Abigail Hamilton-Thompson - Struggle and Suffrage in Peterborough: Womens Lives and the Fight for Equality

Struggle and Suffrage

in

Peterborough

This book is dedicated to my mother, Dorothy. It is thanks to her, and the childhood experiences she gave me, that I have such an interest in history today.

Womens Lives and the Fight for Equality

Abigail Hamilton-Thompson

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Pen & Sword History

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Abigail Hamilton-Thompson, 2022

ISBN 978 1 52671 672 9

ePUB ISBN 978 1 52671 674 3

MOBI ISBN 978 1 52671 674 3

The right of Abigail Hamilton-Thompson to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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This book explores the lives of women in Peterborough between 1850 and 1950, and considers the way in which different aspects of those lives changed over the years: education, home life, work, heath & poverty, leisure activities, suffrage and active citizens. It will also consider the ways in which both the First and Second World Wars affected the citizens in Peterborough, including the loss of so many men from the community and the lifestyle changes that had to be made as part of the war effort.

Women in Peterborough experienced a good deal of change during this time. Provision for the poor increased with an ever expanding workhouse in Thorpe Road and Miss Pears Almshouses, which replaced a smaller almshouse in Cumbergate in 1903. Health care improved with a small infirmary in Priestgate and then the citys first operating theatre was attached to said infirmary. Schooling became available to all girls in the city when education became compulsory in Britain, replacing the various privately run dame schools dotted around Peterborough and when the First World War arrived, women were required to replace men in the workforce and this continued well into the Second World War whereby women were very much active citizens in and around Peterborough. Let us not forget that this period was not always a joyous one for women in Peterborough as during the First World War more than one thousand men from the town died leaving whole communities of mothers, wives and children distraught particularly as a number of these men signed up together in the same Pals battalions and fought/died together in the same battles. A working class wife was responsible for keeping her family as clean, warm and dry as possible in housing stock that was literally rotting around them as well as potentially supplement the familys income by taking on extra work on top of her domestic duties.

Edith Cavell 1865-1915

There are a number of notable Peterborough women commemorated within the cathedral in the city centre, including Edith Cavell, a British nurse shot by the Germans during the First World War, who has a Blue memorial plaque on a cathedral pillar. Edith Cavell was born to a vicar in Swardeston, Norfolk, on 4 December 1865 and was a pupil-teacher of Laurel Court. Thanks to her former employers, Margaret Gibson, connections in Belgium, Edith was offered a job as a governess to a family in Brussels where she stayed for five years before returning home to nurse her sick father. This may well have given her the inspiration to train as a nurse at the Royal London Hospital in London.