Posts Tagged women’s suffrage
Books And Ephemera By And About Women For Sale: Catalogue 208
Posted by womanandhersphere in Books And Ephemera For Sale on March 23, 2023
Woman and her Sphere
Catalogue 208
See # 12
Elizabeth Crawford
5 Owen’s Row
London EC1V 4NP
elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
This catalogue includes, in the final section, a particularly extensive ‘Women and the First World War’ list.
Index to Catalogue
Suffrage Non-fiction: Items 1-4
Suffrage Biography: Items 5-8
Suffrage Fiction: Items 9-10
Suffrage Ephemera: Items 11-54
Suffrage Postcards: Real Photographic: Items 55-92
Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic: Items 93-94
General Non-fiction: Items 95-190
General Biography: Items 191-262
General Ephemera: Items 263-280
General Postcards: Items 281-282
General Vaudeville Sheet Music: Items 283-290
General Fiction: 291-299
Women and the First World War: Non-fiction: Items 300-324
Women and the First World War: Biography & Autobiography 325-339A
Women and the First World War: Ephemera 340
Women and the First World War: Fiction 341-345
Suffrage Non-fiction
1. CRAWFORD, Elizabeth Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists Francis Boutle 2018
Discusses the lives and work of over 100 artists, each of whom made a positive contribution to the women’s suffrage campaign. Most, but not all, the artists were women, many belonging to the two suffrage artists’ societies – the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier. Working in a variety of media – producing cartoons, posters, banners, postcards, china, and jewellery – the artists promoted the suffrage message in such a way as to make the campaign the most visual of all those conducted by contemporary pressure groups. Mint – NEW
[15387] £20
2. FRIEZE MASTERS Women in Art History Frieze Masters 2018
Magazine published to coincide with the Frieze Masters Fair, 2018 – the entire issue devoted to ‘women in art history’. Among the several articles is one by Jessica Lack on ‘the role of women artists in promoting the cause of women’s suffrage’. Soft covers – large format – very good – corners a little rubbed
[15215] SOLD
3. KENT, Susan Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914 Princeton University Press 1987
Fine in d/w (which has one slight nick)
[1361] £20
4. STRACHEY, Ray The Cause: a short history of the women’s movement in Great Britain G. Bell 1928
This copy belonged to Lord McGregor – author of ‘Divorce in England’, a book that includes a very useful bibliography of works on women’s rights. He has laid in the book a collection of newspaper cuttings, from the 1950s to 1970s, relating to the position of women. The copy of the book is in good condition – but he had bought it as an ex-library copy and has added a few pencilled notes on the back pastedown. An interesting association copy.
[12059] £55
Suffrage Biography
5. (DUNIWAY) Ruth Barnes Moynihan Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway Yale University Press 1983
Abigal Scott Duniway (1834-1915), American suffragist, journalist, and national leader. Fine in d/w
[1205] £5
6. (MILL) John Stuart Mill Autobiography Longmans, Green 1873
First edition in original green cloth. Internally very good – a little wear at top and bottom of spine
[14974] £75
7. (PANKHURST) David Mitchell Queen Christabel: biography of Christabel Pankhurst MacDonald and Jane’s 1977
Good in d/w – ex-library, free front end paper removed
[11623] £6
8. (WEBB) Richard Harrison Richard Davis Webb: Dublin Quaker Printer (805-72) Red Barn Publishing 1993
Webb was a committed anti-slavery campaigner, whose family were very involved in the Irish women’s suffrage campaign. A brief biography. Soft covers – very good condition
[15066] £8
Suffrage Fiction
9. GRAY, LESLEY The King’s Jockey Solis Press 2013
A novel centring on the life of the jockey who was riding the King’s Horse at the 1913 Derby, colliding with Emily Wilding Davison. Soft covers – fine condition
[15065] £5
10. LUCAS, E.V. Mr Ingleside Methuen, 15th ed, no date 1910/1912?)
A novel with suffrage scenes. Only a reading copy – cloth worn – backstrip loose
[14132] £4
Suffrage Ephemera
11. CAZALET, Thelma Mrs Pankhurst
An article about Mrs Pankhurst by Thelma Cazalet (MP for Islington East) in ‘The Listener’ (6 Nov 1935) in a series ironically titled ‘I Knew A Man’. See also item ??. A 4-pp article – including photographs. The late-lamented ‘The Listener’ was a substantial journal in those days – this issue is 55 pages – in goodish condition – the front page is present but detached.
[14454] £28
12. CERAMIC GEESE MATCH HOLDER
Three white geese, yellow beaks wide open, the chorus ‘We Want Our Votes’ inscribed on the green base. As described on page 109 of my Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide. Very rare – I think this is the first time I have had this piece in stock this century – and I can find no evidence of another passing through the salerooms in that time. In fine condition
[15382] SOLD
13. DYSON, Will Cartoons The Daily Herald 1914
A Second Collection of cartoons drawn by the celebrated Australian cartoonist, Will Dyson (1880-1938), and published in ‘The Daily Herald’. Among the 40 are 6 directly related to the suffrage campaign. In fair condition the middle 2pp have come loose from the staples and the edges are a little rubbed. Could be broken up and the prints framed individually. Large format – 36 x 26 cm – paper covers
[13801] SOLD
14. INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE CONGRESS
Budapest June 15-20 1913. This is a small advertising paper label/stamp (it has a sticky back) for the Congress – showing two graceful women stretching their arms, to hold hands across the globe. The type-face is very 1913. A pretty and interesting memento of the last pre-war international women’s gathering. Fine -amazingly ephemeral – and unusual. With the background printed in blue
[14505] £85
#15 ‘Les Droits de la Femme en 1900’ cotton scarf
15. ‘LES DROITS DE LA FEMME EN 1900’
Commemorative cotton scarf, design originally printed by E. Renault, Rouen – packed with numerous delightful vignettes showing women occuping the man’s sphere. While the men mind the children, women are soldiers (from the lowest ranks to chief of the army), sailors, astronomers, financiers etc etc – and, of course, President of France. Originally printed c 1880, this ‘Reproduction d’un Document du Musée de l’impression de Mulhouse’ (ie Mulhouse Textile Museum) was issued c. 1970. There has been no reproduction for sale since then. Approx 80 x 68cm (31.5 x 27ins). Printed in black on white cotton, with border and internal bands in red. A rare piece, even in reproduction, of French ‘Women’s Rights’ ephemera. In fine condition.
[15381] SOLD
16. MARY PHILLIPS ARRESTED IN CHESTER
She is being frog marched by a policeman as the thronged crowd looks on, having thrown a bag of flour at a cavalcade of cars, in one of which Asquith was riding. Although sentenced, her fine was paid, against her will, by a local Liberal sympathiser. On the reverse of the photograph is written ‘Please return to S. W. Newsome, 26 West End Lane, NW6’. Stella Newsome was hon sec of the Suffragette Fellowship and this photograph, a good deal battered and still bearing traces of blu tack, was once part of the display in the Suffragette Museum. 16.5 cm x 21 cm – the central image is unimpaired but the edges are frayed and parts of the crowd have lost some surface – fair only – but interesting
[15343] £50
17. MEMENTO OF WOMEN’S CORONATION PROCESSION TO DEMAND VOTES FOR WOMEN: Order of March and Descriptive Programme The Women’s Press 1911
This is the official programme for the spectacular march that was held in London on Saturday June 17 1911. ‘From the Introduction: ‘The March through London of 40,000 women has been arranged to show the strength of the deman to win Votes for Women in Coronaton year. The Procession will form up on Westminster Embankment, starting at 5.30pm and marching seven abreast in a line some five miles long, through Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, to Kensington. At the close of the march a great meeting will be held by the Women’s Social and Political Union in the Albert Hall…’ The programme lists all the suffrage societies taking part and describes in detail the different sections – such as the Prisoners’ Pageant and the Historical Pageant. The ‘Order of March’ is inset. The decorative cover is printed in greeen on good quality thick paper, In good condition – with a little rusting at the staples- a very scarce item.
[15320] SOLD
18. MISS EMILY FAITHFULL
studio photograph by W & D Downey, 57 & 61 Ebury Street, London, together with a printed brief biography.
[14029] £40
19. MISS MORGAN, OF BRECON The Duties of Citizenship Women’s Local Government Society c 1912
Extracts reprinted from a paper read at the Annual Conference of the National Union of Women Workers, Manchester, October 27th 1896. By the time this leafet was issued Miss Morgan had been Mayor of Brecon, 1911-12. 4-pp – good – withdrawn from the Women’s Library
[13833] £5
20. MRS DESPARD
portrait photograph by Lena Connell, 50 Grove End Road, NW – mounted on stiff brown card – published by The Suffrage Shop, the card embossed with the shop’s monogram. This once belonged to Joan Wickham (Mrs Pankhurst’s secretary).. Fine
[15159] £120
21. PUNCH CARTOON
21 January 1912 – full page – ‘The Suffrage Split’. Sir George Askwith (the charismatic industrial conciliator), as ‘Fairy Peacemaker’, has tamed the dragon of the Cotton Strike – and Asquith, wrestling to keep a seat on the Cabinet horse turns to him ‘Now that you’ve charmed yon dragon I shall need ye to stop the strike inside this fractious gee-gee.’
[14323] £12
22. PUNCH CARTOON
30 Nov 1910, scene is a suffragette demonstration, ‘Votes for Women’ flags flying. Two young street urchins observe and comment. Caption is ‘Man of the World (lighting up), “Well ‘ave to give it ’em, I expect, Chorlie”‘. Half-page illustration
[14324] £12
23. PUNCH CARTOON
18 April 1906. ‘A Temporary Entaglement’ – a scene from ‘Vanity Fair’. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman as Josh Sedley holds the wool as The Suffragette (aka Becky Sharp) winds it into a ball. The allusion is to the news that ‘The Prime Minister has promised to receive a deputation on the subject of Female Suffrage after Easter’. Full-page cartoon by Bernard Partridge
[14333] £12
24. PUNCH CARTOON
5 October 1927. As a young woman takes her gun from the ghillie an elderly gentleman (the Conservative Party) looks concerned and remarks ‘I hope she’s got enough ‘intuition’ not to let it off in my direction’. The remark is explained: ‘The question of extended suffrage for women [ie for those between 21 and 30] [in whose ‘intuition’ Mr Baldwin reposes so much confidence will be raised in the approaching Conference of the Conservative Party]. Full page
[14334] £12
25. PUNCH CARTOON
23 May 1928. A gentleman identified as Lord Banbury kneels in a ring (it’s an allusion to the Royal Tournament which was doubtless on at the time) and opens his umbrella to defend himself against the horde of cloche-hatted women who are rushing towards him carrying their flag for the ‘Equal Franchise Bill’. In the debate on the Representation of the People Act on 21 May 1928 Lord Banbury had attempted to move its rejection. Full-page cartoon – good – one corner creased
[14335] £12
26. PUNCH CARTOON
26 March 1913. ‘Burglary Up-To-Date’. Burglar has taken his swag from a safe and now writes ‘Votes for Women’ across the jemmied door. Half-page cartoon – good condition
[14343] £10
27. PUNCH CARTOON
19 March 1913. At a railway wayside halt the stationmaster asks the signalman to keep an eye on ‘the ole gal on the platform’ while he has his dinner. The signalman doesn’t think she’ll come to any harm but the stationmaster explains ‘I’m not thinkin’ of ‘er ‘ealth. I’m thinkin’ about my station. She might want to burn it down.’ Half-page cartoon – very good
[14344] £10
28. PUNCH CARTOON
5 March 1913. ‘The child is daughter to the woman’ is the caption. Suffragette mother returns after a strenuous day and is expecting some important correspondence. Her daughter, however, reveals she has torn up the letters to provide a paperchase for her dolls. Mother expostulates: ‘..Haven’t I often told you that letters are sacred things?’ A comment on suffragette attacks on post-boxes. A half-page cartoon – very good
[14345] £10
29. PUNCH CARTOON
5 February 1913. ‘How Militant Suffragettes Are Made’. A cheeky caddie explains to a visiting golfer that the old green they are passsing gets flooded and ‘so they’ve give it up to the lydies.’ A half-page cartoon – very good
[14347] £10
30. PUNCH CARTOON
29 January 1913. ‘Rag-Time in the House’ is the caption. Members of the government are enjoying the ‘Suffrage Free & Easy Go As You Please’ dance. Asquith, with an ‘Anti’ label, is keeping an eye on Lloyd George (wearing a ‘Pro’ armband) jitterbugs with Sir Edward. The sub-text is ‘Sir Edward Grey’s Woman Suffrage Amendment produces some curious partnerships’. Full-page cartoon – very good
[14349] £12
31. PUNCH CARTOON
23 June 1912. ‘Votes for Men and Women’ is the caption. John Bull is sitting comfortably and turns round as Nurse Asquith enters carrying a baby labelled ‘Franchise Bill’. In answer to JB’s query ‘she’ replies: ‘Well, Sir, it’s certainly not a girl, and I very much doubt if it’s a boy’. The government’s Franchise and Registration bill was given its first Reading on 18 June 1912. Full-page cartoon – very good
[14350] £12
32. PUNCH CARTOON
27 March 1912. A young suffragette is standing on a table addressing a crowd: ‘I defy anyone to name a field of endeavour in which men do not receive more consideration than women!’ A Voice from the Crowd retorts: ‘What about the bally ballet!’ A half-page cartoon – very good
[14351] £10
33. PUNCH CARTOON
7 December 1910. ‘Voter’s Vertigo’ is the caption. It is the second general election of 1910 and the voter is all in a tizz..muddling up all the campaign slogans..(e’g. ‘don’t tax the poor man’s dreadnought’ and ‘home rule for suffragettes’). A quarter of a page cartoon – very good
[14352] £8
34. QUESTIONS TO LLOYD GEORGE ASKED BY THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION
11 questions concerning his behaviour re introducing a Government measure for Manhood Suffrage in 1913…Among the many other pertinent questions ‘Why do you expect us to accept your personal and unofficial advocacy of Woman Suffrage as a substitute for united and offiicial action on the part of the Government as a whole? In good condition – some creasing. 2-sided leaflet, printed in purple
[15006] £100
35. SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN
Saucer (12.25cm) made by Williamsons of Longton for the WSPU in 1909, initially for use in the refreshment room of the Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition and then sold in aid of funds. The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines and is rimmed in dark green. Each piece carries the motif, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, of the ‘angel of freedom’ blowing her trumpet and flying the banner of ‘Freedom. In the background are the intitials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by the thistle, shamrock and rose, and dangling chains. For more information on the WSPU china see my website – http://tinyurl.com/o4whadq. This piece originally belonged to a well-known suffragette. In very good condition – would be ‘fine’ but the ‘Angel of Freedom’ motif is very slightly faded
[14751] £350
36. SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN
Saucer (12.25cm) made by Williamsons of Longton for the WSPU in 1909, initially for use in the refreshment room of the Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition and then sold in aid of funds. The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines and is rimmed in dark green. Each piece carries the motif, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, of the ‘angel of freedom’ blowing her trumpet and flying the banner of ‘Freedom. In the background are the intitials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by the thistle, shamrock and rose, and dangling chains. For more information on the WSPU china see my website – http://tinyurl.com/o4whadq. This piece originally belonged to a well-known suffragette. In very good condition – would be ‘fine’ but there is a small crack to the surface of the saucer. This slight blemish does not penetrate through to the reverse.
[14752] £200
#37 WSPU side plate
37. SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN
Side plate (17 cm) made by Williamsons of Longton for the WSPU in 1909, initially for use in the refreshment room of the Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition and then sold in aid of funds. The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines and is rimmed in dark green. Each piece carries the motif, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, of the ‘angel of freedom’ blowing her trumpet and flying the banner of ‘Freedom. In the background are the intitials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by the thistle, shamrock and rose, and dangling chains. For more information on the WSPU china see my website – http://tinyurl.com/o4whadq. This piece originally belonged to a well-known suffragette. In fine condition
[14756] £650
#38 WSPU saucer
38. SUFFRAGETTE CHINA – ‘ANGEL OF FREEDOM’ DESIGN
Saucer (12.25cm) made by Williamsons of Longton for the WSPU in 1909, initially for use in the refreshment room of the Prince’s Skating Rink Exhibition and then sold in aid of funds. The white china has strikingly clean, straight lines and is rimmed in dark green. Each piece carries the motif, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, of the ‘angel of freedom’ blowing her trumpet and flying the banner of ‘Freedom. In the background are the intitials ‘WSPU’ set against dark prison bars, surrounded by the thistle, shamrock and rose, and dangling chains. For more information on the WSPU china see my website – http://tinyurl.com/o4whadq. This piece originally belonged to a well-known suffragette Mrs Rose Lamartine Yates. In fine condition
[15058] £450
39. ‘SUFFRAGETTES’ CORONATION DEMONSTRATION’ BOADICEA AND HER TWO ATTENDANTS’
Boadicea is on horseback, her hair in two very long plaits, attended by, presumably, two men of her Iceni tribe. The part of Boadicea was played by Miss Florence Parbury. Crowds line the procession route.Photograph by General Press Photo Company Ltd, 2 Breams’ Buildings, Chancery Lane. The image is very good, the edges of the 16.5 cm x photo a little frayed
[15341] £320
40. TEN MAGIC LANTERN SLIDES ‘The Suffragettes’ Ruse & How Bobby Peeler Foiled Them’
The slides tell a neat little story of an attempt by suffragettes to infiltrate Parliament from the Thames. Hiding in barrels, they plan to be unloaded onto the Terrace – but two burly policemen, alert to the inability of women to resist the joys of a ‘fashion paper’, entice them out – and haul them off to Cannon [sic] Row police station. The illustrations are lovely – beautifully drawn and delicately coloured. An allusion is made on the title slide to ‘The Graphic’. The Lucerna Magic Lantern Web Resource (University of Exeter) notes the set as manufactured no later than 1907 by York & Son, based in Bayswater, London. One of the partners, William York, was a ‘photographic artist’ and may possibly have been responsible for this topical number. 10 glass slides, each 3¼ inches (83mm) square and edged with passepartout.Slide no 6 has a little fracture across the top right corner (held with the passepartout) and slide 8 has a superficial crack (without breaking the glass) – all in all these humourous lantern slides – a complete set – are in amazingly good condition considering their age and fragility. I have never before, in nearly 30 years of immersion in suffrage ephemera as researcher and dealer, seen this set -or, indeed, any other suffragette lantern-slide story. In fact, ‘The Suffragettes’ Ruse’ is the only suffrage-related item on the Lucerna website. Extremely rare
[15388] SOLD
41. THAT RAGTIME SUFFRAGETTE SHEET MUSIC B. Feldman & Co c 1913
written by Harry Williams and Nat D. Ayer and originally heard in the 1913 Ziegfeld Follies. It was recorded c 1913/14 by Warwick Green – a British comic singer – to very great effect, although I think he omits the second verse, which is printed in this sheet music. You can hear Warwick Green singing ‘That Ragtime Suffragette’ on youtube. I think it’s wonderful – so evocative- ‘Ragging with bombshells and ragging with bricks/ Hagging and nagging in politics’. The 4-pp of sheet music is printed ‘Professional Copy’ – in good condition, a little rubbed and scuffed; I’m sure it has been well played. Very scarce.
[15319] SOLD
42. THE CONCILIATION BILL EXPLAINED
Leaflet headed ‘Votes for Women’, probably dating from 1910. settng out the contents of the Conciliation Bill, which had passed its Second Reading in July 1910, and explaining details,such as which groups of women would be enfranchised under tis terms. Printed by Baines and Scarsbrook, 75 Fairfax Road, South Hampstead and with the rubber stamp of the WFL [Women’s Freedom League] 1 Robert St, Adelphi. In pristine condition, having been found laid betwen the pages of a book.
[15036] £120
43. THE FIGHTING SEX
This issue of the part-work ‘History of the 20th Century’ includes a section on the suffrage campaign – written by Trevor Lloyd (author of ‘Suffragettes International’). Paper covers – large format
[14074] £5
44. ‘THE MARCH OF THE WOMEN’
‘Dedicated to the Women’s Social and Political Union’ by its composer, Ethel Smyth. This is an example of the ‘Popular Edition in F. (For meetings and processions, to be sung in unison)’. The 4-page song sheet, containing both music and the words, the latter written by Cicely Hamilton, was published by Breitkopf & Hartel of 54 Great Marlborough Stree, London W and was ‘To be had of The Woman’s Press, 156 Charing Cross Road, London, W.C.’ Price Threepence. ‘The March of the Women’ was premiered at a WSPU meeting, held on 21 Jan 1911 to celebrate the release from prison of WSPU militants. The back cover lists ‘Works by Ehtel Smyth, Mus. Doc.’. The song-sheet has been folded and is a little rubbed and marked, having presumably been put to its intended use at some WSPU rally, but is in generally good condition. Very scarce
[15315] SOLD
45. ‘THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN’
supplement to ‘The Graphic’, 1885, heralding the supplements to be issued in Nov and Dec 1885 on ‘Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days’. As its advertisement for the series The Graphic has chosen to use George Cruickshank’s ”The Rights of Women; or a view of the hustings with female suffrage, 1853.’ We see on the hustings the two candidates – ‘The Ladies’ Candidate’- Mr Darling’ and ‘The Gentleman’s Candidate – Mr Screwdriver – the great political economist’. Elegant Mr Darling is surrounded by ladies in bonnets and crinolines – Mr Screwdriver by ill-tempered-looking boors. The audience contains many women accompanied, presumably, by their husbands who are holding aloft a ‘Husband and Wife Voters’ banner. Another banner proclaims the existence of ‘Sweetheart Voters’ and riding in their midst is a knight in armour holding a ‘Vote for the Ladies’ Champion’ pennant. There do not appear to be many supporters of the opposition.
Single sheet 28 cm x 20.5 cm – a little foxed around the edges of the paper but barely afffecting the good, clear image of Crucikshank’s cartoon.
[13690] £160
46. ‘THE WOMEN’S MARSEILLAISE’
Written by Florence Macaulay (1862-1945), one-time student at Somerville College, Oxford, and an organiser for the WSPU. ‘The Women’s Marseillaise’, a marching song, was written in 1909 and begins ‘Arise, ye daughters of a land/That vaunts its liberty’. This single sheet is headed ‘The National Women’s Social & Political Union 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand, W.C.’ and was printed by ‘Geo. Barber,The Furnival Press, E.C.’ The sheet was clearly used for the purpose intended, has been folded, with a slight split at the edges of the fold. In good condition – very scarce
[15314] SOLD
47. THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION – VOTES FOR WOMEN – ALL WOMEN ARE INVITED TO BE PRESENT AT THE PARLIAMENT OF WOMEN
to be held in the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on February 11, 12 and 13. Session each afternoon, 3-6. Evening meeting, 8-10. Chairman: Mrs Pankhurst.’ The year is 1908. The single-sheet leaflet, issued by the WSPU and printed by Geo. Barber, The Furnival Press, then sets out arrangements for other meetings to be given in the forthcoming weeks. In goodish condition – a little loss to paper on one side, with no loss of text
[15325] £350
48. ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’
Songsheet, – the words of a song adapted from a poem by Sir Walter Scott, to be sung to the tune of ‘Bonnie Dundee’. It begins ‘To the Lords of Westminster ’twas the suffragette spoke:-/Put us in the King’s Speech, and give us the Vote,/Let each mother’s son who loves freedom to see,/Cry ‘Votes for the Women’ let Britons be free!’. No publisher or society is credited as issuing of the songsheet, which was in circulation by April 1908.(because Campbell-Bannerman is cited, still prime minister). So quite an early example of a suffrage songsheet. Good -single sheet – some foxing
[15309] SOLD
#49 ‘A Deputation to the House of Commons’
49. VOTES FOR WOMEN – A DEPUTATION OF WOMEN WILL PROCEED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
to interview Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George, on Tuesday, Nov 21st at 8 o’clock, to protest against a Bill to give votes to all men being introduced by a Government that excludes all women from the vote’. The year is 1911. Set out in the leaflet is a invitation by Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, who was to lead the deputation, to members of the public to come along to Parliament Square ‘to see fair play’ and to ‘protect women from being brutally vitimized by police in uniform and in plain clothes as they were on Black Friday (November 18th 1910)’. The leaflet was issued by the WSPU and printed in green, on white paper, by Geo Barber, The Furnival Press. In very good condition
[15329] £400
#50 Royal Albert Hall Demonstration
50. VOTES FOR WOMEN – THE WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION – A WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION IN THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, ON SATURDAY, JUNE 15TH, 1912 AT 8PM
Mabel Tuke is in the chair (in the enforced absences of Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick-Lawrence) and the speakers were T.M. Healy, the barrister and MP who had defended Mrs Pethick-Lawrence at her trial for conspiracy in March, Elizabeth Robins, Annie Kenney and Mrs Mansell-Moullin. Newspaper reports show that there was a febrile atmosphere at this demonstration, with messages read out from prisoners who were being held, on hunger strike. This 4-pp card contains a long list of the ‘Suffragist Prisoners Still Under Sentence’, with the date of their arrest, the length of their sentence and the prison in which they were held. The back cover consists of a form on which a promise of a donation to the WSPU could be made. Very good – most unusual. I don’t remember having seeing an item such as this previously.
