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Abstract
This article examines the history of women’s suffrage agitation in York one hundred years after some women were able to vote for the first time in Parliamentary elections, in December 1918. It concentrates on the period leading up to the evasion of the census on 2–3 April 1911 and places developments in York in the context of national events. Actions and attitudes of the York Women’s Suffrage Society, which was formed in 1889 and affiliated to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, are considered, as well as those of the York branch of the more militant Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The WSPU was founded in 1903 and its York branch was not finally established until 1910; its leading figures were the secretary Annie Coultate and its organiser Violet Key Jones. The extent of the 1911 census evasion in York, and the location where evaders spent the night to avoid being counted, are identified for the first time. Four sisters of the Suffield family of Fulford were active suffragettes and were probably among the evaders in York and Scarborough.
Notes
1 Smith, Suffrage Campaign, 90.
2 See particularly Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement; Crawford, Regional Survey; Peacock, York 1900-1914, 34–5, 141–42, 188, 201.
3 Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 8. The text of the petition is available online at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2016/06/07/the-1866-womens-suffrage-petition; and there is a list of the signatories at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/parliamentary-archives/1866SuffragePetitionNamesWebJune16.pdf (both accessed 15 January 2018).
4 York Herald, 16 March 1876.
5 Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 8; Crawford, Regional Survey, 52–3.
6 Y[orkshire] G[azette], 9 March 1889; Crawford, Regional Survey, 53.
7 Y[orkshire] E[vening] P[ress], 2 March 1901.
8 Women’s Suffrage Record, June 1903.
9 YEP, 4 June 1908 Women’s Franchise, 11 June 1908.
10 Crawford, Reference Guide, 388, 720–21; Pugh, Pankhursts, 165–67; Smith, Suffrage Campaign, 44.
11 The two demonstrations are discussed by Tickner, Spectacle, 80–98.
12 YEP, 1 June 1908. Tickner, Spectacle, 60–73 discusses the significance of banners and banner-making for suffrage campaigners. Also Crawford, Reference Guide, 32–4.
13 YG, 13 and 20 June. Nellie Martel was born in England but spent many years in Australia where she campaigned for women’s suffrage. She joined the WSPU after returning to England in 1904 but left the organisation later in 1908. See Crawford, Reference Guide, 385–87; and http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/martel-ellen-alma-nellie-13081 (accessed 15 January 2018).
14 Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 9–10.
15 Una Dugdale joined the WSPU in 1907 and in 1908 worked for the cause in Aberdeen (Crawford, Reference Guide, 177–78).
16 V[otes] f[or] W[omen], 11 June 1908.
17 YEP, 6 June 1908.
18 VfW, 4, 11 and 18 June 1908.
19 VfW, 11 June 1908.
20 YEP, 6 June 1908; VfW, 23 and 30 July 1909. Charlotte Marsh was a WSPU organiser in Leeds and Bradford (Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 9–10 and Women of the Right Spirit, 68; Crawford, Reference Guide, 381–82).
21 Y[orkshire] H[erald], 30 July 1909. YG, 31 July 1909, had a shorter account of the meeting, adding, ‘A crowded meeting was held in the Exhibition Square on Thursday evening [29 July]’. In 1906 the Daily Mail newspaper had coined the term ‘suffragette’, intended to be derogatory, to distinguish the more militant campaigners from the more peacefully-minded ‘suffragists’.
22 YG, 6 November 1909. Lady Frances Balfour was a member of the NUWSS executive committee from at least 1903 and President of the Central Society for Women’s Suffrage (renamed the London Society for Women’s Suffrage when it was reorganised in 1907) from 1904 to 1914 (Crawford, Reference Guide, 29–30, 356–57).
23 YG, 11 December 1909.
24 YG, 18 December 1909.
25 YEP, 6 and 8 December 1909. Ernest Percival Holmes of 55, Wentworth Road, York, a clerk with the North Eastern Railway, was later to chair WSPU meetings in York (VfW 16 December 1910 and 5 May 1911) before reverting to the NUWSS because he disagreed with the WSPU’s militant methods, believing that ‘they could not do evil that good may come’ (YH, 27 March 1912).
26 YEP, 6 December 1909.
27 In 1908 and 1909 VfW had a regular feature ‘Heckling Cabinet Ministers’ or ‘Questioning Cabinet Ministers’ describing such activities.
