Equal Rights International (1930-c.1940) was founded in 1930 when the franchise was granted to women in a growing number of countries, and women's activism in the West moved from suffrage to campaigning for equality of rights with men. When progress was impeded at a national level, many began to look to international change. Campaigning, by Vera Brittain amongst others, was undertaken to press the League of Nations to pass an Equal Rights treaty. In 1929 the British Six Point Group and Open Door Council had worked together to form Open Door International to secure this and equal pay for female workers and at first the League appeared to support this work. However, when plans for an equal rights treaty emerged, Open Door International opposed it as too vague to repeal contemporary discriminatory laws. In response to this situation, Equal Rights International was founded in 1930 by members of the Six Point Group with the support of the National Women's Party to continue the process, aiming to 'work for the adoption of the Equal Rights Treaty by all nations'. Members of the Geneva-based group included Vera Brittain, who was active in the promotion of the Equal Rights Treaty from 1929, Jessie Street, who became vice-president in 1930 and the journalist Linda Littlejohn who became president in 1935. Member countries of the League of Nations were lobbied to back the treaty, but no member country could be found to place the item on the Assembly's agenda. Despite this, work continued and the ERI became affiliated to the Liaison Committee of International Women's Organisations in order to gain increased access to members of the League of Nations secretariat. An initial lack of success was followed by hope in the late 1930s, when a committee of inquiry into women's legal status across the world was created. However, this work also came to nothing as the Second World War began. The organisation appears to have been wound up some time after this, c.1940.
Hackney Women's Aid (HWA) (1975-fl 2007) established in 1975, was part of the Women's Aid London-wide and national network of women's refuges offering support, advice and temporary emergency accommodation to women with or without children who were experiencing domestic violence. HWA later became the nia project, which also has its own legal support and representation service for women, an information and referral line and advice/caseworkers that support women. They have specialist workers who advocate for and assist women who are affected by gender violence, also those who are involved in street prostitution, helping them to exit. They also work with women who have issues relating to domestic violence and substance misuse. Sinéad O'Connor opened the drop-in centre in Dalston in 1998. In addition, they have Turkish-language advice, refuge and resettlement workers. Nia is a Swahili word that means 'purpose'.
The League of Church Militant (1909-1928) was founded as the Church League for Women's in 1909, a non-party organisation open to members of the Church of England who wished to campaign 'to secure for women the vote in Church and State.' In 1917 it became the League of Church Militant with aims including the establishment of equal rights and opportunities for men and women both in Church and State and the 'settlement of all international questions on the basis of right, not of might.' After the end of the First World War it shifted its main attention to the following aim, as adopted at a Council meeting in 1919: 'To challenge definitely … what has hitherto been the custom of the Church of confining the priesthood to men.' After the Franchise Act received Royal Assent in 1928, the League felt that one of its main aims had been realised and that, whilst it still desired to see women ordained to the ministry of the Church, felt that this might be better carried on through other means. In 1928 it therefore decided to wind up its affairs. The campaign for the ordination of women was continued by the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women (f 1930) and many of those, including E Louie Acres, who had been active in the League, were prominent within the Group.
Mothers in Action (1967-c 1977) was established in 1967 by five unsupported mothers who joined together to improve the conditions in which they were living and bringing up their children. The group was founded with a £10 grant from the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child (later NCOPF). The aim of MIA was 'To press for the best possible status for unsupported mothers and their children'. The four objectives of the group were: (1) To encourage unsupported mothers to improve their own conditions through participation in the activities of the group and any other organisation with which the group may be associated. (2) To press for improvements in the status of and facilities for unsupported mothers and their children, by representation to local authorities or government departments and by specially conducted campaigns. (3) To disseminate information of special interest to unsupported mothers and similarly to encourage their personal contribution to current research into their problems. (4) To encourage social contact between unsupported mothers; to reduce isolation and to enable them to make the fullest part of life in the community. Services offered to members included distribution of a newsletter, accommodation register, fact sheets, baby-sitting register and the existence of local groups. By 1969 membership of Mothers In Action had grown to 1000 countrywide, with some members living abroad. The organisation existed as a pressure group for unsupported mothers, both employed and unemployed. The group included single mothers, divorced, separated or deserted wives, widows and married women whose husbands were serving prison sentences or were incapable of supporting them by virtue of mental or physical handicaps. Membership was divided into Ordinary Members - Unsupported Mothers - and Associate Member- everyone else. In 1972 the group was revised and formal membership abolished (effective 1 Mar 1972). The aim was now rephrased: 'To press for the best possible status for one parent families regardless of race, religion or nationality'. The decision was made to focus on pressure activities rather than services to members.
SUMMARY OF CAMPAIGNS: 1970-1975 Housing; 1960s Equal pay; 1968-1970 Day Nursery Campaign; 1968 Adoption; 1973 Target Campaign on Maternity Leave; 1973-1974 Day care campaign; 1974 School age mothers; 1974 Parents' legal rights, in conjunction with Brunel University.
The Married Women's Association (1938-1988) was formed in 1938 as a result of the failed attempts of the Equal Rights International Group, set up by members of the Six Point Group, to persuade the League of Nations to incorporate an Equal Rights Treaty in the Equal Rights International Group Constitution. Juanita Frances had been working in Geneva as part of the operative. After three unsuccessful meetings she drew up plans for a separate organisation to work chiefly for the rights of housewives and mothers and the Married Women's Association was born. It was to be a 'non - party and non - sectarian' association and its management was initially conducted at 20 Buckingham Street, London WC2. Prominent members included Edith (later Baroness) Summerskill, Vera Brittain, Helena Normanton and Lady Helen Nutting. Edith (later Baroness) Summerskill was the association's first president, other presidents included Vera Brittain and Juanita Frances. The aims of the Association were to: a) promote legislation to regulate the financial relations between husband and wife as between equal partners; b) secure for the mother and children a legal right to a share in the marital home; c) secure equal guardianship rights for both parents; d) extent the National Insurance Acts to include women on the same terms as men. The Association later included additional objectives, which were to: e) extend family allowances; f) establish equal pay; g) awaken women to their full political responsibilities. In order to achieve these goals members conducted deputations to ministers; held public meetings, debates and social activities and the Association published its own newsletters, namely: Wife and Citizen (1945-1951) and the Married Women's Association Newsletter [1966-1987]. In 1952 a significant disagreement between members led to a split within the Association. Helena Normanton had prepared evidence for submission to the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce and she had included proposals, which other members vehemently objected to. It was felt that the evidence was for the benefit of privileged women and as such, the position of ordinary women would remain at a disadvantage, which would be contrary to the Association's objectives. Helena Normanton and Mrs Gorsky (Chair) left to form the Council of Married Women and were joined by Lady Helen Nutting. The Married Women's Association continued up until the 1980s. A rough minute book entry of 6 Dec 1981 states that there will be no further meetings due to ill health and family commitments. However, the records contain Executive and AGM minutes to 1983 and correspondence to 1988. The extension of family allowances, establishment of equal pay and helping women to recognise their political responsibilities became later objectives. 'Wife and Citizen' (1945-1951) and the 'MWA Newsletter' were the official organs of the Association.
The National Women Citizens Association (1917-1975) was founded in 1917 at a time of concern in how women could be active citizens. After decades of campaigning for women's suffrage, initiatives were established to lay the foundations of women's informed political participation in the early part of the twentieth century. From 1913, autonomous local Women Citizen's Associations were formed throughout the United Kingdom following Eleanor Rathbone's initiatives in Liverpool and Manchester. Their aim was to stimulate women's interest in social and political issues in order to prepare them for active citizenship. When it became evident in 1917 that women were about to be awarded the parliamentary vote, more of these organisations were established. In Jun 1917, the National Union of Women Workers called a meeting of British women's organisations at which the issues surrounding this were discussed. It was here that the NUWW drew up the Provisional Central Committee on the Citizenship of Women, with members drawn from interested societies, though acting in a private capacity. It was their intention to continue to stimulate interest through the work of the existing societies but also to help form local groups that would affiliate to this central body. At the Nov 1917 conference of the 42 affiliated societies of the National Union of Women Workers, the plans and procedures of the new body were accepted by the Executive Committee. The first election of the Central Committee took place that Dec 1917, followed by a change of name to the National Women Citizen's Association. Helena Normanton was the first Secretary. In early 1918 the first of the local branches began to appear and when, in that year, the franchise was finally given to women, the numbers of affiliated organisations increased as suffrage groups changed their names and objectives to fit new circumstances. During the early 1920s a number of Women's Local Government Society branches affiliated, eventually becoming women's citizenship groups when the parent body dissolved in 1925. This saw the NWCA assume greater responsibility for work in the area of local government through the second half of this decade and into the 1930s. Despite this, there was a decline in interest and activity in the group before the Second World War. However, this situation was reversed after the war. In 1947, the organisation amalgamated with the National Council for Equal Citizenship and then, in 1949, with Women for Westminster. There was a corresponding increase in activity leading up to the Festival of Britain in 1951, so that in the 1950s it was necessary to reorganise the local branches into five regional federations. Local branches continued to be established into the 1960s. However, there was a another decrease in activity and the NWCA disbanded in 1974 despite some local branches continuing and an attempt being made by some former officers to revive the group in 1975.
St Joan's Social & Political Alliance (1923-1954) was created in 1923, when the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society (1911-1923) changed its name as the society refocused its aims on a wider scale to consider social issues affecting women. From this time on, its international work expanded, from becoming a founder member of the liaison committee of international female organisations in 1924 to the presentation of a report to the League of Nations on the subject of female status in African and Asian states in 1937. This international work continued after the Second World War. Its areas of interest now included the slave trade, women's education and professional development, employment, divorce, prostitution and marital abuse, advising the United Nations on these matters and becoming recognised as an official consultative body by the UN, UNESCO and the World Labour Organisation since 1952. St Joan's Social and Political Alliance became known as the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Section of the St Joan's International Alliance in 1954.
