A GUDE CAUSE
MAKS
A STRONG ARM
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF LEADING FIGURES
IN THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT AROUND
THE TIME OF THE EDINBURGH PROCESSION
AND WOMEN’S DEMONSTRATION OF 1909
INTRODUCTION
The women (and a few men) included in
these biographical sketches were chosen
because they were involved in the women’s
suffrage campaign in Edinburgh around 100
years ago. They had strong Edinburgh
connections and/or were directly involved
with the Edinburgh Procession and Women’s
Demonstration on 9 October 1909. That
procession is being re-enacted in its centenary
year along with a programme of events
co-ordinated by the Gude Cause. The City of
Edinburgh Museums’ contribution to the Gude
Cause is this exhibition, ’Votes for Women, the
Women’s Suffrage Movement in Edinburgh’.
Some of the people we chose were involved with the
women’s procession and demonstration as organisers,
sympathisers or participants. Others were active in the wider suffrage movement at the
time, or later, but did not take part in the procession. We have also included campaigners
who were influential pioneers in the women’s suffrage movement in the years that led up
to the 1909 events.
Information about the lives and activities of these people is not always easy to find. Some
were much more prominent and famous (or infamous) than others. For the less well
known, or those about whom little is yet known, we have written very short pieces – they
are in a section at the back of the folder. Their stories are still waiting to be told and we
would welcome more information about them.
The colours in the folder have a meaning. The main suffrage societies had their own sets
of colours, and we have used one colour from each set to show which societies each
person belonged to or worked with. We have used red for the early campaigners and
societies. Green shows that someone changed their allegiance, or belonged to more than
one society or organisation at the same time.
Red:
Pioneers and early suffrage societies including the Edinburgh National Society
for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS) and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS)
Purple: Members or supporters of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)
Gold:
Members or supporters of The Women’s Freedom League (WFL)
Green: Shows that someone changed membership or support from one society to
another, or belonged to several groups
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The biographies in this folder have been
compiled using a variety of sources. The
main ones are The Biographical
Dictionary of Scottish Women (Ewan, E.,
Innes, S., Pipes, R., Reynolds, S. (eds),
Edinburgh University Press, 2006); The
Women’s Suffrage Movement: A
Reference Guide 1866-1928 (Crawford,
E., Routledge, 2001); The Women’s
Suffrage Movement in Britain and
Ireland: A Regional Survey (Crawford,
E., Routledge, 2008); A Guid Cause: The
Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland
(Leneman, L., Aberdeen University Press,
1991); The Scottish Suffragettes (Leneman,
L., NMS Publishing Ltd, 2000).
The compilers of the biographies are:
Members of Women’s History Scotland:
www.womenshistoryscotland.org: Kath Davies, Lindy Moore, Rose Pipes,
Siân Reynolds, Norman Watson
Co-ordinator of Gude Cause, 2009: Helen Kay
Special thanks are due to Lindy Moore for additional research and synthesis
of sources. We would also like to thank all those who gave their time to
chase up references, provide dates and share family memories with us.
The compilers also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Crawford and
the late Leah Leneman for their extensive research into and pioneering
publications on women’s suffrage.
The source of each photograph is acknowledged beside it.
ARCHDALE,
HELEN ALEXANDER
Helen Archdale (n. Russel), journalist
and feminist campaigner, was born at
Nenthorn, Berwick, on 25 August 1876.
She was the daughter of Helen Carter de
Lacy Evans, one of the first five women
medical students at Edinburgh University,
and Alexander Russel, editor of The
Scotsman, who supported the women’s
medical campaign.
Educated at St Leonards School, Archdale was among
the first female graduates of the University of St Andrews (1892-94). She
married in 1901, but after living in Lancashire and India and having three
children, separated from her husband. She returned to Britain in 1908 and
joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), campaigning for votes
for women. She was a WSPU organiser in Edinburgh at the time of the suffrage
procession and women’s demonstration on 9 October 1909. That year, she
was imprisoned in Dundee, after disturbances during Winston Churchill’s visit.
In prison, she and four other women initiated one of the first hunger strikes.
They were released after four days without being forcibly fed, but Archdale
was said to have lost more than a stone in weight. Later, she was a WSPU
organiser in Sheffield and the WSPU prisoners’ secretary. She worked on the
WSPU journal, The Suffragette, and, after breaking a window in a suffrage
protest in 1911, was again sentenced to imprisonment, this time in Holloway.
She deputised for the Pankhursts when they were in prison in 1912.
After the First World War, Helen Archdale became the first editor of Time and
Tide, a political and literary review published by Viscountess Rhondda, with
whom she worked closely for many years. In 1921 they set up the Six Point
Group, extending the campaign for equality for women into employment,
social life, economics and the law. Archdale contributed articles to The Times,
Daily News, Christian Science Monitor and The Scotsman. In the late 1920s,
she was involved in international feminist action, lobbying for an Equal Rights
Treaty at the League of Nations. Described as ’large of mind and body and
forthrightness’ she died in London on 8 December 1949.
Photo acknowledgement: Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1876-1949
BALFOUR,
LADY FRANCES
Lady Frances Balfour was the daughter of
Lady Elizabeth Georgiana SutherlandLeveson-Gower, and Sir George Douglas
Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll. She was
brought up in Inverary and Rosneath castles
and in London. Her parents, supporters of
the Liberal party, involved their children in
social reform campaigns.
Lady Frances was known throughout Scotland (and
elsewhere) for her work as a suffragist, writer, speaker
and churchwoman. She married into a strongly Conservative
family, the Balfours, but maintained her independent political viewpoint. She
organised the Women’s Liberal Unionist Association in the 1880s, and worked
with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), who adopted
a constitutional, non-militant approach to campaigning for votes for women.
However, while not approving of the direct action of the WSPU, she did admire
the courage of militant feminists including her sister-in-law, Lady Constance
Lytton, who was imprisoned several times. Another sister-in-law, Lady Betty
Balfour (sister of Constance), helped to set up the non-militant Conservative and
Unionist Women’s Franchise Association. The Balfour sisters-in-law campaigned
vigorously in Scotland. In January 1907, Lady Frances chaired a large public
meeting in Edinburgh: the speakers included both the militant suffragist Teresa
Billington (later Billington-Greig) and the constitutional suffragist, Sally Mair.
Lady Frances was a strong supporter of the Church of Scotland, though she
criticised institutional religion generally for failing to offer equal opportunities.
She was president of her branch of the Woman’s Guild, of the
non-denominational Scottish Churches’ League for Woman Suffrage, formed in
Edinburgh in 1912, and of the Lyceum Club (which still flourishes). In 1918, she
published a biography of Dr Elsie Inglis, and was later awarded honorary
degrees from Durham and Edinburgh Universities. She held office on the
National Council of Women (still working for women’s rights) until her death.
One of her last actions was to petition the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland for the ordination of women. She died in London on 22 February
1931, before the petition could be heard.
Photo acknowledgement: National Portrait Gallery, London
1858-1931
BILLINGTON-GREIG,
TERESA
Emmeline Pankhurst recruited Teresa
Billington for the Women’s Social and
Political Union (WSPU). She was active at
first in the WSPU’s London-based activities,
speaking for women’s suffrage. She was the
first suffragette to go to Holloway Prison. In
autumn 1906, she was asked to organise
WSPU branches in Scotland. In February 1907,
in Glasgow, she married Glasgow businessman
and socialist Frederick Lewis Greig. Their pre-nuptial
agreement included both adopting the name BillingtonGreig. They had one daughter, Fiona (b.1915).
Teresa Billington-Greig had a considerable impact on her hearers. Her powerful
speaking rapidly drew in many supporters as she spoke at events around Scotland.
When the WSPU Scottish Council was established (June 1907), Teresa BillingtonGreig was secretary, Isabella Pearce treasurer, and Helen Fraser organiser for
Scotland. Teresa Billington-Greig favoured a democratic organisation, but
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst appeared to resent her influence within
Scotland. As a result, with Charlotte Despard, she left the WSPU and founded the
Women’s Freedom League (WFL), for which she campaigned actively throughout
Scotland with Isabella Pearce, Maggie Moffat, Anna Munro and Eunice Murray.
They worked not only for women’s suffrage but for wider equality, challenging the
double standard of morality and the inequitable situation of women in marriage
and employment.
Teresa Billington-Greig’s writings analysed male oppression of women and
discussed the misogyny and prejudice women faced. She left the WFL in
December 1910, for not living up to its democratic and non-violent aspirations,
putting her case in The Militant Suffrage Movement (1911) and in freelance
speaking and writing. In 1923, the Billington-Greigs moved from Scotland to
London. She maintained contact with the WFL, occasionally resuming activism,
as in 1928 and 1937 and, in her final years, encouraged the Six Point Group,
established in 1921 to continue the campaign for equal rights. Teresa BillingtonGreig’s impact on the Scottish women’s suffrage movement was considerable, and
the WFL maintained a strong presence in Scotland long after 1918.
Photo acknowledgement: Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)
1876-1964
BLAIR,
CATHERINE HOGG
Catherine Blair (n. Shields), suffragette
and founder of the Scottish Women’s
Rural Institutes, was born in Bathgate.
She married farmer Thomas Blair in
1894 and they had four children. The
family home was Hoprig Mains Farm,
East Lothian.
Catherine Blair was an active member of the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU),
chairing local meetings and writing many letters to the
press. She did not engage in militant protest because of her young family.
However, with the support of her husband, she made Hoprig Mains Farm
into a clandestine refuge for Scottish suffragette prisoners released under
the Cat and Mouse Act (the Prisoners [Temporary Discharge for Ill Health]
Act). Under the Act, prisoners could be released if their health became
critical, but had to return to prison to complete their sentence when their
licence was up. However, as they never did this voluntarily, the police
tried to keep them under surveillance after release. Edith Hudson was
one suffragette who may have hidden at Catherine Blair’s farm in East
Lothian, as she had given a talk in the area about her prison experiences
and Catherine Blair later recalled ’… a Suffragette lying in our hammock
in the garden, rocking with laughter at the evening paper which told of
her escape to France!’
Catherine Blair was a lifelong campaigner for ’fairness and democracy’
and it was her concern for isolated women in rural areas that led her to
found the first Scottish Women’s Rural Institute (SWRI) at Longniddry in
1917. Thereafter she campaigned to get Scottish Department funding for
SWRIs throughout Scotland. Catherine Blair also championed rural
industry. She was herself a designer, painter and embroiderer. In 1919,
she founded the Mak’Merry pottery as a cooperative rural enterprise to
provide a means of income for local women.
Photo acknowledgement: Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes
1872-1946
BROWN,
AGNES ’NANNIE’ HENDERSON
Agnes (Nannie) Henderson Brown was
an active member of the Women’s
Freedom League (WFL). She was one of
only six women who walked from
Edinburgh to London on the 400-mile
suffrage march of 1912. The march aimed
to collect signatures on a petition for Votes
for Women. It was organised mainly by the
WFL, with the support of the WSPU and the
NUWSS. Following a rally in Charlotte Square,
addressed by Ethel Moorhead (WSPU militant), Anna
Munro, Charlotte Despard, Alexi Jack (WFL secretary) and Elizabeth Finlayson
Gauld, the marchers attracted huge crowds along Princes Street. They dressed
in brown with green cockades in their hats. On the road to London, they held
suffrage meetings every day.
