In February 1912 the Bristol Liberal MP Charles E H
Hobhouse addressed a meeting of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage
in the city’s Colston Hall. During his speech he remarked, “In the present days
of cheap and easy railway traffic they [the suffragettes] could always arrange
numerous deputations or demonstrations and they could be as noisy as their
funds permitted – (laughter)…” (Western Daily Press, 17 February 1912).
Hobhouse was anti-women’s suffrage and remained so even
after the passage of the 1918 Representation of the People Act gave the vote to
some British women. Although he had no understanding of or sympathy with the
suffrage movement, his statement does show that he understood one thing: the
importance of the rail network to the suffrage movement. In this three-part
article, I’ll be exploring the connections between the railway system and the
suffrage campaign, particularly the militant campaign.
Both militant and non-militant women’s franchise campaigners
relied on train transport. Trains, as Hobhouse noted, took protesters to demonstrations
and deputations. On 13 June 1908, for example, special trains to London were
put on all over the country to allow women to travel to join a march from the
Embankment to the Albert Hall organised by the non-militant National Union of
Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). A week later, thirty extra trains were
provided to carry suffragettes of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)
to a demonstration in Hyde Park that attracted over 250,000 people.
 |
| Supporters travelled by train to take part in demonstrations. This one at London's Albert Hall was organised by the non-militant NUWSS. |
During by elections, both militant and non-militant suffrage
workers descended on contested constituencies to campaign for women’s suffrage.
Militant protestors also travelled to and from London to join the great WSPU deputations
to the House of Commons whenever a suffrage bill was debated – and invariably
defeated. The militants used the rail network to facilitate their more disruptive
acts too. When suffragettes interrupted a speech by the Prime Minister, H H
Asquith, at Bletchley Park in August 1909, they went by train to Leighton
Buzzard and walked to the Park from the station. Probably the most famous rail journey
made with militancy in mind was that taken from London Victoria to Epsom by
Emily Wilding Davison when she went to the 1913 Derby. Days later she died of
her injuries after running out in front of the King’s horse.
 |
| Emily Wilding Davison's return train ticket. |
Suffragettes could also use the trains to make their
campaign visible. When Lillian Dove Willcox and Mary Allen were released from
Holloway and returned to Bristol they were met at Temple Meads Railway station
by a procession of women wearing suffragette colours and carrying banners. From
here, the two suffragette heroines were driven in decorated carriages through
the centre of the town to a welcome reception.
Large national organisations with their headquarters
in London relied on being able to move people easily and quickly around the
country in order to function. Suffrage campaigners attended meetings large and
small: Winifred Coombe Tennant often caught the train from her home in Neath,
South Wales to go to London meetings of the national executive of the National Union
of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Suffrage workers travelled throughout the kingdom
setting up and running a network of local branches, and organising
demonstrations, events, fund raising, and talks at local level. Campaigners
moved around the country as they were needed, supporting local organisers when
required. When Winston Churchill visited Bristol in 1909, workers were deployed
from London and Exeter to help Bristol and West of England WSPU organiser Annie
Kenney arrange a number of protests.
The railway system played a large part in propaganda
work too. Not only did it enable the distribution of suffrage publications such
as Votes for Women or The Common Cause, it also meant that
workers were able to spread their message widely. Popular speakers used trains
to facilitate their speaking tours. Trainers from head office travelled to the
provinces to instruct local branch members in public speaking and other aspects
of suffrage work. The movement’s celebrities were a tremendous boost to the
cause. A visit by Mrs Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
and other well-known figures brought publicity, new members, and much-needed
cash.
 |
| Emmeline Pankhurst and Lady Constance Lytton, popular WSPU speakers, at Waterloo in 1910. |
Travelling around organising, speaking and
protesting was a life that took its toll on the women involved. In 1909 WSPU
member Millicent Browne, whose biography I am writing, was sent to campaign in
North Wales. She had a terrible journey: she was suffering from appalling
period pains, no one met her at the station, she had nowhere to spend the night
and all the boarding houses she tried were full. Eventually she managed to
obtain a reviving glass of hot water and gin, and one of the landladies let her
sleep in an armchair.
Kate Parry Frye worked for the New Constitutional
Society for Women’s Suffrage, which was founded in 1910 and positioned itself
between the WSPU and NUWSS by advocating anti-government action but eschewing
WSPU-style militancy. The diary she kept throughout those campaigning years is
full of references to train travel, and amply illustrates how much campaigners
relied on the network. It also shows how the constant travelling, often at
short notice, contributed to the exhaustion, discomfort and difficulties the
peripatetic campaigner endured. The stress of illness, homesickness, bad food, and
comfortless lodgings were compounded by rushing to catch trains, over-crowded carriages,
and having to lug bags around or entrust them to left luggage offices.
In 1911, Kate Parry Frye travelled to the Women’s
Coronation Procession in London. There were, she wrote, “So many people
travelling…at Norwich, where I had to change, it was quite a pandemonium, and
so hot. The train was half an hour late” (Campaigning for the Vote: Kate
Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary, ed. Elizabeth Crawford, Francis Boutle
Publishers, 2013, p 66). On a later journey, “I lost my luggage. Two porters
were very rude…I told an official I had been travelling since the early morning
and had come to the conclusion that the Railway companies made it as difficult
as possible for people” (Diary, p 71). By 1913 it had all become too
much for her. After a journey to Dover she declared, “I simply cannot bear
these journeys and arrival in places. And such a pouring wet night and such a
filthy station” (Diary, p 137).
