Maggie Andrews - Hidden Heroines: The Forgotten Suffragettes

Hidden Heroines

THE FORGOTTEN SUFFRAGETTES

Hidden Heroines

THE FORGOTTEN SUFFRAGETTES

Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas

ROBERT HALE

First published in 2018 by
Robert Hale, an imprint of
The Crowood Press Ltd,
Ramsbury, Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2018

Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas 2018

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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

ISBN 978 0 71982 762 4

The right of Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

CONTENTS

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (182791)
Victorian suffrage campaigner
Janis Lomas

Rose Crawshay (18281907)
Philanthropist and Welsh iron-masters wife
Maggie Andrews

Harriet McIlquham (18371910)
Petitioner and local politician
Linda Pike

Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (18401929)
Shakespearean scholar and proponent of the Rational Dress Society
Maggie Andrews

Elizabeth Amy Dillwyn (18451935)
Industrialist and novelist
Maggie Andrews

Lady Henry Somerset (18511921)
Leader of the Womens Temperance Movement
Maggie Andrews

Dame Ethel Smyth (18581944)
Composer and campaigner
Janis Lomas

Margaret Llewelyn Davies (18611944)
Organizer of the Womens Co-operative Guild
Maggie Andrews

Mary Hayden (18621942)
History don and Irish Nationalist
Maggie Andrews

Clemence Annie Housman (18611955)
Author, illustrator, engraver, tax resister and census evader
Maggie Andrews

Millicent Hetty MacKenzie (18631942)
Professor, educationalist and campaigner
Maggie Andrews

Lady Isabel Margesson (18631946)
An eclectic supporter of multiple causes
Lesley Spiers

Alice Hawkins (18631947)
Working-class militant and trades union organizer
Janis Lomas

Constance Antonina (Nina) Boyle (18651943)
Founder of the Womens Police Service
Lisa Cox-Davies

Jennie Baines (18661951)
Working-class firebrand
Janis Lomas

Emma Sproson (18671936)
Red Emma
Linda Pike

Countess Constance Markievicz (18681927)
Irish Nationalist and the first woman elected to the House of Commons
Maggie Andrews

Ada Neild Chew (18701945)
Socialist and mail-order entrepreneur
Janis Lomas

Kitty Marion (18711944)
Actress, hunger-striker and birth control campaigner
Janis Lomas

Ada Croft Baker (18711962)
Magistrate and alderman
Carol Frankish

Catherine Blair (18721946)
Founder of the Scottish Womens Rural Institutes
Maggie Andrews

Edith Rigby (18721948)
Arsonist, WI activist and bee-keeper
Maggie Andrews

Hannah Mitchell (18721956)
Councillor and Justice of the Peace
Janis Lomas

Chrystal Macmillan (18721937)
Advocate and peace campaigner
Maggie Andrews

Margaret Bondfield (18731953)
The first female minister in a British Cabinet
Paula Bartley

Adeline Redfern-Wilde (18741924)
A working-class activist in the Potteries
Amy Dale

Alice Clark (18741934)
Historian and shoe company executive
Maggie Andrews

Mrs Arthur Webb (18741957)
Suffragist domestic goddess
Maggie Andrews

Grace Hadow (18751940)
Oxford don and NFWI Vice Chairman
Elspeth King

Rosa May Billinghurst (18751953)
Disabled militant suffragette
Janis Lomas

Mrs Aubrey Dowson (18761944)
Editor of
The Womens Suffrage Cookery Book Jenni Waugh

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh (18761948)
The suffragette princess
Carol Frankish

Muriel Matters (18771969)
Campaigner and Montessori teacher
Janis Lomas

Mabel Lida Ramsay (18781954)
A doctor and suffragist in Plymouth
Maggie Andrews

Margaret Cousins (18781954)
Irish Nationalist, Theosophist and magistrate
Leah Susans

Kate Parry Frye (18781959)
Impoverished suffrage organizer and palm reader
Janis Lomas

Nora Dacre Fox (18781961)
Suffragette and Fascist
Maggie Andrews

Margaret Wintringham (18791955)
From schoolteacher to politician
Maggie Andrews

Mary Macarthur (18801921)
Trade union leader and adult suffragist
Anna Muggeridge

Vera Jack Holme (18811962)
The suffragette chauffeur
Janis Lomas

Anna Munro (18811962)
Scottish orator and Womens Freedom League campaigner
Rose Miller

Mary Gawthorpe (18811973)
Teacher, WSPU organizer and Labour campaigner
Janis Lomas

Helena Normanton (18821957)
Pioneering barrister
Holly Fletcher

Elsie Howey (18841963)
Joan of Arc and suffragette warrior
Mollie Sheehy

Annie Barnes (18871982)
Stepney councillor
Maggie Andrews

Dora Thewlis (18901976)
Baby suffragette
Janis Lomas

Ellen Wilkinson (18911947)
Communist and cabinet minister
Paula Bartley

Lilian Lenton (18911972)
Militant, hunger striker and escape artist
Janis Lomas

To Neil, Clare, Laura, Emily, Tom, David and Gregg, Lynton, Oli and Sophie, Dom and Sonya, Annie and Peter, Lucia, Erin, Edu, Florence and Stanley.

May your lives live up to the dreams and hopes that the hidden heroines of this book have struggled to realize.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the product of numerous scholars of womens suffrage history. We owe a huge debt and thanks to the writers and experts such as Elizabeth Crawford, Leah Leneman, Jill Liddington, Angela John, June Purvis and many others whom we have encountered, particularly through the Womens History Network, and drawn upon here.

Friends and colleagues Paula Bartley, Carol Frankish, Lesley Spiers and Jenni Waugh have provided support, discussion and the biographies of women. University of Worcester students have also contributed to writing the histories of individual women for this book: undergraduates studying History or Law Holly Fletcher, Mollie Sheehy and Leah Susans as well as postgraduates Amy Dale, Lisa Davies, Elspeth King, Rose Miller, Anna Muggeridge and Linda Pike. Thank you all. We hope that you never lose your interest and enthusiasm for womens history.

Our families have, as ever, lived with our enthusiasm, exhaustion and preoccupation as we have struggled our way through completing this text. A huge thank you, as always, goes to Neil and John for all their love, support and shopping undertaken while we were writing. Thank you also to the good-natured forbearance of the next generations: Neil, Clare, Laura, Emily, Tom, and to David and Gregg, Lynton, Oli and Sophie, Dom and Sonya, Annie and Peter, Lucia, Erin, Edu, Florence and Stanley.