized an extravagant demonstration in Hyde Park to which women from all over the country came. Birmingham was on the line from Wolverhampton along which travelled on the day a Special Train bringing Birmingham supporters to take part in the rally. Tickets for the train cost seven shillings return and could be bought from Stanford and Mann, booksellers in New Street, from James Pass’s music warehouse at 48 Cherry Street, or from Combridge at 4 and 5 New Street.  The train left Birmingham at quarter to eight in the morning. When they got off the train at Euston the women lined up with thousands of others to process to Hyde Park.

One of the main speakers in Hyde Park, with her own platform from which to address the vast crowds, was Gladice Keevil,

Gladice Keevil

Gladice Keevil

considered one of the prettiest and most effective of WSPU speakers. She was a Londoner and was then 24 years old – she had already spent six weeks that year in Holloway. The Daily News report of the Hyde Park rally singled her out : ‘Miss Keevil was a particularly striking figure.  Robed in flowing white muslin, her lithe figure swaying to every changing expression, and the animated face that smiled and scolded beneath the black straw hat and waving white ostrich feather, was the centre of one of the densest crowds’, showing that then, as now, it is the messenger rather than the message that captures the attention of the reporter. It was around this time that Gladice Keevil came to Birmingham, appointed WSPU National Organizer in the Midlands.  She had already played her part in the conducting of the WSPU campaign at a by-election in Wolverhampton in May.  WSPU election policy was to oppose the government (that is the Liberal) candidate in order, as they hoped, to bring pressure to bear on the government. At this Wolverhampton election the Liberal retained his seat with a majority of only eight (reduced from over 2800); the WSPU of course claimed that it was their campaign that had produced this close call. By the end of October 1908 Gladice Keevil had opened a WSPU office in Birmingham at 14 Ethel Street, which was to act as the headquarters for the Midlands. Evening At Homes were held there at 7.30 on Tuesdays, presumably attracting women who were working during the day,  while afternoon

Edgbaston Assembly Rooms

Edgbaston Assembly Rooms

meetings were held for the leisured at the Edgbaston Assembly Rooms.  Working closely with Gladice Keevil at this time was Bertha Ryland, the daughter of Mrs Alice Ryland, of 19 Hermitage Road,

Hermitage Road (thanks to Carole McKeown)

19 Hermitage Road (thanks to Carole McKeown)

Edgbaston, who in the mid 1870s had been a member of the executive committee of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society and who had, with her daughter, transferred allegiance The Birmingham WSPU took its campaign into the Bourneville works and reported that many of the girls there wore the  WSPU ‘Votes for Women’ badges. In February 1909 Christabel Pankhurst was the speaker at a meeting at the Town Hall and, as Votes for Women reported, ‘received an ovation the like of which no woman has ever experienced in Birmingham’.

A month later Mrs Pankhurst addressed a reception at the Midland Hotel, and a month after that Mrs Pethick-Lawrence led another Town Hall meeting.  Birmingham was certainly not allowed to forget the women’s Familiar names appear in the list of WSPU activists; Miss Mathews and Miss Saxelby, for instance, have the same surnames as married women members of the 19th-century suffrage society, presumably attracted by the opportunity of more direct action offered by the WSPU. Catherine Osler’s daughters, Nellie and Dorothy, remained active members of the constitutional society and their brother, Julian was by this time a member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, the male counterpart of the NUWSS. Their other brother, John, was running the London side of the glass business and his wife was secretary of the Hampstead NUWSS society.

Gladice Keevil had introduced plenty of amusement for the young women of Birmingham; they could join the Votes for Women Corps and take to the street, standing in the gutter and attempt to persuade passers by to buy the WSPU newspaper. Again this activity seems to have been aimed at the leisured because quarter to 12 on a Friday morning was the rendevous time for the Corps to meet.   Those sufficiently active could join the Cycling Scouts who, covering a 10-mile radius around Birmingham, took the suffrage message to out of the way places.  There was also a Midlands WSPU horse-drawn caravan which in the summer toured the surrounding countryside. 

Throughout the spring of 1909 there was also rather more sedentary activity that could be dedicated to the cause; the WSPU held in London a vast fund-raising bazaar, to which each district was encouraged to contribute goods for sale. The Midland group supported two stalls, one presided over by Mrs Kerwood, who had been one of the WSPU prisoners in March 1908, and the other by Mrs Gertrude Howey of Malvern, who had donated the campaigning caravan and whose daughter, Elsie, was one of the most active of the younger WSPU members. Women were encouraged to come from all over the country to visit the  Exhibition, which was beautifully decorated by Sylvia Pankhurst, another of that remarkable family.  Parties came down from Birmingham for the occasion on special excursion tickets. Birmingham women jewellers, including a Miss Myers and Annie Steen (of Woodfield Cottage, Woodfield Road, King’s Heath) contributed jewellery for sale on the Midland stall.  Annie Steen was a regular advertizer in the pages of Votes for Women. In the 1901 census she had been described as an Art Teacher living at Mayfield Road, Kings Norton. Some of this jewellery would have been rendered with enamelling or stones in the WSPU ‘colours’; Annie Steen advertised in October 1909 ‘Handwrought jewellery in gold and silver set with stones in the colours’.  Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence had introduced the colours, purple, white, and green, as ‘favours’ to be worn at the Hyde Park rally the previous year and WSPU branding had taken off in Birmingham. In a May 1909 report Gladice Keevil reminded members that hats, ties etc in the colours could be obtained from Romney, a milliner at 150 Broad Street and noted that one member was having the colours introduced into her wedding in every possible way, including the bouquets and the cake. Besides supplying jewellery to the cause Annie Steen also volunteered her drawing room for WSPU At Homes. Such meetings were also held at this time in the Women’s Hospital and in Queen’s College.