The German section of St Joan's International Alliance was established around 1950 and remained small throughout its existence, with only 25-50 members throughout West Germany at any time. However, it had considerable influence, especially in the 1960s under the presidency of Dr Luise Bardenhewer. Mary Dittrich was secretary from 1974 and the section was dissolved in 1980 on her resignation. Along with the international group, it was active in efforts to support the introduction of women priests after the Vatican Council of 1961, as well as being concerned with the general issues of the status of women both inside and outside the Catholic Church.
Prominent individuals: -
Secretaries: Anne Branksiepe 1952-1957; Dr Luise Bardenhewer 1958-1971; Iima Reissner 1972-c 1974; Mary Dittrich 1974-1981 (closure).
Chair: Dr Margarethe von Miller from 1966; Dr Maria Schulter-Hermkes - date unknown; Professor Ursula Kemp. Since 1991 Head of Theology/ Religious studies at Bristol University.
Throughout the 1920s and the early part of the 1930s, international women's organisations were engaged in efforts to have an international equal rights treaty passed by the League of Nations. Although this was never passed before the League s Council, four governments signed a version of the accord at the Pan-American conference of 1933. The rest of the conference participants, however, were unable to do so and merely adopted a resolution requesting that governments implement equality so far as the peculiar circumstances of each country will conveniently permit'. The following year the Pan-American Commission of Women, which was an official body of the Pan American Union, persuaded ten Latin American members of the League's Council to request that the whole issue of women's status be examined. In response, the Council requested fifteen international women's organisations to present statements on the nationality and status of women. They reported back on contemporary restrictive legislation being passed that curtailed women's economic and social liberties in Europe. The evidence presented led the League in 1935 to invite governments to present them with further information on this question within their own borders. The League of Nations' Status of Women Committee was established in 1935 to examine this at the same time as an inquiry was conducted by the International Labour Organisation to examine equality under contemporary labour laws.
The British government undertook research in order to present the necessary findings to the League. However, the National Council of Women felt it necessary to set up an independent group to study and supplement these reports. Consequently, the Committee on the Status of Women was established. Its immediate was to co-ordinate the responses of women's groups to the request for information and forward them through the International Council of Women. However, this work came to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World War. When its activities resumed in 1945, the League of Nations had been dissolved and their task had changed dramatically. Now, under the first post-war chairperson, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, the organisation was not involved in reporting to the United Nations but acted as a national body for co-ordinating the work of organisations campaigning for women's rights. In this period, it monitored contemporary legislation for examples of discrimination and acted as a pressure group on the government, other law-makers, employers, those in education and the media. It was constituted by representatives of British women's institutions and groups which were affiliated to the Committee included the Association of Assistant Masters and Mistresses, the Commonwealth Centres League, the League of Jewish Women, the Married Women's Association, the St Joan's Alliance, the Six Point Group, the Suffragette Fellowship, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Josephine Butler Society, the United Kingdom Federation of Business and Professional Women, and the Women's Liberal Federation amongst others. Additionally, individuals and co-opted specialists in their fields also belonged to what remained a non-party organisation throughout its existence. From the end of the Second World War, the group continued to hold regular meetings and annual conferences. In 1968, they organised the jubilee of Votes for Women; in 1972, their annual conference revolved around women and property rights. In 1974, sex discrimination in the EEC was the central topic while in 1975 the conference discussed the future of women. They aimed for equality for women in all spheres of life. This aim centred around eight principles: equal pay for work of equal value; equal educational facilities; equal provision of training; equal opportunities in employment; equality on social security; equality in taxation; equal social standards and equal standards in marriage. However by the late 1970s, the number of groups that continued to subscribe dropped back as some were dissolved and others failed to renew their membership. In 1978, their activities had fallen way to such an extent that organisers of the official celebrations for fifty years of suffrage initially omitted to include them in the events. By 1980, members themselves were questioning the continued existence of the group since most of their demands for legal equality had been achieved and constituent groups were now referring few matters to them. Consequently, the group was officially wound up in January 1985, when the balance of their funds was transferred to the accounts of the Society for Promoting the Training of Women.
The Association of Post Office Women Clerks (1903-c 1913) was founded as women became employed in this sector. Women were first employed in the British Civil Service in Feb 1870, after the responsibility for Britain's telegraph service came under the remit of the Controller of the Post Office under the Telegraph Act of 1869. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was great opposition to women's employment amongst male employees, in contrast to employers' acceptance of a new workforce who worked for lower wages and was less inclined to industrial agitation. This hostility also affected the male-dominated trade unions of the period, especially those concerned with the Civil Service. This meant that women civil servants of the time continued to occupy separate and lower grades than those of men, and a marriage bar prevented them continuing to work after they became wives. It was not until the turn of the century that female trade union agitation for equal pay and conditions with the male workforce began. Women workers continued to be employed in larger numbers by the Post Office than in other departments. However, conditions continued to be poor. The Association of Post Office Women Clerks was formed in 1903 as a result of a dispute which began in 1897 when women's starting pay and annual increments were suddenly further reduced. By 1904 the union had over 1,300 members. In 1913 the organisation joined the Federation of Women Clerks to further these aims. In 1916 they merged with the Civil Service Typists Association to become the Federation of Women Civil Servants. This represented all clerical women in the Civil Service with the exception of Writing Assistants, had the objective of securing equal pay with male employees and co-operated with male trade unions to attain this end. The Association, along with most of the civil service trades unions were involved in efforts to introduce arbitration and militated for what would become Whitley Councils. After the end of the First World War such action helped bring about a major restructuring of the service. Grades that had been unique to each of the departments were now merged across the entire service to form four basic bands. When women's posts were finally assimilated into the general grading system in 1920, the group found itself weakened as members left for larger mixed unions. As a result of this, the union amalgamated with the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries in 1932 and continued as the National Association of Women Civil Servants. The organisation was affiliated to the Federation of Women Civil Servants, and later merged with the National Association of Women Civil Servants.
Amelia (Millie) Scott (1860-1952) was born to Syms Scott and Ellen Nicholls on 16 Jan 1860. She spent much of her later childhood living with her aunt, and grandmother (both called Amelia Nicholls) following the death of her father in 1870, as her mother was unable to support six children. Amelia Scott and her three sisters all remained unmarried and Amelia and her sister Louise lived together in Tunbridge Wells for many years. Their background was one of a middle class family who were not quite as affluent as they once had been. Amelia Scott was involved in several organisations such as the Tunbridge Wells branch of the National Council of Women (originally called the National Union of Women Workers), which she established in May 1895. She was a member of this organisation for thirty-five years, serving as its honorary secretary. She worked as Treasurer for the Tunbridge Wells branch of the Women Citizens' Association and as an honorary secretary and Chair for the Leisure Hours Club - an association set up for working girls. She was also involved with the Tunbridge Wells branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, serving as vice president, and the Christian Social Union. Between 1918-1924 Amelia served on the Legal sub committee of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child. She also served on the Provisional Executive Committee of this organisation by representing the National Council of Women. Amelia Scott was also a Poor Law Guardian for many years, Chair of the Infant Life Protection Committee, Member of the Kent County Mental Deficiency Committee and Director of the Women's Common Lodging House Company, Tunbridge Wells. Amelia Scott was the author of 'Women of Sacred History', a study concerned with the women of the bible and 'Passing of a Great Dread', a history of the poor law as well as writing a number of articles, pamphlets and speeches for the organisations she was involved in. She died in 1952.
In 1957 Elizabeth (Betty) Betty Vernon was in correspondence with several individuals in relation to the completion of her biography of Philippa Fawcett. She sent typescript copies to a group which included Vera Douie, then the librarian of the Fawcett Society, as well as to Miss Philippa Strachey, the secretary of the Fawcett Society and Dame Margaret Cole. They wrote back to her to point out minor corrections to make to her manuscript.
Philippa Strachey (1872-1968), known as Pippa, was born in 1872 to Lady Jane Maria Strachey and Major Richard Strachey. She was brought up first in India, where her father was a leading figure in the administration, and then in London, where the family moved in 1879. Her mother was active in the movement for women's suffrage and both Philippa and her siblings were encouraged to contribute to this work. In 1906 she became a member of the executive committee of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage and the following year she was elected the secretary of its successor the London Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1906 she joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage, succeeding Edith Palliser as secretary the following year. It was also in 1907 that she joined her mother Lady Jane Maria Strachey in organising what became known as the 'Mud March' at the instigation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and which went from Hyde Park to the Exeter Hall to demand the vote. During the First World War she was deeply involved in various war works, from being the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau for War Workers to participating as a member of the Committee for the London units of the Scottish Women's Hospital from 1914-1919. This war work began her lasting involvement with the issue of women's employment and she remained the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau after 1918 when it became concerned with helping women thrown out of jobs on the return of men from the Front. She remained there until its dissolution, which came in 1922, caused by a financial crisis in the parent organisation. However, subsequently Strachey helped to found a new group to fill the gap, becoming the secretary and then honorary secretary of the Women's Employment Federation. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, family problems took up much of her time as she nursed both her mother and her brother Lytton until their deaths. However, all through this time she remained active in the London Society for Women's Service and when it was renamed the Fawcett Society in 1951, she was asked to be its honorary secretary. It was that year that she was awarded the CBE for her work for women. She subsequently was made a governor of Bedford College. Increasing ill-health slowed the pace of her work and blindness finally forced her to enter a nursing home at the end of her life. She died in 1968.
Cornelius Gronow (fl 1917) arranged a visit of Sylvia Pankhurst to the Rhondda in 1917.
