Lies at Her Door is a psychological thriller set in one of the more affluent parts of affluent Clifton in Bristol. As a Bristolian, I enjoyed the setting and recognising places familiar to me – though it can feel a bit disconcerting to picture murky deeds and doings going on in them! Still, murky deeds and doings can take place anywhere, as thrillers like this suggest.   Lucy Freeman is in her thirties and after a lifetime of put-downs from her fashion-model-thin and impeccably dressed mother is low on self-esteem. She’s always been unfavourably compared to her rock-star brother who is handsome, glamourous, rich and self-centred. Now her mother is disabled by Parkinson’s, Lucy has to stay at home to look after her, which she does lovingly and conscientiously. Her father, a university lecturer, isn’t much help, and does little to support his daughter. Lucy’s life is about as bleak as it can be.   Something needs to change. Unfortunately, change is often not for the better a...

My postcard collection includes this picture of Fanny Fields, a music hall star whose song The Suffragette was one of many music-hall references to the militant suffrage campaign of the 1900s. Fanny Fields found fame playing an American-Dutch girl with a lager-swilling fiancé called Schultz. She entertained her audiences with songs, clog dances, and comic patter. She was one of the most popular stars of her day, and perhaps nowhere was she more loved than in Bristol.  Happy Fanny Fields She was born Fanny Furman in New York on 15 September 1880, and started performing in Vaudeville at the age of thirteen. According to her own account, she went on the stage to help refill the family’s coffers after her parents’ fruit importing business failed. Her brother, who had been an actor, taught her to dance, and her brother-in-law, Joseph Fields, was an actor and encouraged her talent for mimicry. After a year in variety, she spent five years touring with various companies, and then joine...

Usually referred to as Mrs W C H Cross, she was born Mabel Harriette Duncan in Bristol in 1872. Her mother was Adelaide, and her father, Edward Duncan, was a tea wholesaler. In the 1880s the family were living in Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol. By the time of the 1901 Census the family had moved to Clifton. Mabel does not appear with them on the Census however, and it is possible that at this time she was training or working as a nurse. A Mabel Duncan is recorded on the 1901 Census as a “sick nurse” in Weston-Super-Mare. At some point Mabel was a district nurse in London. She was back in Bristol in the early 1900s when she was honorary secretary of the Women’s Reform Union (WRU). The WRU had been formed by Quaker sisters and suffragists Anna Maria and Mary Priestman. In 1908 Mabel Duncan and Sarah Jane Tanner organised a Bristol WRU contingent to join the NUWSS procession on 13 June which culminated in a meeting in the Albert Hall in London.  Mrs Millicent Garrett Fawcett (second wo...

Tyntesfield, near Wraxall, North Somerset   This is the view from our picnic spot when we had a day out at Tyntesfield just outside Bristol recently. Tyntesfield is now a National Trust property , but was once the home of Bristol MP George Abraham Gibbs.  George Abraham Gibbs (1873–1931) was the Conservative MP for Bristol West between 1906 and 1928. That meant he was in Parliament during the women’s suffrage campaign, and one of Bristol’s MPs at the height of suffragette militancy in the city. Gibbs, though, was opposed to women’s suffrage, and in 1910 voted against the Conciliation Bill which would have enfranchised some women. However, unlike his more unfortunate Liberal counterparts, he did not have to endure heckling and interruptions at his meetings, arson attacks on his homes, or thrashings such as the one suffragette Theresa Garnett gave Liberal MP Winston Churchill in Bristol in 1909. This was because the target of WSPU militancy was the government and its min...

In 1894 Reverend Clement Reginald Tollemache (1835–1895) moved to The Villa, Batheaston with his wife, Frances Josephine, and three daughters, Mary, Grace and Aethel. The family had been living in Brighton, where the Reverend Tollemache had settled after ministering in India for some years. His daughters were all born in India. In Batheaston, Reverend Tollemache gave ministerial assistance at St John’s and St Catherine’s churches. However, he did not enjoy his new home for long, and died in November 1895.   In 1903 the eldest of the three sisters, Mary, married Bernard Charles Spencer Everett, a canon at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Grace (1871–1952) and Aethel (1874–1955) remained in Batheaston. Here their lives took an arguably much more exciting turn than that of their sister in the quiet precincts of The Cloisters at Windsor Castle. In 1907 Aethel Tollemache and her friend and neighbour Mary Blathwayt of Eagle House, Batheaston went to a meeting in the Victoria ...