Yorkshire’s rebel girls

London and Lancashire have always been thought the rightful homes of the suffragette movement, but the latest book from a Leeds academic is set to change all that.

Using new information gleaned from census returns and recently discovered Home Office papers, Dr Jill Liddington has unearthed a colourful roll-call of activists on this side of the Pennines, in the first collective history of the Yorkshire suffragettes.

Rebel Girls - their fight for the vote chronicles the women’s suffrage campaign through the cities of Leeds, Hull and Sheffield, to the smaller towns of Huddersfield, Halifax and Hebden Bridge. Intriguing characters emerge, including the youngest and often forgotten Pankhurst sister, Adela, who was Yorkshire’s regional organiser; dancer turned arsonist Lillian Lenton, and ‘baby suffragette’ Dora Thewlis, arrested at a London demonstration aged just 16.

Jill Liddington’s sources include papers lodged in libraries in Canberra and New York, plus back copies of the Yorkshire Post, Huddersfield Examiner and Hebden Bridge Times. The minute book of the Huddersfield WPSU survives, as do the diaries of the town’s suffragist, Florence Lockwood. The census records, searchable electronically, enabled Dr Liddington to trace the women as they moved between rented accommodation, and recently uncovered Home Office records disclose details of covert surveillance carried out on women prisoners.

From middle-class mill owners’ wives to factory weavers, the individual women vividly illustrate the differences between the militant suffragettes of the Pankhursts’ Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU) and the law-abiding suffragists in the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), led by Mrs Fawcett.

In Yorkshire, NUWSS members were predominantly middle class; they held meetings, collected signatures for petitions and organised dignified processions. Isabella Ford of Adel Grange was the mainstay of the NUWSS in Leeds, running the city’s branch with her two sisters. In 1909, she organised a regional tour, taking the message by horse-drawn caravan to the dales, moors and coast of North Yorkshire.

As Dr Liddington writes: “It was a brave decision for a woman accustomed to a bevy of servants and who might never have shopped or cooked a meal in her life.” In each town or village, suffragists would speak from the caravan steps, some audiences being more receptive than others.

In contrast, the WSPU disrupted speeches by government politicians, marched on Parliament and, in later years, smashed windows and set fire to postboxes and buildings. Dora Thewlis from Huddersfield was among the first Yorkshire WSPU activists to march on Parliament. Following her arrest, her photo appeared on the front page of the Daily Mirror, shouting and dishevelled between two burly policemen. In court, the magistrate was shocked that, given her tender age, she was not at school. He was seemingly unaware that at 16, Dora had already been working in a mill for three years. She was remanded in custody for six days

While the NUWSS was closely identified with the ruling Liberal party and local employers, the early WSPU joined with striking mill workers and fought Liberal candidates in local by-elections.

Active working women, such as tailoress Lavena Saltonstall from Hebden Bridge, were most likely to join the WSPU. She championed a long-running fustian weavers’ strike in the town and brought Emmeline Pankhurst to Hebden Bridge to speak to the strikers. A regular contributor of acerbic letters on women’s suffrage to the local paper, Lavena was later imprisoned twice in Holloway after London demonstrations.

Some respectable middle-class Yorkshire women did embrace the militancy of the WPSU, including Leonora Cohen, wife of a Leeds businessman. She smashed a plate glass display case at the Tower of London. Brought to a trial by jury, she was acquitted after proving that the cost of repair was under the £5 threshold for such a court.

Increased WPSU militancy brought an ever tougher response from the Liberal Government, including longer prison sentences, force feeding of hunger strikers and even hard labour.

Dancer Lillian Lenton, who vowed on her 21st birthday to burn two (empty) buildings a week until women got the vote, was convicted for arson and force fed while on hunger strike. The tube was wrongly inserted and food went into her lungs, leaving her fighting for her life.

To deal with such ‘embarrassments’ the Government brought in a ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act, by which hunger strikers were released under licence on health grounds, only to be rearrested a few weeks later when they’d recuperated. Many, including a recovered Lillian Lenton now imprisoned in Armley, went on the run, flouting new surveillance methods brought in by the Government, including fingerprinting and covert photography while in prison.

The book covers a relatively short period of the suffrage campaign, from 1904 to the start of World War One. Some Yorkshire suffragettes later emigrated to Australia and America. Leonora Cohen stayed in Leeds where she ironically became a JP and gained an OBE. But women like Dora Thewlis and Lavena Saltonstall disappeared from written records and only Dr Liddington’s painstaking research has pieced this fascinating part of suffrage history back together.

Rebel girls - their fight for the vote is published by Virago (£14.99).
Dr Jill Liddington will be at Waterstones in Leeds on May 24 at 7pm, tickets are £3 and available on 0113 244 4588 (redeemable against copies of the book).

Photo 1: Huddersfield National Union of Women’s Suffrage Society’s banner embroidered by Florence Lockwood (Kirklees Community History Service)
Photo 2: Leonora Cohen after her release from Holloway Prison (Abbey House Museum, Leeds)
Photo 3: Dr Jill Liddington