Daisy Dobson (fl 1927-1950) was the friend and private secretary of Dr Agnes Maude Royden, the pacifist and Christian preacher. Dobson accompanied Royden on her lecture tours of the world, sending reports home to friends and family.
Dorothy Mary Elliott (1897-1980) was born in 1897 and educated at the University of Reading where she graduated in Modern Languages. During the First World War she was involved in Munitions work in Birmingham in 1916 and it was here that she first became involved in the trade union movement. After this experience, Elliott attended classes at the London School of Economics where she met the trade unionist Mary MacArthur. It was through MacArthur that she was introduced to the National Federation of Women Workers for which she was to become an organiser in Woolwich Arsenal in 1918. From 1921 she transferred her organising skills to the National Union of General and Municipal Workers before moving to Lancashire in 1924 to continue her work there. When Margaret Bondfield became a Member of Parliament, Elliott was appointed the union's Chief Woman Organiser from 1924 to 1925 and then again in 1929 to 1931. In 1931 she became the Chair of the National Labour Women's Conference and a member of the Standing Joint Committee on Industrial Women's Organisations. She also worked with the Women's Electrical Association in this period and became a regular speaker at the Labour Party's Women's' Sections and the Co-operative Women's Guild. By 1939 she was Chief Woman Officer for the Trade Union movement as a whole. During the Second World War Elliott was one of the representatives sent by the TUC sent to attend the Committee of Woman Power and was a member of the Women's Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Labour from 1941. Throughout her career she had been an advocate of equal pay for women and of the married woman's right to work. It was this perspective that she brought to her post-war work on the committee concerned with the admission of women to the senior foreign service and the Women's Consultative Committee dealing with the resettlement of women in civilian life. It was in 1946 that she was granted a sabbatical by the union to become Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Houseworkers and it was in this capacity that she attended the International Labour Organisation's meetings in Hamburg to discuss the conditions of domestic workers the following year. Initially set up to improve the status and conditions of women working in the home, under her guidance the National Institute expanded into an education and training centre which set examinations and granted diplomas, becoming known as the Institute of House Craft (Training and Employment). She continued this work until 1958 when she retired from the organisation but did not give up her trade union work until 1961 when she finally retired. Elliott died in 1980.
Vera Douie (1894-1979) was born in Lahore in 1894, the daughter of a British Civil servant in India. She was educated at the Godolphin School, Salisbury before going on to complete her studies at Oxford University before degrees could be taken by women. She subsequently became a library assistant at the War Office Library from 1916 until 1921, the year in which she became the indexer of 'The Medical History of the War'. She later became the librarian of the London National Society for Women's Service at the Women's Service Library at Marsham St, London between 1926 and her retirement in 1967. It was Douie who, during this period, laid the foundations of its transformation into the Fawcett Library (now The Women's Library). She was active in the women's movement throughout her life and was particularly involved in the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. During the Second World War she was a fervent campaigner for equal rights and published 'The Lesser Half' on behalf of the Women's Publicity Planning Association in 1943, examining the 'laws, regulations and practices introduced during the present war, which embody discrimination against women'. After the war, she also published Daughters of Britain: an account of the work of British women during the 2nd World War (1950). When she retired in 1967, she was awarded the OBE for her life's work. She died in 1979.
Dorothy Shelagh Brown (fl. 1942-1945) was held as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp in the Far East during World War Two, 1942-1945. During this time, she wrote a diary of her daily experiences in this environment.
Elsa Fraenkel (1892-1975) was a sculptor and artist who became friends with Sylvia Pankhurst during the post-war period. They met for the first time in 1950 Fraenkel herself became interested in Ethiopia, the country with which Pankhurst was involved at the time. By 1950 the former was helping to organise cultural events featuring the African nation in London and contributed some of her own work to the celebration that was held in London when the Princess Tsahay Hospital was dedicated. Before Sylvia Pankhurst went to live in Ethiopia in 1956, she left her paintings and sketches with Mrs Elsa Fraenkel, herself a sculptor. When Pankhurst had moved to Ethiopia, Fraenkel contacted her with the aim of creating an exhibition of her work during her time with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Pankhurst was unable to help her having left behind much of the work she had created at the turn of the century, but was able to give her information on the time and send her photographs of a WSPU fete in the Princes Skating Rink. The eventual exhibition of work which was eventually arranged by Fraenkel and Lady Winstedt took place at the French Institute on 5 Dec 1959, sponsored by the Suffragette Fellowship, the Women's Freedom league and the Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society. Fraenkel also wrote an (undated) article on 'Sylvia Pankhurst : student days' which was based on notes supplied by Sylvia. After Pankhurst's death in 1960, Elsa offered a portrait of her to the National Portrait Gallery.
Elsie Fyffe (fl 1940) was a housewife during the Second World War. Just after the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1939, the British economy was placed on a siege footing. This meant that all resources from metal to foodstuffs became scarcer and stocks had to be preserved. In 1940 Lord Woolton was appointed Minister of Food, becoming responsible for operating the rationing system, and a parallel public relations campaign to encourage housewives to make the best of what was available. Food Ministry advertisements were regularly placed in newspapers offering advice on conserving the limited amounts and variety of fare available as well as conserving fuel. Propaganda campaigns revolved around making citizens feel that they were contributing to the war effort by following this guidance. It was in this context that Mrs Elsie Fyffe was informed by the Sunday Pictorial newspaper that she was one of the winners of their award for the twenty best housewives in Britain. For this, she was awarded a diploma signed by Lord Woolton and interviewed by the periodical.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917), the daughter of Newson Garrett and Louise Dunnell, was born in Whitechapel, London in 1836, one of twelve children. From 1851 to 1853 she was educated in Blackheath but while visiting Northumberland in 1854, Elizabeth met Emily Davies who would remain a friend and supporter for the rest of her life. Five years later Garrett met Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to qualify as a doctor, influencing the former to enter the field of medicine. Attempts to enter several medical schools failed; instead Garrett became a nurse at Middlesex Hospital though her efforts to attend lectures for the male doctors failed. However, it came to light that the Society of Apothecaries did not specify that females were banned from taking their examinations and in 1865 Garrett sat and passed their examination before establishing a medical practice in London. That same year, she joined Emily Davies, Dorothea Beale and Francis Mary Buss to form the Kensington Society and in 1866 signed their petition for women's enfranchisement. In 1866 Garrett created a women's dispensary and four years later was appointed visiting physician to the East London Hospital where she met James Anderson, the man who was to become her husband in Feb 1871. Though she later graduated from the University of Paris, the British Medical Register refused to recognise her MD degree.
Over the next few years she became the first woman elected to serve on a school board in England, the mother of three children, opened the women-run New Hospital for Women in London with Elizabeth Blackwell and helped Sophia Jex-Blake to establish the London Medical School for Women to which Garrett Anderson was elected Dean of the London School of in 1884. Though she was never on the executives of any of the major suffrage societies, she did chair meetings and was a member first of the Central Committee of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and then later of the London Society for Women's Suffrage. On her retirement she moved to Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and became mayor herself, following her husband's death, in 1908. Subsequently, she returned to suffrage politics, but left the National Union of Suffrage Societies, which her sister Millicent Fawcett dominated, and became active in the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) until 1911 when she objected to their arson campaign. Garrett Anderson and Skelton had one son, Alan Garrett Anderson (1877-1952), and two daughters, Margaret, who died of meningitis in 1875, and Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873-1943). Alan followed his father to become a public servant and shipowner, whilst Louisa went on to become a distinguished doctor herself and active suffragette. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson died on 17 Dec 1917.
Elsie May Cannon worked at the magazine Good Housekeeping and in a book publishing department in the 1940s-1970s. Her aunt was the barrister Helena Normanton (1882-1957).
Helena Florence Normanton (1882-1957) was born on 14 Dec 1882 to Jane Amelia and William Alexander Normanton in Kensington. In 1886 the family moved to Brighton. From 1900 Helena attended York Place Secondary School, Brighton (later renamed Margaret Hardy School, forerunner of Varndean School for Girls). From 1903-1905 she attended teacher training at Edge College, Liverpool. In 1907 Helena obtained a diploma in French language, literature and history from Dijon University. In 1912 she achieved her BA Hon First Class in History (London University). From 1913 -1915 she was a senior mistress for History at Glasgow High School for Girls and lecturer to postgraduate students of Glasgow University in Principles and methods of teaching history and then a University Extension lecturer to the University of London. From 1918-1920 she edited 'India' a political weekly. On 24 Dec 1919 Helena was admitted as a student at the Middle Temple, the day after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act received Royal Assent. On 26 Oct 1921 she married Gavin Bowman Watson Clark (d 1948). On 17 Nov 1922 Helena was called to the Bar, a few months after Ivy Williams had become the first woman to do so (but she did not practise). In 1922 Helena was the first woman to be briefed at High Court (successful divorce petition). In 1924 she was the first woman to be briefed at Old Bailey. Also in that year she was the first married British woman to be issued a passport in her maiden name ('as legal and only name'). In 1926 she was first woman to be briefed at the North London Sessions. In 1948 she was the first woman to prosecute in a murder trial (young soldier found guilty of murdering his wife) in the North-Eastern Circuit. In Apr 1949 she was the first woman KC (with Rose Heilbron).
In 1952 Helena drew up a memorandum of evidence as President of the Married Women's Association for consideration by the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce (criticism led to her resignation, withdrawing the memorandum and forming the Council of Married Women and submitting a revised memorandum to the Royal Commission). In 1956 Helena was the first recorded donor to the fund to create a new university in Sussex. Helena died in Oct 1957 and was buried at Ovingdean churchyard, Brighton.