Mary Leigh in her uniform as leader of the WSPU Fife and Drum Band

Mary Leigh in her uniform as leader of the WSPU Fife and Drum Band

Birmingham hit the headlines in September 1909 when suffragettes (as WSPU members had been nicknamed in order to be differentiated from members of the non-militant societies, the suffragists) dramatically interrupted a meeting that Asquith was attempting to hold in the Bingley Hall. Birmingham had tried to protect itself against any likely outrage; nine-foot high barricades had lined the station platform and the main streets along which the prime minister had travelled. However one intrepid suffragette had penetrated the defence and had reached the roof of the hall, from where she proceeded to hurl down slates to the ground. The five suffragettes, only one of whom (Evelyn Hilda Burkitt, a secretary  who lived at 214 Wellington Road, Perry Barr) was native to Birmingham, were arrested.  Four were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and the fifth, Mary Leigh, who was regarded as a repeat offender, was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment with hard labour in Winson Green. There they went on hunger strike. Mary Leigh had used the tactic, both in Holloway and in Walton jail, Liverpool, and on both occasions had starved herself out of prison before the end of her sentence. However by late September the Home Office, whose officials had been giving advice to the prison medical officers, decided that enough was enough and Winson Green staff were instructed to institute a regime of forcible or, as the Home Office preferred to call it, ‘artificial’ feeding.

The minutes of the Prison Visiting Committee for this period make interesting reading.  Unlike the issues of Votes for Women in which the suffragettes told their story, the Committee minutes give a dispassionate account of the procedure, recording that attempts were first made to feed Mary Leigh with a spoon, and when she resisted, resort was made to feeding by a nasal tube, but that by the end of the month she was taking food from a feeding cup.  The WSPU brought a case on her behalf against the Home Office and the Governor of Winson Green, to the effect that a prisoner had a right to refuse such ‘treatment’ as feeding, However, the Lord Chief Justice eventually ruled that it was a medical officer’s duty to prevent prisoners committing suicide. A statement made by Mary Leigh, ‘Forcible Feeding in Prison’, based on her experiences in Winson Green, was published by the WSPU. The Birmingham WSPU did what they could to capitalise on the prison’s notoriety; parades were organised to march around outside, the women singing to offer encouragement to the inmates, I have seen a postcard sent at the time by a certain Arthur Lewis, who wrote to his correspondent No doubt you have heard of the Birmingham suffragettes being forcibly fed in the prison.. It is occurring only about 3 minutes walk from our house and nearly every night the suffragettes who are at liberty ride to the prison in sometimes wagonettes and sometimes a fruitier’s cart and blow bugles. There are always some policemen there and do not let the conveyance stop. One suffragette Mrs Leigh was released yesterday, Saturday.’ Indeed Much had been made of the release of Mrs Leigh who was taken to the Ethel Street office in a cab and then straight to a nursing home.

The sight, as it were, of the Liberal government forcibly feeding suffrage prisoners was too much for Catherine Osler and at the end of the year she resigned as president of the Birmingham Women’s Liberal Association, a position she had held for most of her adult life. She did not, however, condone militancy, as she made clear in a pamphlet, ‘Why Women Need the Vote’.

By January 1910, when the general election that resulted from the House of Lord’s rejection of Lloyd George’s budget was held, Gladice Keevil had been moved on from Birmingham to Exeter, a very marginal Liberal seat, which went, with an equally small majority to the Conservatives; obviously Gladice’s winning ways were thought an essential tool in this aspect of the campaign. Liberalism was presumably too entrenched in Birmingham for it to be thought worth more than the usual measure of campaigning. The new organiser was Dorothy Evans and a new office, which stayed open until 8 in the evening, was opened at 33 Paradise Street. Throughout 1910, with the Liberal government dependent on a greatly reduced majority, the WSPU put militancy on hold, taking at face value Asquith’s assurance that if a reform bill were to be introduced the government would make the question of a women’s suffrage amendment open to a free vote. Activity therefore in the country concentrated on keeping the issue in front of the electorate.  Bertha Ryland and Hilda Burkitt were still active WSPU workers, attracting a range of high- profile WSPU speakers to Birmingham. Through the pages of Votes for Women the minutiae of the campaign can be traced; it certainly involved an incredible amount of organisation.  By the end of the year the WSPU activists were even able to employ electricity to advertize a meeting at which Mrs Pankhurst was speaking in the Town Hall; lanterns were ‘fitted with electric light which shone through’ throwing up the words ‘Mrs Pankhurst, Town Hall, November 15’ and were carried around the streets.  The lanterns had been made by members of the local Men’s Political Union – the WSPU’s male counterpart.  Women might agitate for the vote but they obviously didn’t mess with electricity.

The Birmingham NUWSS society had reopened an office c 1908 at 10 Easy Row – it was apparent that they had been without a central office for several years. Catherine Osler had by now an extremely competent secretary to run the society – Mrs Florence Carol Ring. I have been unable to find out anything about Mrs Ring – perhaps some local researcher can – but believe she was a most efficient organizer.  A notebook in the Archives is labelled ‘Town Hall Meetings: Method of organizing and procedure’ and is full of the most detailed notes of how to organize and advertize the suffrage society’s meetings. All the items are costed and this notebook highlights the orderliness and forward planning that went into NUWSS meetings in this period.