[15330] £600
51. WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION SONG SHEET
Headed ‘Votes for Women’ and ‘The National Women’s Social & Political Union, 4, Clement’s Inn, Strand, W.C.’, the 4-page pamphlet contains the words of 6 songs. They are: 1) The Women’s Marseillaise by F.E.M. Macaulay 2) Rise Up Women (to the tune ‘John Brown’) by Theodora Mills 3) Women of England (to the tune ‘Men of Harlech’ 4) In the Morning (to the tune ‘John Peel’) by Theodora Mills 5) As I Came Through Holloway (to the tune ‘The Keel Row’) 6) Women of To-Day (which begins ‘The blood of maryrs is the seed from which the churches sprung,/We suffer now our martyrdom when into prison flung/’).Printed by St Clement’s Press and published by the WSPU). This songsheet probably dates from c 1908. In very good condition – very scarce
[15316] SOLD
52. WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION – VOTES FOR WOMEN – A DEPUTATION OF WOMEN WILL GO TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON TUESDAY, JUNE 29TH AT 8 O’CLOCK TO SEE THE PRIME MINISTER
and lay before him their demand for the Vote. The right to do this is secured to them by the Bill of Rights….’ In the event many women were arrested, although most of them had their cases adjourned ‘sine die’. Some, charged with stone throwing, were imprisoned and were some of the first women to go on hunger strike in Holloway. The case of Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Evelina Haverfield, judged to be the leaders of the protest and who pleaded their protest was within the terms of the Bill of Rights, was adjourned until the end of the year. Flyer, issued by the WSPU and printed in black on white paper by the St Clements Press, Portugal Street. In good condition – the year ‘1909’ has been added in pencil after ‘June 29th’ – extremely scarce
[15321] £400
53. WOMEN’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL UNION ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’ LEAFLET NO. 61
This double-sided leaflet is devoted to publishing Laurence Housman’s ditty ‘Woman This, and Woman That’, an ‘Echo of a ‘Barrack-room Ballad, with acknowledgments to Mr Rudyard Kipling’. It begins ‘We went up to Saint Stephens, with petitions year by year;/’Get out!’ the politicians cried, ‘we want no women here!’/ and was avery popular party-piece at WSPU gatherings. Perhaps its most famous rendition was by actress Decima Moore on the night of the 1911 census, when her audience comprised c 500 suffragettes evading the enumerator in the Aldwych Skating Rink. This leaflet is headed with full details of the WSPU office and leading personnel and was printed by the St Clement’s Press, Portugal Street (now the site of the LSE Library). Like many such ephemeral pieces, it has been folded – presumably in use at a WSPU gathering – with a slight split along a fold – but no loss of text. Although fragile, it is actually in quite good condition, considering its age and purpose
[15317] £150
#54 WSPU Neck Piece
54. WSPU NECK PIECE
A length of purple, white, and green woven ribbon, from which gold tassels dangle from the two ends. I hardly like to call it a tie, as this gives the wrong impression – but it was worn around the neck, as modelled by Christabel Pankhurst on 13 October 1908, when being arrested by Inspector Jarvis, along with her mother and Flora Drummond, in Clements Inn. The item is in fine condition, with no fraying, the colours vibrant. I have never seen one of these for sale before. I am including with the piece, for the sake of provenance, a comic suffragette postcard, postmarked 1913 and addressed to Miss Chapman, together with an original real photographic postcard depicting, as mentioned above, Christabel Pankhurst wearing just such a neck piece..
[15106] £3,000
Suffrage Postcards – Real Photographic
55. ANNIE KENNEY
– an early postcard, I think, No photographer or publisher is credited. She is wearing a blouse with elaborate lace yoke and deep lace cuffs – and is standing behind a chair. She looks very youthful. It was probably Miss Chapman who wrote on the reverse ‘Miss Annie Kenney’. Very good – on good, thick card – unposted
[15109] £120
56. CHRISTABEL PANKHURST
photographed by Lambert Weston and Son, 27 New Bond St. I think the card dates from c 1907/8. Fine – unposted
[13616] £45
57. CHRISTABEL PANKHURST
black and white photograph of the portrait of Christabel by Ethel Wright, with Christabel’s printed signature along the bottom of the card. The card will date from c 1909, when the portrait was first exhibited. Having been owned by the family of Una Dugdale since that time, the portrait was bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery in 2011 and is on permanent display. This postcard – which is in fair condition (it has a diagonal crease across the centre) comes from Miss Chapman’s collection and is unposted. It represents one of the WSPU’s ingenious methods of fund-raising.
[15111] £20
58. CHRISTABEL PANKHURST
photographed probably post-First World War – I have seen an image on Google images that may be from the same sitting and is dated to 1926.. She is shown in profile, wearing a blouse with a wide collar. The image is set in an oval, on stiff brown card – rather like that used by Lena Connell, but no photographer is noted. The card was once owned by Joan Wickham. An unusual image. Fine – unposted
[15153] £120
59. COUNTESS RUSSELL
real photographic postcard – headed ‘Votes for Women’ of ‘Countess Russell Member of National Executive Committee Women’s Freedom League’. The card depicts Mollie Russell photographed in a studio setting.. She was the second wife of Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, the elder brother of Bertrand. Mollie was described by George Santyana as ‘a fat, florid Irishwoman, with black curls, friendly manners and emotional opinions: a political agitator and reformer.’ The photograph in no way belies the physical description. She and Russell were divorced in 1915. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted – scarce
[14612] £25
60. DR THEKLA HULTIN
Portrait photograph, published by the Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert St, Adelphi, and headed ‘Votes for Women’. The portrait is captioned ‘Dr Thekla Hultin, Member of the Finnish Diet’. Thekla Hultin was the first elected woman member of Parliament to speak at a suffrage meeting in Britain. From Miss Chapman’s collection. Fine – unposted
[15123] £120
61. EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE
Captioned ‘Mrs Pethick Lawrence. The National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clements Inn, WC’ – she is wearing a coat with a heavy fur collar and lapels and is standing with her hands in her pockets. Published by Sandle Bros. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. In fine condition – unposted
[14571] £25
62. EMMELINE PETHICK LAWRENCE
The photo is captioned ‘Mrs Pethick Lawrence Joint Editor of ‘Votes for Women’, Honorary Treasurer, National Women’s Social and Political Union. 4 Clement’s Inn.’ The photographer, F. Kehrhahn, has an entry in my ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’. Fine – unposted
[14574] £25
63. LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON
real photographic postcard- issued by the ‘Women’s Social and Political Union’. She is sitting at her desk looking at a book. Glossy photograph by Lafayette. This card was purchased in the International Suffrage Shop at 15 Adam St, just off the Strand and was sent to France by Helene Putz, who lived at 10a Belsize Parade, Haverstock Hill, London NW. The 1911 census finds her living there, aged 60, and working as a foreign correspondent – dealing with patent medicines. The message, written in French, tells the recipient that Lady Con is another of the important women working ‘pour la franchise’.
[14694] £120
64. MISS ALICE SCHOFIELD (Organiser) Women’s Freedom League WFL
An early WFL card – the address printed on the card is 18 Buckingham Street, Strand (ie before the move to 1 Robert St in 1908). Alice Schofield, influenced by Teresa Billington, had been a very early member of the WSPU, but with Teresa left the WSPU in 1907 and by 1908 was a paid WFL organizer. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. A scarce card – in fine unposted condition
[14554] £120
65. MISS CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, LLB
Captioned ‘National Union of Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, WC’. She is wearing a brooch that may have been designed by C.R. Ashbee. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14599] £25
66. MISS CICELY HAMILTON
‘Member of the Executive Committee of the Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert St, Adelphi, London WC’. The photograph is by Elliot and Fry – published by the London Council of the Women’s Freedom League. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14600] £65
67. MISS CICELY HAMILTON
member of the National Executive Committee, WFL. office 18 Buckingham Street, Strand, London. 30 Gordon Street, Glasgow.’ An early card – published by the Women’s Freedom League not long after their break with the WSPU and before they moved into their Robert Street office. Cicely Hamilton faces straight on to the camera. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. Fine – unposted – scarce
[14633] £45
68. MISS GLADICE KEEVIL
Portrait photograph of Gladys Keevil ‘National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, WC’. The photographer was Lena Connell, who, in an interview in the Women’s Freedom League paper, ‘The Vote’, dated her involvement with the suffrage movement to this commission – photographing Gladice Keevil soon after her release from prison in 1908. Gladice was considered one of the prettiest of the WSPU organisers. You can read about her in my ‘Reference Guide’. In fine conition – unposted. Unusual
[14918] £120
69. MISS MARGUERITE SIDLEY
Photograph by Foulsham and Banfield, headed ‘Votes for Women’ and captioned ‘Women’s Freedom League’ 1 Robert St, Adelphi, London W.C.,’ She wears, I think, the WFL ‘Holloway’ badge at ther throat and, certainly, a WFL flag brooch on her bosom. She had joined the WSPU in London in 1907, working for some time in the London office and then as a peripatetic organizer before leaving the WSPU to do the same kind of work for the Women’s Freedom League. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – scarce – unposted
[14643] £65
70. MRS AMY SANDERSON
Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London WC. She had been a member of the WSPU, and, as such had endured one term of :imprisonment, before helping to found the WFL in 1907. She is, I think, wearing her WFL Holloway brooch in the photograph. Card, published by WFL, is from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson..Fine – unusual – unposted
[14636] £65
71. MRS BORRMANN WELLS WFL
Headed ‘Votes for Women’ and captioned ‘Women’s Freedom League. Offices: 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London WC’. Bettina Borrmann Wells was born in Bavaria c 1875 and in 1900 married an Englishman, Clement Wells. She joined the WSPU in 1906- but by 1908 had left to join the WFL. She was imprisoned for 3 weeks in Oct 1908 after demonstrating at Westminster. The Hodgson Collection contains a (different) postcard from Bettina Borrmann Wells to ‘Miss Hodgson’ asking for help with ‘special work’, which may be the picketing She later spent much of her life in the US. A striking photo- she’s rather magnificently dressed. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. In fine condition -unusual – unposted
[15005] £120
72. MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD
photographed in profile -seated. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14580] £25
73. MRS CHARLOTTE DESPARD
studio photograph. She is seated and facing the camera, looking wry. No photographer, publisher or suffrage affiliation given. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14591] £25
74. MRS COBDEN SANDERSON WFL
Mrs Cobden Sanderson is shown, head and shoulders, in profile on this most unusual card. The photo is by Max Parker and the caption is: ‘Mrs Cobden Sanderson. Women’s Freedom League’. I would imagine that this is quite an early card -c 1908. Fine – unposted
[14965] £120
75. MRS DESPARD
Photograph of her in profile. The card is headed ‘Votes for Women’ and underneath her name is the caption ‘Hon. Treas. Women’s Freedom League Offices: 18 Buckingham St., Strand. 20 Gordon St, Glasgow’ The card dates from after 1910, when she took over the treasureship of the WFL. Very good – unposted
[14569] £25
76. MRS DESPARD
photographed by Alice Barker of Kentish Town Road and published by the Women’s Freedom League. A head and shoulders portrait in profile. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14592] £25
77. MRS DESPARD
photographed by M.P. Co (Merchant’s Portrait Co). ‘President, The Women’s Freedom League, 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London W.C.). She is sitting in an armless chair – with her left arm leaning on a table. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14616] £25
78. MRS E. HOW-MARTYN
photographed by M.P.Co (Merchant’s Portrait Co) as ‘Hon. Sec Women’s Freedom League’. It seems to me that for this photograph she wearing the ‘Holloway’ badges issued to erstwhile prisoners by both the WSPU and the WFL. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14609] £65
79. MRS EDITH HOW-MARTYN
Hon Sec Women’s Freedom League, ARCS, BSc – photographic postcard headed ‘Votes for Women’. Photographed by Ridsdale Cleare of Lower Clapton Road. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14594] £65
80. MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST
photograph by F. Kehrhahn & Co, Bexleyheath. She is wearing one of the WSPU shield-shaped badges – and looks very beautiful. The sitter isn’t identified, but Mrs Pankhurst is unmistakable. The photograph had been taken at the same time – or had been cropped from and reproduced as a separate image – as a full length portrait (#14536). The card was published by Kehrhahn – about whom you can find out more here https://wp.me/p2AEiO-ge. Unusual – probably dates from c 1909. In fine condition
[14534] £100
81. MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST
no photographer or publisher given. She sites in a high-backed chair wearing a dress with heavily embroidered sleeves and bodice. Her right hand rests on her cheek. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson. Fine – unposted
[14640] £45
82. MRS EMMELINE PANKHURST
studio portrait photograph by F. Kehrhahn, Bexleyheath, possibly dating from c. 1912-1914. A head-and shoulders image – she is wearing an evening-style dress, a rather magnificent necklace, and a decorative band across her hair. It is an unusual image of her, taken by a photographer who often photographed WSPU occasions (or a post about Kehrhahn on my website see https://wp.me/p2AEiO-ge). Interestingly, although so recognisable, the card doesn’t carry her name – or any link to the WSPU. On the reverse of the card is written ‘Mrs Pankhurst’. It was once owned by Joan Wickham. Fine – unposted
[15152] £120
83. MRS HENRY FAWCETT, LL.D.
photographed by Elliott and Fry in c 1909. She is sitting, full length, seen in profile. From Miss Chapman’s collection. Although the image is familiar I do not appear to have had a copy of this postcard in stock previously. The NUWSS issued far fewer postcards than did the WSPU so are relatively scarce – and this card doesn’t even mention her association with the NUWSS. Very good – unposted
[15127] £60
84. MRS LILIAN M. HICKS
– photographed by Lena Connell – an official Women’s Freedom League photographic postcard. Mrs Hicks had been an early member of the WSPU, but left to join the WFL in the 1907 split, returning in 1910 to the WSPU. Fine – unposted
[14533] £35
85. MRS MASSY
photographic portrait, taken by Rita Martin and captioned ‘Mrs Massy. National Women’s Social and Political Union, 4, Clements Inn, W.C.’. Mrs Rosamund Massy (1870-1947) probably joined the WSPU in 1908 and in Nov 1909 was imprisoned for the first time, In Nov 1910 she served a month in Holloway after breaking a window during the ‘Black Friday’ debacle. When, in 1928, Mrs Pankhurst stood for election in Whitechapel Mrs Massy, although not a Conservative, gave her every support and it was Mrs Massy’s hunger strike medal and Holloway badge that it was, it is believed, placed in a casket in the plinth of Mrs Pankhurst’s statue when it was first erected in Victoria Tower Gardens. Fine – unposted – unusual
[15189] £140
86. MRS PANKHURST
Full-lenth portrait by F. Kehrhahn of Bexleyheath.- captioned ‘Mrs Pankhurst’ She is wearing a WSPU badge and holds a dangling lorngnette in one hand while the other rests on an open book, is wearing a WSPU badge. Very good – unposted
[14536] £40
87. MRS PANKHURST
photographed sitting, turning towards the camera with an open book in her hand. A long, pale stole is draped over her shoulders. A studio portrait, though no photographer is noted. ‘Votes for Women’ is the heading and the caption is ‘Mrs Pankhurst, The Women’s Social and Political Union, 4 Clement’s Inn, Strand, WC’. This card dates from the early days of the WSPU in London, c 1907. From Miss Chapman’s collection. Very good – unposted
[15138] £55
88. MRS PANKHURST
arrested in Victoria Street, 13 February 1908. She is on her way from the WSPU ‘Women’s Parliament’ in Caxton Hall – a policeman holds her left hand – she carries her ‘Parliament’s’ resolution in the other. Published by Photochrome Ltd. On the reverse, a rather complicated message to unravel. The card was posted from South Kensington to ‘Mrs Dixon, 66 Ceylon Place, Eastbourne’ in March 1908, I can’t make out the day on the postmark. I think it was a joint effort – the first sender, signing for ‘A & F (?), ‘writes this in the Hall – do so wish you here with us’, and a second (‘L’) continues ‘C. Pankhurst is speaking as I write. Mrs P. has been released today instead of tomorrow so will occupy the chair – I wish you were herre – must listen’. The meeting the writers of the postcard were attending was that held in the Albert Hall on 19 March 1908, at which Mrs Pankhurst, newly released from Holloway, did arrive to take the chair. Her sentence had followed her arrest, as pictured on the reverse.There is another layer, as it were, on the card. In what I think is another, firmer, hand (perhaps that of Mrs Dixon, the recipient), has been written ‘19.3.08 self denial £258 2. 11. 7!!’ This refers to the amount of the money raised in ‘Self Denial Week’ of £258 2s 11d. The figure 7 and the exclamation marks could be interpreted as referring to the £7000, the sum raised in cash, goods and promises by the end of the meeting. I have been unable to identify ‘Mrs Dixon’, who was no longer living at 66 Ceylon Place (a boarding house) in 1911, but perhaps someone with an interest in suffrage activity in Eastbourne will be able to. The card, with its interesting on-the-spot message, has been through the Edwardian post and has a crease across one corner, but is in generally good condition
[15346] £180
89. MRS T BILLINGTON-GREIG WFL
A lovely photographic head and shoulders portrait of her – captioned ‘Mrs T Billington-Greig Hon Organising Sec Women’s Freedom League 1 Robert St, London WC’. The photo is by Brinkley and Son, Glasgow. Fine – unposted – unusual
[14573] £65
90. REV R.J CAMPBELL
published in Rotary Photographic Series. A rather angelic-looking muscular Christian – and fervent supporter of women’s suffrage. He spoke out against the White Slave Trade. A postcard from the Postcard Album compiled by Women’s Freedom League members Edith, Florence and Grace Hodgson.. Fine – unposted
[14652] £65
91. ST CATHERINE’S CHURCH, HATCHAM
The church, in Pepys Road, Deptford, was burned by suffragettes on the night of 6 May 1913. On the reverse the date is written in ink in a contemporary hand ‘Tuesday June 17th 1913’. As there is no photographer or publisher given, it may be that the photograph was taken by an individual and then processed as a postcard on which they wrote that date. The arson attack was an element in the protest against the latest sentencing of Mrs Pankhurst. Shown roofless in this photograph, the church was rebuilt.