Positions held : Treasurer and Secretary of the Old Bailey Bar Mess; Honorary member of the New York Women's Bar Association and of the women lawyers' association, Kappa Beta Pi (USA); Principal elected officer for Europe of the International Legal Sorority
Other interests : wrote extensively for Good Housekeeping magazine and other publications eg 'The Queen', 'Quiver'; Associate Grand Dame for Europe of the International Society of Women Lawyers; Chair of the International legislative sub-committee of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women; Executive member of the National Council for Equal Citizenship; Executive member of the State Children's Association; First Secretary of the National Women's Citizens' Association; Founder and Honorary Secretary to the Magna Carta Society; Founding member of the Horatian Society
Katharine C Bushnell (1855-1946) was born in Peru, Illinois on 5 Feb 1855. She became a doctor of medicine and a learned scholar of Hebrew and Greek. During her travels in India, Bushnell became involved in exposing the control of prostitution by the Indian government. She then proceeded to England to campaign against its continuance. During the early 1920s, Bushnell returned to America where she worked on her book, God's Word to Women, which was published in 1923. This book was a culmination of the work invested in the 'Women's Correspondence Bible Class'. The lecture notes of this class provided the foundation of the published work. Bushnell held positions such as President of the Union to Combat the Sanitation of Vice (America) and Vice-president of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene. Katharine Bushnell died, aged ninety years of age, on 26 Jan 1946. Note: Nothing is known of Mrs F White [TWL 7FWH] other than her being a pupil enrolled on Bushnell's 'Women's Correspondence Bible Class'.
Gertrude Leverkus (1899-1976) was born in Oldenberg in Germany in Sep 1898 just before her family moved permanently to Manchester. From 1910, they settled in Forest Hill outside of London where Leverkus attended Sydenham High School. She proceeded to attend London University College before going to work in an architect's office. She then went on to study architecture, again at London University College, passed the Royal Institute of British Architects' exams and took the Town Planning Certificate in 1925. She was given several commissions for work after this and in 1930 she was appointed architect to the Women's Pioneer Housing Limited and undertook the conversion of around forty large properties into small flats for single women. In the early 1930s she also went into partnership with Eleanor KD Hughes before being commissioned to design the Out Patients' Department at the Annie McCall Maternity Hospital in Clapham. Her place in the profession was demonstrated by her election to the post of Secretary of the Women's Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architects in the late 1930s. During the Second World War, Leverkus was appointed as an organiser of evacuees from London. From 1940 she was officially known as the organiser for the Borough of Holborn, working with the Food Advice Bureau and the National Savings Campaign in joint work. However, this work ended in 1943 when she was appointed the Housing Architect in the Borough Architecture and Town Planning Office of West Ham, a position she would hold throughout the time when the area was a used as a model for new theories in housing. She resigned in 1948 and began work for Norman and Dawbarn where she would stay until her retirement at the age of 62 in 1960. During this period she became involved with the Women's Provisional Club. She spent the rest of her life acting as a governor of the Brixton School of Building and nursing her sisters. She died in 1976.
Gwen Lees ([1900-1988]) was born into a poor family somewhere at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Her mother was a servant who found herself unable to take her children with her when she was offered a position as a cook. Because of this, Lees and her brother David were placed in a workhouse. In Apr 1982, when Lees was recovering from a stroke, she sent three chapters of an autobiography provisionally entitled 'Jenny', to an agent Rebecca O'Rourke. The autobiography detailed her experiences as a child, feeling that her experiences of the harsh regime might be of some sociological interest. In 1983, the manuscript was rejected by The Women's Press but the first chapter was later accepted by Sheba Feminist Publishers for inclusion in a new anthology entitled 'Everyday Matters II' published Jul 1983.
Helen Caroline Bentwich née Franklin (1892-1972) was the daughter of Arthur Ellis Franklin (1857-1938), senior partner in the banking house of A Keyser and Co, leader of the New West End Synagogue, and brother-in-law of the Liberal cabinet minister, Herbert Samuel, and Caroline Franklin née Jacob. Helen's brother was the suffrage campaigner, Hugh Franklin (1889-1962); her niece was the scientist Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958). Helen trained in social work at Bedford College and ran a Girl Guide unit in the East End and a Jewish Girls' Club in Soho, London. During a visit to Egypt with her parents in 1910 she met her future husband, Norman de Mattos Bentwich (1883-1971). Norman, who had been educated at Cambridge and called to the bar in 1908, worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Justice until the outbreak of war in 1914 when he joined the British Army in Egypt and took part in the conquest of Jerusalem. The couple married in 1915. During the First World War Helen undertook a variety of work: in a hospital; at Woolwich Arsenal - from which she was dismissed for her trade union activity; and as an organiser of the Land Girls. In 1918 Norman became legal secretary to the British military administration in Palestine and, after the establishment of the Mandate in 1922, the country's first Attorney-General. Helen lived with him in Jerusalem until 1929 when his position, as an official and a Jew, became increasingly difficult; they returned to London, and Norman retired from the Colonial service in 1931. He became Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University in 1932 and was active in many spheres, including serving as director of the League of Nations high commission for refugees from Germany (1933-1935). He also served in the Ministry of Information during World War II and was involved in the National Peace Council (1944-1946). In the inter-war and post-war years Helen was active in Labour politics and stood for Parliament, although she was never elected. However, she was prominent on the London County Council (LCC), of which she became chair in 1956. Helen died in 1972.
Helen Ward (fl. 1924-1925) was a member of the Blanesburgh Committee set up under the chairmanship of Lord Blanesburgh to investigate the question of the parliamentary candidature of Crown servants and their candidature in municipal elections. It reported in 1925.
Hugh Franklin (1889-1962) was born on 27 May 1889 at 28 Pembridge Villas, Paddington, the son of Arthur Ellis Franklin, JP, a senior partner in the banking house of A Keyser and Co, and a director of several companies. The Franklins were practising members of the Jewish faith and were sufficiently prosperous to own property in the country, Chartridge Lodge, Chesham. Hugh Franklin was educated at Clifton College and in 1908 he went up to Caius College, Cambridge, where he read engineering. After his first year at Cambridge he made a break with the family tradition by declaring in a letter to his father his lack of religious belief that remained in some question for the next two years. In 1909 he attended with friends a suffrage meeting at the Queen's Hall, London, addressed by Mrs Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst and Mrs Pethick Lawrence, which was his first contact with the militants. During the summer he took part by selling papers in the processing from Kingsway to Hyde Park. From this he took up the suffragette practice of chalking pavements and sold papers for open-air WSPU meetings, in the Chesham area. At the beginning of the October term, 1909, Franklin decided to abandon the idea of a career in engineering that his father had intended for him and neglected his engineering studies for economics and sociology, which provoked further bitter family controversy. His interest in politics was growing and several drafts for speeches and debates exist for his years at Cambridge. Already a member of the Fabian Society and the ILP and the Cambridge Men's League for Woman Suffrage (for which he arranged meetings for Mrs Fawcett and Lady McLaren), he joined the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement on 22 Feb 1910. He provoked further dispute with his family by finally abandoning religious observance and by declaring his intention of not returning to Cambridge. After persuasion Franklin did return to Cambridge, but devoted all his energies to organising a meeting for Mrs Pankhurst in May at the Cambridge Guildhall and he was disciplined by his College authorities for his attempts at publicising it. On 26 May 1910 he joined the Young Purple White and Green Club. He took little trouble over his final examinations and missed some papers, as he was helping the MPU in London to organise for a Suffrage Procession from the Embankment to the Albert Hall and 'came down for good' from Cambridge at the end of June. In the following months, Franklin took an even more active part in WSPU and MPU meetings, both speaking and organising. He accepted reluctantly (after an initial refusal), an offer from Sir Matthew Nathan, Secretary to the Post Office, to be his private secretary (his uncle, Herbert Samuel, was Postmaster-General at the time). He gave evidence at the trial of Victor Duval, arrested in connection with an attempted protest at a meeting of Lloyd George's, at the Temple in October. He was among those present and was himself arrested during the events of 'Black Friday' (18 Nov 1910), at which large scale brutality by the police was alleged to have taken place when members of the WSPU attempted a mass lobby of Parliament. Franklin was among those who were discharged but he considered Winston Churchill, Home Secretary, personally responsible for police orders and was determined to make his protest. He was among those who interrupted Churchill's meeting at Highbury on 22 Nov 1910 and at Bradford on 26 Nov 1910, being ejected on both occasions. On the same train as Churchill returning from the Bradford meeting, Franklin approached Churchill with a dog whip and attempted to strike him, saying 'Take this, you cur, for the treatment of the suffragists'. For this offence, Franklin received six weeks imprisonment, the first of the three terms which he was to receive during the next three years for militant protests and which also caused his dismissal as Sir Matthew Nathan's Secretary. Franklin's activities were, from November 1910-1913 directed exclusively towards work for the Men's Political Union, as Honorary Assistant Organiser, while in Nov 1911 he resigned from the NUWSS affiliated Men's League for Women's Suffrage, being in disagreement with the League's reliance on a suffrage amendment to the Government's Reform Bill.