In the summer of 1910 the country’s NUWSS and WSPU societies jointly staged in London a grand rally, wonderfully decorated with banners. There would have been trainloads of participants from Birmingham.

MRs Aubrey Dowson (ed), The Women's Suffrage Cookery Boook

MRs Aubrey Dowson (ed), The Women’s Suffrage Cookery Boook

The Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society was behind the production of one of the NUWSS’s most appealing fund-raising projects, the Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book, edited by Mrs Aubrey Dowson, whose husband was a nephew of Catherine Osler. The recipes were gathered from suffragists all over the country – the first in the book, for Egg Croquettes is from Mrs Julian Osler, Catherine’s daughter-in-law.

The suffrage peace came to an end in November 1910 when it was announced that parliament was to be dissolved  without women being any closer to getting the vote. This was not the outcome for which the suffrage societies, both constitutional and militant, had been working; the WSPU put in place prepared plans for a deputation to the House of Commons.  This met with firm police resistance in Parliament Square.

'Black Friday', Parliament Square, November 1911

‘Black Friday’, Parliament Square, November 1910

Women were assaulted and the occasion went down in suffrage history as ‘Black Friday’.  Dorothy Evans was among the women arrested but, because the Home Office realised that the occasion would be used as a wonderful source of propaganda by the WSPU, no charges were brought against her or any of the many others.  However women who, a couple of days later, protested about the Parliament Square debacle by throwing stones at government offices, were arrested and charged.  One of these, who was sentenced to two weeks’ imprisonment, was a Mrs Pattie Hall, who although originally from Manchester, where she and her husband had been very close associates of the Pankhursts in their Labour Party days, now lived in Edgbaston, at 56 Hagley Road.  Her young daughter, Nellie, had taken part the previous year in the parades outside Winson Green and was to remain a supporter of Mrs Pankhurst until the latter’s death.  A wonderful collection of Nellie Hall’s suffrage papers and ephemera (including a  suffragette tea service and  her hunger strike medal) is on loan to the Birmingham Museum.   By mid 1911 the WSPU office had moved again – to 97 John Bright Street.

In April 1911 some members of the Birmingham WSPU joined in the boycott called on the census. One of these was Mrs Ethel Adair Impey, a Quaker,  of Cropthorne, Middletonhall Road, King’s Norton. She was described on the census form, filled in by the registrar, as a ‘Suffragette, Information Refused’. In fact  information was refused not only by her, but also by her husband, her son, her servant and about 6 nameless females.

In November 1911 after yet another long period of truce, Asquith announced that the government planned to introduce a manhood suffrage bill, which might, if the House of Commons desired, be amended to include women. An unlikelihood. This was the signal for women to take to the streets in London with stones, breaking more windows of government offices. Amongst the many arrested was Bertha Brewster, a young Birmingham woman whose mother had also long been a suffrage supporter. She was sentenced to 21 days’ imprisonment and on her release, with other Birmingham prisoners, she was given a hero’s welcome, in a room in Queen’s College, by the local WSPU. Dorothy Evans was among the many women arrested in London in March 1912 after smashing windows in the West End; Mrs Pankhurst had told the WSPU that ‘the argument of the broken pane of glass is the most valuable argument in modern politics’.  Dorothy Evans was sentenced to two month’s imprisonment and a Miss Grew took over as organizer in Birmingham. Because there were too many suffragette prisoners to be accommodated in Holloway many were farmed out to prisons around the country.  Twenty-five ordinary prisoners were moved from Winson Green in order to make way for suffragettes, who then went on hunger strike and were forcibly fed.  Miss Grew organized members to go each night to stand outside the prison and cheer them on.

The prisoners appear to have made the most of their incarceration. They produced a hand-written, illustrated magazine, entitled The Hammerer’s Magazine – ‘for private circulation only’, its cover showing a hammer striking a pane of glass. One of the sketches, drawn on toilet paper, shows the 25 suffragettes in two rows seated on chairs, backs to the artist, with the prison gallery above, one warder at the front and another on the first-floor gallery. This is quite an important sketch, giving a rare view of life inside Winson Green..

The best poem in the magazine is probably one entitled ‘Winson Green in April & May 1912’ which appears to be written on the back of a Robertson’s Golden Shred marmalade wrapper! It begins:

Cling, clang of prison keys,

Slam bang of doors,

Wash slosh – Monday morn,

Water on the floors –

Tramp, tramp of prison feet,

Ring, rang of bells,

Clash smash of prison bars,

Suffragettes in cells.

Among the women imprisoned at this time was Maude Kate Smith from Birmingham, with whom Professor Brian Harrison recorded an excellent interview now held in the Women’s Library.  Besides giving very graphic detail of her experience of forcible feeding, during the course of the interview Miss Smith reveals that there were plans afoot to blow up a Birmingham canal – for during 1912 and 1913 WSPU militancy escalated  as the government’s intractability became more apparent.