Nannie Brown became honorary secretary of the Edinburgh branch of the
Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage (NMFWS), formed in 1913,
in which her sister Jessie was also active. The Federation was established by
Maud Arncliffe-Sennett to organise deputations to the Prime Minister of town
councillors and other leading dignitaries. Prime Minister Asquith had refused to
receive a deputation in 1913, and a second deputation was also rebuffed. On
this occasion, though, the men had a more cordial hearing from Scottish MPs.
They held a demonstration in Trafalgar Square and, on return, a successful
meeting on the Mound in Edinburgh (14 March 1914).
The WFL and the NMFWS continued their suffrage campaign in wartime. The
men’s society held open-air meetings in May and July 1915. Elizabeth
Finlayson Gauld and Maud Arncliffe-Sennett spoke at a large demonstration in
the Meadows, Edinburgh, at which there were three speaker’s platforms and a
crowd of about a thousand. Another meeting was organised in August 1916.
Nannie Brown and Edith Hudson, an Edinburgh hospital nurse, together gave a
talk at Hoprig Mains, East Lothian, organised by WSPU supporter and friend,
Catherine Blair. With Catherine Blair, Nannie Brown was involved in setting up
the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes (1917), and she was also a member of
the Edinburgh Women Citizens’ Association.
Photo acknowledgement: City of Edinburgh Museums. The People’s Story
1866-1943
BURNS,
LUCY
1879-1966
Lucy Burns, campaigner and organiser,
was born in Brooklyn, New Jersey,
USA, of Irish parentage. She studied at
Vassar, Yale, Berlin and Oxford. Having
joined the Women’s Social and Political
Union (WSPU) in 1909 while on holiday
in London, she was arrested along with
fellow American Alice Paul, during the
WSPU deputation to the House of Commons
in June that year. In August, both women arrived
in Scotland with Emmeline Pankhurst to campaign in
Glasgow and Dundee, and were once more arrested, going on hunger
strike, but were not forcibly fed.
Lucy Burns and Alice Paul then helped organise the women’s suffrage
procession and demonstration held in Edinburgh on 9 October 1909. Lucy
Burns remained in Edinburgh, acting as the local WSPU organiser until
summer 1912, working from the new WSPU office at 8 Melville Place,
Queensferry Street. In Edinburgh, her activities included renting a café
used by WSPU members to evade the Census (April 1911), travelling to
London to take part in a window-smashing campaign (February/March
1912), and speaking at rallies. A striking figure with abundant red hair, she
was described as a talented orator with a musical voice. But there was
some friction with local suffragists - including a Miss Gorrie - who did not
always appreciate the non-Scottish organisers sent by WSPU London
headquarters.
Lucy Burns returned to the USA in the summer of 1912 and, with Alice
Paul, helped launch an American campaign for women’s enfranchisement,
employing many WSPU tactics including large-scale demonstrations and
daily picketing of the White House. She opposed the First World War, and
was arrested several times, eventually spending more time in prison than
any other American suffragist. When US women got the vote in 1919, she
retired from public life.
BURTON,
MARY
Mary Burton, early campaigner for
women’s rights and member of a
well-known intellectual family, was born
in Aberdeen but lived in Edinburgh from
the age of 13. Her political role began
relatively late in life, in the 1860s: in 1868
she applied to be added to the voters’ roll,
and her case was the first to be taken – and
rejected -– by the Supreme Court of Appeals.
She worked actively to achieve equality for women in a
range of spheres, including education. In 1869, she persuaded the directors of
the Watt Institution (later Heriot-Watt University) to open classes to women,
and she served for many years on the Edinburgh Parish Council and the
Edinburgh School Board.
In a life that included civic service, campaigning and responsibilities towards
orphaned nephews and nieces, the ’formidable’ Mary Burton took an active
part in the campaign for women’s suffrage during the 1870s and 1880s. As a
public speaker and organiser of both large and small meetings, she toured
Scotland giving suffrage lectures. She personally canvassed women
householders in the cause, collecting signatures for a petition and participating
in the large Scottish National Demonstrations of Women in Glasgow (1882)
and Edinburgh (1884), which she may have helped to organise.
An energetic member of the Edinburgh Liberal Women’s Association, formed
in 1889, she was its president in the 1890s. In a debate with Priscilla Bright
McLaren in the correspondence columns of The Scotsman in 1890, Mary
Burton argued that women’s active participation in party politics was beneficial
to the suffrage cause, since it meant that ’the great argument against women’s
franchise that “politics is not women’s sphere” seems to be quite wiped out’.
She left a legacy to Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS),
to campaign for women to become MPs, ’either at Westminster or in a Scottish
Parliament’.
Photo acknowledgement: The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
1819-1909
BURTON,
ISABELLA ‘ELLA’
1846-AFTER 1885
Ella Burton, suffrage campaigner, was
a niece of Mary Burton. She became
one of the first women students at the
Watt Institute and School of Arts,
Edinburgh, after her aunt had
persuaded its directors to admit women.
She spoke at a suffrage meeting on behalf
of the Edinburgh National Society for
Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS) in Edinburgh in
1873, and in early 1877 accompanied Mary
Burton on a series of meetings including Aberdeen,
Kirkcaldy and elsewhere in eastern Scotland. Ella Burton reported on
their activities for the Women’s Suffrage Journal. They collected more
than a thousand signatures from women householders in Edinburgh,
300 of them from Newington, and went on to collect more throughout
Scotland, including 600 from Aberdeen. At the Scottish National
Demonstration of Women in Edinburgh (1884), Ella Burton gave
an address.
After her marriage to an Aberdonian doctor in 1885, she appears to have
continued to support women’s suffrage in Aberdeen under her married
name, Mrs Rodger.
CADELL,
GRACE ROSS
1855-1918
Grace Cadell, doctor and suffrage
campaigner, was born in Carriden, and
became one of the first students at
Sophia Jex-Blake’s Edinburgh School of
Medicine in 1887. She and her sister later
studied under Elsie Inglis and, in 1904, she
joined the staff of Dr Inglis’s High Street
Centre, the Hospice. By 1911, she was
running the centre.
Grace Cadell was president of the Leith branch of the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the summer of 1907. After a
disagreement about campaigning tactics led to the setting up of a less militant
group, she supported the breakaway group, the Women’s Freedom League
(WFL). She was a tax resister, refusing to pay inhabited house duty on a
property she owned, so some of her furniture was sold in public at the Mercat
Cross in Edinburgh in 1912. Grace Cadell and her friends turned this occasion
into another suffrage protest. In 1913, she was also prosecuted and fined for
refusing to pay National Insurance contributions for her staff.
During the Scottish campaign of attacks on buildings (1913-1914), Dr Cadell
was one of the medical advisers to women hunger strikers in prison, who were
frequently released into her care under the Cat and Mouse Act (the Prisoners
[Temporary Discharge for Ill Health] Act). She not only provided a house of
refuge but also helped the women to escape. Three Edinburgh militants she
helped were Edith Hudson (at the end of May 1913), Ethel Moorhead
(February 1914) and Arabella Scott (May 1914). In an interview with the
Edinburgh Evening Dispatch (9 May 1914), Dr Cadell described her home as ’a
house of refuge for suffragettes’. In July 1914, she attended the trial at the
Edinburgh Sheriff Court of Maude Edwards, who had slashed a portrait of King
George V in the Royal Scottish Academy. When the suffragettes present
applauded, the Sheriff, Lord Maconachie, ordered the court to be cleared.
Grace Cadell was reported by the press to have resisted so strongly that it had
required the efforts of three police officers to remove her.
CRUDELIUS,
MARY
1839-1877
Mary Crudelius (n. M’Lean) was born
in Bury, Lancashire, and died in
Edinburgh when she was only thirtyeight years old. She was the daughter
of Mary Alexander and William M’Lean
from Dumfriesshire, a merchant in Bury.
She was partly educated in Edinburgh, and
in 1861 she married Rudolph Crudelius, a
German meal merchant working in Leith. They
had two daughters.
Mary Crudelius was one of the founders of the higher education for
women movement in Scotland through the Edinburgh Ladies’ Educational
Association (ELEA, later known as the Edinburgh Association for the
Higher Education of Women), which she set up with Sarah Siddons Mair
in 1867 and, as secretary, guided closely through its early years with her
eye always on her objective: ’My aim is … the throwing open of the
University to us, not the organising of a special college for women’.
An active supporter of women’s suffrage, she signed the first suffrage
petition in 1866 but, by 1867, had been advised to keep her interests in
education and votes for women separate. So she declined an invitation to
join the Edinburgh Women’s Suffrage Committee, though she continued
to work ’quietly’ for the cause. She wrote to Agnes McLaren, one of
secretaries of the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage
(ENSWS): ’I have every right to be numbered amongst the firm friends of
all true progress; I was one of the first fifteen hundred women who sent a
petition to parliament, have signed and got what signatures I could since,
and, quietly working, shall be glad to help you as far as I can’.
DRUMMOND,
FLORA MCKINNON
Flora Drummond (n. Gibson), suffrage
campaigner, grew up on Arran and moved
to Glasgow aged 14, where she took
courses in business and attended economics
lectures at the university. She married Joseph
Drummond, an upholsterer, in 1898 and they
moved to Manchester. They both joined the
Fabian Society and the Independent Labour
Party.
Flora Drummond worked in different factories in the
city, and claimed later that it was her experience of the poor
wages and conditions for women workers there that led to her involvement in the
suffrage movement. She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in
1905, speaking and doing secretarial and organisational work. She moved to
London in 1906 and became involved in suffrage demonstrations, serving her first
term of imprisonment in Holloway at the end of that year.
By 1908, she was in charge of the WSPU office in London and had acquired the
nickname ’The General’ – she was well known for wearing a uniform with peaked
cap and riding astride her horse at WSPU processions. She was imprisoned nine
times, but was released on the second occasion as she was pregnant. Although she
often went on hunger strike, she was never forcibly fed, perhaps because the
authorities feared that treating so prominent a person in this way might result in
further violence from WSPU activists.
She moved to Glasgow as WSPU organiser in 1909 and played a big part in the
Edinburgh suffrage procession that October. According to an Edinburgh newspaper,
’… Over all, ’General’ Drummond reigned supreme. [She is] a remarkable
personality and unites a capacity for organisation and an intellectual grasp which is
allied to considerable charm.’
Returning to London in 1911, Flora Drummond continued her campaigning
activities and was joint founder of the Women’s Guild of Empire (WGE). She
controlled this anti-communist, anti-fascist organisation for 17 years while working
for various equal rights causes. Her husband had left her 1909, and in 1924 she
married a cousin. After he was killed in an air raid in 1944, she moved back to
Scotland where she died, in Corradale, Argyll.
Photo acknowledgement: The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
1878-1949
GAULD,
ELIZABETH FINLAYSON
c. 1853-AFTER 1930
Elizabeth Finlayson Gauld, Matron of a
girls’ orphanage in Edinburgh, was one
of the most active Edinburgh suffrage
supporters, a member of the Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU).