His second militant protest in Mar 1911 was that of throwing a stone at Churchill's house in Eccleston Square, for which he received a further month in prison and was forcibly fed throughout his term. The third and most dramatic of Hugh Franklin's acts of militancy consisted of setting fire to a railway carriage at Harrow station on 25 Oct 1912, for which he was sentenced to nine months in prison. Refusing food during his imprisonment, he was forcibly fed over 100 times and was the first suffragette prisoner to be released, in May 1913, under the Prisoners (Temporary Release for Ill-health) Act, 1913, more familiarly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'. Breaking his parole, Franklin escaped to the Continent, where he stayed under the alias of 'Henry Forster' until shortly after the outbreak of war. Franklin was disqualified for war service on grounds of eyesight and served on the staff of the Ordnance Factories, Woolwich. On 28 Sep 1915 he married Elsie Duval, sister of his MPU colleague Victor Duval, but she died only months after the War ended, on 1 Jan 1919, from heart failure, partly the result over the years of her own experience of forcible feeding. After the War he entered the timber trade and took no further part in politics until 1931 when he left business for writing and rejoined formally the Labour Party. In the 1931 General Election he contested Hornsey and in 1935, St Albans, unsuccessfully on both occasions. After standing in a number of local government elections, he won a seat on the Middlesex County Council in 1946. From 1934-1949 he held various co-opted and elected positions on committees of the LCC, Middlesex County Council and Metropolitan Water Board. He also held office in the New Fabian Research Bureau, the National Executive of the Labour Part and on boards of governors of schools and on hospital management committees. Franklin's imprisonment for his militant suffragette offences led him to a deep and abiding interest in penal reform. In addition to membership of the Howard League, he submitted a memorandum to his uncle, Herbert Samuel, when Home Secretary in 1932, and wrote a play 'On Remand' which he endeavoured to have produced in the theatre or filmed, but without success. In 1921 Hugh Franklin married a second time, Elsie Constance Tuke at Lewisham Register Office. He died 21 Oct 1962.
Elsie Duval (1892-1919) was born in 1892, the daughter of Ernest and Emily Duval who together with their children were keen suffragists. Duval joined the Women's Social & Political Union in 1907, the year after her mother. Unlike her mother, however, she did not leave the organisation to join the Women's Freedom League when the Pankhursts changed the constitution, but the mother and daughter did work together for three years in the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement which Victor Duval, Elsie's brother, founded. The younger female Duval was arrested on the 23 Nov 1911 for obstructing the police. After this event, she was officially accepted by the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) as a militant protest volunteer. On 27 Jun 1912, Duval was arrested for smashing a Clapham Post Office window. Subsequently she was remanded for one week in custody 'for the state of her mind to be enquired into', and then sentenced to one month in the third division at Holloway, during which time she was forcibly fed nine times before being released on the 3 Aug 1912. She was arrested again in Apr 1913 for loitering with intent (with Phyllis Brady) and was again sent to prison for a month. She was forcibly fed during both remand and whilst serving her sentence, being seriously ill throughout and often resisting strenuously. Her prison diary for this year refers to 'pain at the heart' after one of these incidents. She was released under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act, 1913, (commonly known as the 'Cat and Mouse' Act) which allowed for prisoners to return to prison on recovery. Duval was the first prisoner released from Holloway under the Act and the second to be released (Hugh Franklin) was the first) from any prison. During her last imprisonment (according to Hugh Franklin's biographical notes) a charge was being prepared for burning Lady White's house at Egham, with 'Phyllis Brady', (Olive Beamish) for which the latter received five years' imprisonment. Duval burnt also Sanderstead station and other places, before her arrest, together with 'Phyllis Brady'. Duval narrowly avoided arrest on her final release, instead, she and her fiancé Hugh Franklin left for France to avoid the re-imprisonment that her terms of temporary release had demanded. She spent several months working as 'Eveline Dukes' in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland armed with false testimonials provided by friends. She was only able to return to Britain at the outbreak of the First World War when a general amnesty was granted to suffragettes. After this she became active in the war work of the WSPU. She and Hugh Franklin were finally married in a Jewish ceremony at the London Synagogue in Sep 1915. Two years later, she joined the Pankhursts' Women's Party, but died on the 1 Jan 1919 of heart failure, a victim of the influenza epidemic.
Hilda Mary Seligman (fl. 1936-1947) founded the "Skippo" Fund, which supplied the first health vans to serve isolated villages in India and Pakistan. The Fund's 'Asoka-Akbar Mobile Health Vans' were given to the All India Women's Conference to administer. She was the author of three small books: When Peacocks Called (1940), Skippo of Nonesuch (1943), Asoka, Emperor of India (1947).
Isobel Denby (fl 1905-1912) was an author active at the end of the nineteenth century. She appears to have undertaken a correspondence with a clergyman from 1905 to 1911. From this emerges a woman who is critical of the contemporary teaching of the Church of England on women. She specifically suggests revisions to the marriage service and advances thoughts on the role of women in the economic system of the time and in the ministry. The intense intellectual relationship between the author and the clergyman seems to have been ended in 1911 through the intervention of a female friend and the correspondence was published the following year as 'Unconventional Talks with a Modern DD Letters Sent and Unsent'.
Unknown.
Kay Pilpel (fl 1930s) grew up in the Jewish community of Stamford Hill, London, in the 1930s as the daughter of a lithographer. She attended Tottenham High School for Girls.
Louie Luker (1873-1971) was born in Kensington in London in 1873 to a family of artists. She studied art in Bushey, in Hertfordshire, under Hubert von Herkomer from 1900-1903 but emigrated to South Africa in 1904. There she worked as a painter before marrying Philip Burrell, only returning to Britain in 1908 for the birth of her daughter, Philippa. Her husband died in Durban before being able to join her. In London, she resumed her career as a portraitist and achieved considerable success as a society artist. She was also the General Secretary of Artists' Suffrage League. She became ill in 1912, subsequently recovering during a trip to Canada. Her career in Britain ended abruptly in 1914 when commissions stopped as the First World War began. In the light of this, she travelled to California where she spent the rest of the war and where she found a new audience. She returned to London in 1919 but was unable to find work. Instead she rented out rooms and became a cook until 1923 when she came to the attention of Mrs Stanley who became her patron. She travelled to India in 1928 where she painted members of the ruling classes including the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, and Field Marshall Sir William Birdwood. However, her career ended soon after due to ill health. She died in 1971.
Mary Ann Rawle (1878-1964) was born in Lancashire in 1878 and from the age of ten worked in a cotton mill. In 1900 she married Francis Rawle, an iron turner, with whom she had two children. She became active in local industrial politics and was a member of her local branch of the Independent Labour Party at Ashton-Under-Lyne. Six years later she was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and was one of the group of 400 women textile workers who went as a deputation to the Prime Minister on 19 May 1906. During this event, she came into contact with Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie and Jessie Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst, and accompanied the group who was allowed into the Foreign Office on that occasion. In the autumn of that same year, she assisted Hannah Mitchell when she was appointed a part-time organiser for the WSPU in Oldham. In Mar 1907 she attended the second Women's Parliament (dressed in shawl and clogs) and was arrested in London and sentenced to two weeks in Holloway Prison. In 1907, however, she left the WSPU for the Women's Freedom League and became the secretary of its Ashton-Under-Lyne branch. She moved to Grantham in 1910 and presided at a branch meeting of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies there in 1913. She would later stand as a Labour candidate in the Grantham municipal elections and was chair of her branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild for 17 years. In 1945 she was chair of the Grantham branch of the Old Age Pensions Association. She died in 1964.
Mildred Anna Rosalie Tuker (1862-1957) was born in Apr 1862, the daughter of Rosalie du Chemin and Stephen Tuker. She was educated privately before studying moral sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1880 to 1883. Her work appears to first have been published in 1887 and she would continue to work as a writer until the period just before the outbreak of the Second World War. She spent the period in 1893-1910 mainly in Rome, which became her second home. Her most important works were The School of York in 1887, The Liturgy in Rome in 1897, Handbook to Christian and Ecclesiastical Rome in 1897-1900, Cambridge in 1907, Ecce Mater in 1915, The Liturgy in Rome in 1925 and Past and Future of Ethics in 1938. In the early part of the twentieth century she became involved with the women's suffrage movement as well as the role of women in the Roman Catholic Church. Her articles on Catholicism were published in a wide range of periodicals such as Hibbert's Journal and the Fortnightly Review. By 1911 she had become a member of both the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society and the Women's Social and Political Union. She published a number of articles in the pages of Votes for Women, signing herself MART, as well as being asked by Christabel Pankhurst to lobby MPs on a number of occasions. She took part in the series of major marches that took place in London in 1908 and 1910 and was in the Joint procession that took place in 1911. In addition to her suffrage and theological activities, she was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia, Rome and a Lady of Justice of the Order of St John of Jerusalem as well as being on the expert adviser's panel of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1927. Her writing focused on the historical position of women, particularly in the Christian religion, and the theological and ethical rationale for this. She died in Mar 1954.
Mary Beatrice Crowle (1874- fl 1930) was born in Brisbane in 1874, the daughter of Mr WE Finucane. In her lifetime she was a suffragist, voluntary worker, health practitioner, holder of public office and broadcaster. After her marriage to the naval officer Captain Crowle, she began a series of travels that would eventually end in her settling in England. Crowle was active in the suffrage movement in the pre-war period, becoming a member of the Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association by 1913 and the honorary secretary of the Plymouth branch in the following year. During the first year of the First World War she worked with the Red Cross as a nurse and established a Ladies Rifle Club in the naval town. The following year, she was one of the first members of the local branch of the Women's Police Force and began lecturing on the role of her native Australia in the war. In the post-1918 period when women had been given a vote, she became a member of the committee of the Bath and District Women Citizens' Association and was elected to the Bath Union Board of Guardians. During the 1920s she became involved with broadcasting and became a Selborne Society Lecturer, following this activity in the 1930s by joining the League of Nations Union. Towards the end of her life, she became concerned with issues of vivisection and homeopathic medicine.