28 Rubinstein, Different World, 160–64; Smith, Suffrage Campaign, 25–6, 39–40.
29 YEP, 3 April 1907.
30 YEP, 5 April 1907.
31 Pugh, Pankhursts, 180, 192, 194, 203 (the context of the reference to the Bermondsey attack giving the impression that it was undertaken by the WSPU). For Bermondsey see The Times, 29 and 30 October 1909; Crawford, Reference Guide, 721–22.
32 ‘Votes for Women’ was the rallying cry of the WSPU as well as the name of its newspaper at this time (from October 1912 it was called The Suffragette).
33 YG, 6 November 1909.
34 VfW, 18 February and 12 and 19 August 1910, and 31 March 1911, refer to ‘Miss’ Coultate but that is surely an error; the usual designation is ‘Mrs’ Coultate. Annie Coultate, who was born in 1855, was a school teacher and a widow. She had a daughter, Florence Annie, who married William Mountain Holmes in 1903 and who may be the ‘Mrs Holmes’ mentioned in reports of the York branch of the WSPU in VfW, 2 December 1910 and 2 June and 22 December 1911 and in The Suffragette, 7 March 1913. However, some of those references might be to Mrs Emma Holmes, wife of E. P. Holmes (see footnote 25), who had a letter about women’s suffrage published in YEP of 3 November 1909.
35 Pugh, Pankhursts, 216–17.
36 The responsibilities of WSPU local organisers are discussed in Cowman, Women of the Right Spirit, and in Crawford, Reference Guide, 478–79. Annie Coultate’s activities as indefatigable seller of Votes for Women in the streets of York and as speaker are recorded in VfW of 4 November 1910; 10 February, 21 July, 25 August and 10 and 17 November 1911; and 16 August 1912. See also YH 3 April 1912; Daily Herald 19 November 1912 and 8 March 1913; and YEP 14 February 1914. On Violet Key Jones see Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 11–13, 21–30; Liddington, Rebel Girls, 275–79, 286, 293.
37 Full women’s suffrage had been introduced in Australia in 1902 and limited women’s suffrage had been introduced in Norway in 1907.
38 Votes for Women, 20 October 1911 recorded her departure from both posts. She had been a paid organiser in the WSPU for three years and had previously worked in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cardiff, the West Country and Scotland (Pugh, Pankhursts, 146–47). She and Miss Garnett from Leeds had spent several days campaigning in Scarborough in November 1908 when the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was heckled by suffragettes when he spoke at the Londesborough Theatre (VfW, 19 and 26 November 1908). Adela returned there in December 1909 ‘to organise an attack on the Liberal seat at the next General Election’, held in January 1910 (YEP, 6 December 1909; VfW, 17 December 1909).
39 Frederick Pethick-Lawrence and Mrs Pankhurst also addressed meetings on York on 20 January and 28 April 1911 respectively (VfW, 20 and 27 January and between 24 March and 5 May 1911).
40 Scarborough’s proximity to York was no doubt a factor. The YWSS had already ‘in 1904–5 engaged Miss Rowlette as an organizer, who then energetically founded local committees in Scarborough, Middlesbrough and Whitby’ (Crawford, Regional Survey, 53).
41 VfW, 18 October 1910 onwards and 13 October 1911.
42 VfW, 25 March, 6 May (giving Miss Suffield’s first name as Ada, confirming her identity) and 1 July 1910 and subsequently.
43 VfW, 16 July 1909.
44 VfW, 23 and 30 July (the latter saying that during the first week of August Ada would be at Fulford, York, confirming her identity), 6 and 20 August and 3 September 1909.
45 VfW, 23 September;14 and 28 October; 4 and 11 November; 2 and 16 December 1910; 6, 20 and 27 January; 3, 10, 11 and 17 March; 5 and 26 May; 2, 9, 16 and 30 June; and 15 December 1911. Also YG, 10 September 1910; and YEP, and YH, 1 March 1911.
46 YG, 10 September 1910.
47 VfW, 25 August, 1 and 8 September, 6 and 13 October 1911; 8 March, 7 and 14 June 1912.
48 VfW, 24 February and 10 March 1911.
49 VfW, 17 February and 14 April 1911.
50 VfW, 28 October and 4 November 1910.
51 VfW, 30 September, 14, 21 and 28 October, 4 and 11 November, and 2 and 16 December 1910. Helen Archdale was imprisoned in Dundee in October 1909 with Adela Pankhurst and three others, all five going on hunger strike before being released; in 1910 she was briefly WSPU organiser in Sheffield (Crawford, Reference Guide 15–16). Lady Isabel Margesson was a member of the NUWSS before resigning in 1906-1907 to join the WSPU (Crawford, Reference Guide, 375–76).