In February 1912 she took part in a WSPU
window-smashing raid in London. Arrested,
she promised no more violent acts because, as a
matron, she could not be absent from work for
imprisonment. However, she spoke and wrote in strong
defence of militancy. In 1912, she spoke at an open-air suffrage meeting near
Stirling and at the start of the Edinburgh to London suffrage march. In 1913,
in London, she addressed a reception for the Scottish men’s deputation to
Prime Minister Asquith ’in a splendid, inspiring way’. In August 1913, she
launched the Edinburgh WSPU caravan tour organised by Jean Lambie, her
assistant at the orphanage. The tour held open-air meetings throughout the
Borders. In 1914, when Ethel Moorhead was released from prison after being
forcibly fed (and suffering double pneumonia), Elizabeth accused Dr James
Devon, prison commissioner, of doing his duty ’as did the tools and
sycophants of every tyrant …’, and Jean Lambie attacked him with a dogwhip. He did not press charges.
In March 1914, the WSPU organised protests at churches including the Tron
Kirk and St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. Elizabeth called this ’an example of
what the Church might be reduced to’ when it had lost its true spirit. In April,
she wrote to James Dunlop, a doctor at Edinburgh’s Calton Jail, about the
treatment of women on hunger strike. At a Northern Men’s Federation for
Women’s Suffrage demonstration in the Meadows, Edinburgh, with Maud
Arncliffe Sennett she addressed a crowd of about a thousand people.
After the First World War, she was involved in the newly formed Scottish
Women’s Rural Institutes. However, when former suffragettes were invited to
the unveiling of Emmeline Pankhurst’s statue in 1930, she had to appeal to be
included – her part in the women’s suffrage movement had already
been forgotten.
THE GORRIE SISTERS
ISABELLA (ISOBEL OR BELLE) CRICHTON 1883-1954
MARY NICHOL 1886-1959
ELIZABETH (BETH) MACLAGAN 1891-1973
Mary Gorrie, in addition to her suffrage
activities, ran a benefit association for retired
domestic workers. It provided a residence in
Duddingston and organised a contributory pension
scheme. Mary appeared in the 1909 pageant in the
role of ’Kate Barlass’.
Isobel Gorrie in the role
of Mary, Queen of Scots
Elizabeth Gorrie was a graduate of Edinburgh University, a member of the Women
Students’ Union, and secretary of the Edinburgh University Women’s Suffrage Society.
She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) Edinburgh branch around
1908. A keen photographer, she recorded many suffrage events including the 9 October
1909 events and the Census protest of 1911, when women spent all night at their
suffrage café so that they could not be counted in the Census (no cooperation without
representation). Her photograph album is held in the National Library of Scotland.
It seems that some members of the Edinburgh WSPU group did not always agree with
the organisers sent up by London. In 1914, Christabel Pankhurst recalled that, ’Miss Lucy
Burns [organiser] was virtually driven away from Edinburgh, so unhappy was she because
of a few members. The ostensible reason of the trouble was the stand she made with
regard to a certain Miss Gorrie …’
The sisters’ mother appears to have shared their views. There is a story in the Gorrie
family that, after a cabinet minister’s appearance in the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh, she
spied him leaving in a cab, jumped on the running board and beat on the cab roof with
her umbrella, shouting ’Votes for Women!’
Photo acknowledgement: The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
The Gorrie sisters were all involved in women’s
suffrage activity in Edinburgh. Isobel Gorrie was a
government factory inspector, interested in
improving working conditions for women as
well as in winning the vote. Tall and
red-haired, she played Mary, Queen of Scots
in the pageant that formed part of the
Edinburgh suffrage procession and
demonstration, 9 October 1909 (pictured).
She was also a champion seller of Votes for
Women. In recognition, the newspaper’s
founder, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence,
presented Isobel with an inscribed copy of
her autobiography, My Part in a Changing
World.
The Honorable Evelina Haverfield was born in
Scotland, daughter of the third Baron Abinger
of Inverlochy. Her mother was the daughter of
a commodore in the US navy. Described as
’a very sensible, silent woman’, she was a
keen horsewoman. She married aged 19
and moved to Dorset. She was in South
Africa with her second husband, a soldier
in the Boer War, when her sister Ella, a
doctor, was there as a member of the
commission headed by Millicent Fawcett
investigating conditions in the British
concentration camps. She returned to
Dorset and in 1908 joined the Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU),
becoming a strong supporter and benefactor.
She spoke regularly at public meetings and
took part in a National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) caravan campaign in
Yorkshire. Her deep knowledge of horses meant that
she was able to develop a technique for forcing police
horses to sit down - useful on suffrage demonstrations.
Evelina Haverfield
In January 1910 she campaigned in Dundee in Churchill’s constituency during the
general election. She formed a close relationship with Vera Holmes, another WSPU
activist who drove Emmeline Pankhurst and others by car to Edinburgh for the
women’s suffrage procession and demonstration in 1909 (the car is mentioned in the
order of the parade).
Evelina Haverfield founded the Women’s Volunteer Reserve (WVR) on the outbreak
of war, then joined Dr Elsie Inglis in Serbia. Vera Holmes joined the WVR and also
served in the Transport Unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospital 1915-1916. She and
Evelina were in charge of the horses and trucks. In Serbia, Elsie Inglis entrusted Vera
Holmes with reporting back to the Foreign Office and Secretary of State for War. On
her return, Vera Holmes went on lecture tours in Scotland and, after Evelina’s death
in Serbia, joined the artistic community in Kirkcudbrightshire. Dorothy Johnstone
painted her portrait, known as Lady in Black with tulips. Vera Holmes supported the
Scottish Women’s Rural Institute in Lochearnhead and was a member of a theatre
group, the Pioneer Players.
Photo acknowledgement: The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
HAVERFIELD, EVELINA 1867-1949
HOLMES, VERA 1881-1969
HUDSON,
EDITH
c.1872-?
Edith Hudson, nurse and political
activist, was born around 1872.
Remembered by a child as a very gentle
person, she was an Edinburgh hospital
nurse who became an active Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU) member.
Edith Hudson was imprisoned in Edinburgh in
1909 for refusing to pay taxes because women
were not considered ’persons’ (did not have the
vote). Nannie Brown, also a militant suffragist,
described her as ’the first political prisoner in the new Calton Jail’. In 1912, she
was imprisoned again, for taking part in a London window-smashing raid. In
Holloway, she fought hard against being forcibly fed, knocking down six prison
wardresses, and telling the doctor what she thought of him.
In 1913, she and three other Edinburgh WSPU members, Arabella Scott and
Agnes and Elizabeth Thomson (two sisters in their mid-sixties), planned to set
fire to Kelso racecourse grandstand. Charged with attempted arson, Edith
Hudson and Arabella Scott were sentenced to nine months in Calton Jail.
Elizabeth Thomson received three months and Agnes was released. Donald
McEwan, who arranged a taxi for the women, also received a nine-month
sentence. Edith, Arabella and Elizabeth immediately went on hunger strike and
were released after a few days under the new Cat and Mouse legislation (the
Prisoners [Temporary Discharge for Ill Health] Act). Under the Act, prisoners
could be released under licence if their health became critical, but had to
return to prison when their licence was up. However, as they never did this
voluntarily, the police tried to keep them under surveillance after release. The
Evening Dispatch reporter found Edith Hudson ’resting’ at the home of Dr
Grace Cadell of Leith. Thereafter, she disappeared. The police never found her,
so she never completed her prison sentence. She may have hidden at
Catherine Blair’s farm in East Lothian, as she had given a talk there about her
earlier prison experiences and Catherine Blair later recalled ’… a Suffragette
lying in our hammock in the garden, rocking with laughter at the evening
paper which told of her escape to France!’
INGLIS,
ELSIE MAUDE
Elsie Inglis, medical doctor and suffrage
campaigner, was born in India, where her
father was a senior civil servant. She
became a highly influential figure in the
field of medicine and within the women’s
suffrage movement. After the family moved
to Edinburgh in the 1870s, she began her
medical training in the Edinburgh School of
Medicine for Women, moving on to Glasgow
then London where she was a house surgeon in the
New Hospital for Women. In 1894, she returned to
Edinburgh, set up a practice and opened a hall of residence
for women medical students. In 1899, she opened a small hospital for women,
and was appointed as a lecturer at the Medical College for Women in Edinburgh.
She first became involved with the suffrage movement in London and, after
returning to Edinburgh, she became secretary of the Edinburgh National Society
for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS). From 1900, she was an active campaigner in
Scotland, travelling widely and speaking at up to four meetings a week. Her
medical work brought her into contact with injustices against women of all
classes, and she used these examples in her public lectures.
In 1909, she became secretary of the newly founded Scottish Federation of
Women’s Suffrage Societies, and three years later joined the general council of
the Scottish Churches League for Woman Suffrage. She was always adamantly
against militancy, and in 1912 signed a public letter of protest against
WSPU activity.
The First World War brought her a new challenge. She proposed setting up
hospitals staffed only by women. Turned down by the British government, the
Serbs and the French accepted her offer. The Scottish Women’s Hospitals
provided an all-women service to allied casualties. Inglis was chief medical officer
of one of the first hospital units, in Serbia, and later set up a hospital in Russia.
Elsie Inglis was a highly respected pioneer on many fronts and her death in 1917
caused widespread shock and grief in Scotland and beyond. Her body lay in
state in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and British and Serbian royalty attended
her funeral.
Photo acknowledgement: Image courtesy of Lothian Health Services Archive, Edinburgh University Library (LHSA/EUL/LHB8A/9/1)
1864-1917
JACK,
ALEXI BUTTAR
1863-1948
She was born in the village of Newtyle, on the
Perth-Angus boundary. After elementary
education, she became a pupil-teacher in
Aberdeen. Described as an intelligent and thoughtful
woman, Alexi Jack moved to Edinburgh in the 1880s to
take up a teaching position with Edinburgh School Board.
She also travelled to London to take advanced examinations in botany and geology.
By 1913, she held the position of ’second master’ in an elementary school, one of
only three women to have achieved such a position in Edinburgh.
It is not certain when Alexi Jack’s interest in women’s emancipation began. It must
have been well established by 1907 when she became the founding secretary of the
Edinburgh branch of the WFL. By then into mature years, her activities focused on
organisation and co-ordination, letter writing and public speaking. She was elected
to the Scottish Council of the WFL, becoming its secretary and treasurer, and
represented Scotland on the WFL National Executive. She was a stabilising influence
when policy arguments threatened to split the WFL hierarchy after the dropping of
the Conciliation Bill. The Bill had proposed giving a limited vote to some women,
but was abandoned in 1912. Jack publicly backed WFL leader Charlotte Despard
and retained her position on the executive committee which emerged.
In October 1912, Jack addressed large crowds in Charlotte Square at the start of the
women’s march from Edinburgh to London, sharing the platform with WFL
colleagues Charlotte Despard and Anna Munro, and alongside Elizabeth Finlayson
Gauld and WSPU firebrand Ethel Moorhead. She did not condone attacks on
property, which became Moorhead’s speciality, but insisted the WFL was,
nevertheless, a militant organisation.
Alexi Jack remained prominent in the WFL beyond the militants’ stand-down in
1914, and worked with women in agriculture during the First World War. After the
war she became the first honorary secretary, and a vice-president, of the Edinburgh
Women Citizens’ Association.
Photo acknowledgement: Dr Frances Wheelhouse
Alexi Jack, teacher and suffrage
campaigner, was the first honorary secretary
of the Edinburgh branch of the Women’s
Freedom League (WFL) and remained in that
position until 1915.