Mary Eliza Haweis née Joy (1848-1898) was the eldest daughter of the Victorian portrait artist Thomas Musgrove Joy and his wife Eliza. She herself painted and exhibited. She illustrated books, designed book covers and many of her woodcuts appeared in Cassell's magazine. However, she is best known as an important figure in the female literature of household taste that flourished in the 1880s, her most famous work being The Art of Decoration (1881). She wrote several books and also contributed widely to contemporary women's magazines, mostly on women's clothes and interior design. In 1867, aged 19, she married Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901), popular preacher, musician, lecturer and incumbent of St James, Marylebone. The couple lived in Welbeck Street and later in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at the centre of an intellectual, scientific and literary circle. The marriage was a difficult one, with her husband's extra-marital affairs causing pain to Mary Eliza. They had three children Lionel (b. 1878), Hugolin and Stephen (who was delivered by the female doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson). Mary died in 1898.
Lady Mary Gertrude Emmott (1886-1954) was born Mary Lees in Oldham in 1866. She was the daughter of John William Lees and Elizabeth Lees and was educated at Queen's College in London. She married the Liberal MP Lord Alfred Emmott in 1887, with whom she had two daughters. She became the Mayoress of Oldham in 1891, the same year that she became one of the original members of the Board of the Oldham branch of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This social welfare work was to continue through her life, she was the first woman to be elected to the Oldham Board of Guardians in 1898 and went on to represent the Women's Industrial Council on the Council of the National Association of Women's Lodging Houses in 1910. During the First World War she was involved in organising aid to Belgian refugees and in its aftermath she was appointed to the Chair of the Women's Subcommittee Advisory Council by the Ministry of Reconstruction. Her interest in housing was continued by her work as a member of the Housing Advisory Council overseen by the Ministry of Health, membership of the Advisory Council of the Local Government Board on Housing in 1919, membership of the Garden Cities and Town Planning Association from 1932-3 and presidency of the Women's Homes Association in the 1930s. Emmott was also active in the area of women's status. She helped establish a branch of the National Council of Women in Oldham in 1897 and became the vice-chair of the Women's National Liberation Foundation. Later she would be successively a member of the Executive committee, president of the London branch and the Chair of the National Council of Women's Parliamentary Legislation Committee before being appointed acting vice-president in 1927 and president from the following year until 1938. She was also closely associated with the London Society for Women's Suffrage, as a member of the Executive Council from the end of the nineteenth century to its transformation into the Fawcett Society in 1951, of which she was elected President months before her death in 1954.
Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929) was born in Suffolk in 1847, the daughter of Newson and Louisa Garrett and the sister of Samuel Garrett, Agnes Garrett, Louise Smith and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The sisters' early interest in the issue of women's suffrage and commitment to the Liberal party were heightened after attending a speech given in London by John Stuart Mill in July 1865. Though considered too young to sign the petition in favour of votes for women, which was presented to the House of Commons in 1866, Millicent attended the debate on the issue in May 1867. This occurred a month after she married the professor of political economy and radical Liberal MP for Brighton, Henry Fawcett. Throughout their marriage, the future cabinet minister supported his wife's activities while she acted as his secretary due to his blindness. Their only child, Philippa Fawcett, was born the following year and that same month Millicent Garrett Fawcett published her first article, on the education of women. In Jul 1867, Millicent Garrett Fawcett was asked to join the executive committee of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage and was one of the speakers at its first public meeting two years later. She continued her work with the London National Society until after the death of John Stuart Mill in 1874, when she left the organisation to work with the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage. This was a step which she had avoided taking when the latter was formed in 1871 due to its public identification with the campaign for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Fawcett, despite her support for the movement's actions, had initially believed that the suffrage movement might be damaged by identification with such controversial work. However, the two groups later merged in 1877 as the new Central Committee for Women's Suffrage and a new executive committee was formed which included Fawcett herself. Her influence helped guide the group towards support for moderate policies and methods. She did little public speaking during this period but after the death of her husband in 1884 and a subsequent period of depression, she was persuaded to become a touring speaker once more in 1886 and began to devote her time to the work of the women's suffrage movement. In addition to women's suffrage Millicent Garrett Fawcett also became involved in the newly created National Vigilance Association, established in 1885, alongside campaigners such as J Stansfeld MP, Mr WT Stead, Mrs Mitchell, and Josephine Butler. In 1894 Fawcett's interest in public morality led her to vigorously campaign against the candidature of Henry Cust as Conservative MP for North Manchester. Cust, who had been known to have had several affairs, had seduced a young woman. Despite marrying Cust's marriage in 1893, after pressure from Balfour, Fawcett felt Cust was unfit for public office. Fawcett's campaign persisted until Cust's resignation in 1895, with some suffrage supporters concerned by Fawcett's doggedness in what they felt was a divisive campaign. In the late nineteenth century, the women's suffrage movement was closely identified with the Liberal Party through its traditional support for their work and the affiliation of many workers such as Fawcett herself. However, the party was, at this time, split over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland. Fawcett herself left the party to become a Liberal Unionist and helped lead the Women's Liberal Unionist Association. When it was proposed that the Central Committee's constitution should be changed to allow political organisations, and principally the Women's Liberal Federation, to affiliate, Fawcett opposed this and became the Honorary Treasurer when the majority of members left to form the Central National Society for Women's Suffrage. However, in 1893 she became one of the leading members of the Special Appeal Committee that was formed to repair the divisions in the movement. On the 19 Oct 1896 she was asked to preside over the joint meetings of the suffrage societies, which resulted in the geographical division of the country and the formation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She was appointed as the honorary secretary of the Central and Eastern Society that year and became a member of the parliamentary committee of the NUWSS itself. It was not until the parent group's reorganisation in 1907 that she was elected president of the National Union, a position that she would retain until 1919. By 1901, she was already eminent enough to be one of the first women appointed to sit on a Commission of Inquiry into the concentration camps created for Boer civilians by the British during the Boer War. Despite this, her work for suffrage never slackened and she was one of the leaders of the Mud March held in Feb 1907 as well as of the NUWSS procession from Embankment to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908. She became one of the Fighting Fund Committee in 1912 and managed the aftermath of the introduction of the policy, in particular during the North West Durham by-election in 1914, when other members opposed a step that effectively meant supporting the Labour Party when an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing in a constituency. When the First World War broke out in Aug 1914, Fawcett called for the suspension of the NUWSS' political work and a change in activities to facilitate war work. This stance led to divisions in the organisation. The majority of its officers and ten of the executive committee resigned when she vetoed their attendance of a Women's Peace Congress in the Hague in 1915. However, she retained her position in the group. During the war, she also found time to become involved in the issue of women's social, political and educational status in India, an area in which she had become interested through her husband and retained after the conflict came to an end. She remained at the head of the NUWSS when the women's suffrage clause was added to the Representation of the People Act in 1918 and attended the Women's Peace Conference in Paris before lobbying the governments assembled there for the Peace Conference in 1919. She retired in Mar 1919 when the NUWSS became the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship but remained on its executive committee. She also continued her activities as the vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, to which she had been elected in 1902, for another year. After this she became the Chair of the journal, the 'Women's Leader', and appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1925. It was in that year that she resigned from both NUSEC and the newspaper's board after opposing the organisation's policy in support of family allowances. She remained active until the end of her life, undertaking a trip to the Far East with her sister Agnes only a short time before her death in 1929.
Margaret Heitland (1860-1938) was born in 1860, the daughter of the Rev WH Bateson DD, Master of St John, College, Cambridge University, and his wife Anna Aitkin. Margaret was educated at Highfield School, Hendon and in Heidelberg, Germany. She and her two sisters, Anna and Mary Bateson were involved with the women's suffrage movement alongside their mother. When the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association was formed in 1884, Margaret Bateson was appointed the first honorary assistant Secretary. However, her main interest was journalism and she entered the profession in 1886. Two years later she began working for the Queen magazine, where she remained for most of her career. In Jan 1888 she organised a campaign of meetings in various towns for the Women's Suffrage Society and in 1895 she was editor of a collection of interviews, which was published under the title of 'Professional Women upon their Professions'. She married William Emmerton Heitland MA, Fellow of St John's College, in Jul 1901 but continued her work after this time and was elected to the executive committee of the Cambridge Association of Women's Suffrage the following year. She supported the Association financially, paying the costs of a Secretary for seven months in 1905. In Dec 1908 she was asked to speak at a private meeting in Bedford which led to the founding of the Bedford Society for Women's Suffrage. It was in Bedford in 1912 that she also spoke to members of the local branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in support of the national organisation's Election Fighting Fund which was aimed at supporting Labour Party candidates in seats where an anti-suffrage Liberal candidate was standing. By 1913 she was the president of the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Executive committee and vice president of the Central Bureau for the Employment of Women, which she had helped to found and on whose behalf she had lectured on women's employment since 1906. In 1920, Heitland was a member of the standing committee of the Cambridge branch of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. She died in 1938.
Pat Caplan (fl 1970-) studied Swahili and anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She became an ethnographic expert on Mafia, an island off the coast of Tanzania, and also worked in Nepal, Madras and Britain. Pat Caplan was one of the founding members of the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, which she joined as a lecturer in 1977. She became Professor of Anthropology in 1989 and continued to teach until 2003. She is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. She was also Director of the University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies 1998-2000 and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth 1997-2001. Her interests have included gender and social inequality; sexuality; kinship; food, health and risk; reflexivity and anthropological ethics; social justice and human rights. She has carried out fieldwork on Mafia Island, Tanzania since 1965, Chennai (Madras) since 1974, and West Wales since 1992. She has authored five books and edited or co-edited six others, as well as writing numerous articles, both academic and non-academic; she has also produced a video and website (both about Mafia Island), a digital data archive about food and health, and an archive on her Nepal research. Caplan became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in the early 1970s, being a member of several local reading and consciousness-raising groups in north London. She also worked as a volunteer for two days a week at the Women's Research and Resources Centre (WRRC) in the mid 1970s, when it was still located in its first home at the Richardson Institute in Gower Street. Pat was a member of the (General) Collective and of the Publications Collective. Like many women academics at the time, Pat initially found it difficult to obtain a full-time university job. Many female academics held only part-time or temporary posts and this was often the experience of members of the WRRC. Pat attended the National Women's conferences held throughout the 1970s, and also conferences in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s concerning the teaching of women's studies (mainly in universities). As an academic she has remained active in feminism, and has taught a number of courses on women and gender as well as carrying out research in this area. She is currently a Trustee of the development charity Action Aid, and has responsibility on the Board for women's rights.