[15337] £120
92. WOMEN’S FREEDOM LEAGUE MRS DESPARD AND MRS COBDEN SANDERSON WAITING FOR MR ASQUITH WFL
‘Arrested August 19th, 1909’ They are shown wating outside 10 Downing Street as part of the campaign to picket the Prime Minister in a vain attempt to force him to accept a petition. Fine condition – scarce – unposted
[15354] £65
Suffrage Postcards: Commercial Comic
93. PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT
presumably the result of enfranchising women – Wife wields poker as her husband crawls out from under the tea table. She says, ‘Come along, come along, come along do, I’ve been waiting here for you’. Good – posted from London to Wincanton on 24 June 1911
[14096] £10
94. THEM PESKY SUFFRAGETTES WANTS EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES
says old man confronted with a door labelled ‘For Ladies Only’. Rather topical, again. A US postcard. Fine – unposted
[14000] £20
General Non-fiction
95. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS FROM CONNECTICUT OF THE COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION OF 1893 AT CHICAGO Case, Lockwood and Brainard Co 1898
Fine – many photographs
[5485] SOLD
96. ADELMAN, Jeanne And ENGUIDANOS, Gloria (eds) Racism in the Lives of Women: testimony, theory and guides to antiracist practice Harrington Park Press 1995
Paper covers – mint
[5226] £5
97. AHMED, Leila Women and Gender in Islam Yale University Press 1992
Fine in d/w
[10512] £15
98. ALBERMAN, Eva And DENNIS, K.J. Late Abortions in England and Wales Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 1984
A report of a national confidential survey by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Soft covers – good – ex-library
[9010] £8
99. ALLEN, Jennifer (ed) Lesbian Philosophies and Cultures State University of New York Press 1990
Paper covers – very good
[5164] £5
100. ALLSOPP, Anne The Education and Employment of Girls in Luton, 1874-1924: widening opportunities and lost freedoms Boydell Press/Bedfordshire Historical Record Society 2005
Examines the education of Luton girls and its relationship with employment opportunities. Mint in d/w
[10963] £20
101. ANON New Careers for Women: the best positions, and how to obtain them George Newnes 1917
Articles that were first published in ‘The Ladies’ Field’, covering medicine, dispensing, dentistry, the civil service, the public librarian, accountancy, portrait photography (by Madame Lallie Charles),landscape gardening (by Gertrude Jekyll), the house decorator (one of the women cited as an example, Millicent Cohen, had been a pupil of Agnes Garrett), gardening (ny Viscountess Wolseley), landscape gardening (by Gertrude Jekyll), cookery, poultry farming, dog breeding, motoring – and much more. Very good – very scarce
[15264] £55
102. BEACHY, Robert Et Al (eds) Women, Business and Finance in 19th-century Europe: rethinking separate spheres Berg 2006
Fine
[9208] £12
103. BEER, Janet Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: studies in short fiction Palgrave 1997 r/p
Focusses on a wide range of short fiction by these three women writers. Hardovers – fine
[11769] £12
104. BENJAMIN, Marina (ed) Science and Sensibility: gender and scientific enquiry 1780-1945 Basil Blackwell 1994
An interesting collection of essays, Soft covers – mint
[11668] £18
105. BERRY, Mrs Edward And MICHAELIS, Madame (eds) 135 Kindergarten Songs and Games Charles and Dible, no date [1881]
‘These songs are printed to supply a want in English Kindergartens’ – the music is, of course, included – as are movement instructions. Mme Michaelis ran the Croydon Kindergarten. Very good
[9035] £48
106. BLAKE, Trevor (ed) The Gospel of Power: ‘Egoist’ essays by Dora Marsden Union of Egoists (Baltimore) 2021
Essays by Dora Marsden (1882-1960), sometime member of the WSPU, published in ‘The Egoist’. Soft covers – mint
[15213] £8
107. BLAKELEY, Georgina and BRYSON, Valerie (eds) The Impact of Feminism on Political Concepts and Debates Manchester University Press 2007
Soft covers – mint
[11549] £10
108. Boucé, Paul-Gabriel (ed) Sexuality in 18th-century Britain Manchester University Press 1982
Includes essays by Roy Porter, Ruth Perry and Pat Rogers – among others. Very good in d/w
[11034] £24
109. BURSTALL, Sara A. The Story of the Manchester High School for Girls 1871-1911 Manchester University Press 1911
Very good internally – slightly marked cover
[9606] £15
110. CHECKLAND, Olive Philanthropy in Victorian Scotland: social welfare and the voluntary principle John Donald Ltd 1980
Fine in fine d/w
[9241] £20
111. CLARK, Margaret Homecraft: a guide to the modern home and family Routledge, 3rd ed 1978 (r/p)
The author was senior adviser for Home Economics for Derbyshire. The book was a textbook, suitable for school Home Economics courses. First published in 1966. Soft covers – very good
[10288] £6
112. CLARKE, Norma Dr Johnson’s Women Hambledon and London 2000
investigates lives of Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale and Fanny Burney – exploring their relationship with Dr Johnson, with each other and with the world of letters. Excellent reading. Mint in d/w
[9736] £8
113. CLARKE, Patricia The Governesses: letters from the colonies 1862-1882 Hutchinson 1985
Fine in fine d/w
[12463] £7
114. COHEN, Monica Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: women, work and home CUP 1998
Offers new readings of narratives by Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, George Eliot, Emily Eden etc to show how domestic work, the most feminine of all activities, gained much of its social credibility by positioning itself in relation to the emergent professions. Soft cover – fine
[12419] £25
115. CRAWFORD, Elizabeth Enterprising Women: the Garretts and their circle Francis Boutle 2009 (r/p)
Pioneering access to education at all levels for women, including training for the professions, the women of the Garrett circle opened the way for women to gain employment in medicine, teaching, horticulture and interiior design – and were also deeply involved in the campaign for women’s suffrage. Includes studies of the work of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Davies, Millicent Fawcett, Rhoda and Agnes Garrett, Fanny Wilkinson, Annie Swynnerton – and many women of their day. Soft covers, large format, over 70 illustrations. Mint
[15386] £25
116. CUNNINGTON, C. Willett Feminine Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century William Heinemann 1935
Good
[2558] £15
117. DEAN-JONES, Lesley Ann Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science OUP 1996
Soft covers – fine
[11865] £15
118. DINSHAW, Carolyn and WALLACE, David (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing CUP 2003
Soft covers – fine
[11857] SOLD
119. DON VANN, J. and VANARSDEL, Rosemary T. (eds) Periodicals of Queen Victoria’s Empire: an exploration University of Toronto Press 1996
Fine in fine d/w
[9600] £18
120. DOODY, Margaret Anne The True Story of the Novel Fontana 1998
Aims to prove that the novel is an ancient form – with a continuous history of 2000 years. Soft covers – very good
[10562] £5
121. DURHAM, Edith High Albania Virago 1985
First published in 1909. Soft covers – very good
[10802] £8
122. DYHOUSE, Carol Girl Trouble: panic and progress in the history of young women Zed Books 2013
Paper covers – mint
[15209] £8
123. ELLIS, Mrs Sarah Stickney The Select Works Henry G. Langley (New York) 1844
Includes ‘The Poetry of Life’, ‘Pictures of Private Life’, ‘A Voice From the Vintage, on the force of example addressed to those who think and feel’
Good in original decorative cloth
[11234] £48
124. EVANS, Dorothy Women and the Civil Service: a history of the development of the employment of women in the Civil Service, and a guide to present-day opportunities Pitman 1934
Dorothy Evans had been a leading WSPU organizer – and after 1918 was chairman of the Six Point Group. In the 1920s and 1930s she was a representative of the National Association of Women Civil Servants, campaigning for equal pay with their male colleagues. Fine condition – very scarce
[15233] SOLD
125. FADERMAN, Lillian Surpassing the Love of Men: romantic friendship and love between women from the Renaissance to the present The Women’s Press 1991 (r/p)
Paper covers – fine
[15049] £8
126. FINDLAY, J.J. (ed) The Young Wage-Earner and the Problem of His Education: essays and reports Sigwick and Jackson 1918
For ‘His Education’ read also ‘Hers’. The essays include: ‘From Home Life to Industrial Life: with special reference to adolescent girls, by James Shelley, prof of education, University College, Southampton; ‘The Young Factory Girl’ by Emily Matthias, superintendent of women employees, the Phoenix Dynamo Manufacturing Co, Bradford and the reports include: ‘Working Girls and Trade Schools (London)’ by Theodora Pugh and ‘The Sons and Daughters of Farming Folk’ by J.J. Findlay. Very good
[8026] £25
127. FRANCOME, Colin Abortion Freedom: a worldwide movement Allen & Unwin 1984
Very good in d/w
[9006] £5
128. FRYE, Susan And ROBERTSON, Karen (Eds) Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: women’s alliances in early modern England OUP 1999
A collection of essays exploring how early modern women associated with other women in a variety of roles, from alewives to midwives, prostitutes to pleasure seekers, slaves to queens, serving maids to ladies in waiting…’. Fine
[7435] £28
129. FULLER, Margaret ‘These Sad But Glorious Days’: dispatches from Europe, 1846-1850 Yale University Press 1991
Fine in d/w
[8887] £18
130. GARRETT, Stephanie Gender Tavistock 1987
In ‘Society Now’ series. Soft covers – very good
[8759] £3
131. GATES, Evelyn (ed) Woman’s Year Book 1923-1924 Women Publishers Ltd 1924 (2nd ed)
An invaluable reference work, covering all aspects of the post-emancipation period in considerable detail. Contributors include Millicent Fawcett, Commandant Mary Allen, Lena Ashwell, Lilian Barker, Margaret Bondfield, Winifred Cullis, Margaret Llewellyn Davies, Margery Fry, Chrystal Macmillan, Hilda Martindale, Bertha Mason, Edith Picton-Turbervill, Eleanor Rathbone – among many others. Full of facts and figures, names and addresses. Women Publishers Ltd was not in business for long; this is the only Year Book they published. Very good internally – cloth grubby with library shelf mark on spine. Scarce.
[15240] SOLD
132. GLUCK, Sherna Berger and PATAI, Daphne (eds) Women’s Words: the practice of oral history Routledge 1991
Explores the theoretical, methodological, and practical problems that arise when women utilize oral history as a tool of feminist scholarship. Hardback – fine in d/w
[11532] £15
133. GOOD HOUSEKEEPING’S HOME ENCYCLOPAEDIA Ebury Press 1968 (r/p)
Packed with information and illustrations. How very retro. Large format – very good in rubbed d/w – heavy
[10297] £10
134. HARTLEY, Jenny (ed) Hearts Undefeated: women’s writing of the Second World War Virago 1994
Soft covers – very good
[9135] £10
135. HASTE, Cate Rules of Desire: sex in Britain: World War 1 to the present Pimlico 1992
Soft covers – very good
[10519] £8
136. HESSELGRAVE, Ruth Avaline Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle Yale University Press 1927
An 18th-century Bath literary salon. Lady Miller was the first English woman to describe her travels in Italy. Fine
[3020] £30
137. HOLT, Anne A Ministry To The Poor: being a history of the Liverpool Domestic Mission Society, 1836-1936 Henry Young (Liverpool) 1936
Very good – scarce
[9243] £45
138. HORSFIELD, Margaret Biting the Dust: the joys of housework Fourth Estate 1997
Mint in d/w
[10183] £5
139. HUGHES, Linda K. And LUND, Michal Victorian Publishing and Mrs Gaskell’s Work University Press of Virginia 1999
Fine in fine d/w
[9537] £15
140. KEDDIE, Nikki And BARON, Beth (eds) Women in Middle Eastern History: shifting boundaries in sex and gender Yale University Press 1991
The first study of gender relations in the Middle East from the earliest Islamic period to the present. Fine in d/w
[10511] £15
141. KENEALY, Arabella Feminism and Sex-Extinction E.P. Dutton & Co (NY) 1920
Anti-feminist eugenicist polemic. US edition is scarce. Very good internally – cloth cover a little bumped and rubbed
[12107] £25
142. KERTZER, David and BARBAGLIO, Marzio (eds) Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century 1789-1913 Yale University Press 2002
A collection of essays under the headings: Economy and Family Organization: State, Religion, Law and the Family; Demographic Forces; Family Relations. 420pp Heavy. Mint in d/w
[11037] £18
143. KIDD, Alan and NICHOLLS, David (eds) Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: middle-class identity in Britain 1800-1940 Manchester University Press 1999
Soft covers – very good
[11759] £12
144. KIRBY, Joan (ed) The Plumpton Letters and Papers CUP for the Royal Historical Society 1996
Letters addressed mainly to Sir William Plumpton (1404-80) and his son, Sir Robert (1453-1525). Good in marked d/w- but has perhaps been exposed to damp at some point
[10954] £10
145. LEE, Julia Sun-Joo The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel OUP 2010
Investigates the shaping influence of the American slave narrative on the Victorian novel in the years between the British Abolition Act and the American Emancipation Proclamation – and argues that Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thackeray and Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative. Mint in d/w (pub price £40)
[13436] £15
146. LOANE, M. The Queen’s Poor: life as they find it in town and country Edward Arnold (new and cheaper edition0 1906
Martha Loane, a Queen’s Nurse in Portsmouth, wrote as a social investigator among the ‘respectable poor’. This was her first study. Good in decorative boards
[7995] £35
147. LYNN, Susan Progressive Women in Conservative Times: racial justice, peace, and feminism, 1945 to the 1960s Rutgers University Press 1992
Paper covers – mint
[5219] £10
148. MALOS, Ellen (ed) The Politics of Housework Allison & Busby 1980
Fine in d/w
[1819] £4
149. MARKS, Lara Metropolitan Maternity maternity and infant welfare services in early 20th century London Rodopi 1996
Soft covers – fine
[11624] £22
150. MARTIN, Jane Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England Leicester University Press 1999
Mint (pub price £65)
[10781] £15
151. MASON, Michael The Making of Victorian Sexuality OUP 1994
Fine in d/w
[10599] £14
152. MEAKIN, Annette Woman in Transition Methuen 1907
A feminist study of a changing society. Very good
[15220] £48
153. MEERES, Frank Suffragettes: how Britain’s women fought & died for the right to vote Amberley 2013
Hardcover in fine condition – in fine d/w. With many illustrations
[15211] SOLD
154. MEWS, Hazel Frail Vessels: woman’s role in women’s novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot Athlone Press 1969
Very good in d/w
[3801] £12
155. MILLER, Lucasta The Bronte Myth Cape 2001
Hardcover – fine – in very good d/w
[15216] £8
156. MILLER, Naomi and YAVNEH, Naomi (eds) Maternal Measures: figuring caregiving in the early modern period Ashgate 2000
Essays on a wide range of early modern caregiving roles by women in England, Italy, Spain, France, Latin America, Mexico and the New World. A wide range of scholarly and critical approaches is represented. Mint in d/w
[11038] £15
157. MUMM, Susan (ed) All Saints Sisters of the Poor: an Anglican Sisterhood in the 19th century Boydel Press/Church of England Record Society 2001
A history of the Sisterhood that was founded by Harriet Brownlow Byron in 1850 to work in the slums of Marylebone – but then spread its net much wider. This volume comprises material drawn from the Sisterhood’s archives. V. interesting. Mint
[10964] £15
158. NATIONAL LESBIAN AND GAY SURVEY What a Lesbian Looks Like: writings by lesbians on their lives and lifestyles Rooutledge 1992
Paper covers – mint
[5281] £10
159. NORWICH HIGH SCHOOL 1875-1950 privately printed, no date [1950]
A GPDST school. Very good internally – green cloth covers sunned – ex-university library
[9612] £15
160. ORAM, Alison And TURNBULL, Annmarie The Lesbian History Sourcebook: love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970 Routledge 2001
Soft covers – fine
[9092] £12
161. PEACH, Linden Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction: gender, desire and power University of Wales Press 2008
The first comparative study of fiction by late 20th and 21st-century women writers from England, Southern Ireland and Wales. Soft covers – mint
[11572] £15
162. PEEL, John And POTTS, Malcolm Textbook of Contraceptive Practice CUP 1969
Soft covers – very good
[9021] £6
163. PICHLER, Pia Talking Young Femininities Palgrave 2009
Explores the spontaneous talk of adolescent British girls from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Hardovers – mint ( pub price £50)
[11525] £10
164. PINES, Davida The Marriage Paradox: modernist novels and the cultural imperative to marry University Press of Florida 2006
Mint
[10188] £18
165. POTTS, Malcolm, DIGGORY, Peter And PEEL, John Abortion CUP 1977
Soft covers – very good – 575pp
[9007] £8
166. PURKISS, Diane The Witch in History: early modern and 20th century representations Routledge 1996
Soft covers – mint
[9395] £12
167. RENDALL, Jane The Origins of Modern Feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860 Macmillan 1985
Soft covers – very good
[9461] SOLD
168. RIOJA, Isabel Ramos The Day Kadi Lost Part of Her Life Spinifex 1998
A photographic study of female circumcision. Soft covers – large format – mint
[7577] £8
169. ROBERTS, Alison Hathor Rising: the serpent power in ancient Egypt Northgate 1995
Soft covers – fine
[11866] £8
170. ROBINSON, Jane Angels of Albion: women of the Indian mutiny Viking 1996
Very good in rubbed d/w
[4240] £8
171. ROWBOTHAM, Sheila Women, Resistance and Revolution Allen Lane 1972
Very good in chipped d/w
[1834] £10
172. SANCHEZ, Regina Morantz- Conduct Unbecoming a Woman: medicine on trial in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn OUP 2000
Soft covers – very good
[15212] £4
173. SEARLE, Arthur (ed) Barrington Family Letters 1628-1632 Royal Historical Society 1983
In the main letters to Lady Joan Barrington, the focal point of the extended family, the dowager and respected matriarch on a recognisable early 17th-century pattern. Very good
[10955] £12
174. SEIDLER, Victor The Achilles Heel Reader: men, sexual politics and socialism Routledge 1991
Paper covers – mint
[5302] £5
175. SHATTOCK, Joanne And WOLFF, Michael (eds) The Victorian Periodical Press: samplings and soundings Leicester University Press 1992
A collection of essays. Fine in d/w
[3501] £28
176. SMITH, Joan Misogynies Faber 1990
Reprint, paper covers – mint
[15064] £4
177. SONBOL, Amira El Azhary (ed) Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History Syracuse University Press 1996
18 essays covering a wide range of material. Soft covers – fine
[10484] £12
178. SOUHAMI, Diana No Modernism Without Lesbians Head of Zeus 2021
Paper covers – fine
[15210] £5
179. SPENDER, Dale Invisible Women: the schooling scandal Women’s Press 1989
Pioneering research on sexism in education. Paper covers – mint
[1667] £2
180. STAFFORD, William English feminists and their opponents in the 1790s; unsex’d and proper females Manchester University Press 2002
Fine in fine d/w (pub. price £45)
[11757] SOLD
181. STONE, Dorothy The National: the story of a pioneer college Robert Hale 1976
History of the pioneering domestic economy training college – The National Training College of Domestic Subjects. Fine in d/w
[8231] £12
182. STOPES, Marie Birth Control Today Hogarth Press, 12th ed 1957
Very good in d/w
[9003] £5
183. TAYLOR, Jane Contributions of Q.Q. Jackson & Walford 5th ed, 1855
The majority of these essays were first published in the ‘Youth’s Magazine’, between 1816 and 1822. Good in original cloth
[1699] £15
184. VANITA, Ruth Sappho and the Virgin Mary: same-sex love and the English literary imagination Columbia University Press 1996
Soft covers – very good
[11223] £8
185. VICINUS, Martha (ed) Suffer and Be Still: women in the Victorian age Methuen 1972
An excellent collection of essays. Paper covers – fine – scarce
[2388] £25
186. WANDOR, Michelene Post-War British Drama: looking back in gender Routledge, revised edition 2001
Soft covers – mint
[5897] £12
187. WILSON, Philip K (ed) Childbirth: Vol 3: Methods and Folklore Garland Publishing 1996
An anthology of key primary sources centring on methods of childbirth -covering ‘Painless Childbirth’ from the 18th century onwards; ”Caesarian Sections’ and ’20th Century Natural Childbirth’ and ‘Oral Traditions and Folklore of Pregnancy and Childbirth’ A single volume from a 5-voume series. Fine – 433pp
[11065] £25
188. WOOD, Ethel M. The Pilgrimage of Perseverance National Council of Social Service 1949
A rather negelected but I think rather good short history of feminist campaigns. Good – though ex-library
[2312] £3
189. WOLFE, Susan J. And PENELOPE, Julia (eds) Sexual Practice/Textual Theory: lesbian cultural criticism Blackwell 1993
Paper covers – mint
[5276] £5
General Biography
190. (ALDRICH-BLAKE) Lord Riddell Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake Hodder & Stoughton, no date (1920s)
Biography of Louisa Aldrich-Blake, surgeon at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s New Hospital for Women. You can see her portrait bust in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury. Presentation copy from the author, Lord Riddell.