KIRKLAND,
ELIZA SCOTT
c.1834-FL.1895
Eliza Scott Kirkland, suffrage
campaigner, was born in Glasgow. By
1876, she was one of the secretaries of
the Edinburgh National Society for
Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS) and a regular
speaker throughout Scotland. In 1877, she
addressed drawing room meetings in
Ardrossan and in Ayr where, with Mary
Burton, she also canvassed unmarried and
widowed women house owners. On 23 and 24
January 1879, she attended a large gathering in Bristol
of representatives of various suffrage societies, at which Professor David
Masson of Edinburgh, a strong suffrage supporter, reported on the campaign
in Scotland. In 1880, she held meetings around the country, including
Stranraer and Girvan, and in October she was one of the speakers, with
Jessie Craigen and Eliza Wigham, at a public meeting in the Queen’s Rooms,
Edinburgh. In 1881 she was known to be living with her mother and four
unmarried sisters at 13 Raeburn Place, Edinburgh.
When the Scottish Liberal Association first admitted women to its annual
general meeting on 24 January 1883, Eliza Kirkland was present. A year later,
she was one of the women in charge of the Scottish National Demonstration
of Women held in Edinburgh (22 March 1884). There were meetings in halls
and drawing rooms in the city, at which she was a frequent speaker, leading
up to the demonstration. In the summer of 1884, before the final vote in
Parliament on the Reform Bill, numerous suffrage drawing room meetings
were held in Edinburgh (15 in July alone). Following the failure of the Bill,
suffrage meetings resumed in the Autumn. Eliza Kirkland was again busy
touring Scotland, visiting Broughty Ferry, Dundee, Kirkcaldy, Dunkeld, then
north to Tain, Dingwall and Inverness. In October 1885, she addressed a
drawing room meeting in Aberdeen. By the end of the year she had visited
26 towns in the north of Scotland, arranging for the distribution of leaflets
and the questioning of candidates. In September 1887, with Florence
Balgarnie, she toured around Glasgow and various west coast locations. She
resigned as secretary of ENSWS in about 1895.
MACAULAY,
FLORENCE ELIZABETH MARY
1862-1945
Florence Macaulay was a Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU) organiser in
Edinburgh for much of 1909, the year of the
women’s suffrage procession and
demonstration.
The daughter of a Reading bookseller, she went
to Somerville College, Oxford, but had to leave
after only two terms because her father died. She
taught for many years in Reading, London and Great
Yarmouth. By 1907 she had become a WSPU organiser
and as such, she travelled extensively around Britain. She
spoke for the WSPU in Brighton in 1907, in Bristol in October
1908 and in the Midlands in January 1909.
In 1909, Florence Macaulay wrote ’The Women’s Marseillaise’,
a marching song published by the WSPU.
I
Arise, ye daughters of a land
That vaunts its liberty!
Make reckless ruler understand
That women must be free.
That women will be free.
Hark! Hark! The trumpet’s calling!
Who’d be a laggard in the fight?
With victory even now in sight,
And stubborn foemen backward falling.
II
Arise! Though pain or loss betide,
Grudge naught of freedom’s toll.
For what they loved the martyrs died:
Are we of meaner soul?
Are we of meaner soul?
Our comrades, greatly daring,
Through prison bars have led the way:
Who would not follow to the fray,
Their glorious struggle proudly sharing?
Chorus
To Freedom’s cause till death
We swear our fealty.
Repeat. March on! March on!
Face to the dawn,
The dawn of liberty.
Chorus
To Freedom’s cause till death
We swear our fealty.
Repeat. March on! March on!
Face to the dawn,
The dawn of liberty.
From February 1910 until late 1912 Florence Macaulay was again in the south of
England, in Canterbury and Thanet. She returned to Scotland in 1913 to address
meetings and continue her suffrage campaigning there.
MACBETH,
ANN
Ann Macbeth, designer, embroiderer,
teacher and suffrage supporter, was the
daughter of Scottish Presbyterians and the
eldest of nine children. She was a student
and later a member of the council and
Head of the Embroidery Department at
Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
Ann Macbeth’s commitment to women’s right to
work, equal pay, education and the vote was
expressed through her embroidery as well as in direct
action. Her designs won international medals. She designed a
banner for the 1909 Edinburgh women’s suffrage procession and demonstration,
and a linen quilt with the embroidered names of hunger strikers for an
exhibition in April 1910. She also organised the Arts and Curio Stall at the
Grand Suffrage Bazaar, held in the St Andrew’s Halls, Glasgow, in 1910.
GSA provided a fruitful atmosphere for the suffrage cause. Between classes, the
students, including Ann Macbeth, took turns at stitching suffrage banners. Her
predecessor, Jessie Newbery, was an active Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) member, designing items in the WSPU colours of green, white and
purple. Helen Fraser, another artist who specialised in embroidery, became the
first WSPU organiser in Glasgow.
Ann Macbeth supported WSPU militant action. She may have taken part in the
WSPU window-smashing raid in London in 1912, but she is not mentioned in
any sources. She did endure imprisonment, solitary confinement and forcible
feedings in the name of the cause. Her colleagues at GSA supported her
protests. In May 1912, she wrote to the Secretary of the School thanking him for
his ’kind letter’. ’I am still very much less vigorous than I anticipated’, she said,
’after a fortnight’s solitary imprisonment with forcible feedings … but the doctor
thinks this will improve when I get away’. She did not recuperate quickly. By
June, when her doctor told her that she needed at least five months’ care as a
’semi-invalid’, it was obvious that, like many other women protesters who were
forcibly fed, she would suffer long-term ill health. She retired to Cumbria, where
she continued her design work and her writing.
Photo acknowledgement: Douglas Annan
1875-1948
MACDONALD,
AGNES SYME
1882-1966
Agnes Macdonald, suffrage and women’s
citizenship campaigner, was born in
Edinburgh, the only daughter of six
children. She was brought up to be a
’daughter of the house who stayed at
home’, even though her mother took over
and ran the family wine and spirit merchant
business. When she joined the Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU), she said it was
because she was one of ’too many women running
around with no training to do anything’.
In March 1912, Agnes Macdonald was among the Scottish women who
travelled to London to take part in window-smashing raids. Using ’a hammer,
which we wore round the neck on a rope and a bit of string’, she broke a
police office window. She was charged with malicious damage and, in
common with others who had attacked government property, was given two
months’ hard labour in Holloway prison.
In 1918, she helped to set up the Edinburgh Women Citizens’ Association
(EWCA), and was its first and longest-serving secretary. WCAs were formed
throughout Britain at this time to organise and educate women voters into a
political force and to promote women’s representation. Agnes Macdonald
remembered the inter-war EWCA as busy and effective: ’There was such
efficiency and drive! Deputations to Government Departments and town
councils! Meetings all over the country, constant efforts to get things done. And
we did get things done’. Organised citizenship was seen as the next stage for
the women’s movement, and the programme was ambitious. It included
campaigns for more women councillors and MPs; for equal pay and an end to
the marriage bar; for pre-school nurseries, improvements to public health and
social housing; against child sexual abuse; and for a national maternity service.
In July 1939, Agnes Macdonald retired as secretary of the EWCA. Later, she
was involved in relief work for European refugees with the Society of Friends
(Quakers) and was a governor of a progressive school.
MCLAREN,
PRISCILLA BRIGHT
Priscilla Bright McLaren, a lifelong
energetic campaigner for women’s rights,
including suffrage, was born in Rochdale
into a famous Quaker family, the Brights.
When she married Duncan McLaren in
1848 she joined a leading Presbyterian
Liberal dynasty based in Edinburgh, where
she spent the rest of her life. Several members
of the close family were politicians and/or
campaigners for reforming causes.
Both she and her husband had campaigned against the Contagious Diseases
Acts, and she had also been an active abolitionist. Having supported J. S. Mill’s
1867 amendment to the Reform Act, she was the first president of the
Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS), set up after the
amendment’s defeat. She remained in this role into the 1890s.
Priscilla McLaren was a pragmatist who became exasperated with masculine
indifference to the cause. She was described as being ’generally liked and
conciliatory’, and ’an excellent speaker – singularly free of egotism’. For these
reasons and her family’s prominence, she was often to be found presiding or
speaking at many of the Edinburgh suffrage meetings, and her words are
frequently reported in the local press. She had suggested the idea of the ’grand
demonstrations’ and took the chair at the Glasgow Demonstration in 1882,
speaking also when the demonstration took place in Edinburgh in 1884. In the
1890s, she was president of the Scottish branch of the Special Appeal
Committee that collected about 250,000 signatures to be presented at
Westminster (the ’monster petition’). Well into old age, she continued to raise
support for the cause, including the fighting fund for the Lancashire factory
women’s suffrage movement. Just before she died, she dictated a letter of
support to the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), feeling that
constitutional suffragism had failed to make headway. She was particularly
bitter about the Liberal party leadership who had come out against suffrage in
1881 – her husband had been a rare exception, while her brothers were on
different sides on the issue.
Photo acknowledgement: Edinburgh City Libraries
1815-1906
MCLAREN,
DUNCAN
Duncan McLaren, prominent male
supporter of women’s suffrage, was
born in Dunbartonshire and became a
leading politician in Edinburgh, holding
the office of Provost from 1851 to
1854. In 1856, he was elected Liberal
MP for the city, which he represented for
sixteen years at Westminster.
In 1848, the twice-widowed McLaren had
married Priscilla Bright, sister of the Lancashire
politicians John and Jacob. She was an energetic supporter of women’s
rights, and this may help to explain why Duncan McLaren, who opposed
trades unions and home rule, was radical on this issue. He supported J. S.
Mill’s unsuccessful amendment to the 1867 Reform Act and presented a
large petition in its favour. On 17 January 1870, he chaired the first
public meeting in favour of women’s suffrage to be held in Edinburgh. A
year later, he presided when Mill spoke in Edinburgh. McLaren noted
that the majority of MPs from the Edinburgh region had supported the
cause at Westminster, while Edinburgh Town Council had also petitioned
for it. He and Priscilla attended the 1871 Women’s Suffrage Conference
in London.
On 30 March 1871, Duncan McLaren presented to parliament a petition
signed by 250,000 women calling for the repeal of the Contagious
Diseases Acts. Ten years later, in 1881, he introduced and carried the first
Married Women’s Property (Scotland) Act. Other male members of the
family supported the suffrage cause. Duncan’s eldest son, lawyer John
McLaren, assisted the Edinburgh women who appealed to be added to
the electoral register in 1868, and another son, Walter, was also an
active supporter.
Photo acknowledgement: City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries, City Art Centre
1800-1886
MCLAREN,
AGNES
Agnes McLaren, suffrage campaigner
and doctor, was born in Edinburgh,
the daughter of Duncan McLaren and
his second wife Christina Renton, and
stepdaughter of Priscilla Bright McLaren.
Like many of the family, Agnes became
involved in the suffrage cause.
She had signed the 1866 women’s petition
and, when her stepmother became president of
the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage
(ENSWS), formed in 1867, she became joint secretary with Eliza
Wigham, holding the post for several years. In September 1871, Agnes
McLaren accompanied Jane Taylour on a speaking tour of the northern
Highlands, holding suffrage meetings in Orkney, Inverness, Thurso and
Wick. She told her audience that since the Edinburgh politicians, whether
councillors or MPs, were already converted to the cause, there was a
need to canvass elsewhere. In 1872, she and Jane toured western
Scotland including some of the islands. Their meetings, she reported,
were well attended, chiefly by ladies of ’the upper middle class’. In 1873,
the pair visited Shetland.