10179254_b~Automatic-Suffragette-Exterminating-Pillar-Box-a-Comment-on-Militant-Suffragettes-PostersPillar boxes were fired – here is one comical comments on this method of militancy. More seriously, property (always at least intended to be empty) was also targeted. The actions of the government contributed towards what might now be seen as ‘terrorism’. In April 1913 parliament passed ‘The Cat and Mouse Act’, by which  women prisoners who were being forcibly fed were to be released for a few days to recover their health and were required to return to prison to resume their sentence. Most of those released – the mice – did not bother to return to prison and in many instances the police did not bother to look for them.  This ‘underground’ life did, however, have a momentum of its own. Mice, already branded as criminals, thought nothing of repeating their acts of arson (or, as they called it, ‘work’) and much of the damage, which was really quite extensive, was carried out by a dedicated few,  travelling around the country, given shelter by well wishers.

For instance, on Christmas Day 1913 one young suffragette, Lilian Lenton, who had been arrested on a charge of setting fire to a house in Cheltenham, was released from prison after going on a hunger-and-thirst-strike – into the care of Mrs Edith Impey of King’s Norton.  In April 1913 suffragettes were suspected of setting fire to a boathouse in Handsworth Park.  In the same month the Morning Post reported that the suffragettes had planned to set fire to the Old Grammar School at Kings Norton, but had changed their minds when they saw its beauty. In June 1913 a house in Solihull was destroyed and in July one in Perry Bar and another in Selly Park was set on fire.  Nellie Hall was charged on suspicion of having been involved with this last arson attack; she had been caught on 13 July after throwing a brick at Asquith’s car when he visited Birmingham and was sentenced to three weeks’ imprisonment. In October 1913 two local railway stations -Northfield  (not far from here) and

Hagley Road Station c 1913

Hagley Road Station c 1913

Hagley Road were fired and in February 1914 Northfield Library  was destroyed – the damage was estimated at £1000 – and on the same day a bomb exploded at Moor Hall Green. Soon after there were several other serious arson attempts in Birmingham; two houses and two cricket pavilions were set alight  – at Smethick and Harborne. The slogan left at Harborne was ‘Down with sport, up with fair play for women’ – and there was a fire on the Midland railway at Kings Norton. .In March 1914 the Cathedral was defaced by suffrage slogans – including  ‘Stop Forcible Feeding’ –which were daubed on much of its interior in white enamel paint. ‘Votes for Women’ was painted across the middle of the Burne- Jones window. On the vestry door was painted ‘The clergy must rise on our behalf’  Edgbaston Parish Church and St Stephen’s Selly Hill were also attacked.

On 17 May a grandstand at Bromford Bridge racecourse was destroyed and on 8 June Bertha Ryland, cleaver in hand, slashed a picture, ‘Master Thornhill’ by Romney, in Birmingham Art Gallery . She carried a letter giving an explanation of her conduct, saying ‘I attack this work of art deliberately as a protest against the government’s criminal injustice in denying women the vote, and also against the government’s brutal injustice in imprisoning, forcibly feeding, and drugging suffragist militants, while allowing Ulster militants to go free..’ The gallery was immediately closed for six weeks. After that it was not open after 5 in the afternoon and was closed all day Sunday; presumably the level of security had to be increased and the gallery could not afford to open for so many hours. A rule of ‘No muffs, wrist-bags or sticks’ was subsequently enforced.. Bertha Ryland, the presumably gently-nurtured daughter of Edgbaston (whose mother had 30 years earlier been intent on bringing art to the working-classes), had already spent a week in Holloway in November 1911 and, after taking part in the March 1912 window-smashing campaign in London, had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. She had spent four months in Winson Green prison, had gone on hunger strike and been forcibly fed.

Bertha Ryland's WSPU hunger-strike medal (together with her Coronation medal) courtesy of Christie's

Bertha Ryland’s WSPU hunger-strike medal (together with her Coronation medal) courtesy of Christie’s

After her arrest in the Art Gallery she went on hunger strike while held on remand.  She then accepted bail, was too ill to stand trial at the July assizes, and still had not been sentenced when war broke out.  She suffered permanent kidney damage as a result of her treatment in prison.

With Mrs Pankhurst in and out of prison under the Cat and Mouse Act and Christabel based in  Paris, to where she had fled to escape the police, the WSPU leadership was

Christabel Pankhurst relaxing in France

Christabel Pankhurst relaxing in France

increasingly out of touch with day-to-day reality and the campaign was ricocheting out of control. It is my contention that the WSPU was only saved from real disaster by the outbreak of war. The Pankhursts then dropped all suffrage activity and rallied to the flag leaving many, but by no means all, of their supporters dumbfounded. Some of the latter group founded the United Suffragists, to carry on campaigning.  In 1915 Bertha Brewster founded a Birmingham branch of the United Suffragists, with an office at 15 New Street.

The NUWSS had, of course, eschewed all the pre-war violence and concentrated on spectacle and politicking. The constitutional or ‘law-abiding’, as they termed themselves, societies had organised themselves into Federations to concentrate their efforts.   Birmingham played a leading part in the Midlands (West) Federation and in June 1913 joined with the other societies in The Pilgrimage, a grand attempt to bring a dignified campaign to the country and the prime minister.   The Birmingham society travelled along the route that brought pilgrims, with cockleshell badges pinned to their hats, from Carlisle to London. On 14 July 1913 the Birmingham Daily Mail carried a report of the arrival of the pilgrims in Birmingham. ‘At 5 o’clock a strong contingent of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society marched from Easy Row to meet the pilgrims who had started early in the afternoon from Wolverhampton. At Great King St, Hockley, the visitors were joined by the local suffragists, and a procession was formed, headed by the Baskerville Band. Banners bearing the legends ‘Law Abiding’ and ‘By Reason, Not Force’ were prominently displayed’. The pilgrims that passed through Birmingham would have been among those who continued on to Oxford.