[15283] £15
191. (ALLEN) John C. Hirsh Hope Emily Allen: medieval scholarship and feminism Pilgrim Books (Oklahoma) 1988
Biography of an American medieval scholar, born in 1883 – who spent time at Newnham. Fine
[11995] £15
192. (AMBERLEY) Bertrand and Patricia Russell (eds) The Amberley Papers: the letters and diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley Hogarth Press 1937
The epitome of radical liberalism in the mid-19th-century. Both died tragically young. Good
[11044] £45
193. ANON WOMEN’S WHO’S WHO, 1934-5 Shaw Publishing Co 1935
‘An Annual Record of the Careers and Activities of the Leading Women of the Day.’ A mine of information. Very good
[15290] £38
194. ANON (Agnes Maud Davies) A Book with Seven Seals Cayme Press 1928
First edition of a classic of Victorian childhood – I think perhaps it is a ‘faction’ – am not sure that it is actually a memoir. If I said that it strikes me as having a hint of Rachel Ferguson about it, those that are familiar with her work will know what I mean. The author’s name was withheld for this first edition. An elegant book – cover a little blotched
[8552] £15
195. (ARNOLD-FOSTER) T.W. Moody and R.A.J. Hawkins (eds) Florence Arnold-Foster’s Irish Journal OUP 1988
She was the niece and adopted daughter of W.E. Foster. The journals covers the years 1880-1882 when he was chief secretary for Ireland. Fine in slightly rubbed d/w
[1043] £10
196. (ASHBURTON) Virginia Surtees The Ludovisi Goddess: the life of Louisa Lady Ashburton Michael Russell 1984
She was possibly proposed to by Browning – and was the patroness (and perhaps lover) of Harriet Hosmer. Fine in d/w
[8886] £18
197. (BAIRD) Elizabeth Nussbaum Dear Miss Baird: a portrait of a 19th-century family Longstone Books 2008
Traces the fortunes of a 19th-century family over 60 years, shedding light on issues such as the status of women, education and changing attitudes to religion, love and death. Some pencil lines in margins. Young Gertrude Baird was a talented artist, who died too young. Soft covers -some pencil lines in margins – otherwise fine
[15068] £3
198. (BEALE) Elizabeth Raikes Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham Constable 1908
Good
[11045] £15
199. (BEETON) Kathryn Hughes The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton Harper 2006
Excellent biography. Soft covers – fine
[10918] £6
200. BELL, Alan (ed and with an introduction by) Sir Leslie Stephen’s ‘Mausoleum Book’ OUP 1977
Intimate autobiography written for Stephen’s immediate family after the death of his wife, Julia, the mother of Vanessa and Virginia. Very good in d/w
[13199] £12
201. (BOTTLE) Dorothy Bottle Reminiscences of a Queen’s Army Schoolmistress Arthur Stockwell no date [1936]
Dorothy Bottle (c.1886-1973) taught at schools for the children of the military – in Ireland, Jamaica, Egypt and Britain and relates her experiences from c 1904-1935. She was an astute and sympathetic observer. Very good – with photographs – very scarce
[15257] £55
202. (BURNEY) Joyce Hemlow (ed) Fanny Burney: selected letters and journals OUP 1986
Follows her career from her romantic marriage to the impoverished French émigré General d’Arblay to her death 46 years later. Fine in fine d/w
[12030] £12
203. (CAMERON) Victoria Olsen From Life: Julia Margaret Cameron and Victorian photography Aurum Press 2003
Fine in d/w
[9345] £15
204. CLAYTON, Ellen English Female Artists Tinsley Brothers 1876
Biographical essays on English women artists – from the 16th century until 1876. Particularly interesting for the information on 19th-century artists. Two volumes – bumped, rubbed and back board of vol 2 detached, but present. Scarce
[15078] £50
205. (CLEARY) Susanne George Kate M. Cleary: a literary biography with selected works University of Nebraska Press 1997
Study of woman who wrote stories, poems and articles about life in the American west. Mint in d/w
[5413] £5
206. CRAWFORD, Anne et al (eds) Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women: over 1000 notable women from Britain’s Past Europa 1983
Soft covers – 536pp – fine
[12408] £10
207. (DE STAEL/CONSTANT) Renee Winegarten Germaine de Stael and Benjamin Constant: a dual biography Yale University Press 2008
Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w
[11963] £12
208. (DICKINSON) Lyndall Gordon Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and her family’s feuds Virago 2010
Biography of Emily Dickinson. Hardcover in fine condition – in fine d/w
[15207] £8
209. (EDEN) Violet Dickinson (Ed) Miss Eden’s Letters Macmillan 1919
Born, a Whig, in 1797. Her letters are full of social detail. In 1835 she went to India with her brother when he became governor-general. Very good
[9339] £28
210. (ELIZABETH) Philip Yorke (ed) Letters of Princess Elizabeth of England, daughter of King George III, and Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg written for the most part to Miss Louisa Swinburne T. Fisher Unwin 1898
Full of social details – letters written both from England and Germany. Good
[8520] £38
211. EWAN, Elizabeth, PIPES, Rosie etc (eds ) The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women Edinburgh University Press 2018
Soft covers – 496pp – mint
[15072] £16
212. (GAUTIER) Joanna Richardson Judith Gautier: a biography Quartet 1986
Biography of French woman of letters – and muse. Soft covers – fine
[12432] £6
213. (GLADSTONE) Lucy Masterman (ed) Mary Gladstone (Mrs Drew): her diaries and letters Methuen 1930
Daughter of Gladstone, born in 1847, excellent diary and letters, 1858-to her death (1927). Very good in d/w
[8409] £18
214. (GOODINGS) Lennie Goodings A Bite of the Apple: a life with books, writers and Virago OUP 2020
Autobiography of Lennie Goodings, one of the founders of Virago. Mint in mint d/w
[15091] £6
215. (HALDANE) Elizabeth Haldane From One Century to Another Alexander Maclehose 1937
She was born in 1862, into an eminent Scottish Liberal family – an interesting autobiography by one who was at the heart of things. Good – cover marked – remains of Boots Library label
[15266] £12
216. (HAMMOND) Mrs John Hays Hammond A Woman’s Part in a Revolution Longmans, Green 1987
The ‘Revolution’ was the Boer War – her husband was imprisoned by the Boers. Good
[6083] £30
217. (HARRISON) Amy Greener A Lover of Books: the life and literary papers of Lucy Harrison J.M. Dent 1916
Lucy Harrison (a niece of Mary Howitt) studied at Bedford College, then taught for 20 years at a school in Gower St (Charlotte Mew was a pupil at the school and v. attached to Miss Harrison) and then became headmistress of the Mount School, York. Good – pasted onto the free front end paper is a presentation slip from the editor, Amy Greener, to Mary Cotterell
[11054] £18
218. HAYS, Frances Women of the Day: a biographical dictionary of notable contemporaries J.B. Lipincott (Philadelphia) 1885
A superb biographical source on interesting British women. Good in original binding – with library shelf mark in ink on spine- scarce
[12594] £75
219. (HOLTBY) Alice Holtby and Jean McWilliam (eds) Winifred Holtby: Letters to a Friend Collins 1937
Excellent, chatty, letters, dating from 1920-1935, written to her friend, Jean McWilliam, whom she had first met in 1918 while serving with the WAAC in France. First edition, hard covers, in very good condition
[15253] £20
220. (HOLTBY) Evelyne White Winifred Holtby as I Knew Her: a study of the author and her works Collins 1938
Very good in d/w
[15252] £15
221. (HOWE) Valarie Ziegler Diva Julia: the public romance and private agony of Julia Ward Howe Trinity Press International 2003
Hardcover – fine in fine d/w
[11892] £10
222. (JAMESON) Clara Thomas Love and Work Enough: the life of Anna Jameson Macdonald 1967
Good
[12070] £10
223. (JAMESON) G.H. Needler (ed) Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe OUP 1939
Very good internally – cover marked
[12451] £20
224. (LEIGH) Michael and Melissa Bakewell Augusta Leigh: Byron’s half-sister – a biography Chatto & Windus 2000
Hardcovers – fine in fine d/w
[12012] £8
225. MARTINDALE, Hilda Some Victorian Portraits and Others Allen & Unwin 1948
Biographical essays of members of her circle – including Adelaide Anderson, factory inspector. Very good in d/w
[6071] £18
226. (MARTYN) Christopher Hodgson (compiler) Carrie: Lincoln’s Lost Heroine privately published 2010
A biographical anthology of works relating to Caroline Eliza Derecourt Martyn, socialist. Soft covers – fine
[14222] £10
227. (MAYNARD) Catherine B. Firth Constance Louisa Maynard: mistress of Westfield College Allen & Unwin 1949
Very good – scarce
[11033] £15
228. (MONTGOMERY) Mary Rubio and Elizbeth Waterston (eds) The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: vol 1 1889-1910 OUP 1985
Fine in very good d/w -424pp – heavy
[12426] £15
229. (MORGAN) Sydney Lady Morgan Passage From My Autobiography Richard Bentley 1859
‘The following pages are the simple records of a transition existence, socially enjoyed, and pelasantly and profitably occupied, during a journey of a few months from Ireland to Italy.’ Good – in original decorative mauve cloth
[13675] £18
230. (NIGHTINGALE) Eliza F. Pollard Florence Nightingale: the wounded soldier’s friend S.W. Partridge no date [early 1890s]
In Partridge’s ‘Popular Biographies’ series and, presumably, popular as this copy is from the twelfth thousand printing. Prettily illustrated, with an illustrated cover, depicting Florence, with her lamp, tending a wounded soldier. The free front endpaper contains a an ink inscription ‘To Jane Small. In remembrance of kind attention during illness from Elizabeth Johnson New Year’s Day 1894. An appropriate gift in the circumstances. In good condition
[15251] SOLD
231. (NIGHTINGALE) Lynn McDonald (ed) Florence Nightingale’s European Travels Wilfrid Laurier Press 2004
Her correspondence, and a few short published articles, from her youthful European travels. She is an excellent observer and reporter. Fine in d/w – 802pp
[11112] £45
232. (NORTON) Jane Gray Perkins The Life of Mrs Norton John Murray 1910
Very good
[3537] £8
233. (ORR) Deborah Orr Motherwell: a girlhood Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2021
A sharp memoir. Paperback – fine
[15208] £3
234. PARRY, Melanie (ed) Chambers Biographical Dictionary of Women Chambers 1996
Soft covers – fine – 741pp – heavy
[12421] £10
235. (PASTON) Helen Castor Blood and Roses Faber 2004
A family biography tracing the Pastons’ story across three generations. Mint in mint d/w
[11981] £8
236. (PINZER) Ruth Rosen & Sue Davidson The Maimie Papers Virago 1979
Correspondence, beginning in 1910, between Fanny Quincy Howe, a distinguished Bostonian, and Mainie Pinzer, a Jewish prostitute. Fascinating. Paper covers – very good
[5444] £5
237. (PLATH/HUGHES) Diane Middlebrook Her Husband: Hughes and Plath: a marriage Little,Brown 2004
Fine in fine d/w
[12020] £8
238. (PUREFOY) G. Eland (ed) Purefoy Letters 1735-1753 Sidgwick & Jackson 1931
The letters of Elizabeth Purefoy (1672-1765), whose husband died in 1704, and her son, Henry Purefoy. Elizabeth Purefoy was, as her epitaph recorded, ‘a woman of excellent understanding, prudent and frugal’ and her letters are full of domestic detail. Very good – two volumes
[9338] £40
239. (RUSKIN) Mary Lutyens (ed) Young Mrs Ruskin in Venice: the picture of society and life with John Ruskin 1849-1852 Vanguard Press (NY) 1965
Very good in d/w
[13200] £12
240. (SEEBOHM) Victoria Glendinning A Suppressed Cry: life and death of a Quaker daughter Routledge 1969
The short, sad life of Winnie Seebohm, smothered by her loving family. She enjoyed a month at Newnham in 1885, before returning home and dying. Good in d/w – though ex-library
[4276] £4
241. (SMITH) Dodie Smith Look Back With Astonishment W.H. Allen 1979
A volume of autobiography – from the early 1930s and the beginning of her success as a playwright. Good reading copy – ex-public library
[10642] £3
242. (SMITH) Dodie Smith Look Back With Gratitude Muller, Blond & White 1985
Follows on from ‘Look Back With Atonishment’. Reading copy – ex-public library
[10643] £3
243. (SPENCE) Susan Magarey etc (eds) Every Yours, C.H. Spence Wakefield Press 2005
Catherine Helen Spence was an Australian novelist, journalist and campaigner. This is her Autobiography (1825-1910), Diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894-1910). Fine in fine d/w
[15071] £12
244. (SPRING RICE) Lucy Pollard Margery Spring Rice: pioneer of women’s health in the early 20th century Open Book 2020
Excellent biography of yet another enterprising member of the Garrett family, author of ‘Working Class Wives’. Soft covers – mint
[15074] £12
245. (ST TERESA OF AVILA) St Teresa of Avila by Herself Penguin Classics 1957 (r/p)
Soft covers – fine
[11950] £6
246. (STEAD) Chris Williams Christina Stead: a life of letters Virago 1989
Soft covers – fine
[11891] £8
247. (STOWE) Joan Hedrick Harriet Beecher Stowe OUP 1994
Soft covers – fine
[11991] £9
248. (STUART) Hon. James A. Home (ed) Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart to Miss Louisa Clinton David Douglas (Edinburgh) 1901 & 1903
Two volumes – complete set. The first volume covers the period 1817 to 1825 and the second volume (called ‘Second Series’) that from1826 to 1834. Society observed. Very good – two volumes together
[13335] £38
249. (TAYLOR) Nicola Beauman The Other Elizabeth Taylor Persephone 2009
Biography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint
[15089] £8
250. (TENNYSON) James O. Hoge Lady Tennyson’s Journal University Press of Virginia 1981
Fine in d/w
[9675] £18
251. (TREMAIN) Rosie: scenes from a vanished life Vintage 2018
Autobiography of the novelist. Soft covers – mint
[15093] £4
252. (TROUBRIDGE) Jaqueline Hope-Nicholson (ed) Life Amongst the Troubridges: journals of a young Victorian 1873-1884 by Laura Troubridge John Murray 1966
Very good in rubbed d/w
[9324] £10
253. (TUCKER) Agnes Giberne A Lady of England: the life and letters of Charlotte Maria Tucker Hodder & Stoughton 1895
The standard biography of a popular children’s and religious writer – who spent the later years of her life as a missionary in India. Good – though ex-university library
[9599] £28
254. (TUDOR) Maria Perry Sisters to the King deutsch 2002
Lives of the sisters of Henry VIII – Queen Margaret of Scotland and Queen Mary of France. Soft covers – fine
[12024] £4
255. (VICTORIA) Agatha Ramm (ed) Beloved and Darling Child: last letters between Queen Victoria and her eldest daughter 1886-1901 Alan Sutton 1990
Mint in d/w
[6509] £10
256. (VICTORIA) Dorothy Marshall The Life and Times of Victoria Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1992 (r/p)
Lavishly illustrated. Mint in d/w
[6510] £10
257. (WARWICK) Charlotte Fell-Smith Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick (1625-1678), her family and friends Longmans, Green 1901
Very good
[1754] £15
258. (WORTH) Edith Saunders The Age of Worth: courtier to the Empress Eugenie Longmans 1954
Interesting social history. Good – though ex-Boots library, with label pasted on to front cover.
[4013] £5
259. (WRIGHT) Margaret Lane Frances Wright and the ‘Great Experiment’ Manchester University Press 1972
An Owenite – the ‘Great Experiment’ was Nashoba, a utopian community in America. Very good
[6081] £18
260. (WYNNE) Anne Fremantle (ed) The Wynne Diaries Vol II (1794-1798 OUP 1937
I’ve loved Betsey and Eugenia Wynne ever since I encountered them about 50 years ago in the condensed, one volume, Oxford Classics edition of the Wynne diaries – and then followed them through the three full published volumes. They are rattling around Europe, on land and sea, during the war with France. Very good in very good d/w
[9609] £35
261. (WYNNE) Anne Fremantle (ed) The Wynne Diaries Vol III (1798-1820) OUP 1940
I’ve loved Betsey and Eugenia Wynne ever since I encountered them about 50 years ago in the condensed, one volume, Oxford Classics edition of the Wynne diaries – and then followed them through the three full published volumes. In this vol Betsey is married to Capt Fremantle, who becomes an admiral in the course of fighting Napoleon at sea. Betsey is at home in England and the letters and diary give a wonderful picture of civilian life at all levels of society. Very good in very good d/w
[15077] £35
General Ephemera
262. The Home Friend (New Series) SPCK 1854
4 vols of miscellany of fact and fiction. Very good in embossed decorative original cloth – together
[8313] £45
263. AUTOGRAPHS – THE GUILDHOUSE
The Guildhouse was an ecumenical place of worship and cultural centre founded in 1921 by Maude Royden. On 4 sheets of paper are fixed 25 cut-out signatures, including those of Maude Royden, Hudson Shaw, Daisy Dobson (Maude Royden’s secretary), Zoe Procter (former WSPU activist), and Katherine Courtney (of the NUWSS). Together
[13061] £45
264. BEATON, Audrey Evelyn Memoirs of Guide and Brownie Days
This handwritten ‘memoir’ covers the period September 1941 to February 1950. ‘Although I am only just fourteen and have most of my guide life still before me I want to write down on paper some of the things that have happened during my brownie and guide life before I forget. I want to read this book when I am a grown woman, and show it to my children, who, through reading some of the mistakes which I will relate in this book, will avoid them themselves….’ Audrey belonged to the 3rd Leek Girl Guides – and in time became District Captain. In the early 1950s her mother was treasurer of the Leek and District Girl Guides’ Association; Audrey dedicates her ‘Memoir’ to ‘Mum and Dad without whose help and support nothing good would have been accomplished.’ Here, in devoted detail, is every minute of Audrey Beaton’s early Brownie and Guiding career – a glimpse into that mysterious post-Second World War world. An excercise book – 177 pages – clearly written, in ink – with numerous illustrations – photographs, newspaper cuttings, certificates – laid in. In good condition
[15361] SOLD
265. BINFIELD, Clyde Belmont’s Portias: Victorian nonconformists and middle-class education for girls Dr Williams’ Trust 1981
The 35th Friends of Dr Williams’s Library Lecture. Paper covers – 35pp – good – scarce
[9158] £18
266. CHARITY ORGANISATION REVIEW Vol X (New Series) July To Dec 1901 Longmans, Green 1902
half-yearly bound volume of the COS’s own magazine. Very good
[9244] £28
267. CITIZEN HOUSE, CHANDOS BUILDINGS, BATH
First Report on the running of Citizen House, which opened in Sept 1913 as an educational and social centre. The Report, dated March 1915, gives details of the societies, such as the National Union of Women Workers, the Workers Educational Association, Girl Guides – and, since the beginning of the war, the Committee of Women Patrols and the Aid Coordination Committee. The Wardens were Helen Hope and Mary de Reyes. Packed full of information about the good works being done in Bath. In very good condition – 16pp – card covers
[14978] £18
268. EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK Equal Pay Campaign Committee 1944
‘The question of Equal Pay for Equal Work will shortly come up for discussion in Parliament…’Small 4pp leaflet
[14999] £2
269. EVERYWOMAN
founded in 1985, a news and current affairs magazine aimed at ‘real women’. Issues:
1991 July/Aug
1992 Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1993;1993, Feb, April, March, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov Dec/Jan 1994; 1994, Feb, March, April, May, June, July, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1995;1995 Feb, March, April, May, June, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec/Jan 1996;1996 May
In good condition. Each
[14923] £8
270. FAREWELL FROM THE WOMEN’S BRANCH OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY WAR AND RELIEF FUND 1914 1918
Small metal Vesta case with a map of India shown in relief..to hold a small box of matches. During World War I, Lord Willingdon, the governor of Bombay, created the India War & Relief Fund (Bombay Branch) two which all the native and princely states neighbouring the Bombay Presidency contributed, along with the people of the Bombay Presidency. Lady Willingdon was president of the Women’s Branch. it is thought these little vesta cases were given to soldiers leaving India on their way back to Britain. In good condition – unusual
[14979] £25
271. GIRL’S OWN PAPER, Oct 1885-Sept 1886
Good in decorative binding – front hinge a little loose – some foxing. The lead serial story is ‘Folorn, Yet Not Forsaken: the story of a nursery governess’. Articles include ‘Photography for Girls’, The Law of Mistress and Servant’, ‘On Copying the Old Masters’ – plus many articles on dress, music, gardening etc – with masses of illustrations
[4152] £25
272. GIRL’S OWN PAPER, Oct 1887-Sept 1888
Includes articles on ‘Reform in Underclothing’ – as well as the usual articles on dress – on the typewriter and type-writing, on how girls should spend the year for pleasure and profit, stories by Mrs Linnaeus Banks and Mary Cowden Clarke etc etc.With the Extra Summer Number bound in. Good in chipped publisher’s binding
[4153] £25
273. HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS BOLTON
Page from ‘The Buiilding News’ (18 March 1892) showing the new building for the school, at Park Road, Bolton, opened by Millicent Fawcett on 8 May 1891. The building, now, I think, demolished was in an ‘olde Englishe’ style, with half-timbering and an oriel window to the assembly hall. The page includes plans for the Ground and First floors, showing the disposition of classrooms, wcs etc. Very good
[14898] £25
274. NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE CONTRIBUTION BOOK
for Ethel Leach, a member of the Amalgamated Association of Card, Blowing and Ring room Operatives c1912. Ethel Leach lwas born in 1898 and lived at
2 Alder Street, Bolton, with her parents (her father was a basketmaker) and her brother and sister. When the 1911 census was taken she was 13 and still at school – but by the time this Contribution Book was issued she was a ‘Cardroom Operative;. The 8 printed pages of the book detail the Table of Weeklly Contributions, Contributions Paid, and the Benefits that will accrue.- as well as much detail about the operation of the National Health Insurance at that time. An unusual item. Card covers – very good
[14975] £12
275. REFORMATORIES AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS (COMMITTALS) Returns showing the comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools April 1872
‘Shows comparative number of committals of boys and girls to reformatories and industrial schools in 1870, with the number of cases in which the parents have been charged with such payment towards their children’s cost at such schools as may be considered equal to the expense they are saved by so throwing their children on public support, together with a comparative statement of the number of cases in which such charge has been adjudged, with that of the charges actually recovered and regularly paid.’ Raw facts. 4 foolscap pp – disbound
[9150] £28
276. ROSS, Alan The London Magazine, March 1970
Special Short Story Issue. Contains essays on short-story writing by Brian Glanville, Elizabeth Taylor and William Trevor. Soft covers – good
[7308] £5
277. SENIOR, Mrs Nassau Pauper Schools HMSO 1875
‘Copy ”of a Letter addressed to the President of the Local Government Board by Mrs Nassau Senior, lately an Inspector of the Board, being a reply to the observation of Mr Tufnell, also a former inspector upon her report on pauper schools’. This was a follow-up to Mrs Senior’s 1874 report.
24pp – large format – disbound.
[10457] £28
278. WOMEN: A CULTURAL REVIEW OUP
1994 Spring, vol 5, no 1; Autumn vol 5, no 2; Winter vol 5, no 3
1995 Summer vol 6, no1; Autumn vol 6, no 2; Winter, vol 6, no 3
1996 Spring vol 7, issue 1; Autumn vol 7, no 2; Winter vol 7, no 3
1997 Sprng vol 8, no 1; Autumn vol 8. no 3
In very good condition – each
[14929] £8
279. WOMEN’S PRINTING SOCIETY (LIMITED)
Advertising card for this very interesting business, founded in 1876. Coincidentally, I was commissioned to write an article on the WPS to accompany the BL’s ‘Unfinished Business’ exhibition. You can find it here https://www.bl.uk/womens-rights/articles/the-womens-printing-society. This trade card dates from the early years of the WPS, before 1893, when it was in Great College St, Westminster.
[15080] SOLD
General Postcards
280. CLARK’S COLLEGE, CIVIL SERVICE Preparing for the Lady Clerk’s G.P.O. Exam
Photographic postcard of the young women preparing for this exam which, if they passed, offered a chance of bettering themselves. Very good – unposted
[9233] £12
#281 Hull Postcard
281. MYSTERY ‘WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION’ POSTCARD
I bought this card in 2004, but it was only as a result of Lockdown Research that I had the time – and patience – to work out why a large group of women were arrayed in front of a camera in Hull. The answer lay on their lapels – white ribbon badges = Hull Temperance. For details of the detective work, see the piece about it on my website – https://wp.me/p2AEiO-1Br
[8145] £20
General (Cross-Dressing) Vaudeville Sheet Music
282. MISS ELLA SHIELDS B. Feldman 1914
sings ‘Just One Kiss – Just Another One’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. The song was written by William Hargreaves and Dan Lipton. Very god
[10675] £7
283. MISS ELLA SHIELDS Campbell, Connelly & Co 1925
sings ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’, written by Irving King, and is photographed as an awkward young man on the cover of the sheet music. Good
[10678] £6
284. MISS ELLA SHIELDS Lawrence Wright 1925
sings ‘When the Bloom is On the Heather’ and is photographed in top hat and tails on the cover of the sheet music. Very good
[10681] £6
285. MISS ELLA SHIELDS Lawrence Wright 1929
sings ‘Home in Maine’ and is photographed in sailor attire on cover of sheet music. Good
[10688] £6
286. MISS HETTY KING Francis, Day & Hunter 1908
sings ‘I’m Afraid to Come Home in the Dark’ and is photographed on the cover of the sheet music in extravagantly elegant top hat and tails. Very good
[10684] £7
287. MISS NORA DELANEY Lawrence Wright 1929
sings ‘Glad Rag Doll’ and is photographed in male evening dress on the cover of the sheet music. Good
[10687] £5
288. VESTA TILLEY Francis, Day & Hunter 1905
sings ‘Who Said, “Girls”?’. Sheet music featuring photograph on cover of Vesta Tilley in smart male attire. The ditty begins: ‘One day on a Western claim/Miners vow’d their lives were tame, For in that lonel spot there seldom girls had been.’ Good
[10670] £7
289. VESTA TILLEY Francis, Day & Hunter 1896
sings ‘He’s Going In For this Dancing Now’, sheet music, written by E.W. Rogers. Very good – except that the front cover is semi-detached
[10672] £5
General Fiction
290. AITKEN, David Sleeping with Jane Austen No Exit Press 2000
Facetious crime novel. Soft covers – very good
[12417] £4
291. BULKIN, Elly (ed) Lesbian Fiction: an anthology Persephone Press (Massachusetts) 1981
Soft covers – very good
[15079] £8
292. CLIFT, Charmian Walk to the Paradise Gardens Harper & Bros (NY) 1960
First US edition of this Australian novel. Very good in very good d/w, which is slightly chipped at top and bottom of spine
[12458] £25
293. HOLTBY, Winifred The Crowded Street The Bodley Head 1924
Very good in original decorative cloth. The novel is dedicated to Winifred’s friend, Jean McWilliam, to whom she wrote the letters published as ‘Letters to a Friend’ (see item # ?]
[15254] £35
294. LEVERSON, Ada Love’s Shadow Chapman & Hall 1950
Reprint of the 1908 edition. Good
[3086] £4
295. MARTIN, Valerie The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2006
Soft covers – fine
[10469] £4
296. SIGOURNEY, Mrs (ed. F.W.N. Bailey) The Poetical Works of Mrs L.H. Sigourney G. Routledge 1857
Neatly rebound in cloth
[2428] £10
297. SPENDER, Dale The Diary of Elizabeth Pepys Grafton 1991
Elizabeth gives her account of life with Samuel. Soft covers – very good
[11232] £8
298. TAYLOR, Kate Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen Vintage 2004
Enjoyable novel, Canadian literary researcher in Paris – parallel portraits of old and new worlds. Soft covers – fine
[10470] £4
Women and the First World War: Non-fiction
299. ALDRICH, Mildred On the Edge of the War Zone: from the Battle of the Marne to the entrance of the Stars and Stripes Constable 1918
Mildred Aldrich had left the USA for France in 1898 and in 1914, when war broke out, was living in La Creste, a country house overlooking the Marne Valley. In this volume she recounts, in letter form, day-to-day life after the Battle of the Marne. The account was intended to influence public opinion, to back the entrance of the US into the war. In 1922 she was duly awarded the Legion d’Honneur. Very good
[15297] £45
300. ANDERSON, Adelaide Women in the Factory: an administrative adventure, 1893 to 1921 John Murray 1922
‘Tells the story of the Woman Inspectorate of Factories and Workshops from its beginning in 1893, until 1921, when 30 Women Inspectors saw the fruits of the work of their branch, not only in greatly developed protection for the woman worker, but also in her own increased capacity to help herself’. Written by one of the leaders of the woman inspectorate movement, who was, incidentally, a niece of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Good, with the bookplate of the Lyceum Club, Melbourne on the free front endpaper – and a few spots on the front cover. Scarce.
[15225] SOLD
300A ANON The Letters of Thomasina Atkins: Private (WAAC) on Active Service Hodder & Stoughton no date (1918)
With a foreword by Mildred Aldrich. This is one of those books about which it is difficult to be entirely sure – are the letters genuine – or is it fiction? The general consensus – of reviewers in 1918 and of academics in the 21st century – is that they are real letters, written by a member of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps to a woman friend (‘Peachie’). The only clues as to the author’s identity are that she had previously been an actress and that she was considerably younger than Mildred Aldrich (author of ‘Hilltop on the Marne’ and other accounts of the War), who had known her since she was a child. Good – with a damp stain along bottom of free front endpapers – ownership inscription (1918) and stamp of the ‘Royal Midlan Counties Home for Incurables Castel Froma Lillington Road Leamington Spa’. Very scarce
[15261] £45
301. ANON [Katherine Evelyn Luard] Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front 1914-1915 William Blackwood 1916 (2nd imp)
‘This Journal was written with no idea of publication. As it was thought that some of it might interest others outside the Author’s family, for whom the Journal was kept, these selections – which are given exactly as they were written – are published.’ Kate Luard’s experience nursing in France during the first two years of the First World War. She was born in 1872 and died in 1962, one of the many children of an Essex vicar – educated at Croydon High School when Dorinda Neligan was headmistress, and was twice mentioned in despatches during the War. Very good – very scarce
[15237] SOLD
302. BILLINGTON, Mary Frances The Red Cross in War: woman’s part in the relief of suffering Hodder & Stoughton 1914
Good
[15273] £20
303. BOWSER, Thekla Britain’s Civilian Volunteers: authorized story of British Voluntary Aid Detachment Work in the Great War McClelland, Goodchild & Steward (Toronto) 1917
This is the US/Canadian title of ‘The Story of British V.A.D. Work in the Great War’ – the text of both editions is the same. With 18 photographs. Very good – in d.w.