In the 1890s, Agnes McLaren began studying medicine in Montpellier
and Dublin and thereafter practised as a GP in France. She joined the
Roman Catholic church in 1898 and campaigned for Catholic nuns to be
trained for medical missions abroad (an aim fulfilled only after her death).
She maintained her interest in the suffrage cause, subscribing to the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1909 and to the National
Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) election fighting fund in
1912. At her death, she was a member of the Catholic Women’s
Suffrage Society.
Photo acknowledgement: The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge
1837-c.1913
MACMILLAN,
CHRYSTAL JESSIE
Chrystal Macmillan, suffragist and lawyer,
was born in Edinburgh. She lived with her
parents and eight brothers in Corstorphine
Hill House until she went to St Leonards
School, St Andrews, in 1888. She was the first
woman to graduate from the science faculty of
Edinburgh University (Mathematics, first class).
She also studied in Berlin, but was called home in
1901 to keep house when her mother died.
Chrystal Macmillan became secretary of the Women
Graduates of the Scottish Universities Committee, who
argued that all graduates had the right to vote within the university electorates. When
the Court of Session in Edinburgh rejected their case, with Elsie Inglis, Frances
Simson, Frances Melville and Margaret Nairn, she raised £1000 to appeal to the
House of Lords in November 1908. Her eloquent argument generated public support
– the Daily Chronicle (11 November) called her the ’Scottish Portia’ – but the Lords
rejected the appeal on the grounds that the term ’person’ did not include ’woman’.
By 1909, her suffrage activities included travelling by caravan with Eunice Murray,
holding public meetings from Dumfries to Orkney. They announced meetings by
chalking on pavements – which she enjoyed (Eunice Murray’s diary). She wrote The
Struggle for Political Life (1909) and Facts versus Fancies on Woman Suffrage (1914)
and contributed to Woman Suffrage in Practice (1913).
Chrystal Macmillan became an executive member of the National Union of Women’s
Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). In 1911, she attended the International Women’s
Suffrage Alliance in Stockholm and in 1913 became secretary of IWSA, remaining on
its committee until 1930. At the start of the First World War, many women rejected
the patriotic anger sweeping throughout Europe. Chrystal Macmillian helped organise
the International Congress of Women at The Hague in April 1915 to protest against
the war, to promote international cooperation and to propose methods toward a
permanent peace. The legacy of this event is the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the oldest women’s peace organisation in the world.
Chrystal Macmillan was called to the bar in 1924. In 2008, one of the University of
Edinburgh buildings was named in her honour.
Photo acknowledgement: Ian Macmillan
1872-1937
THE MCPHUN SISTERS
Frances McPhun was a graduate in Political
Economics of Glasgow University. She
worked in the Queen Margaret College
Settlement in Glasgow before joining the
WSPU in 1909-1910 with her sisters
Margaret (also a Glasgow graduate, in
Psychology) and Nessie (of whom little is
known). Margaret convened the Scottish
University Women’s Suffrage Union
(SUWSU) and was later press secretary for
the Scottish WSPU. Frances (and probably
Margaret) helped to organise the pageant of
Famous Scottish Women for the 1909
Edinburgh procession and demonstration, and
was involved with later processions and exhibitions,
including the WSPU Glasgow Exhibition of 1910. She
was secretary of the Glasgow WSPU in 1911-1912.
Frances McPhun
After taking part in the WSPU window-smashing campaign in London in 1912,
Frances and Margaret were imprisoned in Holloway. Frances wrote cheerful letters
to her family but to the Glasgow WSPU she described the horrors of prison. The
sisters were forcibly fed after they went on hunger strike in protest against the
treatment of Mrs Pankhurst. They also wrote morale-boosting verse included in
Holloway Jingles, which the WSPU published after their release. In early 1913,
Frances helped secure more than 600 signatures requesting Mr Barnes MP to adopt
a fighting policy on the Woman Suffrage question.
Socialist in outlook, the sisters spoke regularly for the WSPU and on socialist
platforms. They owned a large house in Callander (later donated as a holiday home
for disadvantaged people) where their property-conscious neighbours feared ’these
awful women’. However, Helen Crawfurd, who travelled with them on a WSPU
tour, described Frances McPhun as a beautiful woman with a real sense of humour.
’I remember a tour of Lanarkshire where I was the speaker, along with Margaret and
Frances McPhun. Margaret took the Chair and Frances would map out our
campaign, book halls and arrange connections for trains … Frances was a beautiful
woman, and had a real sense of humour, as had Margaret.’ After the First World
War, Margaret McPhun became secretary of the Scottish Council of Women
Citizens’ Associations.
Photo acknowledgement: Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)
FRANCES MARY 1880-1940
MARGARET POLLOCK 1876-1960
MAIR,
SARAH ’SALLY’
ELIZABETH SIDDONS
Sarah Siddons Mair, suffrage and
women’s rights campaigner, was a
lifelong resident of Edinburgh’s New
Town. The family was proud of its literary
and theatrical connections (including Sarah
Siddons). Her first – and long-lasting –
initiative, aged 18, was to launch a literary
circle (1865) which became the influential
Ladies Edinburgh Debating Society (1869-1935).
The group acted as a seedbed of middle-class
reforming activity. Although it had initially rejected the
idea of women’s suffrage, it consistently voted in favour from
the 1890s, with Sarah Mair proposing the motion.
An early member of the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage
(ENSWS), and a speaker at the Edinburgh Demonstration in March 1884, Sarah
Mair was active in the local suffrage movement for many years, becoming
president of the Edinburgh Society in 1906. She was also an executive member
of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She initially
acted as an important mediating influence when there were tensions in
Edinburgh between militants and constitutionalists, chairing a contested
reception for London WSPU leader Emmeline Pethwick-Lawrence, in
December 1908. But disagreement over support for violent tactics became too
strong, and the NUWSS did not support the WSPU-led demonstration in
Edinburgh on 9 October 1909. Having been elected president of the Scottish
Federation of (NUW) Suffrage Societies, Sarah Mair continued to work
constitutionally for the cause. She also hosted meetings for male suffragists,
notably a London reception in 1914 attended by delegates from 76 Scottish
men’s organisations.
Over her long life, Sarah Mair also supported other forms of women’s rights,
especially in higher education, receiving an honorary doctorate from Edinburgh
University and being made a DBE in 1931. After the partial grant of the vote, in
1918, she became vice-president of the Edinburgh Women Citizens’
Association. Aged 90, she wrote: ’My life has been a long and very happy one
… I have watched and to a small extent shared in the Awakening of Women’.
Photo acknowledgement: St George’s School for Girls, Edinburgh
1846-1941
THE MASSONS
DAVID MATHER 1822-1907
EMILY ROSALINE 1835-1915
FLORA 1856-1937
ROSALINE 1867-1949
Several members of the Masson family
were campaigners for women’s
suffrage. David Masson, an influential
supporter of the earliest women’s
suffrage campaigns, was born in
Aberdeen. Moving to London in 1847,
he became a friend of J. S. Mill and the
Carlyles. In 1865, he was appointed
Professor of English Literature at the
University of Edinburgh, and became a
champion of higher education for women
and a supporter of the Edinburgh Ladies’
Educational Association (ELEA), as well as a
constant campaigner in the suffrage cause. His English
wife, Rosaline senior (n. Orme), signed the 1866 petition in support of Mill’s
amendment to the Reform Bill.
Professor David Masson was on the platform at the first public meeting on
women’s suffrage in Edinburgh (January 1870) and spoke eloquently at the
Edinburgh meeting a year later addressed by Mill. Rosaline senior became a
member, and later joint secretary, of the executive committee of the
Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS) in the 1870s.
She travelled to London for the May 1880 demonstration there. David
Masson reported on the Scottish campaign to a joint meeting of suffrage
societies in Bristol in 1879.
Two of the Masson daughters, both of them prolific writers, took up the
torch. Flora wrote an article on votes for women in 1876 in the Ladies
Edinburgh Magazine, and was a member of the influential Ladies Edinburgh
Debating Society. Rosaline junior, her younger sister, joined the society in
1890. In 1909, Rosaline joined the Edinburgh branch of the Conservative
and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association, of which she later became
honorary secretary, and was a speaker at NUWSS meetings. She later held
office in the Edinburgh branch of its successor, the National Society for
Equal Citizenship.
METHVEN,
JESSIE CUNNINGHAM
1856-1917
Jessie Cunningham Methven was elected
to the executive committee of the
Edinburgh National Society for Women’s
Suffrage (ENSWS) in December 1895, and
was its secretary until the arrival of
militancy on the suffrage scene. She
gradually became convinced that votes for
women would not happen without militant
action. In 1896, she was a member of the Special
Appeal Committee that produced a national suffrage
petition of around 250,000 names. She was one of two
representatives from ENSWS on the National Union of
Women’s Suffrage Societies’ Parliamentary Committee in 1897. Two years later,
she succeeded Eliza Wigham as Edinburgh representative on its executive
committee. She was also a member of the Scottish Women’s Liberal Association.
In 1901-1902, Jessie Methven gave a donation to the special organising fund of
the North of England Society for Women’s Suffrage, through which factory
women were working for the vote. In January 1906, she signed the joint
WSPU/Independent Labour Party manifesto, issued at the general election, as an
’independent socialist’. When in late April the new government refused to
consider votes for women, the WSPU created a disturbance in the Ladies’
Gallery of the House of Commons in protest. Jessie Methven immediately sent a
letter (1 May 1906) to the Glasgow Herald supporting the militants’ action. Later
that year she joined the WSPU, immediately after the death of Priscilla Bright
McLaren. She supported the WSPU and the Men’s Political Union until the
outbreak of war.
In 1911, Jessie Methven donated a hand printing press to Edinburgh WSPU.
That year, she took part in demonstrations following parliament’s refusal to take
forward votes for women in a Bill known as the ’Conciliation’ Bill. On 24
November 1911, in her mid-fifties, she was sentenced to ten days’
imprisonment after breaking a window in the Home Office. In 1913, she wrote
an article for the WSPU publication, The Suffragette, reviewing women’s struggle
to obtain the franchise. She called it ’Women’s suffrage in the past: a record of
betrayal’, and declared that militancy was now the only way to win the vote.
MITCHELL,
LILLIAS TAIT
Lillias Mitchell, suffragette campaigner,
was born in Leith into a prosperous
family. She joined the Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU) in late
1907/early 1908 after attending a suffrage
meeting in Edinburgh at which Emmeline
Pankhurst was a speaker. From then on, her
life revolved around the suffrage cause: ’I lived
and moved and seemed to have my being in
working for votes for women’.
In 1911, she was appointed WSPU organiser in Aberdeen and, in March 1912,
took part in a window-smashing raid in London, for which she was arrested.