Philippa Strachey (1872-1968), known as Pippa, was born in 1872 to Lady Jane Maria Strachey and Major Richard Strachey. She was brought up first in India, where her father was a leading figure in the administration, and then in London, where the family moved in 1879. Her mother was active in the movement for women's suffrage and both Philippa and her siblings were encouraged to contribute to this work. In 1906 she became a member of the executive committee of the Central Society for Women's Suffrage and the following year she was elected the secretary of its successor the London Society for Women's Suffrage. In 1906 she joined the London Society for Women's Suffrage, succeeding Edith Palliser as secretary the following year. It was also in 1907 that she joined her mother Lady Jane Maria Strachey in organising what became known as the 'Mud March' at the instigation of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and which went from Hyde Park to the Exeter Hall to demand the vote. During the First World War she was deeply involved in various war works, from being the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau for War Workers to participating as a member of the Committee for the London units of the Scottish Women's Hospital from 1914-1919. This war work began her lasting involvement with the issue of women's employment and she remained the secretary of the Women's Service Bureau after 1918 when it became concerned with helping women thrown out of jobs on the return of men from the Front. She remained there until its dissolution, which came in 1922, caused by a financial crisis in the parent organisation. However, subsequently Strachey helped to found a new group to fill the gap, becoming the secretary and then honorary secretary of the Women's Employment Federation. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, family problems took up much of her time as she nursed both her mother and her brother Lytton until their deaths. However, all through this time she remained active in the London Society for Women's Service and when it was renamed the Fawcett Society in 1951, she was asked to be its honorary secretary. It was that year that she was awarded the CBE for her work for women. She subsequently was made a governor of Bedford College. Increasing ill-health slowed the pace of her work and blindness finally forced her to enter a nursing home at the end of her life. She died in 1968.
Nina Popplewell (1890-1979) took the Social Science Certificate Course at London School of Economics (LSE) (1913-1914) and gained a Bsc Econ in sociology / social psychology in 1916. She was Professor Hobhouse's sole honours student and contemporary with Mary Stocks, Lord Piercy and Sir Theo Gregory. She was tutored by Clement Attlee and taught by Sidney Webb. After hearing a speech by Mrs Pankhurst in 1911, she began work at the offices of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Lincoln's Inn Fields, sorting letters, making tea and helping at fund-raising bazaars. She started her career by undertaking care committee work in Whitechapel and Stepney and became Vice-Chair of Stepney Juvenile Advisory Committee and a member of the main Employment Committee. Following her degree she worked at the Trade Boards as an assistant secretary and was the only woman on the staff. After five years in post, she was compelled to retire on her marriage to Frank Popplewell, although she was able to return for a year at the end of the First World War. She was later Secretary of the Equal Pay Campaign Committee and active in the National Council of Women and the Fawcett Society. Nina Popplewell was a volunteer in the Fawcett Library and as a lover of cricket.
Dr Patricia Shaw (fl 1948-1965) was employed by the Boots Pure Drug Company and investigated the health of shopworkers.
Lady Stella Reading (1894-1971) was born Stella Charnaud in 1894 in Constantinople where her father worked for the British Foreign Service. She was educated in Europe before becoming a secretary. She was posted to India as the secretary of the new Viceroy's wife before becoming part of the Viceroy's secretariat in Delhi. There, she met John Isaacs, the Marquis of Reading whom she would marry after the death of his wife in 1931. He died in 1935, soon after their return to England. Lady Reading became increasingly involved in social work such as the Personal Service League (PSL) and was elected to a number of committees as well as becoming a magistrate. Her work with the PSL meant that it was her that the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, approached to set up the Women's Voluntary Service for Air Raid Precautions in 1938. The organisation, which soon became known as the simply the Women's Voluntary Service or WRS, recruited and organised female volunteers before and during the war. After 1945, Lady Reading and the organisation continued their work and it was for this that she was created a Life Peer in Jul 1958, becoming the first woman to take her seat in the House of Lords as Baroness Swanborough. She died on 21 May 1971.
Teresa Billington-Greig (1877-1964) was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1877 and brought up in Blackburn in a family of drapers. Although from a Roman Catholic family, Billington-Greig became an agnostic whilst still in her teens. Having left school with no qualifications she was initially apprenticed to the millinery trade. However, she ran away from home and educated herself well enough at night classes to become a teacher. She worked as a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Manchester, studying at Manchester University in her spare time, until her own agnosticism made this impossible. From there Billington-Greig joined the Municipal Education School service where her religious beliefs brought her into conflict with her employers. However, through the Education Committee there she met Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 who found her work in a Jewish school, while that same year she became a member and organiser of the Independent Labour Party. In Apr 1904 she was the founder and honorary secretary of the local branch of the Equal Pay League within the National Union of Teachers. In either late 1903 or early 1904, she joined the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) and became one of their travelling speakers. She was sent to London with Annie Kenney to foster the movement there and to create a London-based organisation, which eventually became the headquarters of the Union. This was done on a small financial budget. The following year she was asked to become the second full-time organiser of the group in its work with the Labour Party and in this capacity she organised publicity and demonstrations as well as building up the group's new national headquarters in London. In Jun 1906, Billington-Greig was arrested in an affray outside of Asquith's home and later sentenced to a fine or two months in Holloway Prison. She was the first suffragette to be sent to Holloway Prison although an anonymous reader of the Daily Mirror paid the fine.
Later in the same month, Jun 1906, she was sent to organise the WSPU in Scotland and it was here that she married Frederick Lewis Greig 1907. However, growing differences with the Pankhursts led to her resignation as a paid organiser, though she remained in the group as a member until Oct 1907. In Oct 1907, Mrs Pankhurst suspended the constitution and took over government of the WSPU with her daughter Christabel. Several prominent members left the WSPU, including Billington-Greig, Mrs How-Martyn and Charlotte Despard who together went on to form the Women's Freedom League (WFL) on the basis of organisational democracy. Billington-Greig was initially appointed the National Honorary Organising Secretary for the League. However, Billington-Greig once more resigned in 1910 when the WFL undertook a new campaign of militancy after the defeat of the Conciliation Bill. Although she did not immediately join another organisation Billington-Greig continued to write and carry out public speaking engagements - activities she continued throughout her life. She also cared for her daughter, born in 1915, and supported her husband's billiards table company. Her only organisational work until 1937 was in the field of sport. Then she once more joined the Woman's Freedom League working for it's Women's Electoral Committee. After the Second World War this became the Women for Westminster group with which she remained involved. Subsequently she took part in the Conference on the Feminine Point of View (1947-1951) and after 1958 she was a member of the Six Point Group while writing her account of the Suffrage Movement. She had a keen interest in the history of the suffrage movement, as well as her writings on the subject she compiled many biographies. Some of these were created for obituaries for the Manchester Guardian. Her writings on behalf of the women's cause (but to some extent in criticism of it) included 'The Militant Suffrage Movement', published in 1911. Other writings cover a wide range of topics of social and feminist interest. She wrote innumerable articles for a variety of journals. Her interests were wide and she was involved in a large number of women's organisation. In 1904 she had formed the Manchester Branch of the Equal Pay League. She held strong views on a variety of subjects of public interest, but especially equality between the sexes in education and in marriage. She died in 1964.
Winifred Adair-Roberts (fl 1910-1974) was brought up in Hampstead, the seventh child of a family of nine; all girls bar one. Her parents were Irish and her father co-owned a chemical works (Boke, Roberts) in Stratford. It moved to Walthamstow in 1974. Winifred was educated at private schools including, briefly, St. Felix, South Wold and Polam Hall (Durham). Winifred also attended a short course at the Gloucester Domestic Science College. She did voluntary work with the 'Women's Voluntary Reserve' in the First World War but did no paid work as she seems to have suffered lifelong poor health. In an interview conducted by Professor Brian Harrison, c 1974, Winifred was thought to be well into her eighties. In the interview she described her family background. All seven sisters went to school (several boarding schools are specified) and to college. She also recalled selling Votes for Women standing in the gutter on Finchley Road, near John Barnes store and stewarding at large Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) meetings. She claimed to have brought hot dinners (cooked at home in Hampstead) to Mrs Pankhurst, hiding out in the WSPU office at Lincolns Inn. They were smuggled in under the noses of the police. Her eldest sister, Muriel, a doctor, was imprisoned as part of the suffrage protests. Ethel, a PE specialist, was apparently good at helping to hide Mrs Pankhurst, who apparently looked like 'Dresden China'.
Between 1974-1981 Brian Harrison, then of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, undertook an oral history project financed by Social Science Research Council (he later extensively used these interviews in his book Prudent Revolutionaries: Portraits of British Feminists between the Wars Oxford University Press 1987). The original aim of the project was to provide material to supplement documentary sources on the Edwardian women's suffrage movement in Britain and to make these interviews available to scholars subsequently working in the field. Interviews were conducted with surviving Edwardian women's movement campaigners, their sons, daughters, relatives and employees. During the course of the project the chronological scope was widened to include those active in the women's movement after women's enfranchisement. Thematically the scope was also widened to encompass those who were active in various women's organisations, including international and religious organisations, and to cover themes including women's employment and birth control. 205 interviews with 183 individuals were completed.