[15269] £45
304. CABLE, Boyd Doing Their Bit: war work at home Hodder and Stoughton, 2nd imp 1916
Includes a chapter on ‘The Women’. Good
[15232] £28
305. CORBETT, Elsie Red Cross in Serbia: a personal diary of experiences, 1915-1919 Cheney & Sons 1964
Eyewitness account of nursing in the Balkans during the First World War. Very good,although free front end paper removed and cover cloth a little mottled – a presentation copy to the author
[15244] £65
306. COSENS, Monica Lloyd George’s Munition Girls Hutchinson, no date (1916)
Anecdotal account of the work of the women munition workers in the First World War. Good – covers faded – very scarce
[15230] £55
307. COWPER, Col Julia.Margaret A Short History of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps WRAC Association no date (c 1967)
Soft covers – very good (ex-WRAC Museum). Scarce
[15241] £30
308. DENT, Olive A V.A.D. in France Grant Richards 1917
Description of life as a volunteer nurse in France – with attractie line drawings by R.M. Savage and others. The ink inscription on the free front endpaper, dated 13 September 1919, is ‘To Jeanie, with love,…from one who was in the hospital at Rouen 1916’. Good – with pictorial cloth cover – a little rubbed, bumped and shaken. Scarce
[15274] SOLD
309. DIXON, Agnes M. The Canteeners John Murray 1917
The story of the Cantines des Dames Anglaises (run under the aegis of the French Red Cross) by one who worked for them in France during the First World War. Good – with photographs
[15228] SOLD
310. DOUGLAS-PENNANT, Violet Under the Search-Light: the record of a great scandal Allen & Unwin 1922
In June 1918 Violet Douglas-Pennant was appointed Commandant, Women’s Royal Air Force – only to be dismissed two months later ‘by direction of Lord Weir and Sir Auckland Geddes on the advice of Lady Rhondda, who acted without enquiry on secret information supplied to her, as well as to Mr Tyson Wilson MP, and Miss P. Strachey, by Mrs Beatty and others’. How intriguing. The book takes 463 pp to cover the ‘scandal’. Douglas-Pennant wrote it as her self-justificatory account of events “so that my name & honour may at last be vindicated.” Includes recollections of her ten weeks’ in charge, a Who’s Who of the personalities involved & full details of the House of Lords Inquiry into her dismissal. Good
[14129] £85
311. FOXWELL, A.K. Munition Lasses: six months as Principal Onlooker in Danger Buildings Hodder & Stoughton 1917
An account of work at Woolwich Arsenal during the First World War. With 10 photographs. Good – scarce
[15227] SOLD
312. GRANT, Marjorie Verdun Days in Paris Collins 1918
Work, from 1916, in a war canteen in Paris. Good – extremely scarce
[15276] SOLD
313. GWYNNE-VAUGHAN, DAame Helen Service With the Army Hutchinson, no date (1940s)
A history of women’s involvement with the British army in the First and Second world wars – by one who played a key role in both. Good – scarce
[15260] £45
314. HAMILTON, Cicely Senlis Collins 1917
Her experience in France during the First World War. Good – with 11 photographs – and scarce
[15275] £75
315. HARGREAVES, Reginald Women-At-Arms: their famous exploits through the ages Hutchinson no date [1930]
Chapters on, amongst others ‘Mother Ross: the Amazon dragoon’, Anne Bonney and Mary Read, Hannah Snell, Dr James Barry, and, from the First World War, Dorothy Lawrence: the Sapper of the B.E.F., and Flora Sandes. Good, with 12 illustrations, in original cloth – tho’ ex-library
[15268] £12
316. JESSE, F. Tennyson The Sword of Deborah: first-hand impressions of the British women’s army in France Heinemann 1918
She was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to write this book in March 1918. ‘For we should not forget, and how should we remember if we have never known?’ Good – with the faint outline of a ‘Boots’ shield on the front cover – quite scarce
[15236] £48
317. MACPHERSON, Maj-Gen Sir W.G. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Medical Services: General History: Vol 1 HMSO 1921
‘Medical Services in the United Kingdom; in British Garrisons Overseas; and During Operations against Tsingrau, in Togoland, the Cameroons, and South-West Africa’. 463pp – many maps, charts etc. In good condition (one page of the Index is loose). Very scarce
[15284] £140
318. MARKHAM, Violet R. Watching on the Rhine George H. Doran (NY) 1921
Violet Markham was a member of the Army of Occupation in Germany immediately after the First World War. Very good. (The English edition was entitled ‘The Watcher on the Rhine’).
[15256] £25
319. SINCLAIR, May Journal of Impressions in Belgium Macmillan (NY) 1915
Her description of her journey to the front line with the Motor Ambulance Corps. Very good – extremely scarce
[15248] £75
320. SUTHERLAND, Millicent, Duchess Of Six Weeks At The War The Times 1914
She left England on 8 August 1914 to join a branch of the French Red Cross – and then went on to form her own ambulance unit and took it into Belgium.With photographs. Soft covers – good – spine a little nicked
[15239] £55
321. STOBART, Mrs St Clair War and Women G.Bell & Sons 1913
An account of her adventures with the Women’s Convoy Corps that she took out to Serbia during the Balkan Wars in 1912. With 32 photographs. Good – in original red cloth, with white cross on front board. Scarce
[15270] SOLD
322. STOBART, Mrs St Clair The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere Hodder & Stoughton 1917 (2nd ed)
The redoubtable Mrs Stobart formed her own hospital unit during the First World War, taking it in 1915 to Serbia. Dramatic adventures. Very good – with many photographs, a pull-out map, and a dramatic emblematic cover. Scarce
[15246] SOLD
323. TAYLER, Henrietta A Scottish Nurse At Work: being a record of what one semi-trained nurse has been privileged to see and do during four and a half years of war John Lane 1920
She served with the Anglo-French section of the British Red Cross in Flanders, France and on the Italian Front. The latter section is particularly interesting because there are comparatively few accounts of that Front. Good internally – in original decorative cloth – ex-university library. With 7 illustrations. Extremely scarce
[15287] SOLD
324. THE TIMES HISTORY OF THE WAR VOL XVII The Times 1918
This large, heavy volume includes a section on ‘Women’s Work: War Service’ that includes numerous photographs. Other sections on, for instance, ‘Medical Science and the Pests of War’, ‘The Conquest of Rumania’, ‘The Arab Uprising’, ‘The Boy Scouts’ etc. Very good – scarce
[15306] £65
Women and the First World War: Biography and Autobiography
325. (ASHWELL) Lena Ashwell Myself a Player
Autobiography of the actress and manager, in the years before the First World War, of the Kingsway Theatre – where she staged and starred in Cicely Hamilton’s ‘Diana of Dobson’s’. During the First World War she was a member of the Women’s Corps – and entertained the troops. Very good
[15219] £48
326. (BAGNOLD) Enid Bagnold A Diary Without Dates Heinemann new impression, March 1918
Diary of her life as a VAD in the First World War. Good internally – split to spine cloth – very scarce
[15300] £65
327. (DEARMER) Mabel Dearmer Letters From a Field Hospital: with a memoir of the author by Stephen Gwynn Macmillan 1915
In April 1915 Mabel Dearmer, wife of the Christian Socialist Rev Percy Dearmer, went out with Mrs St Clair Stobart, as a nurse, to Serbia – and died there in July. These are the letters she sent home. Good internally – cover marked, spine chipped – withdrawn from the John Crerar Library, Chicago.. Scarce
[15303] £55
328. (FORBES) Lady Angela Forbes Memories and Base Details George H. Doran (NY) 1922
Born in 1876, she was the half-sister of Daisy, Countess of Warwick, and full sister to Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland. Much about her aristocratic up-bringing but the other half of the book (well over 100 pages) is devoted to her work during the First World War – organising hospitals in France. Very good -scarce
[15221] £48
329. (GEORGE) Gertrude A. George Eight Months with the Women’s Royal Air Force Heath Cranton 1920
Large format, with many delightful full-page illustrations by the author, Gertrude Alice George (1886-1971). She had been an art teacher in St Albans before the First World War. WRAF records show that she joined up on 29 October 1918 and that she was employed at the London Colney RAF airfield. Very good – scarce
[15255] SOLD
330. (HUTTON) Isabel Hutton Memories of a Doctor in War and Peace Heinemann 1960
Studied medicine at the Women’s Medical School in Edinburgh (not Sophia Jex-Blake’s one) – much about her medical education – then with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in the First World War – and a lifetime’s work after. Very good in d/w
[15245] £55
331. (INGLIS) Lady Frances Balfour Dr Elsie Inglis Hodder & Stoughton no date (c 1919)
Biography of Dr Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), Scottish doctor – and suffragist. Founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. In good condition
[15286] £35
332. (JOHNSTON) Agnes Anderson ‘Johnnie’ of Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps Heath Cranton no date (c. 1919)
Elizabeth Johnston joined the WAAC in Dec 1917 and died, bizarrely, on Christmas Day 1918, having fallen from the tower of the church of St Ouen in Rouen. Her year’s work in France is detailed from the letters she sent home to Fife. Very good -very scarce
[15259] £65
333. (KENNARD) Lady Kennard A Roumanian Diary, 1915, 1916, 1917 William Heinemann 1917
Joins a Red Cross Hospital in Roumania in 1916. With photographs. Good condition -very scarce –
[15238] £65
334. (MCARTHUR) Josephine Kellett That Friend of Mine: a memoir of Marguerite McArthur The Swarthmore Press 1920
Memoir of a young woman, educated at Newnham, who in 1914 worked for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society and then, after the outbreak of war, first in the War Office and then in France, in Etaples, with the YMCA. She was still working there when she died, of influenza, aged 26 in February 1919. Fine – presentation copy from her sister
[15277] £35
335. MCLAREN, Barbara Women of the War Hodder & Stoughton 1917
Biographical essays of women and their work in the First World War. – beginning with Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson and Dr Flora Murray and ranging through Lilian Barker, Dr Elsie Inglis, Lady Paget, Commandant Damer Dawson, Lena Ashwell, Violetta Thurstan, Miss Ethel Rolfe and the Women Acetylene Welders, among many others. With many photographs and a coloured frontispiece by Edmund Dulac. Very good (corner has been torn from the free front endpaper) – scarce
[15265] SOLD
336. (SALMOND) Monica Salmond Bright Armour: memories of four years of war Faber, 2nd imp 1935
Autobiography of the sister of Julian Grenfell; she began training as a nurse on 19 August 1914 and worked, in both England and France, for the duration of the First World War. Good – a little foxing. It was once, I think, in the lending library run by Owen Owen, the Liverpool department store. Extremely scarce
[15247] SOLD
337. (SQUIRE) Rose Squire Thirty Years in the Public Service: an industrial retrospect Nisbet 1927
She was one of the first women inspectors of factories – appointed in 1896. Section on work in factories during the First World War. Good – scarce
[15231] SOLD
338. (STIMSON) Julia C. Stimson Finding Themselves: the letters of an American Army Chief Nurse in a British Hospital in France Macmillan (NY) 1927
She arrived in Liverpool in May 1917, moved on to London where she met society women now devoting themselves to running hospitals etc. She was in France, working alongside British nurses, by 11 June and was still there when the book ends, in April 1918. Good condition – very scarce
[15291] £120
339. (VIDAL) Lois Vidal Magpie: the autobiography of a nymph errant Little, Brown 1934
Daughter of the vicarage, she was all for adventure. She worked in the War Office, and then went to France as a war worker in France during the First World War, then was a governess in Corsica, then to Canada – and then back to England. Packed with interesting social comment. Good
[15229] £28
339A WALTERS, E.W. Heroines of the World-War Charles H. Kelly 1916
Chapters on Edith Cavell, Sister Myra Ivanovna: a Russian Joan of Arc, Mabel Dearmer, Sister Joan Martin-Nicholson, The Retreat in Serbia, Women Doctors and War Decorations., Women Soldiers etc. Very good – the endpapers bear the stamp of ‘Southampton General Hospital’. Surprisingly scarce
[15288] SOLD
Women and the First World War: Ephemera
340. COX, Michael Women at War: on old picture postcards Reflections of a Bygone Age 2014
‘A selection of picture postcards featuring the roels of women in World War One, with informative captions’. 38pp – mint
[15214] £4
Women and the First World War: Fiction
341. BORDEN, Mary The Forbidden Zone Heinemann 1929
Stories, sketches and poems written between 1914 and 1918, during four years of hospital work with the French army. Mary Borden (1886-1968), American-British novelist, daughter of a wealthy Chicago family, educated at Vassar, married a Scottish missionary, had three daughters, in England became a suffragette and on the outbreak of the First World War went to France as a VAD. During this time she had an affair with a Brigadier-General, whom she married after a divorce. Quite a life. Fine in very good dustwrapper. Scarce
[15280] SOLD
342. FORBES, R.E.(pseudonym of Ralph Straus) Mrs Holmes, Commandant Edward Arnold 1918
The printed dedication is: ‘Dedicated with feelings of the profoundest respect to the Detachment’. By which is meant the ‘Voluntary Aid Detachment’, for this is a novel (humourous) about the setting up of a VAD hospital in a small English town. First edition in good condition – and very scarce
[15258] £45
343. MARCHANT, Bessie A Transport Girl in France: a story of the adventures of a W.A.A.C. Blackie no date [reprint c earl 1930s]
With pictorial cloth cover: the original design was still in use c 15 years after first publication. Free front endpaper bears a presentation label from Gosport Education Committee showing that the book was awarded to ‘Netta Gladys Smith of St John’s Girls’ School for Good Conduct, Industry and Progress in Standard VIII. Position in Class: 1. 1934.’ The label is annotated in ink: ‘Mayor’s Special Prize’ and signed by the Mayor. Good – with illustrations by Wal Paget. Very scarce. Very good – clean and tight – with only slight bumping to corners
[15262] £75
344. MARCHANT, Bessie A V.A.D. in Salonika Blackie, no date c 1917/18
Good – with pictorial cover (she is in uniform, pushing a motor bike, with minarets and domes in the background.) Has an birthday gift inscription on free front endpaper – 15 February 1918
[15242] £45
345. RATHBONE, Irene We That Were Young Chatto & Windus 1932
With a preface by E.M. Delafield.. Irene Rathbone (1892-1980) had been a young suffragette and in the First World War worked in YMCA camps in France and as a VAD in London. A semi-autobiographical novel of ‘the lost generation’. The free front endpaper carries the ownership signature of ‘H. Thomas 193’ and the comment ‘Twenty Years After’. The back pastedown bears the small label of the bookseller – ‘Higginbothams Booksellers Madras and Bangalore’. First edition -very good – extremely scarce
[15289] SOLD
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You can pay me by bank transfer (preferred method), cheque or (if from overseas) at www.Paypal.com, using my email address as the payee account.
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In case you may be interested in books I have published they are ~
NEW
Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings
ed. Melissa Terras & Elizabeth Crawford
Reproduces Fawcett’s essential speeches, pamphlets and newspaper columns to tell the story of her dynamic contribution to public life. Thirty-five texts and 22 images are contextualised and linked to contemporary news coverage as well as to historical and literary references. These speeches, articles, artworks and photographs cover both the advances and the defeats in the campaign for women’s votes. They also demonstrate a variety of the topics and causes Fawcett pursued: the provision of education for women; feminist history; a love of literature (and Fawcett’s own attempt at fiction); purity and temperance; the campaign against employment of children; the British Army’s approach to the South African War; the Unionist cause against Home Rule for Ireland; and the role of suffrage organisations during World War I. Here is a rich, intertextual web of literary works, preferred reading material, organisations, contacts, friends, and sometimes enemies, that reveals Fawcett the individual throughout 61 years of campaigning. The first scholarly appraisal of Fawcett in over 30 years, this is essential reading for those wishing to understand the varied political, social and cultural contributions of Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett
UCL Press
Available free to access and download. Also to buy in print editions – see https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/161045
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Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists discusses the lives and work of over 100 artists, each of whom made a positive contribution to the women’s suffrage campaign. Most, but not all, the artists were women, many belonging to the two suffrage artists’ societies – the Artists’ Suffrage League and the Suffrage Atelier. Working in a variety of media –producing cartoons, posters, banners, postcards, china, and jewellery – the artists promoted the suffrage message in such a way as to make the campaign the most visual of all those conducted by contemporary pressure groups.
In the hundred plus years since it was created, the artwork of the suffrage movement has never been so widely disseminated and accessible as it is today, the designs as appealing as they were during the years before the First World War when the suffrage campaign was at its height. Yet hitherto little has been known about most of the artists who produced such popular images. Art and Suffrage remedies this lack and sets their artistic contribution to the suffrage cause within the context of their reanimated lives, giving biographical details, including addresses, together with information on where their work may be seen.
With over 100 illustrations, in black-and-white and in colour.
Published by Francis Boutle Soft cover £20
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Kate Parry Frye: the long life of an Edwardian actress and suffragette
Published by ITV Ventures as a tie-in with the series: ‘The Great War: The People’s Story’ this e-book tells Kate’s life story from her Victorian childhood to her brave engagement with the Elizabethan New Age. For details see here (and many more posts on my website).
Available to download from iTunes or Amazon
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The Women’s Suffrage Movement 1866-1928: A reference guide
Elizabeth Crawford
‘It is no exaggeration to describe Elizabeth Crawford’s Guide as a landmark in the history of the women’s movement…’ History Today
Routledge, 2000 785pp paperback £89.99 – Ebook £80.99
The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: a regional survey
Elizabeth Crawford
‘Crawford provides meticulous accounts of the activists, petitions, organisations, and major events pertaining to each county.’ Victorian Studies
Routledge, 2008 320pp paperback £38.99, Ebook £35.09
Enterprising Women: The Garretts and their circle
Elizabeth Crawford
‘Crawford’s scholarship is admirable and Enterprising Women offers increasingly compelling reading’ Journal of William Morris Studies
For further details see here Francis Boutle, 2002 338pp 75 illus paperback £25
I have stock of Art and Suffrage and Enterprising Women. Copies of all my books may be bought direct from the publishers or ordered from any bookshop.
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Suffrage Stories and The Garretts and their Circle: Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings – Zoom Talk
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories, The Garretts and their Circle on October 5, 2022
Here is a link to the recording of the Zoom Book Launch of Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings.
My co-editor, Prof Melissa Terras, and I discuss, in some detail, Millicent Fawcett’s life, work, and writings – and the importance of the digital to the archival as a means of undertaking this act of feminist interpretation and exposition. There are pictures!
We are in conversation with Prof Fiona Mackay (University of Edinburgh School of Political Science), the event hosted by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Selected Writings is published by UCL Press and is available to download, with free open access, or to buy in hard copy – for details see here.
Suffrage Stories: Suffrage in South Devon – Watch My Zoom Talk
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on September 29, 2021
Here is a link to the Zoom talk on the women’s suffrage campaign in South Devon that I gave on 25 September as part of Torbay’s Heritage Lecture Day. The fully-illustrated talk traces suffrage activity in the area from its beginnings in 1866 – through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Collecting Suffrage: Photograph of Mrs Fawcett, 1890
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on September 3, 2020
Today I offer you a studio photograph of Millicent Garrett Fawcett by W & D Downey. Published by Cassell & Co, 1890. She was 43 years old and had already been a leading light of the women’s suffrage movement for over 20 years.
A very good image – mounted. Suitable for framing. £40 + VAT in UK & EU.
In the past I have been concerned about the low profile afforded popularly to Mrs Fawcett. Indeed, in 2013 I wrote a post on the subject: Make Millicent Fawcett Visible.
And in 2016 when there was a suggestion that there should be a statue of a ‘suffragette’ in Parliament Square I did point out that there was already one nearby to Mrs Pankhurst (which I was also determined would not be moved) and one, so often forgotten, to the suffragette movement in general, just down Victoria Street in Christchurch Gardens. That resulted in another post – on Suffragette Statues.
As we all know, the idea of a ‘suffragette’ statue in Parliament Square morphed, thanks to input from Sam Smethers and the Fawcett Society, into the already well-loved statue of Mrs Fawcett. So that she is now indeed publicly visible.
Yesterday’s photograph of Mrs Pankhurst proved very popular, but if you would like demonstrate your loyalty to Mrs Fawcett, here is an excellent opportunity to acquire a photograph of her with which to adorn your desk or wall.
Do email me if you’re interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
Collecting Suffrage: Photograph Of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst c 1907
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on September 2, 2020
This photograph of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst probably dates from c 1907, taken at her desk in Clement’s Inn, headquarters of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
The photograph comes from the collection of Isabel Seymour, who was an early WSPU supporter working in the WSPU office.
The photograph is mounted and is 15 x 20 cm (6″ x 8″) and is in good condition for its age. SOLD
Do email me if interested in buying. elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
Collecting Suffrage: The Church League For Women’s Suffrage Paper
Posted by womanandhersphere in Books And Ephemera For Sale, Collecting Suffrage on August 5, 2020
The paper of the Church League for Women’s Suffrage was published monthly from January 1912. This is the issue for 9 September 1912. Issues of the paper are scarce and this one is in good condition for its age – packed with information. For sale – SOLD
If interested email me: elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com
Kate Frye’s Diary: What Was Kate Doing One Hundred Years Ago Today – The Day She Appears On Our TV Screens?
Posted by womanandhersphere in First World War, Kate Frye's Diary on August 17, 2014
Tonight Kate Parry Frye – in the guise of Romola Garai – appears on our television screens (Sunday 17 August, ITV at 9pm). What was she doing on this day 100 years ago?
Kate was still on holiday from her work with the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage, spending the time with her sister and mother in their rented rooms at 10 Milton Street, Worthing. However, this was no summer idyll such as the Fryes had enjoyed in days gone by. Then they had rented a large house and travelled down from London with their four servants, to spend a season by the sea. Now that they were virtually penniless, these rented rooms were all they could call home. In the life of Kate and, more tragically in that of her sister, we see the jarring disconnect when young women, brought up to a life where marriage was to be their only trade, are left with insufficient money to support their social position and expectations. As such Kate’s life story is very much a tale of its time.
Monday August 17th 1914
Gorgeous day. Up and at house work. Out 12.30- just to the shops. Wrote all the afternoon and after tea to 6. Papers full of interest. Preparing for the biggest battle in the World’s History. There is no doubt the English have landed over there. I hear from John most days – that he is very busy but not a word of what his work is. Mickie [her Pomeranian] and I went out after tea. Agnes still a bit limp.
John Collins, Kate’s fiancé, who had long been an officer in the Territorial Army, had already been recalled to his barracks at Shoeburyness – leaving his engagement with a touring repertory theatre company. Kate’s sister, Agnes, at the first hint of the European trouble had taken to her bed, prostrate. Kate, a would-be playwright, was busy writing – although exactly what she was writing at this time she doesn’t divulge. On her death forty-five years later she left behind a box of unpublished scripts – and one that was published. She hoped one day to achieve fame and fortune. As it was she would soon be back at work at her suffrage society’s headquarters – with a new role as organizer of their War Work Work Room.
Work Room set up by the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage – of which Kate was in charge. Note the NCS flag in the background.
To discover more about the entirety of Kate’s life – her upbringing, her involvement with the suffrage movement, her marriage, her London flats, her life in a Buckinghamshire hamlet, her love of the theatre, her times as an actress, her efforts as a writer, her life on the Home Front during two world wars, her involvement with politics – and her view of the world from the 1890s until October 1958 – download the e-book – £4.99 – from iTunes – : http://bit.ly/PSeBKPFITVal. or £4.99 from Amazon.
I’d love to hear what you think of Kate and the life she lived.
To read in detail about Kate’s involvement in the women’s suffrage campaign – in a beautifully-produced, highly illustrated, conventional paper book – see Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary.