As far as politics was concerned, the NUWSS entered into an electoral alliance with the Labour party in order to support Labour candidates at by-elections and thereby subject Liberal candidates to rather more opposition that the usual lone Conservative – that is, they were prepared to turn by-elections into three-cornered fights.  Catherine Osler supported the national executive in this, although by no means all local societies did.  Birmingham was still radical. By 1913 the society had enrolled 1600 ‘Friends of Women’s Suffrage’, mainly working-class women who could not afford to pay the annual membership fee but were prepared to sign pledges of support.  The society at this time suggested founding ‘Women’s Study Circles’ at which working women could meet in each others homes to discuss the suffrage issue; Mrs Osler’s pamphlet ‘Why Women need the Vote’ was one of the suggested texts, as was John Stuart Mill’s Subjection of Women. At this time the Society had over 700 full members.

Unlike the WSPU, the NUWSS societies carried on campaigning during the First World War, as well as supporting the war effort. There was a split in the NUWSS; a majority of its committee wished to withdraw this support and to join in a Women’s Peace Conference to be held at The Hague and it was in Birmingham in June 1915 that at a national conference this move was defeated.

Whether it was because of women’s contribution to the war effort, matters were at last reaching a resolution. In March 1917 Catherine Osler presided over a meeting held in the Midland Institute in support of the move to include women in the proposed Electoral Bill.  When the first installment of enfranchisement (that is, to women over the age of 30) was granted in 1918 the NUWSS’s work was ostensibly finished.  Catherine Osler was in the chair at the meeting in which the proposed amalgamation of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society and the local branch of the National Union of Women Workers (‘workers’ in this usage were not working-class women but women workers in a cause – in a 19th-century sense – philanthropists).  The amalgamated society became the Birmingham Society for Equal Citizenship. Catherine Osler, radical to the end, was keen that the lack of representatives of women’s labour organizations on the new body should be rectified, suggesting that the Women’s Co-operative Guild should be given three representatives.  She finally resigned as president in 1920; a portrait of her was commissioned and was presented to the ArtGallery (see above).    The surplus of the money raised to pay for the portrait was used to fund a scholarship in her name at Birmingham University, to allow women graduates to read for a postgraduate degree in the Faculty of Arts.  It is still awarded from time until very recently.

As well as all this activity from the two main suffrage societies, Birmingham also had other smaller but active suffrage groups.  In 1913 the Birmingham branch of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage operated from the home of Miss Griffiths at 34 Harborne Road, Edgbaston; that of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association from the home of Miss Adams at 56 Carlyle Road, Edgbaston, the Birmingham branch of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage was run by Mr Evans from 382 Moseley Road, and that of the Friends League for Women’s Suffrage from the home of Miss Joyce at 12 Frederick Road, Edgbaston (a few doors from where Eliza Sturge, also a Quaker, had campaigned nearly 45 years previously).

Mrs Margery Corbett Ashby

Mrs Margery Corbett Ashby

At the 1918 general election, the first at which women (albeit only those over 30 years of age) could both vote and stand as candidates, the main attention was focused on Smethwick where  Christabel Pankhurst stood as a coalition candidate; she was defeated. At that election Birmingham’s first woman candidate (at Ladywood) was  Mrs Margery Corbett Ashby, who stood as a Liberal, again unsuccessfully. The Women’s Library archive includes a 1975 interview with Dame Margery, as she had then become, in which she says that the idea of her standing against a Chamberlain in Birmingham was greeted by her family with hoots of laughter. She goes on to say that she didn’t have ‘the faintest idea of getting in – which would have been very inconvenient – but did so in order to get people used to the idea of a woman standing. That she did as well as other Liberal candidates around. And her candidature was greeted with surprise but with no ridicule.

Dame Elizabeth Cadbury

Dame Elizabeth Cadbury

The first woman to stand as a candidate for King’s Norton’s at a general election – in 1923 – was Elizabeth Cadbury, widow, by then, of George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer. She was a Liberal and was also unsuccessful. She lived at Manor House, Northfield, and was a city councillor for Kings Norton from 1919 to 1924. In 1928, 60 years after Birmingham’s campaign had been launched at the meeting in the Exchange Rooms, New Street, all women were given the vote on the same terms as men. However Birmingham did not have a woman MP until after the Second World War – with Mrs Edith Wills elected as Labour member for Duddeston in 1945 and Mrs Edith Pitt (Conservative) elected for Edgbaston in 1953 – the culmination of the campaign that had begun in 1866 with a mere three Birmingham names on that very first ‘women’s suffrage’ petition.

See also:

Birmingham Stories: Votes for Women

Fight for the Right: the Birmingham Suffragettes

Suffragette Acts in Birmingham: Parliament UK

Suffragettes in Handsworth

Birmingham Archives and Heritage

, , ,

6 Comments

Suffrage Stories: Radio 4 ‘Document’: Votes For Victorian Women

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

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.]

, , , , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: Suffragette Tea from Suffragette China

WSPU china – ‘Angel of Freedom’ design, 1909

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

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

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

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

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

This cup – its design based on Sylvia Pankhurst’s ‘portcullis’ motif which, used on the WSPU’s ‘Holloway brooch’, can be dated to the spring of 1909 – came from a collection that also contained items of the ‘angel of freedom’ china. I bought this wonderful haul some years ago at auction and, although the provenance was not divulged by the auctioneer, I am pretty sure that the china had once been belonged to Mrs Rose Lamartine Yates who held fund-raising teas for the Wimbledon WSPU on the lawn of Dorset Hall, her 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’?

, , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments

Suffrage Stories: Suffragettes and Tea Rooms: From ‘Sheltered Anonymity’ to Sites of Protest

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.

 

, , , , ,

Leave a comment

Suffrage Stories/Collecting Suffrage: Suffragette Jewellery

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’.


, , , , , , ,

11 Comments

Kate Frye’s Diary: ‘Paddington Pandemonium’

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
‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers

, , , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Mariana Starke: Great-grandfather’s house

 

House similar to that lived in by Thomas Starke and his family in the late-17th century

In the late-17th century Thomas Starke, the slave trader, lived and, I think, carried on his business in Mincing Lane in a house rebuilt in the 1670s – after the Great Fire of London. Starke’s house – and all the others in that street- have long since disappeared – now replaced by a Gotham City simulacrum, politely described as a ‘post-modern gothic complex’. However a few London houses built by Mincing Lane’s post-Fire-of London developer, Nicholas Barbon, do remain, including – pictured here – 5-6 Crane’s Court, just off Fleet Street – giving a rough idea of the manner of house in which Starke and his family lived.

Fortunately for us, when Starke – a freeman of the city of London – died in early 1706 several of his children were not yet 21 years old. This meant that the London Court of Orphans was required to draw up an itemized list of his household goods, assets and debts in order to supervise the division of the estate. This inventory provides a marvellous picture of the furnishing of the Mincing Lane house – at least some of which were purchased with the profits from Starke’s slave-trading activity, as well as an insight into Starke’s complicated finances. Moreover, the inventory, made on 18 April 1706, is held in the London Metropolitan Archives, very close to my home, a short walk collapsing the centuries.

Although the inventory does not reveal who was living in the house in 1706, a 1695 tax assessment showed that besides Starke, his wife, and two daughters, the household then comprised two apprentices (both of whom were to figure in later Starke litigation) and three servants – two of them women, one a boy.

The 1706 inventory begins at the top of the house – in the fore garrett – [perhaps a bedroom for the apprentices?] which contained:

One corded bedstead and rods, printed stuff curtains and valance, and flock bed and feather bolster and pillow,  2 blankets and 2 rugs, a table,  2 chests of drawers, a pallet bedstead, 2 chairs, one box – value £2 2s

I assume that ‘corded bedstead’ meant a bed with cords to support the mattress and that  ‘rods’ are curtain-type rods from which hung the printed stuff curtains that surrounded the bed to exclude draughts.

The back garrett  [perhaps a bedroom for 2 servants?] contained::2 chests, a horse for clothes, a few candles, 2 little bedsteads, a feather bed, 2 flock bolsters, two blankets, two rugs, a quilt, some lumber – value £2 1s

In the room 2 pairs of stairs forwards [perhaps Stark’s daughters’ room]: One sacking bedstead and rods, camblett curtains and valance lined with silk. Feather bed, a bolster, 2 pillows, 2 blankets, a rug, one counterpane. Corded bedstead and rods, curtains, 1 feather bed, bolster, 6 pillows, 4 blankets, a rug, 7 chairs, 1 chest of drawers, a table, 2 looking glasses, 5 window curtains, 3 rods, 2 pairs of dogs [ ie for the fireplace], a fender shovel, and tongs, a pair of bellows, 4 hangings of the room – value £15 7s.

Apart from the value, we can tell that this room was used by more important members of the household than the two garrets because of the use of ‘camblett’ to make the curtains, ‘camblett’ being a fine dress fabric of silk and camel-hair, or wool and goat’s hair, which was a lighter material, replacing broadcloth and serge and quite newly fashionable.. Similarly the lining of the valance with silk was a newish and fashionable furnishing style.

Back room: 1 corded bedstead, printed stuff curtains and valance, feather bed, bolster, 1 pillow, 1 blanket, a rug, 1 chest of drawers, 1 table, 2 matted chairs, grate, fender, shovel and tongs, a warming pan, a pair of bellow, 1 boll printed stuff. Hangings of the room, 3 chairs – value £5 2s

Middle room: 1 corded bedstead and rods, a pair of old curtains and valance, 1 feather bed, bolster, 1 pillow, a blanket and rug – value £1 15

In the room 1 pair of stairs backwards:  [perhaps Starke’s bedroom – to be used for entertaining as well as sleeping.] 1 sacking bedstead, silk and damask curtains and valance lined with silk, a quilt and feather bed bolster, some calico curtains, 1 table, a looking glass, 6 chairs and cushions, a slow grate, shovel, tongs and poker, a brass hearth shovel and tongs, 3 pairs of tapestry hangings – value £36 6s [Peter Earle in The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660-1730 (1989) gives the average value of the furnishings of a merchant’s bedroom as £23.3, positioning Starke’s as rather above average.]

The silk and damask curtains and the valance lined with silk were smart and fashionable, while the presence of the tapestry hangings suggest a room intended for comfort in a slightly old-fashioned style..