While trains were valuable resources enabling the
carrying out of militant and non-militant campaigns, the administration of
organisations, and the dissemination of the suffrage message, they were also sites
of activism for the militants. In 1907 Mary Gawthorpe and Annie Kenney were
invited to the Riviera by Emmeline and Frederick Pethick Lawrence for a holiday.
They found themselves travelling on the same train to Cannes as the prime
minister, Henry Campbell Bannerman, when they went into the dining car for tea.
They immediately seized on the opportunity to talk Votes for Women to him and
plonked themselves down beside him. “The dear old man”, as Mary Gawthorpe
called him, was puzzled put polite, though when they told him who they were he refused
to be drawn on the issue. He would only advise, “You should adopt different tactics”
(The Guardian, 3 April 1907).
Trains were also good places for deliberately
tracking down VIPs. In March 1909 Bristol Liberal MP Augustine Birrell was approached
at Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station by suffragettes Elsie Howey and Vera
Wentworth. He refused to speak to them. John Redmond, MP, had two bags of flour
thrown at him by a suffragette on a train to Newcastle in November 1913.
In 1912 King George visited Bristol to open the King
Edward VII Memorial Infirmary, named after his father. The home secretary, Reginald
McKenna, accompanied him. McKenna was accosted by Helen Cragg when he got down
from the King’s carriage at Llandaff. She jumped over a wall, ran towards him, grabbed
his arm, and was immediately arrested. The King and Queen were standing only a
few feet away.
Helen Cragg later told the arresting officers that McKenna
should not have been “jaunting about the country while women were starving in prison”
(Bristol Times and Mirror, 27 June 1912). In Bristol, Miss Billings, who
was waiting for the royal carriage, was recognised and prevented from carrying
out any protest by being detained in one of the station offices until the end
of the King’s visit, when she was put on a train back to London.
The speed with which the police pounced on Helen
Craggs and others is understandable given that these encounters often
degenerated into violence. When Winston Churchill visited Bristol in 1909 he
was attacked at Temple Meads Railway Station by Leeds suffragette Theresa
Garnett. She broke through the cordon of detectives surrounding him and lunged
at him with a whip crying, “Take that you brute!” In 1910 Churchill was assaulted
in a train travelling to London from Bradford by male supporter, Hugh Franklin.
In 1912 Emily Wilding Davison whipped a clergyman at
Aberdeen station, having mistaken him for Lloyd George. In 1914 Lord Weardale,
a joint president of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, was also assaulted
with a whip at Euston station having been mistaken for the prime minister, H H
Asquith. He was struck on the back of his head, fell to the ground, and was
repeatedly hit. His wife, Lady Weardale, was also struck during the scuffle.
Asquith had several violent encounters with
suffragettes, many of which occurred at railway stations or on board trains. In
1910 he was greeted at Burnley station by what his daughter Violet called a
“Suffragette mêlée” (Mark Bonham Carter and Mark Pottle, eds, Lantern
Slides: The Diaries and Letters of Violent Bonham Carter 1904-1914,
Phoenix, 1996, p 223). After a crossing from Boulogne in 1912, Violet reported
that her father was “abordéed by a Suffragette…At Charing Cross…a horrible mêlée
with Suffragettes ensued – I had the pleasure of giving one an ugly
wrist-twist!” (Lantern Slides, p 304). In April 1914 while he was travelling
to his East Fife constituency, a woman jumped on the footboard at the front of
his carriage and threw a letter protesting about forcible feeding through the
window. She was still clinging to the train when it set off, but a railway police
officer pulled her off. On the prime minister’s return journey from Cupar, two
women jumped off the opposite platform, ran across the lines, and scrambled up
to shout “woman torturer!” at him.
Find out in Part 2 about the battle to free Mrs Pankhurst on the Glasgow to London train following her arrest in 1914. Part 2 will be published on Tuesday 14 April 2020.
Picture Credits: All images Women’s Library on
Flickr, No Known Copyright Restrictions
“Women and Transport: Historical
Perspectives”
Circumstances permitting, the West of England and
South Wales Women’s History Network Annual Conference will be looking at more
aspects of women and transport. “Women and Transport: Historical Perspectives”
will take place on Saturday 3 October 2020 from 10 am to 5pm at Central
Community Centre, Emlyn Square, Swindon SN1 5BL. Deadline for Call for Papers
is 24 April 2020. For further information see the WESWWHN website.
Read Elizabeth Crawford's fascinating blog – 'Emily Wilding Davison And
That Return Ticket' – at https://womanandhersphere.com/2013/05/27/suffrage-stories-emily-wilding-davison-and-that-return-ticket/
 |
The Bristol Suffragettes available in paperback from Amazon UK and SilverWood Books. For other buying links and further information see my website.
Sign up for my newsletter here and receive a free copy of The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women's Suffrage Campaign (ebook)
Comments
Post a Comment