Copyright
Suffrage Stories: Mrs Frood, Topsham’s Suffragette/ist
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on July 4, 2013
Some time ago, when researching a talk, ‘No Vote No Census’, that I gave in October 2011 conference on the 1911 census organised by the National Archives, I came across the boycotting census form of Mrs Frood of Topsham. Since then I have passed on this discovery to a researcher associated with Topsham Museum who has been able to link Mrs Frood directly to the 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage, the 100th anniversary of which is being celebrated in Topsham today, 4 July 2013.
The 3 March 1911 edition of Votes for Women contains a letter from Mrs M.C. I. Frood of Station Road, Topsham, in which she described how, early in the morning of the polling day for the last election (which must have been Dec 1910/Jan 1911), she went out with a pot of ‘good, white oil paint’ [I like the fact that it was ‘good] and ‘printed on the inner edge of the pavement along which voters would pass on the way to the polling station ‘Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny’ and ‘Britons never, never, never shall be slaves. I also printed it along the brick wall of my field, which they also had to pass coming and going to and from the train. ..On the large doors of my field, near the same spot, I printed ‘No Votes No Taxes’. I find my field gate a useful place to stick cartoons and cuttings from Votes for Women.’
A month later Mrs Frood was one of those suffragettes who boycotted the 1911 census. Together with one of her daughters, her servant, Beatrice Hutchings and six unknown females, to whom she had clearly given boycotting shelter, she refused to fill in any details on her census form, writing across it ‘If I am intelligent enough to fill up this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper. No Vote No Census.’
The census enumerator, Mr.H. J. Baker, reported this act of civil disobedience to the Census Office and received a reply from its Secretary, Archer Bellingham, instructing him to fill out the form with the best information he could muster. Mr Baker then annotated the letter, quoting Mrs Frood as saying to him that she had had a ‘house full’ of boycotters on census night – and ‘that I am therefore adding to Numbers 6’. With this number revealed as an arbitrary choice of the enumerator, we can only speculate as to how many Topsham women spent the night at Little Broadway House in Station Road.
Although in 1911 it would appear that Mrs Frood, as a correspondent to Votes for Women, was a supporter of the WSPU, by 1913 she is listed in The Suffrage Annual and Women’s Who’s Who as secretary of the Topsham branch of the NUWSS. Perhaps she was one of those who were dismayed by the WSPU’s increasingly militant tactics. It was one thing to paint slogans (with ‘good’ paint’) on pavements and walls, but quite another to break windows and commit arson. So it was as a leading local NUWSS member that Mrs Frood took part in the Suffrage Pilgrimage in early July 1913.
Who was Mrs Frood?
Mrs Mary Catherine Isabella Frood (nee Campbell, c. 1856-1931) had been born of Scottish parentage in Canada and was living in New Zealand when, in 1878, she married James Nicholson Frood (d. 1913), an Irish-born doctor. She had five children, the first four, all daughters, born in New Zealand and the last, a son, born at sea c 1888 – presumably as the family was returning to England. One of her daughters, Hester, was successful as an artist. Although Mrs Frood actually died in London, her address was still in Topsham – 26 The Strand (Old Court House).
26 The Strand, Topsham. Photo courtesy of Derek Harper (geograph.co.uk)
Where was Dr Frood in 1911?
Dr Frood was living with his family (whose name was misrendered as ‘Froud’) when the 1901 census was taken. But where was he in 1911? The name on the cover of the census form had been written as ‘Dr Frood’, but this had been amended to ‘Mrs Frood’ and it is she who is shown as ‘Head of Household’. I can find no trace of James Frood elsewhere in the 1911 census, although he did not die until 1913, his death registered in the local area. Interestingly under the terms of his will probate was granted to the Public Trustee rather than to his wife or any other member of the family.
Where was Little Broadway House?
Thanks to Street View I can see Station Road and the pavement along which Mrs Frood painted her slogans. Thanks to Paul Tucker (see Comment below) who tells me that Little Broadway House is still there – the house with the overhanging upper window that I can see in Street View – although now divided into two. Presumably the ground to its side was Mrs Frood’s field. So let’s take a moment to visualise its gates – decorated with Votes for Women cartoon – a reminder to those walking past on their way to the station that one Topsham woman was prepared to do her bit to win ‘votes for women’.
Campaigning For The Vote: Book Launch Invitation
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on May 9, 2013
Women Writers and Italy: Two Englishwomen In Rome and Sarah Parker Remond
Posted by womanandhersphere in Women Writers and Italy on March 30, 2013
Anne ( 1841-1928) and Matilda Lucas (1849-1943) were the daughters of Samuel Lucas, a brewer with land and influence in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The Lucas family were Quakers. Their mother had died when they were young and after their father’s death in 1870 the sisters continued to live for a short time with their step-mother. But then, in mid-1871, they left England for Rome, where, for the next 29 years, they were to spend much of the year. Ten years after her sister’s death, Matilda Lucas published excerpts from the letters sent over the years by the sisters to friends and relations back in England. Two Englishwomen in Rome, 1871-1900 (Methuen, 1938) makes very interesting reading.
Sarah Parker Remond c. 1865 (Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum Collection)
The few disingenuous sentences I transcribe below would appear to delineate the discomfort that must have been endured by Sarah Parker Remond (1824-94) , or Sarah Remond Pintor as she was by then, as she mixed in society – even expatriate Roman society, which was by no means ruled by convention. An American free-born black woman, Sarah Remond had lived for a time in London, signing the first women’s suffrage petition in 1866, perhaps the only black woman to do so, had then travelled to Italy, where she qualified as a doctor. She had married an Italian, Lazzaro Pintor in Florence in 1877. There is some debate as to how long the marriage lasted. From the Lucas’ evidence, Pintor did not accompany his wife to this social occasion in Rome in March 1878, but Sarah was sufficiently still married to feel able to don her bridal dress.
However am I correct, I wonder, to read the passage as reflecting the curiosity and, perhaps, also slight discomfort felt by the gathering at the presence of a black woman in their midst? If Sarah was their aunt the P___s must surely have been the ‘Putnams’ – the family of Sarah’s sister, Caroline Remond Putnam, who lived with her in Italy on various occasions. If so the fact that Caroline also was ‘black’ makes the passage a little difficult to interpret. Why was Sarah specifically their ‘black aunt’? Did they have any other kind? So perhaps it was only the bridal dress that was the cause for comment. A simple scene, but something of a puzzle.
March 17, 1878. Tell Madgie that the P___s were there with their black aunt. She was a bride, having just married an Italian, and wore her bridal dress of grey silk. It must have been very trying for Mrs P____. People came up to question her. One Italian said, ‘Chi e quell’Africana?’ It appears that she is very clever, and a female doctor. She was taken up a good deal in London by different people who were interested in negroes. I think she lived with the Peter Taylors. She has given lectures. I went to sit on the sofa with her, to the amusement of Franz, who cannot rise above her appearance. Dr Baedtke was much impressed to think that anyone has had the courage to marry her, and said, ‘In that I should have been a coward.’
Click here for Sarah Parker Remond: A Daughter of Salem, Massachusetts – a very interesting website
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Gallery At The UNISON Centre
Posted by womanandhersphere in The Garretts and their Circle on March 28, 2013
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.
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 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.
THE 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
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
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ Is Here
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary, Suffrage Stories on March 13, 2013
Here is the front cover of Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary – published by Francis Boutle Publishers.
The key points about the book are:
- Drawn from a new primary source, Campaigning for the Vote tells, in her own words, the efforts of Kate Frye, a working suffragist, to convert the men and women of England to the cause of women’s suffrage. The detailed diary Kate kept all her life (1878-1959) has been edited to cover 1911-1915, years she spent as a paid organiser for the New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage.
- No other diary gives such an extensive account of the working life of a suffragist, one who had an eye for the grand tableau – such as following Emily Wilding Davison’s cortége through the London streets – as well as the minutiae of producing an advertisement for a village meeting.
- With Kate for company we can experience the reality of the ‘votes for women’ campaign as, day after day, in London and in the provinces, she knocks on doors, arranges meetings, trembles on platforms, speaks from carts in market squares, village greens, and seaside piers, enduring indifference, incivility and even the threat of firecrackers under her skirt.
- Kate’s words bring to life the world of the itinerant organiser – a world of train journeys, of complicated luggage conveyance, of hotels – and hotel flirtations – , of boarding houses, of landladies, and of the ‘quaintness’ of fellow boarders. This was not a world to which she was born, for her years as an organiser were played out against the catastrophic loss of family money and enforced departure from a much-loved home. Before 1911 Kate had had the luxury of giving her time as a volunteer to the suffrage cause; now she depended on it for her keep.
- Kate Frye gives us the fullest account to date of the workings of the previously shadowy New Constitutional Society for Women’s Suffrage. She writes at length of her fellow workers, never refraining from discussing their egos and foibles.
- After the outbreak of war in August 1914 Kate continued to work for some time at the society’s headquarter, helping to organize its war effort, while allowing us to experience her reality of life in war-time London.
- Campaigning for the Vote is over 200pp long and contains over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive. ISBN 978 1903427 75 0 £14.99
- Advance orders may be placed either with me or with the publisher – or with any good bookshop.
‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Suffrage Stories: Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary, The Royal Albert Hall, And The Importance of Gas
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on March 5, 2013
The Royal Albert Hall was the scene of many grand suffrage occasions – organised by both the constitutional and the militant suffrage societies. The management of the Hall has recognised this by supporting its archivists in mounting a small display relating to its suffrage past. The display may be viewed by anyone with a ticket to an event in the hall.
Researchers use the primary sources available and Suzanne Keyte, Project Archivist at the Royal Albert Hall, has mined what is known as the Hall’s ‘Gas Book’ to recreate a list of occasions on which the Hall was rented for suffrage-related meetings. The ‘Gas Book’ records the amount of cubic feet used each time the Hall was let for a concert or a political or a religious meeting and, with certain provisos, can be used as an indication of the size of the audience.
Kate Frye witnessed several grand suffrage occasions in the Hall. Here she describes an evening stewarding for the London Society for Women’s Suffrage at a Mass Meeting of suffrage societies in support of the Conciliation Bill
Saturday November 12th 1910
I sat and sewed a red, green and white scarf for the evening. We had tea at 4.15 and I had a rush to dress and take Mickie [her dog] out and get off by soon after 5 o’clock. I was due at the Albert Hall at 5.30. Was given a job to do till 6.30 – or rather before – when we all went to our posts. Mine was Balcony – selling of programmes and ‘Common Causes’ [the NUWSS newspaper] & helping with the collections. The hall looked lovely – the banners were so beautifully arranged – but it wasn’t so full as I should have liked. The W.S.P.U. had a crowded meeting on Thursday and collected £8,000. Wonderful people one simply cannot hear from the Balcony. Mrs Swanwick was the only one I could really hear – her elocution is marvellous. It was so interesting seeing all the Societies – but [ie except for] the W.S.P.U. there – such lots of colours & badges – and I got very chatsome to some of my companions upstairs from the different societies.
When the meeting was nearly over I went down to the hall & tried to sell ‘Common Cause’. Old Major General Sir Alfred Turner, who was sporting around with Adeline Bourne, bought one of me with a beam and a handful of coin – he is a joke. It had come on to pour with rain and the Wrights insisted on bringing me as far as their place in their Taxi which was kind. ‘
The Hall’s ‘Gas Book’ shows that for this meeting the NUWSS consumed – and were charged for – 47,800 cubic feet of gas. On this November night one imagines that it would have been necessary to have lit all the Hall’s lamps. In fact, on 19 March 1908, when Kate Frye attended the first WSPU meeting to be held in the Albert Hall, that night’s gas consumption had been very similar- 46,800 cubic feet (click here to see Kate’s description of that meeting). From this idiosyncratic source we can deduce that the NUWSS did not lag behind the WSPU in ensuring that their evening meetings were brilliantly lit, even though, from Kate’s account, they were not necessarily able to muster as large an audience.
There was something to be said for staging meetings in the Albert Hall on summer evenings. For at the meeting held there that marked the finale to the NUWSS’s procession through London on 13 June 1908, gas consumption was only 16,000 cubic feet. We know when the meeting started because Kate Frye carefully noted in her diary that, after marching from the Embankment in the rearguard position which the Kensington branch had been allotted, she reached the Albert Hall at 5.10, just as the meeting was about to begin. Clearly less artificial illumination was required for a meeting held on an early evening in summer than for one in the winter, thereby reducing at least one element of the cost. (See here for the entry from Kate’s diary describing the procession).
Suzanne Keyte has identified c 30 suffrage meetings that were held at the Royal Albert Hall. By June 1913, however, after pressure had been exerted on hall owners throughout the country, the management of the Hall decided that they would refuse the WSPU any further lettings. What was in effect their last meeting had taken place a couple of months earlier, on 10 April.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops. In stock at London Review of Books Bookshop, Foyles, National Archives Bookshop.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: Palmist At The Women’s Freedom League Bazaar
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on December 10, 2012
By 1909 Kate Frye was keenly involved – as a volunteer – in the women’s suffrage campaign. Although she belonged to the constitutional London Society for Women’s Suffrage she was happy to give her services to other, more militant, suffrage societies – such as the Women’s Freedom League.
Dramatis Personae for these entries
Marie Lawson (1881-1975) was a leading member of the WFL. An effective businesswoman, in 1909 she formed the Minerva Publishing Co. to produce the WFL’s weekly paper, The Vote.
May Whitty (1865-1948) and Ben Webster (1864-1947) were a well-established theatrical couple. Kate had toured with May Whitty in a production of J.M. Barrie’s Quality Street in 1903.
Ellen Terry (1847-1928) the leading Shakesperean actress of her age.
Edith Craig (1869-1947) theatre director, producer, costume designer, and a very active member of the Actresses’ Franchise League. She staged a number of spectacles for suffrage societies, working particularly closely with the Suffrage Atelier and the Women’s Freedom League. In January 1912 Kate appeared in Edith Craig’s production of The Coronation.
Lena Ashwell (1862-1957) actress, manager of the Kingsway Theatre, a vice-president of the Actresses’ Franchise League and a tax resister.
Thursday April 15th 1909 [The Plat, Bourne End]
I went up to London at 9.50 all in my best. Went to Smiths to leave the books – then straight from Praed St to St James Park by train and to the Caxton Hall for the 1st day of the Women’s Freedom League Bazaar. Got there about 11.30 – everything in an uproar, of course. I had to find out who was in authority over me and where I was to go to do my Palmistry. I had to find a Miss Marie Lawson first and then was taken to a lady who had charge of my department and she arranged where I was to go. A most miserable place it seemed – in a gallery overlooking the refreshment room. I meant to have gone out to have a meal first – but it all took me so long running about getting an extra chair etc that I should have missed the opening. Then another Palmist hurried up – the real thing who donned a red robe. I was jealous. Madame Yenda.
Kate kept Madame Yenda’s card within the pages of her diary
We got on very well, however, and exchanged cards (I have had some printed) it was all about as funny as anything I have ever done and I have had some experiences.
Then I went back to the main room which was beginning to get thronged and stifling from the smell of flash- light photographs. I discovered Miss May Whitty and Mr Ben Webster and chatted to them while we waited for Miss Ellen Terry who was half an hour late. Miss Whitty was awfully nice and I quite enjoyed meeting her again. Ellen Terry looked glorious in 15th century costume and was very gay and larkish. Her daughter Edith Craig was there to look after and prompt her – and ‘mother’ her – what a mother to have had. I expect she had to pay for it. She is a sweet-looking woman with a most clever face – only a tiny shade of her Mother in it but Ellen Terry took the shine out of everyone – what a face to be sure. When she went round the stalls I went to the Balcony and for a little time Madame Yenda and I tried to work up there together but it was impossible. All my clients had to disturb her as they walked to and fro so at last I came out to find 3 more Palmists waiting and nowhere for them to work. One, a real professional, was very cross especially at the small fee being charged and I don’t think she could have been there long. Two other girls, looking real amateurs, were also there. So I sat a while at a table outside and told a few but it wasn’t very satisfactory and at 2 o’clock I went out for some lunch leaving the four others there. I went into a Lyons place in Victoria Street and then went back a little before 3 o’clock meaning to have a look round the Bazaar but I was pounced on to begin again and I was alone at it all the afternoon from 3 till 5.45 up in the gallery. I was left at it with sometimes just a few minutes in between but must have told 40 hands I should say. I did about 7 or 8 before 2 o’clock. We were only supposed to give 10 minutes at the outside but I could not quite limit myself and sometimes, when there wasn’t a rush, I had long talks with the people. It was very interesting and on the whole I think I was successful. Train to Praed St and to Smiths for the books and home by the 6.45.
Friday April 16th 1909 [The Plat, Bourne End]
Ribbon from the WFL Bazaar carefully preserved by Kate
I went straight to Caxton Hall by train from Praed St to St James’s Park – left some flowers at the flower stall. Mother had packed up some lovely bunches for me. Then I went up to the l[ondon] S[ociety] for W[omen’s] S[uffrage] office on business connected with the Demonstration – then back to the Caxton Hall for the opening of the Green White and Gold Fair on the second day. Miss Lena Ashwell was punctual 12 o’clock and she looked delicious and did it all so nicely. Madame Yenda was there but no other Palmists. My chatty friend, who greeted me rapturously, helped fix up the gallery a much nicer place – but clients did not come very early -they were all following Lena Ashwell – so I had 1/- from Madame Yenda myself. I think she was clever but, of course, I am rather a hard critic at it. She told me a great many things I know to be absolutely true and she gave me some good advice especially about morbid introspective thoughts and I think she is quite right. I do over worry. I am to beware of scandal which is all round me just now. She predicts a broken engagement, a rich alliance and always heaps of money. I should have immense artistic success in my profession if only I had more confidence in myself and if only I had some favourable influence (a sort of back patter, I take it) to help me but such an influence is far away. I shall never live a calm uneventful existence. I shall always spend so much of myself with and for others. I am rather glad of that. I was just beginning to tell her her hand but I wouldn’t let her pay as she told me she was very poor and I could see it when some clients came for us both and we both had to start our work.
I didn’t feel a bit inclined for work at first but got into it and had wonderful success. Kept on till 2 o’clock – went to the Army and Navy Stores then and had some fish for lunch – then back – saw the ‘Prison Cell’ for 5 and was very interested – then started work at 2.45 and never moved off my chair till 6.15. I did have an afternoon of it. Madame Yenda had gone and I was alone in my glory. I must have had quite another 40 people if not more and they were waiting in line to come in to me. I seem to delight some of the people and one or two said I quite made them believe in Palmistry. One old lady came back for another shill’oth [shilling’s worth] as I had been so good with her past and present she wanted her future. I must have been very clairvoyant as I told the people extraordinary things sometimes and they said I was ‘true’. Of course one or two I could not make much headway with but that must always be so.
Where I found I had missed my train I wanted to go on but my chatty friend was really awfully decent and would not hear of it. She said if I would tell one man who had been waiting ever so long that was all I must do and she would send the others away. There were about 18 waiting and she did – rather to my relief. I felt ‘done’
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, ALAS, OUT OF PRINT.
KATE FRYE’S DIARIES AND ASSOCIATED PAPERS ARE NOW HELD BY ROYAL HOLLOWA COLLEGE ARCHIVE
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
You can listen here to a talk I gave in the House of Commons – ‘Campaigning for the Vote: From MP’s Daughter to Suffrage Organiser: the diary of Kate Parry Frye’.
Copyright
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: The Mud March, 9 February 1907
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on November 21, 2012
Kate Frye had first joined a suffrage society in the spring of 1906. Her choice was the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage (later renamed the London Society for Women’s Suffrage) – a constituent society of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies Interest in the long-running women’s suffrage campaign leapt ahead in the following few months and in February 1907 the NUWSS staged the first open-air suffrage spectacular – a march through the wintry, muddy London streets. For obvious reasons this became known as the ‘Mud March’. Kate’s estimate of 3000 participants accords with later reports.
Saturday 9 February 1907 [25 Arundel Gardens, North Kensington]
In bed for breakfast – and what was my utter disgust – and disappointment – to hear the torrents of rain – and there was not a shadow of its coming last night – it was bitterly cold. As it was so heavy I hoped it would stop – but it went on and on into a fine heavy drizzle. They said I should be mad to go in the procession and though I knew I must – I went out at 12.30 taking Mickie a walk and sent a telegram to Alexandra Wright telling her the rain prevented my joining them. I had arranged to be at their house at 1 o’clock and go with them to Hyde Park. We all had lunch. I knew I was going all the time – but couldn’t go. Off to wash my hands. 2 o’clock. ‘They will be just starting’, said I. Then as I washed I made up my mind I would go rain or no rain and – lo – the rain had ceased. I prepared a plan to Agnes. She too knew she was to be of it – both flew upstairs and were out of the house before 2.15.
We tore to Notting Hill Gate – meaning to go the quickest way. No motor bus – so we tore for the train – it came in as I started to race down. In we scrambled – had to change at South Kensington much to our disgust – but we were not kept long. We flew out at Charing Cross and up Villiers Street. No sign of the Procession of Women Suffragists in the Strand. They were timed to leave Hyde Park at 2 o’clock so I had to pluck up my courage and ask a policeman. No, they had not passed. So, knowing the route, we flew up as far as Piccadilly Circus and there in about 2 minutes we heard strains of a band and waited, anxious and expectant. The crowd began to gather and we were nearly swept away by the first part – a swarm of roughs with the band – but the procession itself came – passed along dignified and really impressive. It was a sight I wouldn’t have missed for anything – and I was glad to have the opportunity of seeing it as well as taking part in it.
We stood right in front so as not to miss our contingent – and I asked if they knew where it was. Miss Gore Booth said it was coming and we were fearfully excited and I was so anxious not to miss our lot. I shrieked out when I saw Miss Doake’s red head in the distance and we dashed up to them and asked if we could join in. Alexandra carried our banner. Mrs Wright said come along here – it felt like boarding an express train but I suppose it was a quite simple rally though I cannot look back on it as that – but we were so excited and so anxious not to miss them. We walked three abreast – Miss Doake, Agnes and I – I was on the kerb side – behind us Gladys [Wright], Miss Ellis and Mrs Doake. North Kensington was not very well represented but I really do not know who else of us was there.
Then the real excitement started. The crowds to see us – the man in the street – the men in the Clubs, the people standing outside the Carlton – interested – surprised for the most part – not much joking at our expense and no roughness. The policemen were splendid and all the traffic was stopped our way. We were an imposing spectacle all with badges – each section under its own banners. Ours got broken, poor thing, unfortunately, and caused remarks. I felt like a martyr of old and walked proudly along. I would not jest with the crowd – though we had some jokes with ourselves. It did seem an extraordinary walk and it took some time as we went very slowly occasionally when we got congested – but we went in one long unbroken procession. There were 3000 about I believe. At the end came ever so many carriages and motor cars – but of course we did not see them. Lots of people we knew drove.
Flyer advertising the NUWSS ‘Mud March’
Up the Strand it was a great crowd watching – some of the remarks were most amusing. ‘Here comes the class’ and two quite smart men standing by the kerb ‘I say look at those nice girls – positively disgraceful I call it.’ Then ‘Ginger hair – dark hair – and fair hair’ ‘Oh! What nice girls’ to Miss Doake, Agnes and I. Several asked if we had brought our sweethearts and made remarks to express their surprise at our special little band. ‘All the prizes in this lot’ etc. The mud was awful. Agnes and I wore galoshes so our feet were alright but we got dreadfully splashed. It was quite a business turning into the Exeter Hall. A band was playing merrily all the time – the one which had led the procession – and there was one not far off us. Three altogether, I was told.