On the staircase: 3 pictures, clock and case, 2 sconces – value £5

In the Dining room [Earle denotes the dining room as the ‘best’ living room in a house of this type, giving the average value of the contents of such a room as £12 2s – making Starke’s furnishings a little above the average in value.]: Gilded leather hangings, 2 tables, a looking glass, 1 side table, 11 cane chairs, 12 cushions, a pallet case, 2 glass sconces, a pair of tables, brass hearth dogs, shovel and tongs – value £13 12s.

The gilded leather hangings were, by the early 18th-century, perhaps a little old fashioned, but the possession of cane chairs marked the Starkes out as a family who were prepared to buy new and fashionable styles. Cane chairs had been new in aristocratic homes in the 1660s, and were taken up by ‘middling men ’ from the 1680s. It would seem that the Starkes’ cane-bottomed chairs required cushions to make them acceptably comfortable.

In the parlour [the ‘second best’ living room]: Cane chairs, 2 cushions, a boll – value £2 10s.

In the Kitchen: An iron back grate, fender, 2 spit racks, an iron crane, 3 hooks, 2 shovells, tongs and poker, 1 gridiron, 2 iron dripping pans, 2 dish rings, 1 shredding knife, 2 frying pans, 2 box irons and heaters, jack chain and weight and pulley,. 4 spits, a beef fork, a brass mortar and pestle, 7 candlesticks, a pair of snuffers, a ladle and scummer, 2 iron bottles, 4 brass pots and covers, 1 bottle, 2 sauce pans, 1 copper stew pan, 3 chairs, 2 folding boards, 1 pair of bellows and napkin press, a table, a lanthorn, 196lbs of pewter, some tin wooden and earthenware – value £19 12s 10d .

Earle mentions that the average value of kitchen goods in this period was between £10-£20, putting the Starkes’ batterie de cuisine at the top end of the scale.

In the cellar and yard: A few coals, a beer stilling, 2 brass corks, some fire wood, a leaden cistern, 1 boll, 2 doz glass bottles – value £7 1s.

The inventory goes on to give the value of Starke’s wearing apparel (£5), household linen, and plate (292 oz, value £74 –presumably including the silver salver and caudle cup that Starke specifically mentioned in his will) – before moving on to monies owed to him and his own debts.

All in all, this is a house of a middling London merchant, one who, with his family, wished to be comfortable but was not desperate to adopt the very newest fashions. I do not think it would have been as elegant as the parlour room set, dating from 1695, that one can see at the Geffrye Museum. Here you can see the Starkes’ cane chairs, but Thomas Starke presumably preferred the older-fashioned tapestries and gilded leather hangings. which many of his fellow merchants – as in the Geffrye Museum re-creation -would have been taking down and replacing with pictures. In fact only three pictures are listed in the Starke inventory, all hanging on the stair case, alongside the household’s only clock. Similarly, the Starkes were, presumably, still eating off pewter and had not been tempted by the more newly fashionable china.

I did find two omissions interesting. The first is that no room is specifically denoted as a counting-house, although at the time of Starke’s death the sum of £245 19s 13/4 [=£32,000 purchasing power in today’s terms] was held in cash in the house. So, perhaps I was incorrect in assuming that, as he was living in Mincing Lane, in the very heart of the trading district, his business would have been done on the premises. And, secondly, I suppose I might have expected a merchant’s possessions to have included at the very least a quantity of ledgers – and, perhaps, some books and a globe.

Sometime after Thomas’ death, his widow and her daughters – Sarah, Martha, Frances and Elizabeth moved out of the City. There no longer being any necessity to live close to business, they chose Chelsea as their new home– more rural, more fashionable. It is possible that they were the first occupants of a newly-built house in Upper Cheyne Row, close to their great friend Lady Mary Rawlinson, widow of a a close associate of Thomas Starke and a former Lord Mayor of the City of London. The Survey of London suggests that this house and its immediate neighbours were built c 1716 and Lady Mary and her daughter, also Mary, lived at 16 Upper Cheyne Row between 1717 and her death in 1725.  Between 1748 and 1757 Thomas Starke’s daughter, Martha, and the younger Mary Rawlinson lived together at 12 Upper Cheyne Row. They were evidently very close; in her will Martha, who died in 1758, left everything to Mary and asked to be buried with her in the same grave in Ewell parish churchyard. However, Mary Rawlinson lived on to 1765 and in a codicil to her will, made in 1764, changed her preferred place of burial  from Ewell to the Rawlinson family vault in St Dionis Church Backhurch in the City (demolished 1868)..

I imagine that Thomas Starke’s tapestries and gilded leather hangings did not make the move from Mincing Lane to Chelsea and that his widow and daughters took the opportunity to furnish the new – airier and lighter – house with new china and new materials to complement the modern fireplaces and panelling. As we shall discover, in the early 18th-century the Starke family began a close association with India and goods – gifts – from the East would have travelled back to decorate these Chelsea rooms, perhaps, eventually coming into the possession of Mariana Starke.

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.

, , , , , ,

Leave a comment

Book of the Week: Cairnes: Political Essays – Millicent Fawcett’s copy

Cairnes, Political Essays, Macmillan, 1873.

Presentation copy to Millicent Fawcett

 The Irish economist John Cairnes had long been a friend of Henry Fawcett, both part of the Blackheath circle centring on John Stuart Mill. When Millicent Fawcett (aged 23) published her ‘Political Economy for Beginners’ in 1870 Cairnes took it seriously, reviewed it and wrote to her ‘I have just finished my study of your useful little book and send you by this post my notes upon it. You will find I have some serious controversies with you.’ Three years later, when he published ‘Political Essays’ , he sent Millicent a copy – inscribing it ‘MG Fawcett from the author’.