52 VfW, 7 and 21 October and 4 November 1910.
53 VfW, 16 December 1910 and 6 January 1911.
54 Crawford, Reference Guide, 4–5.
55 VfW, 24 February 1911; YH, 28 February 1911.
56 YEP, 1 March 1911.
57 YEP, 1 March 1911.
58 YH, 25 February 1911.
59 YH, 25 February and 1 March 1911; YG, 25 February and 4 March 1911; YEP, 1 March 1911; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 1 March 1911.
60 YEP, 1 March 1911; YG, 4 March 1911.
61 YH, 25 February 1911.
62 YEP, 1 March 1911.
63 A second Conciliation Bill giving a measure of women’s suffrage passed on Second Reading on 5 May 1911 by 255 votes to eighty-eight. But the Liberal Government refused to allow more time for it to be debated, fearing that the new women voters would be mainly Conservatives (Smith, Suffrage Campaign, 63).
64 YG, 11 March 1911.
65 Liddington, Vanishing, 83–4, 90–1, 94–6, 104–06, 231–32.
66 Liddington, Vanishing, 106–07, 119, 182, 200, 211–12, 231–32.
67 Liddington, Vanishing, 105, 117, 160, 169.
68 Liddington, Vanishing, 359. Her daughter Florence Holmes did not evade: she was recorded as present at home in Acomb with her husband and three children.
69 VfW, 31 March 1911. I owe this reference to Christopher Rainger of the Fishergate, Fulford & Heslington Local History Society.
70 Liddington, Vanishing, 243. In addition, VfW, 24 March 1911 listed York among places where ‘members … are throwing open their houses’ to census evaders.
71 Yorkshire Gazette, 13 June 1908; VfW, 21 May and 4 and 11 June 1908.
72 YG, 11 February 1911 and YH 28 February 1911; and VfW, 21 April 1911.
73 VfW, 7 April, 29 September and 22 December 1911. In Kelly’s Directory for 1909 and 1913 Arthur Anderson is described as the secretary of the York Assembly Rooms; he managed them until 1925 (www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/city-of-york/pp531-535#h3-0003, accessed 20 January 2018).
74 Arthur Anderson himself was recorded at 15 Coney Street with his brother and their widowed mother, a visitor and a general servant.
75 The WSPU office moved again after nine months at 8 New Street. VfW, 22 December 1911 reported, ‘The office is being moved to larger premises, Corban [sic] Chambers, Coppergate, at Nessgate Corner, with front windows which will be advantageous for showing stock. It will be formally opened early in January’. Colby Chambers, Coppergate is shown as the WSPU office address in VfW, 19 January 1912 and subsequently (and in Kelly’s Directory for 1913 as Colby Chambers, 11 Coppergate).
76 YEP, 3 April 1911. YH, 4 April 1911 carried the same story.
77 Liddington and Crawford, ‘Women Do Not Count’; Liddington, Vanishing, 220–23.
78 Mary Alice was born in Bradford in 1873/74, Clara Ellen in York in 1878 and Agnes Edith in York in 1885.
79 VfW, 23 September and 14 October 1910; 13 January, 17 March, 1 September and 22 December 1911.
80 VfW, 17 November 1911; 26 April, 6 and 16 August, 13 September, 4 October and 20 November 1912. Either Agnes or Ada must be the ‘Miss A. Suffield’ recorded as speaking on other occasions (VfW 10 November 1911, 16 August and 11 October 1912).
81 VfW, 13 October 1911, referring to ‘Miss Agnes Laffield’.
82 VfW, 19 May 1911 and 19 January and 29 March 1912.
83 VfW, 13 January 1911 and 25 August and 13 October 1911.
84 Arrangements to evade the census in Scarborough were mentioned in VfW, 17 and 24 March and 7 April 1911.
85 VfW, 17 March 1911.
86 Liddington, Vanishing, 221, 271, 336, 340.
87 Auchmuty, Great Debates, 174–6.
88 YEP and YH, 30 January 1913.
89 Peacock, York 1900-1914, 242. The Suffragette, 26 December 1913, listed the incident among ‘the more serious attacks on property which have been attributed to Suffragettes during the year 1913’.
90 Cowman, Militant Suffragette Movement, 17–20, 26–29.
91 YG, 16 March 1912.
92 YH, 9 March 1912.