Exeter Hall in 1905
We got good seats and of course had to wait some time before the meeting started – it was just after 4 pm when it did – but there was a ladies’ orchestra performing and playing very well and a lady at the organ in between whiles. The meeting was splendid. Mr Walter McLaren in the Chair and Israel Zangwill as chief speaker – he was so splendid and most witty. Miss Gore Booth – Mrs Fawcett – Mrs Eva McLaren – Lady Strachey and several other ladies spoke and Keir Hardie made an excellent speech. It was altogether a wonderful and memorable afternoon – and felt we were making history – but after all I don’t know, I am sure, what will come of it. The MPs seem to have cheated and thoroughly ‘had’ us all over it. They wanted the Liberal Women’s help to get into the House and now they don’t care two straws or they are frightened of us. We walked up to Tottenham Court Road and came home by bus. It was nearly 7 o’clock when we got in. .. I felt bitterly tired all the evening after the excitement.
Dramatis Personae for this entry
Agnes, Kate’s elder sister
Mickie, Kate’s beloved dog
Alexandra and her sister, Gladys, lived at 10 Linden Gardens. It was under their influence that Kate had joined the London Society for Women’s Suffrage.
Violette Mary Doake (b 1888) her parents were Irish, which may account for the red hair. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Doake, was also a suffragist. Her father, Richard Baxter Doake, described in the 1911 census as a ‘tea planter’, was elected as a Progressive party member in 1892 to the LCC seat relinquished by Frederick Frye. In 1901 the Doakes lived at 24 Stanley Gardens, close to the Fryes. By 1911 they had moved to 25 Ladbroke Gardens.
Walter McLaren and his wife, Eva were members of a family of long-standing supporters of women’s suffrage. He had been Liberal MP for Crewe in the 1890s and regained the seat in 1910.
Israel Zangwill, Jewish novelist and very effective writer and speaker in support of women’s suffrage
Lady Strachey had worked for women’s suffrage since the 1860s. She remarked that after this march she had to boil her skirt.
Keir Hardie, first Independent Labour Party MP. He had strongly supported a motion in favour of women’s suffrage at the Labour party conference on 26 January
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 from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com (£14.99), or from all good bookshops.
-
‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
- Campaigning for the Vote– Front and back cover of wrappers
You can also listen here to a Radio 4 programme as Anne McElvoy and I follow the route of the ‘Mud March’.
Copyright
Am I Not A Woman And A Sister: Women and the Anti-Slavery Campaign
Posted by womanandhersphere in Uncategorized on October 1, 2012
Am I Not a Woman and a Sister: women and the anti-slavery campaign
‘Am I not a woman and a sister’ reads the legend arching over the female figure of Justice as she reaches towards a kneeling black slave woman, who holds her chained hands up in supplication. In the 1830s this powerful emblem was used on printed matter and on artifacts associated with women-only, or ‘ladies’, anti- slavery associations. It very consciously echoed the motto, ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother’, adopted in 1787 by the founders of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Throughout the long years of abolitionist campaigning women were always participants, their role becoming, over the years, increasing prominent. Experience gained in a movement of such social, economic and political importance was to prove valuable when, in the 1860s, they launched the campaign to gain their own political freedom.
In 1787, however, women could take no direct part in politics, their role confined to that of exercising influence on those who did have political power. One such woman was Lady Middleton, a member of the evangelical Clapham Sect, who conducted a country-house salon at Barham Court in Kent. It was she who, according to Thomas Clarkson, in 1786 persuaded both William Wilberforce and himself to take up the anti-slavery cause. Lady Middleton’s own interest in the subject was not new. In 1782 she had been among the subscribers to Letters of Late Ignatius Sancho, the first prose work by an African to be published in England. Ignatius Sancho, born on a slave ship, had, as a child, been a house slave in London, at Greenwich.
Women’s influence extended to rather more than cajolery over the dinner table. Another member of the Clapham Sect, Lady Middleton’s close friend the writer Hannah More, was asked, in late 1787, to write a poem to draw attention to the discussion soon to take place in Parliament. She quickly composed Slavery, a Poem, published as a large, handsomely printed, 20-page book. She was just one of many women writers who wielded their pens in the abolitionist cause. Although they did not have direct power women could exercise their influence through the medium considered most suitable to their sex, poetry.
Women were also a valuable source of the finance necessary for the funding of the campaign. Although the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed and officered by men, there was no attempt to prevent women from becoming subscribers. Subscriptions ranged from one to five guineas, sizeable sums, indicating that those donating were drawn from the middling to wealthy section of society. Fortunately for us, the Society printed a report listing by name all its subscribers. Women clearly had no more qualms at having their names listed in such a quasi-political publication than they did in appearing as subscribers to a novel or volume of poetry. It is possible, therefore, to study the names of 206 women, comprising about ten per cent of the total, who in the late-18th century made public their condemnation of the slave trade.
The main, London-based, committee attracted members from all around the country. It is noticeable that there are few obviously upper-class or aristocratic women on the list. Only three titled ladies subscribed: Lady Hatton of Longstanton, the Dowager Countess Stanhope (who gave £50), and the Dowager Viscountess Galway. A superficial investigation would indicate that all three were women associated with families with radical sympathies. Indeed the Dowager Countess Stanhope’s son, who had succeeded her husband as earl, was soon to style himself ‘Citizen Stanhope’ to demonstrate his support for revolution in France. Two others of those listed, ‘Miss Pelham and Miss Mary Pelham of Esher’ were members of an influential Whig family, counting a former prime minister amongst their forebears.
The names of some subscribers have entered the literary canon. Prominent are Elizabeth Carter (writer and ‘blue stocking’), Sarah Trimmer (evangelical educationalist and writer) and Mary Scott of Milborne Port, Dorset, who in 1774 had written a lengthy poem, The Female Advocate, in which she drew attention to Phillis Wheatley, the first slave and black woman to have a book of poetry published in Britain.
Phillis Wheatley, as depicted on the frontispiece to her ‘Poems on Various Subjects’
Information can, with some application, be teased out about many of the other names on the list. A quick Google search reveals that, at random,’ Mrs Elizabeth Prowse of Wicken Park, Northampton’ was the sister of Granville Sharp, a leading member of the Abolition Committee. That ‘Mrs Peckard, Cambridge’ was, probably Martha, the wife of Peter Peckard, vice chancellor of Cambridge University and a preacher of sermons against the slave trade. It was he who, he in 1785 had set the question, ‘Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?’, for the University’s Latin essay won by Thomas Clarkson, the first step in his abolitionist career.
Through the Will Search facility at DocumentsOnline on the National Archives website it is possible to read the wills of some of the subscribers and discover a little more about their lives. For example, ‘Mary Belch, Ratcliffe’ was a corn chandler of Broad Street, Ratcliffe, in east London and ‘Deborah Townsend, Smithfield Bars’ was either the wife or the daughter of a Smithfield grocer. The wills may not reveal much about their abolitionist sympathies but they do demonstrate that women from this sector of society were committed to the cause.
The will of another subscriber, ‘Elizabeth Freeman, Woodbridge’, reveals that she was a Quaker and that she left ‘to my poor relations in America twenty pounds to be disposed of by friends of the Monthly Meeting in North Carolina’. It might be presumed that with these connections she knew something of conditions in an American slave state. Further research might indicate that other women subscribers from Woodbridge were also Quakers. Some names, of course, do indicate clear Quaker connections. Five female member of the well-known Fox family of Falmouth were subscribers and, with their fellow Quakers, are likely to be traceable through the records kept by the Society of Friends.
Women were also subscribers to the separate local committees formed in provincial towns. In Manchester 68 out of total of 302 subscribers were women. However few of the names include any indication of address and are, therefore, more difficult to identify. Some were wives of men involved with the Manchester committee. One such was ‘Mrs Bayley of Hope’, wife of Thomas Bayley, Unitarian, JP and penal reformer. Here too many the female subscribers were likely to have been nonconformists, particularly Unitarians and Quakers, a large number having connections with Manchester’s manufacturing interests.
In Bristol, notorious as a slave port, subscribers to the local committee included Miss Anna Goldney and ‘Mrs Goldney’. It has to be remembered that ‘Mrs’ at that time was a title given to unmarried as well as married women and, therefore, that the latter was probably Ann Goldney, who was unmarried and had recently inherited the family’s Clifton estate from her brother. The Goldneys were Quakers although an ancestor, Thomas Goldney, had, in the early 18th century, been the principal investor in a venture leading to the capture of slaves, the family fortune enhanced by investment in the manufacturing of guns for trade with Africa. Between them, Ann and Anna Goldney, a cousin living in the Clifton household, gave a generous six guineas.
Other Bristol women subscribers were Mrs Esther Ash, Mrs Frampton, Mrs Olive and Mrs Merlott, all of whom had at least one other thing in common, being subscribers in 1787 to a translation of Persian poems by Charles Fox. It is likely some were Quakers, but ‘Mrs Merlott’ was probably the unmarried sister of John Merlott, a Presbyterian sugar refiner.
Named women also subscribed to local committees in Birmingham, Exeter, Leeds and Leicester, some of which were probably set up with the encouragement of Thomas Clarkson as he acted as roving ambassador for the Abolition Society. He also organized mass petitions that were such a novelty of this campaign, an early manifestation of the method to be used by popular protest groups throughout the 19th century. Women, however, were not signatories. It was presumably thought that if they were the value of the petition would be diminished.
Women did, though, on occasion take part in public debates about the slave trade. One such was held in 1788 in La Belle Assemblée, a concert hall in Brewer Street, Soho, London, where ‘ladies were permitted to speak in veils’. In 1792 women were also present at a debate at the Coach-makers’ Hall, Foster Lane, Cheapside calling for the boycott of West Indian sugar and rum. The motion was carried by a unanimous vote of 600.
The subject of this latter meeting was one that women were making their own. For, although denied political power, they were able, at least in theory, to influence the economy. As early as 1788 Hannah More had urged a friend ‘to taboo the use of West Indian sugar in your tea’. Women, as chief purchasers of household goods, were encouraged to boycott slave-produced sugar from the West Indies, shopping instead for that grown in the East Indies by free labour. It is thought that by 1791-92 the sugar boycott affected as many as 300,000 people.
As well as redirecting their spending power to ‘free’ produce, women were also encouraged to purchase items that would proclaim their support for the abolitionist cause.
Wedgwood jasper-ware cameo. By courtesy of the Wedgwood Museum Trust, Barlaston, Staffordshire
Thousands of Josiah Wedgwood’s ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother’ jasperware cameos were incorporated into brooches, bracelets, earrings and hair ornaments, allowing the wearer to indicate sympathy with the abolitionist cause. The ‘kneeling slave’ image was also rendered on a variety of other artefacts and was considered a very suitable subject for young girls to embroider on their samplers.
Women could also buy china bearing anti-slavery messages. The tea table was the sphere of influence particular to the woman of the house and, while entertaining her friends, she could pass round a sugar bowl bearing the motto, ‘East India Sugar not made/By Slaves/By Six families using/East India, instead of/West India Sugar, one/Slave less is required’. By boycotting West Indian sugar and displaying articles such as this she turned herself from a passive consumer into a political activist.
Women were able to demonstrate their sensibility by buying and subscribing to the slim volumes of abolitionist poetry that were finding a popular readership. These were written by women of all sorts and conditions, by, as already noted, the evangelical Hannah More, by her working-class protogée, Ann Yearsley, by Mary Robinson, ex-mistress of the Prince of Wales, and by a succession of young women, such as Mary Birkett of Dublin. Women were also able to educate the younger generation by purchasing works such as The Negro Boy’s Tale: a poem addressed to children, published by Amelia Opie in 1802.
By then, however, the mass popular campaign had collapsed. In 1792 the British public had watched in horror as the French monarchy was overthrown by the mob and, in the same year, slaves in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) rose up against their masters. Whatever its theoretical sympathy with the anti-slavery campaign, the British public had no wish to unleash similar forces. When the act abolishing Britain’s direct involvement in the slave trade was passed in 1807 it was as a result, not of popular protest, but of parliamentary manoeuvrings, in which, of course, women played no part.
There was no further popular agitation against slavery until 1823 when Wilberforce and Clarkson once again took the lead in the formation of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions. Over the intervening years there had been a decided change in the position of women who now had no inhibition about founding their own anti-slavery societies. The first such was formed in Birmingham in 1825. Here Lucy Townsend, the wife of an Anglican clergyman, worked with a Quaker, Mary Lloyd. Contact was made through their various denominational networks and soon towns such as Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, York, Southampton and Plymouth, as well as London, supported ladies’ associations. There were also groups in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
The formation of these societies and the activities they undertook did not escape criticism. Wilberforce expressed what one imagines was a very common view: ‘All private exertions for such an object become their character, but for ladies to meet, to go from house to house stirring up petitions – these appear to me proceedings unsuited to the female character as delineated in Scripture’.
For women were now, indeed, a petitioning force. In the early 1830s hundreds of thousands of women signed petitions. Those presented in 1833 alone bore the signatures of 298,785 women, nearly a quarter of the total. A large number – 187,157 – were on a single petition circulated by the London Female Anti-slavery Society and presented to the House of Commons on 14 May 1833, the day the emancipation bill was produced.
Women were not only, by petitioning, participating in the political process, but were now even questioning the aims of the movement. In 1824 Elizabeth Heyrick, a Leicester Quaker, published a pamphlet, Immediate not Gradual Abolition, calling for immediate emancipation of slaves, in contradistinction to the Anti-Slavery Society’s aim of gradual emancipation. In 1830, at Elizabeth Heyrick’s suggestion, the influential Birmingham women’s society threatened to withdraw its funding from the Anti -Slavery Society if it did not agree to change its aim to immediate abolition. The change was agreed.
Elizabeth Heyrick was also the leader of a new campaign to boycott West Indian produce, especially sugar. Like that of the late-18th century, the 19th-century campaign appealed to the woman of the family to exercise her economic power. In 1828 the Peckham Ladies’ African and Anti-Slavery Association published Reasons for Using east India Sugar, demonstrating to its readers ‘that by substituting east India for west India sugar, they are undermining the system of slavery, in the safest, most easy, and effectual manner, in which it can be done’. ‘If we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime. The laws of our country may hold the sugar-cane to our lips, steeped in the blood of our fellow-creatures; but they cannot compel us to accept the loathsome potion.’
Women also exercised their talents in order to raise funds for the cause. The bazaar became a particularly womanly form of demonstrating support. As ever, this activity was regarded in some quarters as a waste of effort. In a letter of 22 September 1828 the salon hostess, Mary Clarke Mohl, wrote: ‘My niece spends all her time making little embroidered bags to be sold for the Anti-Slavery Society …which would be all very well if, instead of turning seamstress to gain £10 a year, she put some poor woman in the way of work’.
Only three years after the Anti-Slavery Society had agreed to change its agenda, the 1833 Anti-Slavery Act abolished slavery within the British colonies. Although a period of apprenticeship was imposed on former slaves before they could obtain freedom, a determined effort by the abolitionists led, in 1838, to the early termination of this system. A national women’s petition on behalf of the apprentices addressed to the newly crowned Queen Victoria had carried the signatures of 7000,000 women, a number described as ‘unprecedented in the annals of petitioning’.
Although Britain no longer allowed slavery within its own territories the anti-slavery campaign continued, with the aim of abolishing slavery world wide. In 1840 the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society organized the first World Anti-Slavery Convention. Women delegates, among them a grand-daughter of Lady Middleton, arrived in London from all parts of Britain. From across the Atlantic came women belonging to a section of the US abolitionist movement that wished to combine anti-slavery activity with campaigns for women’s rights. All women were, however, denied participation in the proceedings. As might be expected that decision led not only to a split in the British anti-slavery movement but, indirectly, to the beginning of the US campaign for women’s suffrage. Several of the British women who were barred, women such Elizabeth Nicholls (later Pease), Hannah Webb, Maria Waring, and Matilda Ashurst Biggs, were among those who 26 years later signed the first women’s suffrage petition.
Both factions of the American anti-slavery movement were keen to gain support from British activists and throughout the 1840s and 1850s strong transatlantic links were developed. As in Britain, bazaars became a particular field of endeavour for American abolitionist women, with the British societies keen to supply boxes of goods for sale. In 1846 the Glasgow Society reported that at the Boston Anti-Slavery fair ‘every one of the great plaid shawls sold instantly. The beautiful cloaks sold, and also the bonnets. Aprons do well. The shawls sent by the Duchess of Sutherland sold immediately.’
Sarah Parker Remond
The societies organized lecture tours for members of the American movement. In 1853 the Glasgow Society sponsored Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin had already sold 1.5 million copies in Britain and in 1861 the Edinburgh Society organized a series of lectures by Sarah Remond, whom they described as ‘a lady of colour from America.’ She wrote: ‘I have been received here as the sister of the white woman’.
Even after the ending of the American Civil War and the freeing of slaves in the US, British women’s societies continued their work, concentrating now on providing aid for the ‘Freedmen’. The Birmingham women’s anti-slavery society continued to meet until 1919.
Over the years many of the women’s anti-slavery societies printed reports, listing the members of their committees. It is now possible to study these, together with publications such as the Anti-Slavery Reporter, to discover not only who the women were who worked for this cause, but also to examine the clear links between the members of the abolitionist and of the women’s suffrage movements.
Further Reading
C. Midgley, Women Against Slavery: the British campaigns 1780-1870, Routledge, 1992.
Anti-Slavery International: http://www.antislavery.org .
Wilberforce House Museum, Hull: details of materials relating to the anti-slavery campaign can be found by searching for ‘Wilberforce House’ at http://www.cornucopia.org.uk .
http://www.quaker.org.uk contains an article on the Quaker involvement in the anti-slavery campaign. The library at Friends’ House, London, contains useful biographical records.
BBC History: Elizabeth Crawford, Women: From Abolition to the Vote
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: Spring 1908 – Suffrage Hope – WSPU in Albert Hall ‘a little too theatrical but very wonderful’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on September 26, 2012
Another extract from Kate Frye’s manuscript diary. An edited edition of later entries (from 1911), recording her work as a suffrage organiser, is published as Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary.
H.Y. Stanger’s Bill, 1908
Kate’s MP, Henry Yorke Stanger, was the promoter of the current Enfranchisement Bill – the latest in the long line that stretched back through the latter half of the 19th century. Despite, as Kate describes, the bill passing its second reading, the government eventually refused to grant facilities to further the debate. However, that blow was yet to come as Kate records in these entries details of the suffrage meetings she attended in February and March 1908. She had the knack of always being present on the great occasions – and on 19 March was in the Albert Hall to witness the rousing – and profitable – reception given to Mrs Pankhurst on her release from prison.
Dramatis personae:
Miss Harriet Cockle, was 37 years old, an Australian woman of independent means, lving at 34 de Vere gardens, Kensington.
Mrs Philip Snowden – Ethel Snowden (1880-1951) wife of the ILP politician, Philip Snowden.
Mrs Clara Rackham (1875-1966) was regarded as on the the NUWSS’s best speakers. In 1910 she became president of the NUWSS’s Eastern Federation, was founder of the Cambridge branch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, and was sister-in-law to Arthur Rackham, the book illustrator.
Margery Corbett (1882-1981- later Dame Margery Corbett-Ashby) was the daughter of a Liberal MP. At this time she was secretary of the NUWSS.
Mrs Fanny Haddelsey,wife of a solicitor, lived at 30 St James’s Square, Holland Park.
Mrs Stanbury had been an organiser for NUWSS as far back as 1890s.
Tuesday February 25th 1908 [London-25 Arundel Gardens]
We got home at 5.15 and had tea. Then I did my hair and tidied myself and Agnes and I ate hot fish at 6.30 and left soon after in a downpour of rain for the Kensington Town Hall – we did get wet walking to the bus and afterwards. We got there at 7 o’clock to steward – the doors were opening at 7.30 and the meeting started at 8.15. I was stewarding in the hall downstairs and missed my bag – purse with 6/- and latch Key etc – very early in the evening which rather spoilt the evening for me as I felt sure it had been stolen. It was a South Kensington Committee of the London Society for Woman’s Suffrage and we were stewarding for Miss Cockle. It was a good meeting but not crowded but, then, what a night. Miss Bertha Mason in the Chair. The speech of the evening was Mrs Philip Snowdon, who was great, and Mrs Rackham, who spoke well. The men did not do after them and poor Mr Stanger seemed quite worn out and quoted so much poetry he made me laugh. Daddie had honoured us with his presence for a little time and had sat on the platform – so I feel he has quite committed himself now and will have no right to go back on us. We were not in till 12.20 and then sat some time over our supper.
Wednesday February 26th 1908
Before I was up in the morning Mother came up in my room with my bag and purse and all quite safe. It had been found and the Hall Door Keeper had brought it. I was glad because of the Latch Key. Daddie generously had paid me the 6/- which I was able to return.
Friday February 28th 1908
Mr Stanger’s Woman’s Suffrage Bill has passed the second reading. I had to wait to see the Standard before going to my [cooking] class. That is very exciting and wonderful – but of course we have got this far already in past history. Oh! I would have liked to have been there.
MargWednesday March 11th 1908
To 25 Victoria Street and went to the 1st Speakers Class of the N.[ational] S.[ociety] of W.[omen’s] S.[uffrage]. I was very late getting there and there was no one I knew so I did not take any part in the proceedings and felt very frightened. But Alexandra Wright came in at the end and I spoke to Miss Margery Corbett and our instructoress, Mrs Brownlow. And then I came home with Alexandra from St James’s Park station to Notting Hilll Gate.
Thursday March 12th 1908
Mother went to a Lecture for the NKWLA [North Kensington Women’s Liberal Association] at the Club and Agnes and I started at 8 o’clock and walked to Mrs Haddesley [sic] for a drawing-room Suffrage Meeting at 8.30. Agnes and I stewarded and made ourselves generally useful. The Miss Porters were there and a girl who I saw at the Speakers’ Class on Wednesday. Alexandra was in the Chair and spoke beautifully – really she did. And Mrs Stanbury spoke. Mrs Corbett and Mrs George – all very good speakers. Mrs Stanbury was really great and there were a lot of questions and a lot of argument after, which made it exciting. It was a packed meeting but some of the people were stodgy. Miss Meade was there with a friend – her first appearance at anything of the kind she told us and she said it was all too much for her to take in all at once. The “class” girl walked with us to her home in HollandPark and we walked on home were not in till 11.45. I was awfully tired and glad of some supper and to get to bed.
Mrs Pankhurst had been arrested on 13 February as she led a deputation from the ‘Women’s Parliament’ in Caxton Hall to the House of Commons. She was released from her subsequent imprisonment on 19 March, going straight to the Albert Hall where the audience waiting to greet her donated £7000 to WSPU funds. Kate was there.
Thursday March 19th 1908
I had a letter in the morning from Miss Madge Porter offering me a seat at the Albert Hall for the evening and of course I was delighted….just before 7 o’clock I started for the Albert Hall. Walked to Notting Hill gate then took a bus. The meeting was not till 8 o’clock but Miss Porter had told me to be there by 7 o’clock. We had seats in the Balcony and it was a great strain to hear the speakers. It was a meeting of the National Women’s Social and Political Union – and Mrs Pankhurst, newly released from Prison with the other six was there, and she filled the chair that we had thought to see empty. It was an exciting meeting. The speakers were Miss Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs Pethick Lawrence, Miss Annie Kenney, Mrs Martel and the huge sums of money they collected. It was like magic the way it flowed in. It was all just a little too theatrical but very wonderful. Miss Annie Kenney interested me the most – she seems so “inspired” quite a second Joan of Arc. I was very pleased not to be missing so wonderful an evening and I think it very nice of Miss Porter to have thought of me. She is quite a nice girl of the modern but “girlie” sort – a Cheltenham girl and quite clever – but very like a lot of other girls. Coming out we met, strangely enough, Mrs Wright and Alexandra (Gladys was speaking at Peckham) and after saying good-bye to Miss Porter I walked home with them as far as Linden Gardens. Got in at 11.30 very tired indeed and glad of my supper. Mother was waiting up.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops. In stock at London Review of Books Bookshop, Foyles, National Archives Bookshop.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Kate Frye’s Diary: Canvassing for the Progressives in North Kensington,1907
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on September 13, 2012
Another extract from Kate Frye’s manuscript diary. An edited edition of later entries (from 1911), recording her work as a suffrage organiser, is published as Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s suffrage diary.