Millicent Fawcett’s bookplate

A ‘From the Author’ slip has survived the handling of the last 140 years – and Millicent Fawcett has added her delightful bookplate to the front pastedown. However, an inquisitive inspection reveals that not all the pages are cut.

Latterly the book was in the library of O.R. McGregor (Professor Lord McGregor of Durris) author of ‘Divorce in England’ which had, for its time, 1957, an excellent bibliography – revealing the author’s wide interest in ‘women’s history’. On the spine the cloth binding is chipped – missing in parts – would benefit from rebacking. Otherwise a good copy – and a very interesting association copy £150. 

To buy contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk

, , , ,

Leave a comment

Book of the Week: Betham, A Biographical Dictionary of Celebrated Women, 1804

Matilda Betham: A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country, printed for E. Crosby, 1804..

‘I was induced to believe that a General Dictionary of Women, who had been distinguished by their actions or talents, i various nations, or at different periods of teh world, digested under an alphabetical arrangement, which had never been done in our language, might meet with a favourable reception.’

Matilda Betham (1776-18520, poet, artist and biographer, was a friend of Coleridge, Southey and the Lambs. Celebrated Women begins with an entry on ‘Abassa, an Arabian Princess of the Eighth Century’ and ends with ‘Zoe, fourth of Emperor Leo VI’ taking in on the way a hundred stars, their light now a little dimmed, only waiting the discerning eye to burst into life. ‘Authenticity, and impartiality have been my aim throughout, conceiving thsoe principles to be of most consequence in a work of this kind, than ornamental writing.’ A fascinating compilation – not only for itself, but for the thought of a young woman at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries taking the trouble to amass so much information.

First edition – 852pp – bound in half leather and marbled boards – very good – scarce – £200.

To buy contact e.crawford@aphere.20.freeserve.co.uk

 

 

 

 

, ,

Leave a comment

Collecting Suffrage: The Hunger Strike Medal

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

, , , , ,

Leave a comment

Collecting Suffrage: 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.’

In very good condition £10 plus £1 postage.

To buy contact: e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk

, , , ,

Leave a comment

Book of the Week: Bulley & Whitley, Women’s Work

 WOMEN’S WORK by Miss A. Amy Bulley and Miss Margaret Whitley. With a Preface by Lady Dilke. Published by Methuen in the Social Questions of the Day series, 1894.

Amy Bulley (1852-1939) was an early student at Girton, Cambridge, going from there to Manchester, where she taught at Manchester High School for Girls and was involved in the campaign that eventually, in 1883, saw women allowed to sit for Owens College degrees. She then took a very active interest in women’s employement and the labour movement, becoming chair of the council of the recently-formed Manchester, Salford and District Trades Council, 1897-1906, investigating the dire conditions of the ‘sweated’ trades.

Lady Dilke had been involved with the women’s trade union movement since the 1870s

The book affords a comprehensive coverage of the new ‘white blouse’ employment open to women – to professions – such as medicine – and to clerical work – such as typewriting and post office work – as well as the trades and vocations with which they had been associated in the past. The authors include much discussion of conditions of employment and the rise of women’s trade unions.

Women’s Work is a thorough piece of research – the authors do not shrink from using statistics and advocating the reforms they think necessary in the future.

In good condition – some marginal pencil markings, showing how involved one previous reader has been in the subject. An unblinking view of the position of working women at the end of the 19th century. £55 plus postage.

To buy: contact e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk

, , , ,

Leave a comment

Book of the Week: Frances Hays: Women of the Day

Frances Hays (ed), Women of the Day: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Women Contemporaries, published by J.B. Lippincott & Co (Philadelphia), 1885. This is a copy of the American edition, published in the same year as the London, Chatto & Windus, edition.

This is a superb biographical source on interesting 19th-century women. The first entry is on Lea Lundgren Ahlborn, a Swedish artist, and the last is on Helen Zimmern, a German-born British journalist and writer. The hundreds of  entries in between give biographical details of women who were ‘notable’ – for their work rather than their position in society – in the latter half of the 19th century but who have now rather faded from view.

This books is, therefore, a very useful vademecum for those researching the period. The general reader, too, will find plenty to interest her in this biographical bran tub.

Frances Hays clearly did much of her research in the Reading Room of the British Museum, thanking both ‘Mr John P. Anderson, Assistant in the British Museum, for much valuable aid’ and noting her indebtedness to Dr Garnett (who was assistant keeper of printed books at the Museum).

This is a copy of the American edition, first published by J.B. Lippincott & Co (Philadelphia), in the same year, 1885, as the London, Chatto & Windus, edition. In fact, apart from the title page, the editions are likely to have been identical. Although the title page of this copy dates it to 1885, bound in at the back is a 32-page section listing Chatto & Windus books dated June 1891. I doubt that the book actually ever saw Philadelphia: it was presented to The City of York Public Library by C.J. [Cuthbert Joseph] Kleiser (1855-1929), a Yorkshire-born watchmaker. What an excellent choice; it makes one want to know more about Mr Kleiser.

The copy is in good conditon, in its original binding, with the City of York Public Library bookplate on the front pastedown and relatively discreet shelf mark on the spine. £75 plus postage.

To buy: email e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk

 

, , ,

Leave a comment