The policeman who arrested her cheered her, remarking that many men had
had to do much the same in order to get the vote! For her part in the raid, she
was sentenced to four months in Holloway prison, where she went on hunger
strike and was forcibly fed. After her release, she returned to Aberdeen and
continued to organise and take part in militant protests, including painting the
marker flags on Balmoral golf course in WSPU colours, with messages attached
about the forcible feeding of suffragettes and ’Votes for Women’. As the Royal
family was in residence at Balmoral at the time, this caused a great commotion
in the London press. With a companion, she also confronted the Prime
Minister, Herbert Asquith, on the Dornoch golf course, but no charges were
brought.
Lillias Mitchell was considered to be ’a model WSPU organiser’ and was sent
to Birmingham to organise militant protests in the Midlands, including setting
railway stations on fire in the city and an attack on the Castle Bromwich
racecourse. She was charged with making inciting speeches and sent to
Winson Green Prison, where she became ill after going on hunger strike. Soon
after her release, she was re-arrested under the ’Cat and Mouse’ Act.
After the First World War, Lillias Mitchell joined the Edinburgh Women
Citizens’Association, wrote for The Scotsman newspaper, and was secretary to
the Edinburgh and South Area of the YWCA.
Photo acknowledgement: Leneman, L., A Guid Cause
1884-1940
MOORHEAD,
ETHEL AGNES MARY
Ethel Moorhead, suffragette and artist,
was born in Maidstone into the Irish
Catholic family of an army surgeon, and
spent her early years abroad. Her parents
settled in Dundee in 1900 and Ethel
returned to care for them after training as
an artist in Paris.
There is no record of her views on suffrage
during her earlier years, but after her father’s death
in 1911, Ethel Moorhead moved to Edinburgh, joined
the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and became regarded as one
of its most ’turbulent’ members in Scotland. She used a string of aliases (Edith
Johnston, Margaret Morrison, Mary Humphreys) and carried out various acts of
militancy both north and south of the border. They included smashing
windows in London, attacking a showcase at the Wallace Monument, throwing
an egg at Winston Churchill and pepper at the police, wrecking police cells
– and carrying out several arson attacks. She held no formal position in the
WSPU but achieved great personal notoriety.
Ethel Moorhead was imprisoned several times and released under the Cat and
Mouse Act. She became the first Scottish suffragette to be forcibly fed, in
February 1914, in Calton Jail, Edinburgh. Having become seriously ill with
pneumonia after this, she was released into the care of Dr Grace Cadell. Her
experience – duly related to the press – caused much protest at the cruelty
involved. It did not stop her activity, however, and it is more than likely that
she was the woman who escaped when her friend Fanny Parker was arrested
in July 1914, trying to blow up Burns’s cottage in Alloway. During the war,
Ethel Moorhead took on more organisational responsibilities. Along with Fanny
Parker, she helped run the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) National Service
Organisation, encouraging women to find the right work.
She continued to exhibit her paintings in public from 1901 until at least 1918.
In the 1920s, she travelled in Europe and edited an arts quarterly journal. She
seems to have been supported by her family in her later years, and died
in Dublin.
Photo acknowledgement: Martin Emmerson
1869-1955
MUNRO,
ANNA GILLIES MACDONALD
Anna Munro, socialist, suffragist and
campaigner for women’s rights, grew up in
Edinburgh. Through the Methodist Sisters
of the People, whom she admired for their
socialism, she spent three years among
women working in the sweated trades in
Shoreditch, London.
By 1905, she was back in Scotland. In October
1906, she joined the Women’s Social and Political
Union (WSPU), becoming Dunfermline organiser. In
1908, in London, she attempted to deliver a petition to the
King on his way to open Parliament, and was imprisoned in Holloway for six
weeks for demonstrating. She was among the group of women who, disillusioned
with the WSPU for what they regarded as its betrayal of democratic principles,
broke away to form the Women’s Freedom League (WFL) with Teresa
Billington-Greig.
Anna Munro became organising secretary of the Scottish Council of the WFL. By
1913, there were ten WFL branches in Scotland (the WSPU had three). From
1910, she was on its national executive, campaigning across Britain. She spoke at
the start of the Edinburgh to London suffrage march in 1912. In 1913, she
married Sydney Ashman, leather-worker, socialist and conscientious objector. That
year, she was arrested while defying the government ban on public speaking, in
Hyde Park. Later, in a BBC talk, she described prison life as having to use
communal bathwater and one-size prison uniforms. She later moved to England
and, from 1915, was active in her local WFL branch. She remained on the WFL
executive until the WFL disbanded in 1961.
Anna Munro helped lead the WFL campaign for equal suffrage in the 1920s,
speaking and writing of ’ … the long warfare for the full political equality of
women and men’. As WFL delegate to the International Woman’s Suffrage
Association conference in Paris, 1926, she supported the case for economic
equality and the removal of all restrictions on women’s work. In the 1950s, she
addressed UN seminars on racial prejudice and juvenile delinquency. Once,
writing to her husband, she said, ’Did you know when the socialist ideal first
formed … I thought people only had to hear it to embrace it … ’
Photo acknowledgement: Culture and Sport Glasgow (Museums)
1881-1962
NICHOL,
ELIZABETH PEASE
Elizabeth Pease Nichol, abolitionist and
suffragist, was born in Darlington into a
Quaker family. She was actively engaged
throughout her life in many campaigns,
including the anti-slavery movement.
Women were often excluded from public
anti-slavery meetings at that time, so she
founded the Women’s Abolition of Slavery
Society in Darlington to give women the
opportunity to express their views. By 1847 she
knew Eliza Wigham, also a Quaker and anti-slavery
campaigner, who lived in Edinburgh.
Elizabeth Pease married John Nichol in 1853 and moved to Glasgow, where he
was Professor of Astronomy at the University. After her husband died in 1859, she
moved to Edinburgh. There, she continued with her campaigning for equal rights,
and by the 1870s was treasurer of the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s
Suffrage (ENSWS), working with Eliza Wigham and her sister Jane. In March 1884
she was present at the Scottish National Demonstration in Edinburgh, and in May
she signed the Letter from Ladies to Members of Parliament asking for the
inclusion of women heads of household in the government Franchise Bill.
Elizabeth Pease Nichol’s interests extended to health, education and animal
welfare, as well as equal rights. She was a member of the executive committee of
the Ladies’ National Association, which campaigned for the repeal of the
Contagious Diseases Acts, and she publicly supported the women’s campaign to
gain medical training at Edinburgh University. She was a member of the
Edinburgh committee of the Ladies’ Educational Association, which campaigned
for higher education for women, and in 1873 was elected a member of the first
Edinburgh School Board. Soon after that she founded a Scottish branch of the
anti-vivisection society.
Elizabeth Pease Nichol’s Edinburgh home was apparently a port-of-call for many
American and English reformers and philanthropists. One visitor in 1898 was
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, US campaigner for women’s rights. She noted that,
’Though over eighty years of age, [Pease Nichol] was still awake to all the
questions of the hour, and generous in her hospitalities’.
Photo acknowledgement: The Women’s Library
1807-1897
PARKER,
FRANCES ’FANNY’ MARY
1875-1924
Fanny Parker, suffragette and
campaigner, was born in New Zealand,
a niece of Lord Kitchener. Her
involvement with women’s suffrage
began after her graduation from
Newnham College, Cambridge. She joined
the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) in Scotland in 1908 and in
September 1909 was both speaker and
organiser for the Scottish University Women’s
Suffrage Union (SUWSU) tour in south-west Scotland.
The following year she organised its caravan tour, and in 1911 was its
delegate to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress in
Stockholm.
She became an organiser for the WSPU in Dundee in 1912 and Edinburgh
in 1913. From this time, she began to take a leading part in direct action
campaigns. In December 1912, she was sentenced to five days’
imprisonment for causing a breach of the peace at a meeting in Aberdeen
where Lloyd George was speaking. She served terms in both Holloway and
Dundee jails for window breaking. At the end of 1913, she sheltered Ethel
Moorhead, who was on the run as a ’mouse’ and it is possible that Fanny
Parker was involved in burning down Whitekirk Church, East Lothian, in
retaliation for forcible feeding of Ethel Moorhead in prison. Moorhead
described her as having ’an exquisite madness – daring, joyous, vivid,
strategic’. In July 1914, she was caught attempting to blow up Burns’s
cottage in Alloway and sent to Perth prison, where she was herself subjected
to injurious forcible feeding, including by rectal tube. In all she was
imprisoned five time and force-fed three times.
Fanny Parker later joined and became a leading figure in the Women’s
Freedom League (WFL). With Ethel Moorhead, she worked for the WFL
National Service organisation during the First World War, campaigning for
women workers to be properly paid. Fanny Parker was later Deputy
Controller of the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in Boulogne.
PAUL,
ALICE
1885-1977
Alice Paul, academic and campaigner, was
born in the USA to Quaker parents who
believed in gender equality and women’s
suffrage. Her stay in Britain transformed her
into a militant suffragist.
Alice Paul came to Britain to study. At
Birmingham University she heard Christabel
Pankhurst speak and was converted ’heart and
soul’ to the women’s suffrage movement. In 1908,
she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) and moved to London. After her arrest during the
WSPU deputation to Parliament, June 1909, she met Lucy Burns, also American,
in a police station. She took part in WSPU action in Norwich and in London,
where she was arrested with Lucy Burns and others who interrupted one of Lloyd
George’s meetings. The women were sentenced to two weeks’ imprisonment in
Holloway, went on a five-day hunger strike and were released. After recovering,
they drove with Emmeline Pankhurst to Scotland to campaign.
In August, Alice Paul spent a night on a Glasgow hall roof, aiming to disrupt a
cabinet minister’s meeting. She, Lucy Burns and Edith New received a 10-day
sentence in September in Dundee for protesting at another political meeting. After
hunger striking, they were released without being forcibly fed. Alice and Lucy
then travelled to Edinburgh and helped organise the women’s procession and
demonstration held in October. Back in London, Alice Paul was arrested after
interrupting the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and sentenced to 30 days in Holloway.
This time she was forcibly fed. In 1910, after release and recovery, she returned to
America. Lucy Burns joined her in 1912, campaigning vigorously for women’s
enfranchisement. This led to further imprisonment and forcible feeding, but their
spirits remained strong.
Alice Paul travelled and worked for women’s rights internationally. She worked
with the League of Nations to include gender equality in the United Nations
Charter, and for the establishment of the UN Commission on the Status of
Women (still an important monitor of women’s rights). It was written of her: ’Alice
Paul was the architect of some of the most outstanding political achievements on
behalf of women in the 20th century …’
SCOTT,
ARABELLA CHARLOTTE
1886-1980
She was born in Dunoon, attended Dunoon
Grammar School and in 1905 entered Edinburgh
University. After graduation, she taught in Leith.
With her sister Muriel, she joined the Edinburgh
National Society for Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS), the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the
Women’s Freedom League (WFL).
She assisted in many campaigns, and participated in the 1907 and 1909 Edinburgh
suffrage processions. Her first arrest came in London in 1909 when she tried to hand
Prime Minister Asquith a petition. For this she was sentenced to 21 days’ hard labour
in Holloway. After hunger striking she was released and returned to Edinburgh
Incensed by the treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst, WSPU founder, Arabella Scott and
Edith Hudson attempted to set fire to Kelso racecourse grandstand in 1913. They
were arrested and charged with attempted arson. Charged with them were Donald
McEwen, who had organised a taxi for them, and Elizabeth and Agnes Thomson,
sisters in their mid-sixties who, allegedly, helped procure some materials. Agnes
Thomson was released and Elizabeth was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment,
while the other three were sentenced to nine months.