The ‘Morning Leader’ supported the Progressives and in late-February 1907 Kate laid this leaflet in between the pages of her diary
The LCC elections were due to be held on 2 March 1907; Kate and her family supported the Progressive Party. In fact, before becoming an MP, her father had been an LCC councillor on the Progressive ticket.
Dramatis Personae for these entries:
Sir Weetman Pearson, Lady Denman’s father, in 1910 became Lord Cowdray and it was as ‘Lady Cowdray’ that his wife was to be involved with a number of suffrage organisations. Lady Pearson was, according to Lady Denman’s biographer, ‘determined to become a leading political and social hostess’ and the Pearsons’ house at 16 Carlton House Terrace, its opulent interior decorated in the mid-19th century by Owen Jones in the islamic style, provided a perfect setting. As we shall read, Kate, who was something of an expert on these matters, rated the Pearsons’ tea very highly.
H.Y. Stanger: Liberal MP for North Kensington, the seat once held by Kate’s father, in February 1908 introduced a women’s suffrage bill, which passed its second reading before being blocked. This was the greatest progress a bill had made since 1897.
Thomas McKinnon Wood: member of the London County Council for Central Hackney (1892-1909) – leader of Progressive Party (1898-1907). Elected MP for a Glasgow constituency, 1906.
Mr Jephson: Henry Jephson, retired civil servant, who was standing again as a Progressive member for North Kensington on the LCC.
Violette Mary Doake (b c. 1888): lived with her parents at 24 Stanley Gardens, Kensington. In 1892 her father had been elected as a Progressive member of the LCC for Kensington North; unsurprisingly the Doake family was staunchly suffragist.
Thursday February 21st 1907
At 2.30 Mother and I went by train from Notting Hill Gate to Charing Cross and walked through the Horse Guards and up the Duke of Yorks steps to Carlton House Terrace – Sir Wheetman [sic] Pearson’s house – by invitation of Lord and Lady Denman to a drawing Room meeting to hear Mr McKinnon Wood – Mr Wilks and the work we could do for the Progressives at the L.C.C. elections.
Nearly all ladies there. Lord Denman was a sort of Chairman & both he and Lady Denman spoke – she seems very nice. My dear friend Mr McKinnon Wood spoke again most beautifully – I do admire him. Of course I knew it all but I dare say some the facts came new to a good many there. Mr Stanger, Mr Jephson and Mr Percy Harris were there.
There was a most gorgeous tea downstairs afterwards it really was quite perfect – such cakes – in such quantities – I made a pig of myself and eat [ate] three and I had my tea and milk poured out of solid gold articles. I really did enjoy the party and the house is wonderful – what a position – looking out on the Park.
Friday February 22nd 1907
I dressed myself. John [her fiance] came at 7.30 to dinner and afterwards Daddie took he, Agnes and I up to the Horbury Rooms [Ladbroke Road] to the Opposition L.C.C. Candidates’ meeting – Mr Davis and Major Skinner. Well I thought it would be interesting but I never expected to be so thoroughly amused.
The Chairman was so funny and Harcourt-Smith such a noodle – a Dickens character with an eye glass. And as for Major Skinner I have never seen or heard the like really. He didn’t seem sharp and made quite an object of himself. He tried to propitiate the ladies – I never heard anything so awful. I blushed for him. He kept right away from the question of the L.C.C. altogether. The only decent man there, for though Mr Whittiker Hampson speaks well, I wouldn’t trust him, was Mr Hume-Williams who opposed Mr Stanger at the Parliamentary Elections. He is a gentleman and speaks well, but he was not convincing – none of them were – they all talked nonsense – have no programme of work at all to bring forward. Their great cry is ‘give us a chance’ and they tell awful stories about the rates, which have really nothing to do with the County Council. It will be a real grief to me if those two dreadful people get in.
John, a thoroughly conservative spirit, doggedly tory, to the backbone was quite turned over by them though he thinks he upholds their views. I do so hate him to be a ‘Moderate’ thinker. We came back and talked them over and laughed merrily at their expense till John had to go at 11 o’clock.
Wednesday February 27th 1907
When I got home at 5 o’clock I found a note and bundle from Gladys Wright asking me to deliver some Women’s Suffragist things. So after tea Agnes went out with me and we did Arundel Gardens and Elgin Crescent – a tremendous number of Women Voters in both. They were papers urging the Women to use their Vote. I feel rather shaky as they are sure to Vote Conservative but that is a cowardly way of looking at the matter, I know.
Thursday February 28th 1907
Went off to the [North Kensington Liberal] Club – Mother, Agnes and Florence [the Fryes’ maid] were there – and the room was full. Miss Jephson, Miss Doake, Mr McArthur, Mr Lewis, Mr Hatt and the usual workers and lots of people I did not know all working at top speed.
Saturday March 2nd 1907
The great London County Council Election day at last and, very fortunately, a beautiful day for it. I should have been canvassing all this week, much as I hate the work – but I am so interested in the Election – but I have felt so awfully seedy I simply hadn’t the strength for it…Agnes and I went to the Pembridge Ward Committee Room and got some work to do. I had Westbourne Grove to do and it took me till 4.30. Mother and Agnes went together. I got so tired I felt nearly dead when I had taken the cards back and came home to tea. But I couldn’t rest and after tea Mother and I walked up to the Golborne Ward Committee Room.
It is depressing work in this Ward. There is no enthusiasm – but up there there was very little excitement amongst the workers – and my heart sank though most of them were cheerful. We saw Mr Jephson in the Committee Room. Miss Jephson, Mrs and Miss Doake, Mrs Willis and lots of workers. Mr Jephson was flying about madly in his Motor Car. Mother and I did three streets – Blagrove Road and two other long ones and kept on till within a few minutes of eight o’clock.
I got so excited and interested that I don’t know how I managed to keep going as I did. I did feel ill but I did some good work. Got one woman to vote who had never used her vote before. I had almost to hold her by force and interest her by telling her how I worked to get a vote. She decided she would go if she was driven. So I sent Mother off to find a carriage and I waited and hung on to her. It was so long coming I flew into the middle of the road and managed to stop Mr Jephson’s car almost by main force it seemed to me – but just then Mrs Widgery drove up in a carriage and she took the woman and a man who went to look after her.
Sunday March 3rd 1907
Florence brought me the news and later the paper. Jephson and Pope beaten and the whole of London swept clear by the Moderates. ‘God help London’ I say since London does not seem inclined to help itself.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops. In stock at London Review of Books Bookshop, Foyles, National Archives Bookshop.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Kate Frye’s Diary: ‘Paddington Pandemonium’
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on August 23, 2012
In the following diary entry Kate describes the pandemonium that occurred at a December 1907 suffrage meeting organised by the North Kensington Local Committee of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage – the non-militant London NUWSS society – chaired by Mrs Millicent Fawcett. From Kate’s account the main culprits were medical students from nearby St Mary’s Hospital and from University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, such student having had, through the ages, a reputation for unruly behaviour. From Kate’s observation, the stories of stinkbombs and the release of mice, specifically intended to upset the genteel female audience at suffrage meetings, were all too true.
Lady Grove (1862 -1926) was a leading Liberal suffragist and author of The Human Woman, 1908. The Paddington Baths, in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, were soon to be demolished to make way for an enlarged Whiteley’s department store.
Thursday 5th December 1907 [25 Arundel Gardens, North Kensington]
‘
At 2 o’clock Agnes and I started off to Linden Gardens and called for Alexandra Wright and several of her helpers and we all walked to the Paddington Baths to help arrange the room for the meeting in the evening. There was a good bit to do – numbering the chairs – partitioning them off and hanging up banners and posters etc. Left [home again] just before 7 o’clock in a bus to Royal Oak and went to the Paddington Baths for the London (Central) Society’s meeting for Women’s Suffrage. Gladys and Alexandra have been weeks getting it up and I did no end of clerical work for it at Bourne End. We were the first Stewards to arrive after Gladys and Alexandra and were decorated with rosettes and given our directions. Lots of the women were very nervous of a row. My department was the gallery, to look after people up there and give invitations for a private meeting next week.
The people came in thick and fast and the doors were opened at 7.30 and with the first group of young men below in the free seats I knew what would happen. The place was soon hot, bubbling over with excitement, and I had my work cut out keeping gangways clear and looking after people and telling them they would be safe. We had expected an exciting evening but this realised our worst expectations. It was Bedlam let loose. A couple of hundred students from St Mary’s and University College Hospitals arrived and insisted on sitting together and never ceased all the evening singing, shouting, blowing tin trumpets, letting off crackers, letting loose mice and, what is worse, scenting the floor with a most terrible-smelling chemical.
Report from the ‘Daily Mail’ 6 December 1907, clipped by Kate and laid in her diary
From the very start they never gave a single speaker a moments hearing. Mrs Fawcett was in the Chair and Lady Groveand others spoke and they went on with the meeting to the bitter end – and bitter it must have been to the speakers. I never heard a word. I felt too angry to be frightened though I must own I did not like the fireworks and saw the most appalling possibilities in that frantic howling mob of mad animals. Agnes owns to being terrified – all the more credit to her for sticking to her place amongst them and she was with them all the evening. I felt mad at not being there in the midst of them. When I could leave I just went down and spoke to John, who I saw standing near Agnes. She had decorated him as a Steward to help in case the worst happened.
I went back to my post until I was no longer any good there and then I went into the very midst of the seething mass and talked to any of them I could get at. Just to silence them, as I did for a few minutes at a time, was a triumph. Cries of ‘Oh I think I like Suffragettes’ as I went amongst them and, then, ‘He is flirting with a Suffragette’ taken up and sung by them all. I spoke like a Mother to several and smiled at them. If they had only known my true feelings I don’t think they would have been so polite to me. Great credit to all the women in the building is due – not only the Stewards – but the audience there. There was never any excitement or panic amongst them and only one Stewardess failed us. She, poor thing, was so terrified she bolted without waiting for hat or coat – but of course we keep that dark. The men Stewards were very good but quite powerless to stop the noise and hubbub. And what could four policemen do? It was an organised ‘Rag’ and nothing but a force of police to outnumber them could have stopped them. They longed for a fight and said so – and no end of them had most terrible looking clubbed sticks which they brandished. We did the only possible thing, I consider. Kept as much order as we could and tried to avoid bloodshed. We had a little unfortunately when, after the meeting was over, they charged for the Platform, sweeping everyone before them. Very fortunately there were large exit doors each side of the platform and most of the people got out of them. I was flung aside and then followed them up. They tore down as many banners as they could and stole one and tore down all the posters. They were like wild cats. The policemen chased them round a little but we would not allow any arrests to be made. The firework ringleader was caught but allowed to go. I spoke to Mrs Wright – red with rage. Poor things, we were all either red or white. Mr Willis, Mrs and Miss Doake and several others. Mr Percy Harris was Stewarding. One man Steward got a most awful crack on the ear and was considerably blooded – he looked awful. Several of the boys had their collars torn off and became very proud in consequence. It was a great wonder and a still greater mercy that more damage was not done. I felt so responsible for the ordinary public who had paid their money. I could only hope to get over the evening safely for their sakes. Personally I wished and still wish to smash the Boys, though at times I could not help laughing. They were not nice boys – all plain and common looking – mostly undersized and no gentlemanly looking one amongst them. I was glad to notice that as I hope they are not the best we can show in our hospitals.
After the general public had gone the police sent word that it was impossible to clear the hall while there was a woman left in it so we left with Mrs and Miss Doake and all came back in the bus with Mrs Willis. Miss Doake said she had never enjoyed a night so much in her life before. I cannot say the same. It was a terrible experience. We could not lose that terrible smell from our noses and mouths. I could taste it through everything at supper. John came home with us and did not leave till after 12o’clock. Agnes and I were too excited to go to bed and sat talking of our experiences. Lots of people will be made all the keener through it, but a great many will be very disgusted I fear.’
As you can see from this note, carefully preserved by Kate, Mrs Fawcett’s meeting was re-arranged for early 1908 – to be held in the safety of Bertha Mason’s house in nearby Hyde Park Square.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
NOW OUT OF PRINT, ALAS
KATE’S DIARIES AND ASSOCIATED PAPERS ARE NOW HELD BY ROYAL HOLLOWAY COLLEGE ARCHIVE
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Collecting Suffrage: Punch cartoon
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on August 8, 2012
21 January 1912 – full page – ‘The Suffrage Split’. Sir George Askwith (the charismatic industrial conciliator), as ‘Fairy Peacemaker’, has tamed the dragon of the Cotton Strike – and Asquith, wrestling to keep a seat on the Cabinet horse turns to him ‘Now that you’ve charmed yon dragon I shall need ye to stop the strike inside this fractious gee-gee.’
In very good condition £10 plus £1 postage.
To buy contact: e.crawford@sphere20.freeserve.co.uk
Suffrage Stories: ‘Madame Mantalini’
Posted by womanandhersphere in 1911 Census, Suffrage Stories, The Garretts and their Circle on July 30, 2012
Since 2009, when details of the 1911 census were released, I have (with, for a time, Dr Jill Liddington) been investigating how the women of the country responded to the call issued by the more militant suffrage societies to boycott the census. In the process I have discovered women of a suffrage inclination of whom, until now, suffrage history has known nothing.
One of these was a ‘Miss S. Marsden’, whose census form was delivered to her at 69 Church Street, Kensington, and who refused the enumerator any details about herself. However, Miss Marsden did not leave the form blank, writing on it one of the longest statements that I have so far encountered. Although the right edge of the census form is badly damaged, creating gaps in her comments, I think we can get the gist.
‘I, Mdme Mantalini, a municipal voter and tax payer, refuse to fill in this census paper, as I have no intention of furnishing this government with information and thereby helping them to legislate for women without obtaining their consent or first consulting them in the [missing words] effective way possible & extending the franchise to duly qualified women. As a responsible, law-abiding citizen I have conducted my business for sixteen years; as an employer of labour I have [contributed?] to the wealth of the state and in return I have been taxed for the upkeep of no 10 Downing Street. No 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister, but converted by his wife into a show-room for a French [dress maker?] (free of all duty and taxation) to exhibit his Paris models and take orders from them to be executed in Paris. I [missing words] with very few exceptions the dressmaking establishments in England are all owned by women, & only women & [missing words] workers. It therefore comes to this, that the only way open to us to protest at ‘our trade’ being ruined in [missing words] our taxes, is to drive home to the government by every method available that women are determined [missing words – perhaps ‘not to be governed’] without their consent.’
Would that not whet any researcher’s appetite? Who was Miss Marsden/Mdme Mantalini? What had Margot Asquith been up to?
In fact the second question was the easier to answer. An inspection of The Times archive revealed that in May 1909 Margot Asquith had been called to task by drapers’ associations from around the country for inviting the Parisian designer Paul Poiret to show dresses in 10 Downing Street.
Poiret then was the epitome of chic – designing dresses that relied on draping, rather than tailoring – so much easier to wear – and promoting hobble skirts, harem pants and kimono coats – designs such as these.
In response to a letter of complaint from an MP, Mrs Asquith explained, ‘I received in my private rooms at tea from 20 to 25 of my personal friends and a well-known French costumier, whose models can be bought in any London shop, brought some specimens for the inspection of myself and my guests. It was a purely personal occasion.’ In fact, such was the rumpus, that henceforward Margot Asquith was obliged to patronize British costumiers, such as Lucile although probably not, I fear, Madame Mantalini.
I thought at first that when Miss Marsden referred to herself on the census paper as ‘Mdme Mantalini’ it was merely as short-hand to describe her position as a dressmaker – that being the name of the dressmaking establishment at which, in Nicholas Nickleby, Kate Nickleby is apprenticed. But, consulting my 1908 London street directory, I found that the shop at 69 Church Street (which is still there) was, indeed, that of ‘Mrs Sybil Mantalini’. It was then only a short step to establish that Mrs Mantalini was, in fact, Miss Sybil Marsden, who was on the London Electoral Register by dint of her occupation of those premises, and the question of’ ‘Who was Miss S. Marsden?’ was solved.
But now I was hooked. Who was Miss Sybil Marsden? Why was she such an outspoken dressmaker?
I discovered that she had 9 siblings and in 1911 was living at the family home, 82 RedcliffeGardens in South Kensington, with her mother and one unmarried sister. Her father, Algernon Moses Marsden, had been a fine art dealer but, by 1901, had been declared bankrupt several times. His background was most interesting; he had declined to enter the family’s successful clothing business, clearly preferring the more elevated association with ‘art’.
Algernon Moses Marsden by James Tissot
Marsden was by all accounts – mainly in the bankruptcy reports – an engaging fellow – as is evident in the portrait of him by James Tissot, painted in 1877, when Sybil was four-years-old. At that time Marsden was Tissot’s dealer, but gambling and high-living proved his downfall. It would appear that after his final bankruptcy in 1901 he removed himself to New York, where he died in 1920. I can now see that the choice of the name ‘Madame Mantalini’ may have been even more to the point than I first thought. In Nicholas Nickleby it is Mr Mantalini’s extravagance that resulted in the bankruptcy of his wife’s business – an awful warning to Sybil Marsden. No wonder Algernon’s daughter had little faith in the ability of men to manage her affairs.
Epilogue
The cinéaste members of my family play the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game (whereby any named film actor has to be connected with fellow-actor KB by links covering no more than 6 films). I am hopeless at that – but think I might be a contender in Six Degrees of Garrett. This particular case is easy: Sybil Marsden, Algernon Marsden, James Tissot, J.M. Brydon, Agnes and Rhoda Garrett. As I discuss in Enterprising Women: the Garrets and their circle, the two young women were undergoing their architectural training with Brydon in 1873, at a time when he was working on the design of a new studio for Tissot, attached to the artist’s St John’s Wood house. Did they go on a site visit? Had they perhaps even seen in the flesh, as it were, the tiger skin and the fashionable blue vase, that serve to emphasise Algenon Marsden’s exoticism and good taste.
Kate Frye’s Suffrage Diary: 3 December 1906
Posted by womanandhersphere in Kate Frye's suffrage diary on July 26, 2012
Kate’s family had always taken an interest in politics; her father had been Liberal MP for North Kensington in the 1890s and into the 20th century her mother was the president of the North Kensington Women’s Liberal Association. However, the meeting described below is the first occasion that Kate mentions in her diary her attendance at a specifically ‘suffrage’ meeting and of the disturbances that had been caused by the WSPU’s ‘rowdy attacks’.
Monday 3 December 1906
At 8 o’clock [evening] Agnes [Kate’s elder sister] and I went off to KensingtonTown Hall to a Woman’s Suffrage meeting – got up by the Central Society. Lady Frances Balfour was presiding. We went by bus – when we got there the large hall was packed. Alexandra Wright was at the top of the stairs and directed us up to the overflow meeting and that was packed too. After a bit the speakers came in to us – the Hon Mrs Bertrand Russell, Miss Gore Booth, Lady Frances Balfour and Mr Cameron Corbett M.P. I heard excellent speeches all of them – they really did put the case in a nutshell and were most instructive and interesting.
Then Gladys Wright came and fetched me out and came and asked me to act as a Steward and collect – then later she went in for Agnes – and we both did what we could. We collected in the Gallery first – then later I was stationed to get the people as they came out. It was very amusing really – and I got so hot and excited – off my head with it – we certainly are in the thick of things always. Some of the people gave a lot – others shook their heads and frowned. One man said I wanted too much – to marry as well as a Vote. I had quite a flirtation on the stairs with a big smart young man – who stopped to ask me a question – he didn’t seem to know anything about anything and when he said the speaker had referred to Earl Percy as ‘half asleep’ – I said ‘That is true about a great many people’ – he did laugh.
I am afraid I felt I was more like a helper at a Bazaar than at so grave a thing as a Woman’s Suffrage Meeting – but then it is so hard for me to be serious about anything – but I am in earnest – I really do feel a great belief in the need of the Vote for Women if only as a means of Education. I feel my prayer for Women in the words of George Meredith ‘More brains, Oh Lord, more brains.’ But we are coming along and not slowly by any means. Of course all these rowdy attacks on the Ministers and these imprisonments have sounded coarse and unpleasant and the jokery made of it most bad for the cause – but women have waited patiently for so long the sort of women who have gone for the matter in this rowdy method are not the best educated or most refined amongst our members.
At this meeting every thing passed off in a most orderly dignified spirit – and the speeches from the women were delightful and must have come as a revelation to many of the audience. There was a declaration there for any working woman there who cared to sign – a number did – I did – as I have a profession [Kate was a rather unsuccessful actress]. Naturally they don’t want crowds of names without any meaning or strength in them. We came home after hearing the amount collected nearly £20 – about the cost of getting up a meeting – the reason for the collection. Bus to Notting Hill – got in soon after 10.30 – in a frenzy of excitement.
Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary edited by Elizabeth Crawford
For a full description of the book click here
Wrap-around paper covers, 226 pp, over 70 illustrations, all drawn from Kate Frye’s personal archive.
ISBN 978 1903427 75 0
Copies available from Francis Boutle Publishers, or from Elizabeth Crawford – elizabeth.crawford2017@outlook.com (£14.99 +UK postage £3. Please ask for international postage cost), or from all good bookshops – and Amazon.
- ‘Campaigning for the Vote’ – Front and back cover of wrappers
Suffragette postcards: suffragettes and policemen 2
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on July 25, 2012
Here is another card in the ‘Philco Series’, titled ‘SUFFRAGETTES ARE GOING ABOUT STICKING BILLS IN PROMINENT PLACES’ and in this particular case that is pasting a ‘Votes for Women’ on the back of a policeman, who is in the process of accosting another bill-sticking suffragette. Needless to say the women are the usual stereotypical trilby-wearing, bespectacled harridens. In the scene a pillar box and a dog have also been plastered with V f W posters. The message on the reverse – written in pencil from the same sender to the same recipient as that of the card in the previous ‘Collecting Suffrage’ post – that is Win to Mrs James – reads ‘And the best of wishes for a happy Christmas. The suffragettes what and how they do things in London.’ Very good – unposted £45 post free. NOW SOLD
Suffragette postcards: suffragettes and policemen
Posted by womanandhersphere in Collecting Suffrage on July 24, 2012
The increased activity of the women’s suffrage campaign in the early years of the 20th century coincided with the golden age of the postcard. It proved to be a subject very popular with the burgeoning number of commercial postcard publishers and cards with a ‘suffragette’ theme outnumber those relating to other contemporary campaigns – such as Tariff Reform and Home Rule.
Without too much effort, anyone interested can still build up a collection of cards reflecting the varying views of Edwardian society on women’s desire for citizenship – and their methods of achieving it. The suffrage societies themselves all produced cards – portraits of their leaders or photographs of great suffrage occasions – although they are vastly outnumbered by cards produced by the commercial publishers.
The incongruence of women battling with policemen – as on ‘Black Friday’ in November 1910 – certainly caught the publishers’ attention and there are many variations on the theme. This card was published by Philco Publishers, whose office was in Holborn Place – very close to WSPU headquarters. This card was not posted but is written to ‘Mrs James’. The message reads ‘I do not know what you will think of this. But this is suffragettes in vengeance and in their battle array.’
The stereotypical harridan (trilby hat, glasses, high-colouring, big nose) wearing ‘Votes for Women’ sash wields her umbrella as she kicks a policeman. In the background another, similar, scene is enacted. There is a tall clock tower – which might just be intended as Big Ben – at the very back of the scene, attached to a misty building. This card, which is in good condition, was one of a series. It is available for sale from me: £45 post free. NOW SOLD
See the August 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine for Prof June Purvis’s article on ‘suffragette’ cards published by commercial publishers and click here for details of her very interesting and informative accompanying podcast (June’s piece begins 20 minutes into the recording).
Woman and her Sphere 