The issue of women in the Church in Great Britain was one that had its origins in the Reformation. Convents were included in the abolition of the English monasteries and with their disappearance women lost the only ecclesiastical role open to them until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century women in the Church of England began to campaign for women's work in the church to be acknowledged by allowing them to hold positions in its hierarchy.
Rosa May Billinghurst (1875-1953) was born in Lewisham in 1875. As a child she suffered total paralysis that left her disabled throughout her adult life. However, this did not prevent her becoming active in social work in a Greenwich workhouse, teaching in a Sunday school and joining the Band of Hope. She was also politically active in the Women's Liberal Association before becoming a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1907. She took part in the WSPU's march to the Albert Hall in Jun 1908 and also helped run the group's action in the Haggerston by-election the following month. Two years later, she founded and was the first secretary of the Greenwich branch of the WSPU and that same year she took part in the 'Black Friday' demonstrations where she was thrown out of her adapted tricycle and arrested. She was arrested several more times in the next few years culminating in a sentence of eight months for damage to letterboxes ('pillar box arson') and imprisoned in Holloway Prison. She went on hunger strike and was force-fed with other suffragettes. The experience led her to be released two weeks later on grounds of ill health. She was able to speak at a public meeting in West Hampstead in Mar 1913 and took part in the funeral procession of Emily Wilding Davison two months later. She supported Christabel Pankhurst's campaign to be elected in Smethwick in 1918 and the friendship with the Pankhursts seems to have survived into the 1920s. However, she later joined the Women's Freedom League and became part of the Suffragette Fellowship. She lived for some time with her brother Henry Billinghurst, an artist, and spent the last years of her life in Weybridge, Surrey. She died on the 4 Sep 1953.
Alice Jane Shannon Ker (1853-1943) was born in 1853, the eldest daughter of Edward Stewart Ker, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1872 she attended University Classes for Ladies in literature and physiology and became a friend of Sophia Jex-Blake who was involved in a dispute with the University of Edinburgh to allow women to study medicine there. Ker eventually studied and took her degree at the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Dublin. She went on to share a practice with Jex-Blake for a year in Edinburgh before studying at Berne University, then working as a house surgeon at the Children's Hospital in Birmingham. She returned to Edinburgh in 1887 and set up an independent practice. The following year she married her cousin Edward Ker and moved with him to Birkenhead and became Honorary Medical Officer to the Wirral Hospital for Sick Children and to the Wirral Lying-In Hospital. During this time, she lectured in domestic economy as well as becoming involved in the Temperance Movement and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In the 1890s she also became active in local suffrage work in the Birkenhead Women's Suffrage Society. In 1907, her husband died suddenly. After this point, Dr Ker's suffrage activities increased and she became increasingly involved with the militant Women's Social and Political Union along with her seventeen year old daughter Margaret. She was in contact with Lady Constance Lytton and Mary Gawthorpe as well as Mrs Forbes Robertson. In Mar 1912 she took part in a smashing raid at Harrods Department Store in London and was arrested and subsequently imprisoned in Holloway Prison for three months. She was released on 10 May 1912 and continued her suffrage activities as well as war work, in Liverpool, where she moved in 1914. She was the host of Sylvia Pankhurst when she spoke there in 1916, before moving to London, where she died in 1943. Her daughter Margaret was a student at the University of Liverpool at this time and she too took part in militant activity. She was arrested twice, the second time spending three months in Walton Gaol from Nov 1912 to Jan 1913. She died in 1943.
Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) (1903-c 1919) was the prime mover of suffrage militancy. In Oct 1903 the WSPU was founded in Manchester at Emmeline Pankhurst's home in Nelson Street. Members include: Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhrst, Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie Kenney and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. Several had been members of the NUWSS and had links with the Independent Labour Party, but were frustrated with progress, reflected in the WSPU motto 'Deeds, not Words'. An initial aim of WSPU was to recruit more working class women into the struggle for the vote. In late 1905 the WSPU began militant action with the consequent imprisonment of their members. The first incident was on 13 Oct 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney attended a meeting in London where they heckled the speaker Sir Edward Grey, a minister in the British government. Pankhurst and Kenney were arrested, charged with assault upon a police officer and fined five shillings each. They refused to pay the fine and were sent to prison. In 1906 the WSPU moved to London and continued militant action - with the Daily Mail calling the activists 'suffragettes' an unfavourable term adopted by the group. Between 1906-1908 there were several constitutional disagreements with the Women's Freedom League being founded in Nov 1907 by the 'Charlotte Despard faction'. From 1908 the WSPU tactics of disturbing meetings developed to breaking the windows of government buildings. This increased the number of women imprisoned. In Jul 1909 Marion Dunlop was the first imprisoned suffragette to go on hunger strike, many suffragettes followed her example and force-feeding was introduced. Between 1910-1911 the Conciliation Bills were presented to Parliament and militant activity ceased, but when Parliament sidelined these Bills the WSPU re-introduced their active protests.
Between 1912-1914 there was an escalation of WSPU violence - damage to property and arson and bombing attacks became common tactics. Targets included government and public buildings, politicians' homes, cricket pavilions, racecourse stands and golf clubhouses. Some members of the WSPU such as the Pethick-Lawrences, disagreed with this arson campaign and were expelled. Other members showed their disapproval by leaving the WSPU. The Pethick-Lawrences took with them the journal 'Votes for Women', hence the new journal of the WSPU the 'Suffragette' launched in Oct 1912. In 1913 in response to the escalation of violence, imprisonment and hunger strikes the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act (popularly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'). Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were released from prison as soon as they became ill and when recovered they were re-imprisoned.
Discord within the WSPU continued - In Jan 1914 Sylvia Pankhurst's 'East London Federation of the WSPU' was expelled from the WSPU and became an independent suffrage organisation. On 4 Aug 1914, England declared war on Germany. Two days later the NUWSS announced that it was suspending all political activity until the war was over. In return for the release of all suffragettes from prison the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities. The WSPU organised a major rally attended by 30,000 people in London to emphasise the change of direction. In Oct 1915, The WSPU changed its newspaper's name from 'The Suffragette' to 'Britannia'. Emmeline's patriotic view of the war was reflected in the paper's new slogan: 'For King, For Country, for Freedom'. the paper was 'conservative' in tone and attacked campaigners, politicians, military leaders and pacifists for not furthering the war effort. Not all members supported the WSPU war policy and several independent groups were set up as members left the WSPU. In 1917 the WSPU became known as the 'Women's Party and in Dec 1918 fielded candidates at the general election (including Christabel Pankhurst). However they were not successful and the organisation does not appear to have survived beyond 1919.
Art and Architecture (A and A) (est 1982) is a membership organisation which provides a network for practitioners and a forum for debate surrounding the role of public art, design and building. Its origins can be found in a conference, Art and Architecture, held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 1982. The event represented a coming together of various strands of thought and activity which had been considering the notion of art in a public context as beneficial to the environment. Art and Architecture as a membership society was formed in the wake of the conference and soon organised itself into four working parties, each addressing a different issue which had been prioritised during the conference. These included Per Cent for Art legislation (promoting the notion that a percentage of the capital costs for building should be allocated to an artistic contribution); the Live Projects Commissions group; the Events group, which organised a series of lectures; and Information and Education, which resulted in production of a newsletter (later the Art and Architecture Journal). A single A and A management board was established under the chair Sir Peter Shepherd. Later chairs included Theo Crosby, Peter Rawstorne, Jenny Towndrow, Christopher Martin, Peter Lloyd-Jones and Graham Cooper.
A and A has organised many lectures, conferences and other events in addition to producing the Art and Architecture journal, edited for many years by former Royal College of Art Librarian Hans Brill. An overriding theme of its work has been the interdisciplinary process and the potential for collaboration and communication between architects and artists, designers and makers.
In 2002, A and A organised a series of events under the banner 'Next Generation' to mark its twentieth anniversary and to consider new approaches to public art and collaboration for the 21st century. The donation of the archive coincided with its twenty-fifth anniversary, around which a number of events were planned, including a three-month exhibition at the Buildings Centre.
L[eonard] Bruce Archer (1922-2005) was an engineering designer and academic credited with helping to transform the process of design in the 1960s. As research fellow, and later professor of design research, at the Royal College of Art, Archer argued that design was not merely a craft-based skill but should be considered a knowledge-based discipline in its own right, with rigorous methodology and research principles incorporated into the design process. His initially controversial ideas would become pervasive and influential.
After early training at what is now City University, and a role as guest professor at Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm (1960-1), Archer went on to spend a majority of his career at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, until his retirement in 1988. From his initial appointment as research fellow within Misha Black's Industrial Design (Engineering) research unit, Archer ascended to head his own Department of Design Research (DDR) for 13 years (1971-84). Archer's innovative methods were first tested on a project in the 1960s to design improved equipment for the National Health Service. One strand of these studies, Kenneth Agnew's proposal for a hospital bed, culminated in the perfection of Agnew's design through a rigorous testing process and the inclusion of systems-level analysis and evidence-based design. The bed went on to become standard issue across the NHS. Archer's influence extended further through his series of articles in Design magazine in the 1960s, in which he advocated six basic stages of process: programming, data collection, analysis, synthesis, development and communication. In this, he anticipated and described concepts which would later be universally understood by designers in now-familiar terms such as 'quality assurance' or 'user-centred research'. Later successes included the DDR's influential study on the importance of design across the school curriculum (1976); from this the RCA established the Design Education Unit for teachers. The DDR itself was closed - peremptorily in Archer's view - by incoming Rector Jocelyn Stevens in 1984. Stevens instead hoped to give Archer College-wide responsibility for embedding research in all departments; to this end Archer was made Director of Research, a post he held until retirement in 1988. In retirement he remained active as president of the Design Research Society, and as a provider of short courses to various institutions, including a return to the RCA to deliver his Research Methods Course over several years.