Arabella, Edith and Elizabeth immediately went on hunger strike. After a few days,
they were released on licence under the ’Cat and Mouse’ legislation. Arabella
continued to campaign openly and militantly, was rearrested and undertook several
hunger strikes over time. On her last release she went south, where she remained for
many months. In June 1914, she was recaptured in Brighton. She was taken to Perth
Prison, where she was brutally force fed for five weeks, tied to the bed and not
allowed to see anyone. She was released in a pitiful state, again under licence, and
never rearrested.
Arabella Scott was awarded WSPU medals for hunger striking and forcible feeding,
the Westminster Grill brooch, an Illuminated Address signed by Emmeline Pankhurst,
and the silver WFL Holloway brooch.
Photo acknowledgement: Dr Frances Wheelhouse
Arabella Scott, teacher and suffragist, was
one of the most notable Scottish heroines of
the women’s suffrage movement. She
suffered the longest term of forcible feeding
of any Scottish prisoner.
SCOTT,
MURIEL ELEANOR
Muriel Scott, a younger sister of Arabella
Scott, was born in Dum Dum, India. She
travelled constantly between the family
home in Dunoon and India with her army
officer father and her school-teacher mother.
She graduated with Arabella in 1908 from
Edinburgh University. The sisters joined the
Edinburgh National Society for Women’s Suffrage
(ENSWS), the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) and the Women’s Freedom League (WFL).
Muriel helped in several suffrage campaigns at
by-elections, including that of Prime Minister Asquith
in East Fife.
Muriel and Arabella Scott travelled to London in June 1909 and were arrested
while trying to hand Prime Minister Asquith a suffrage petition. They were tried and
sentenced to 21 days’ in Holloway prison. There they undertook a hunger strike
and were released, spending some time with their aunt in Kent to recover. On
returning to Edinburgh, at their mother’s wish they were careful not to be arrested
together again.
Muriel’s busy campaigning programme over the next few years involved organising
public meetings and interrupting political gatherings. On one occasion, she and
Arabella had to be cut from seats to which they had padlocked themselves. At a
meeting in Stirling, Muriel defended suffragette damage to the Wallace Monument
as part of the long tradition of fighting for liberty.
When in June 1914, her sister Arabella was not sent back to Calton prison in
Edinburgh, as was usual after her arrests in London, Muriel and her mother wrote
to the prison authorities and the Government demanding to know where she was
being held. Learning that Arabella was in Perth prison, there was great concern that
she might be forcibly fed – fears which proved correct. Muriel led a crowd
estimated at 3000 to protest at Perth prison gates, addressing her followers through
a megaphone. It was reported that the whole town was taken over by the
suffragettes. Police were deployed from across Scotland to maintain order.
What rejoicing there must have been when Muriel Scott finally drove out through
those prison gates with Arabella at her side.
Photo acknowledgement: Dr Frances Wheelhouse
1888-1963
SENNETT,
ALICE MAUD ARNCLIFFE
1862-1936
Maud Arncliffe Sennett acted under the
stage name ’Mary Kingsley’. From 1906,
she was involved with a number of suffrage
organisations, both constitutional and
militant, in Scotland and England, including
the Actresses’ Franchise League. She became
engaged to Henry Arncliffe Sennett while
performing in The Lady of the Lake in
Edinburgh.
In 1911 she broke a window at the Daily Mail offices
because the newspaper refused to report a suffrage rally in
the Albert Hall. She helped to organise the Edinburgh to London march in 1912
(the march was the idea of her sister, Florence de Fonblanque) and, in June 1913,
she persuaded a group of councillors, magistrates, lawyers and businessmen,
mainly from Edinburgh and Glasgow, to support a delegation on women’s suffrage
to Prime Minister Asquith.
Although Asquith refused in advance to see the deputation, the men visited
London, distributed prepared speeches and in the evening attended a reception
Maud Arncliffe Sennett organised with the Actresses’ Franchise League, the Men’s
League for Women’s Enfranchisement and the National Political League. The men
later formed the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage (NMFWS), with
Maud Arncliffe Sennett as ’founder and honorary organiser’. She appears to have
controlled and carried out NMF policy and worked at the increasingly difficult task
of fund-raising. She spoke at an NMF meeting in Edinburgh in November 1913.
Around this time, she was also planning an approach to the Glasgow presbytery
on the issue of women’s suffrage with campaigner Dr Dorothea Chalmers Smith.
In July 1915, she and Elizabeth Finlayson Gauld spoke at a large open-air meeting
of NMFWS in the Meadows, Edinburgh, attended by more than 1000 people. In
1918, the NMF held a commemoration dinner in Edinburgh to celebrate women
gaining the (limited) vote, and presented her with a silver rose bowl in recognition
of her part in the suffrage campaign. She remained a lifelong friend of Nannie
Brown of Edinburgh, who had acted as secretary of the NMF branch in Edinburgh.
Maud Arncliffe Sennett’s campaign scrapbooks are now held at the British Library.
SIMSON,
FRANCES HELEN
Frances Simson was born in Edinburgh
and lived most of her life there. She was
one of the first eight women graduates of
Scottish universities in 1893. When
Edinburgh University’s first residence for
women, Masson Hall, opened in 1897, she
was its first warden, a salaried post which
she held 1897-1918. During that time the hall
became a centre for women’s suffrage activity.
Frances Simson played a leading role in the attempt by
five women graduates to vote for their university MP at the general election of
1906. The others were Margaret Nairn, Dr Elsie Inglis, Chrystal Macmillan and
Frances Melville. The women argued that their membership of the general
council of their university entitled them to vote because the vote was based
on intellect, not gender. When the registrar refused them, they took the case
to the Court of Session in June 1906. Their action failed and, after losing two
further appeals, the women took their case to the House of Lords in
November 1908. Simson, Melville, and Macmillan attended, Macmillan
speaking first and acting as senior counsel. Frances Simson, acting as junior
counsel, spoke on the second day, making a general argument and closing the
case. The Glasgow Herald described her presentation as ’a well ordered
argument’. The appeal was dismissed, but resulted in useful press coverage
and sympathetic support.
Arguing their case so well at the highest court made a powerful statement
about women’s abilities. Simson, dressed plainly in black, was judged ’clear
and impressive’ (Glasgow Herald, 13 November 1908). The case led to the
formation of women’s suffrage societies in the four Scottish universities, and
Simson became president of the Scottish University Women’s Suffrage Union.
She was also vice-president of the Edinburgh National Society for Women’s
Suffrage (ENSWS) and active in the Scottish Federation of the National Union
of Women’s Suffrage Societies. She served as a member of the general council
of Scottish Churches League for Woman Suffrage, founded in 1912. After
1918, she was president of the Edinburgh Equal Citizenship Society, the
successor to ENSWS.
Photo acknowledgement: Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections
1854-1938
STEEL,
BARBARA JOANNA
1857-FL.1918
Barbara Joanna Steel was an active
member of the Scottish Women’s Liberal
Federation. Between 1904 and 1906, she
served on its executive and its Women’s
Franchise and Local Government
Committee. She was also involved with the
Edinburgh National Society for Women’s
Suffrage (ENSWS), speaking at and chairing
annual general meetings. Her late husband was a
Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
In 1907, ENSWS held a public meeting ’to consider the
question of refusal to pay taxes where representation is denied’. A supporting letter
from Lady Steel was read out:
’… it is the only way I can see of publicly discrediting the practice of taxing women
while withholding from them the rights of citizenship. If [ENSWS] could persuade a
few women in every town in Scotland to … [allow] their furniture to be sold as a
protest against the law which classes them with criminals and idiots as unworthy of
a vote, their object as a Society would soon be attained.’
ENSWS passed a resolution that as taxation and representation were linked under
the British Constitution, women who refused to pay taxes were not acting
unconstitutionally. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS),
proved less militant than the Edinburgh society, rejecting tax-resistance as unlawful,
but the militants took it up. In 1907 and 1909, Barbara Steel herself refused to pay
taxes and her goods were auctioned at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh. Lady Steel’s
example was mentioned in a letter to the press in December 1907 from Edith
How Martyn and Teresa Billington-Greig, who represented the newly formed
Women’s Freedom League (WFL). The WFL encouraged women to adopt this
policy and in 1909 established the Tax Resistance League. In September 1908,
Barbara Steel had long talks with Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy, supporter of
women’s suffrage and promoter of higher education for women, at a meeting at
Bridge of Allan. Jessie Methven and Chrystal Macmillan were also present.
Barbara Steel was the first woman to stand for election to Edinburgh Town Council
(1907). In 1918 she was awarded an OBE.
THE STEVENSON SISTERS
ELISA CARLILE 1829-1904
LOUISA 1835-1908
FLORA CLIFT 1839-1905
Elisa was an early member of the Edinburgh
National Society for Women’s Suffrage
(ENSWS) founded in 1867, and her sisters
Louisa Stevenson
Flora and Louisa soon followed suit. They also
joined Sarah Mair’s Ladies Edinburgh Debating
Society and other groups in favour of women’s
higher education and for medical training. In the early
1880s, the younger Stevenson sisters attended suffrage
meetings and signed petitions. In 1889, all three signed a Declaration drafted by
Millicent Fawcett’s Liberal Unionist section that as unmarried women or widows,
they considered their ’exclusion from the privilege [vote] an infraction of the
principle that taxation and representation should go together’. There was some
tension in the Edinburgh branch of NSWS between those suffragists, mainly of
the younger generation, who were Gladstonian Home Rule Liberals and the
Stevensons who were Liberal Unionists. This tension was partly relieved by the
formation of the umbrella grouping, the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS) in 1897, following the ’monster petition’ organised by the
Special Appeal Committee, of which Flora and Louisa had both been both
members, and they both continued to speak at meetings in the early 1900s.
All the Stevenson sisters died before the rise of the active militant campaign, but
it is unlikely they would have supported it. They held to Free Church of Scotland
principles, believing women should play a full role in public bodies, and their
energies were already fully engaged in a range of responsible posts in local
administration. These included the Edinburgh School Board of which Flora was
one of the first women members and later chair; the Edinburgh School of
Cookery; the Edinburgh Parochial Board and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
Board, to which Louisa was re-elected six times.
Photo acknowledgement: The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge
Three of the six daughters of James and
Jane Stevenson took part in the suffrage
movement in its pre-militant years. Born
in Glasgow, and having spent their early
years in South Shields, they lived in
Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh, from
1859 for most of the rest of their lives.
TAYLOUR,
JANE ELIZABETH
From her early 40s onwards, Jane Taylour
was an active campaigner for women’s
suffrage and equality of opportunity for
women in education and employment.
She was a founder member and first
honorary secretary of the Galloway branch
of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage,
formed in November 1870, and, with Agnes
McLaren, became joint secretary of the Edinburgh
Suffrage Society in January 1873. By the summer of
that year she had delivered more than 150 public
lectures in towns all over Scotland, sometimes alone and
sometimes accompanied by others, including Agnes McLaren.
The meetings she addressed were often presided over by influential local figures,
including chief magistrates, sheriffs and church ministers, and her style and
delivery were such that she succeeded in persuading many of them to support
the suffrage cause. Indeed, when closing a meeting she had addressed in
Kirkwall, the Provost praised ’the tact, eloquence, and singularly lucid manner in
which she has advanced the claims of her sex’, confessing that his ’former
opinions on the subject which she has so well treated, have been considerably
shaken’.
Jane Taylour moved to Edinburgh for a time, but by 1884 was living in the
Midlands in England. She continued to lecture, and was closely involved with a
number of organisations, including the Central Committee of the National
Society for Women’s Suffrage, and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies (NUWSS), of which she was Vice President in 1901. Although it
appears that she financed her own lecture tours, in 1873 she was presented with
150 guineas for her work, as well as a piece of jewellery.
In 1891, in her mid-sixties, she moved to Saffron Walden in Essex. Although she
did less public speaking from then on, she remained very much involved and
was influential in various local enterprises. For example, she was honorary
secretary of the local branch of the British Women’s Temperance Association
and, a year before her death, she attended the first public meeting of the new
Saffron Waldon branch of the Central Association for Women’s Suffrage.
Photo acknowledgement: The Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge
1827-1905
WATSON,
ELIZABETH ’BESSIE’
Bessie Watson lived in Edinburgh all
her life and, unusually for a girl, was
encouraged by her parents to learn to
play the bagpipes when only seven
years old. They hoped it would
strengthen her chest as a precaution
against tuberculosis.
Bessie’s skill as a piper led to her involvement
in the women’s suffrage movement. She and her
mother both joined the Women’s Social and Political
Union (WSPU) in 1909, and Bessie volunteered to play the pipes at the
WSPU Edinburgh procession and demonstration on 9 October that year.
A few weeks later, Christobel Pankhurst came to Edinburgh to address a
meeting at the King’s Theatre and presented Bessie Watson with a brooch
depicting Queen Boadicea (Boudicca) in her chariot. Bessie gave the
brooch to Margaret Thatcher when she became Prime Minister in 1979.
When Scottish pipers went to London to take part in the Great Pageant
on 17 June 1911, Bessie Watson was invited to lead them, with other
female pipers: ’I suppose they thought here was I, a girl of ten at that
time, doing something which they always associated with men’.
Bessie Watson became an active suffragette, combining her pipe playing
with suffrage activities. She accompanied prisoners returning to Holloway,
playing her pipes on the platform as the train left Waverley Station. She
also played to the suffragettes imprisoned in Edinburgh’s Calton Jail. At
the age of 14, she became the only female member of the Highland
Pipers’ Society and won many piping awards. She went on to study
French at the University of Edinburgh and became a violin teacher for
Edinburgh schools. She founded the Broughton School Pipe Band, which
she supported for 27 years. At the age of 45, she married John Somerville,
an electrical contractor.
Photo acknowledgement: City of Edinburgh Museums. The People’s Story
1900-1992
WIGHAM,
ELIZA
Eliza Wigham, campaigner against
slavery and for women’s suffrage, was
born in Edinburgh into a network of
reforming Quaker families. Her
stepmother, Jane Smeal, had published
a pamphlet in 1838, urging women to
speak at public meetings in the abolitionist
cause and, with her encouragement and
cooperation, Eliza Wigham became a leading
anti-slavery campaigner, corresponding with
colleagues in the USA, while also taking up the cause of
women’s political, social and economic rights.
After the defeat of the J. S. Mill amendment in 1866-7, Eliza Wigham
joined the Edinburgh National Women’s Suffrage Society (ENWSS) as a
joint secretary, and worked closely with the McLaren family, especially
Priscilla and Agnes. In 1874, she represented Edinburgh at the
Birmingham conference and in the 1880s she is recorded as having
spoken at several meetings, including the two ’Grand Demonstrations’ in
Glasgow and Edinburgh (1884). In the 1890s, she was a member of the
Special Appeal committee, gathering signatures for a monster petition,
and she remained almost until her death a member of the executive
committee of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
(NUWSS), representing Edinburgh.
In politics Eliza Wigham was a Liberal, attending the first meeting of the
Scottish Liberal Foundation to which women were admitted (1884). She
later sat on the committee of the Scottish Women’s Liberal Federation.
Her wide interests covered a range of causes related to women’s rights,
including temperance, campaigning against the Contagious Diseases Act,
and encouraging women to take up medical careers. She did not marry
but nursed her stepmother through a long illness, and later moved to
Dublin where she died.
Photo acknowledgement: Trustees of the National Library of Scotland
1820-1899
BRIEF NOTES
The women listed below are known to
have had Edinburgh connections or been
active in Edinburgh around the time of
the women’s suffrage procession and
demonstration in October 1909, but we
have very little information about them.
There must be many other stories waiting
to be told.
If you can help with more information, we
would be very pleased if you would contact
Women’s History Scotland
www.womenshistoryscotland.org
ALLEN, MARY SOPHIA (1878-1964): Women’s Social
and Political Union (WSPU) organiser in Edinburgh 1913-1914, following Lucy
Burns. Some of the Edinburgh group appeared to resent her because she was
sent up from England. She worked with the Women’s Freedom League (WFL)
after the WSPU suspended activities during the First World War, and was one
of the first women police officers. She later became a journalist. Awarded OBE
at the end of the war.
BARNETT, MARGARET SIMPSON (1874-1956): A strong non-militant
supporter. She attended meetings of the Edinburgh National Society for
Women’s Suffrage (ENSWS). She gained a teaching certificate in 1894 and was
a LLA (Lady Literate in Arts) of St Andrews University.
BAXENDINE, CATHERINE: Active in the Edinburgh branch of the WSPU,
though not a militant because she had very young children. She became a
librarian at the Carnegie public library and later at Edinburgh University.
BELL, ELIZA: Lived in Comely Bank, Edinburgh. She was one of the
organisers of the 1907 Edinburgh women’s procession.
CRAIG, LILIAS (c.1811-1883): Active supporter of ENSWS from its
beginnings, according to her obituary. Died in Edinburgh, March 1883.
BRIEF NOTES
CRAIGEN, JESSIE HANNAH
(c.1835-1899): One of the early suffrage
supporters. Daughter of an Italian actor
and Scottish sailor. She was a dramatic
speaker, addressing early suffrage
meetings across the UK. Active in
Scotland in the 1870s, she gained support
for the cause from women working in
factories, fishing and on the land. She
spoke at the women’s Demonstration at the
Synod Hall, Edinburgh, 24 March 1884. Other
speakers were Alice Scatcherd, Flora Stevenson,
Eliza Wigham, Priscilla Bright McLaren, Florence
Balgarnie, Sarah Siddons Mair and Laura Ormiston
Chant. Men were confined to the gallery, to the outrage
of the Scotsman leader writer.
EDWARDS, MAUDE: Slashed a picture of King George V in the Royal Scottish
Academy. At her stormy trial in 1914 the judge ordered the court to be cleared
of suffragettes, many of whom, including Dr Grace Cadell, strongly resisted. By
July 1914 all suffragette prisoners in Scotland were being sent to Perth Prison to
be forcibly fed. Maude Edwards was among them.
GORDON, LISA: NUWSS organiser based in Edinburgh, c.1909-1914. She
was active in all the Scottish by-election suffrage campaigns. Her sister
Clementina was an organiser in Newcastle.
GRIEVE, MRS: WSPU member who lived at Collesdene House, Joppa. Had
been imprisoned in London. Known as a prominent sympathiser who gave
shelter to at least one suffragette released under the Cat and Mouse Act. In
1913, she refused to pay taxes and some of her goods were publicly
auctioned.
HOWDEN, JESSIE: WSPU member who tried
to set up branches in Tranent
and Pencaitland. President of NUWSS Haddington. Her diary, 1909-1914, is
with East Lothian Local History Centre, Haddington (EL14).
BRIEF NOTES
LOUDON, KATHERINE MARY: Born in
Bombay 1869. Held a Diploma from the
Edinburgh Association for the Higher
Education of Women. She was honorary
secretary of ENSWS from 1912.
LOW, ALICE MARY: Organising
secretary, ENSWS, 1909 and member of
the Scottish Federation. Member of
Whitsome School Board 1908-1912. She
spoke on the Scottish stands, with Louisa
Lumsden, at the NUWSS-organised rally, the
’suffrage pilgrimage’, in Hyde Park in 1913. Chrystal
Macmillan was in the chair.
LUMSDEN, LOUISA INNES (1840-1935): Educational pioneer, suffragist,
animal rights supporter. She was the first headmistress of St Leonards School for
Girls, St Andrews. After 1908, she campaigned actively as a non-militant for
suffrage and women’s rights. She spoke on the NUWSS Scottish stand at the
Hyde Park rally, 1913, and travelled around Scotland as speaker and activist,
often with Frances Balfour and Elsie Inglis, moving to Edinburgh in 1914. Later
she became Vice-President of the Scottish Churches League for Women’s
Suffrage, working at the headquarters in Edinburgh. Made DBE in 1925.
MACFARLANE, FLORENCE: Matron of a private hospital in Edinburgh, she
resigned rather than dismiss one of her nurses who had taken part in a militant
suffrage protest. She was arrested in London in 1910 and 1912, when she was
forcibly fed in Holloway prison.
MELVILLE, FRANCES H. (1873-1962): One of the initiators of the Scottish
university graduates’ lawsuit with Chrystal Macmillan, Margaret Nairn, Elsie
Inglis and Frances Simson. She was the first Scottish woman Bachelor of
Divinity (St Andrews), and held other degrees from Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Later, she became honorary president of the Glasgow Women Citizens’
Association.
BRIEF NOTES
NAIRN, MARGARET: The youngest of
the first eight Edinburgh University
women Arts graduates (1893), she was
among the initiators of the Scottish
university graduates’ lawsuit. She was
one of the first women cyclists in
Edinburgh, and travelled widely.
REID, MARION KIRKLAND: Author of
A Plea for Woman, published in Edinburgh,
Dublin and London in 1843 (reprinted 1988).
She married Hugo Reid in 1839 and went to live
in Edinburgh. Few details of her life are known. She
was present at the anti-slavery convention in London in
1840 and was a supporter of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Hers
was the first book arguing that for women, obtaining the vote was the crucial
first step towards ending gender discrimination in all walks of life. It was
influential in Britain, Ireland and the USA. She was widowed in 1872.
WILKIE, ANNOT ROBINSON (1874-1925): Trained as a teacher in Edinburgh,
taught in Fife and Dundee. In 1901 awarded external degree LLA (St Andrews).
Joined Dundee WSPU. Her sister Helen joined the Dundee WFL. Married and
moved to England but known to be active in Scotland during by-election
campaigns 1912 in Midlothian and South Lanark.
WYLIE, BARBARA: WSPU organiser in Edinburgh 1910. Sentenced to seven
days’ imprisonment 1911, she took part in the WSPU window-smashing raid in
London in 1912 but was released from Holloway with her sister Emma,
because of their mother’s illness. Justified her actions by referring to appalling
housing conditions in Scotland. She was in Canada 1912-1914, continued
suffrage work there and reported back to WSPU. Spoke in Edinburgh in 1914
after Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest. Sent to Holloway again in 1914 and
released under the Cat and Mouse Act after 20 days.
WYLIE, EMMA: Active in by-election work and as a speaker at Scottish WSPU
meetings. Also imprisoned in Holloway in 1911 and 1912.