​Constance Jane Clyde was arrested once in March 1907. She was born Constance Jane McAdam on 25 July 1872 in Glasgow to William and Mary nee Couper. Constance was the third youngest of twelve children. William was a potter, glass bottle manufacturer and plumbago crucible maker operating from Hyde Park Street while the family home was at 30 St Vincent Crescent. William’s business was called the Hydepark Pottery and Glass Bottle Works. 

William’s brother John was politically active in Glasgow initially during the early 1830s and the protests connected with the Reform Act of 1832. Three groups dominated Glasgow in the cause for parliamentary reform and John belonged to all of them. John organised a protest on 12 May 1832 known as the Black Flag demonstration, with many carrying flags, often black adorned with symbolic images. Arranged at short notice, it was estimated that over 60,000 gathered. Perhaps because life became difficult for John in the city, he sailed for Canada, living there or in America for the next fourteen years. During his time in America, John became a supporter of Guiseppe Manzzini advocating a united Republican Italy.  

On his return, he joined William in the Hydepark Pottery. John, in his autobiography, observed that William provided ‘continuous sympathy and active help to the various movements I have been engaged in …has aided me to do some service and to possibly obtain more credit for it than is strictly mine.’ John writes William was an active member of the town council protesting, on one occasion, at the proposal to send a delegation to London to meet with Napoleon. A member of the Water Trust William lobbied for the passing of the Glasgow Corporation Waterworks Act 1855 which gave the city a supply of clean water.

John and William started a fund in 1856 to raise monies to build a monument in memory of William Wallace. When the project looked like it would fail, John rallied additional support and William stepped in to act as treasurer.
 
By the spring of 1879, William’s business ran into financial difficulties. According to his brother, John this was because of William’s ‘property speculation.’ The following January, the business went bankrupt. William and his brother put many of the assets including 35000 jelly jars up for auction. William resolved to start a new life and sailed with his eleven surviving children and wife to New Zealand. The family settled in Dunedin on South Island’s southeast coast. Despite being in his mid-sixties John tried to find work writing to the local council citing his experience in the water industry. An offer he remade a few months later, this time to the Ashburton Borough Council enclosing ‘glowing testimonials.’ William died the following year. The family remained in Dunedin. Mary, Constance’s mother signed the New Zealand petition for women to get the vote.
 
After school, Constance began a career as a journalist, moving, in 1898 to Sydney, Australia, to work for the Bulletin, a magazine first published in 1880. As a publication, it developed over time into a showcase for new writers many of whom went on to be authors of national acclaim. Initially, Constance wrote short stories, her first story was called Hypnotised. She wrote poetry reviewed as processing ‘dainty and subtle lines.’As time went on, she explored social issues writing an article about Sydney’s slum life and another about poor relief which concludes: ‘what are they but animals, without the compensations of animals?’ Constance also wrote short stories published in the press in New Zealand.

Late in 1903, Constance sailed for England. One newspaper described her as ‘perhaps, the most talented of our Australian writers.’ A member of the Yorick Club, the Bohemian set of artists and writers of Sydney gathered at the studio of Amanduas Fischer to bid her farewell. Constance wrote articles sending them for inclusion in a variety of Australian newspapers. One entitled Is London Civilised contains the initial observations of an Australian in London. Constance questions whether the London policeman is as knowledgeable as claimed given he can only give directions pertaining to his patch.  She also wrote a series of articles on working-class life in London for the New Zealand newspaper, Otago Witness. Constance wrote to the Newsletter that while British ‘editors are not sitting waiting on her doorstep’ they were making encouraging noises.  
Constance found the weather ‘dreadfully depressing,’ and observed ‘this is a slow country.’ While she was making ends meet the time it took for a decision infuriated Constance who observed ‘no wonder the people live long; they have to in order for any of their ventures come to fruition.’

In 1905 Fisher Unwin published her book A Pagan’s Love which, through a tale of a woman contemplating an affair, challenged social conventions. It met with mixed reviews in Australia. One reviewer, who felt that Constance’s true metier was juvenile fiction, wrote of her book that it ‘deals with the psychology of sex in a manner approaching hysteria.’ Another described it as ‘a daring, but unpleasant novel.’ More positively the reviewer in the Register described the ‘literary style as excellent.’ The reviews in England were on the whole more positive if lacklustre, the book ‘is entitled to praise if only for the pictures presented of various types of humanity.’

While Constance wrote of life in England for publication in the Australian and New Zealand newspapers she wrote of colonial life for the English press. In one, titled The Woman Worker in the Colonies, she observed that the law in the colonies for women was ‘more liberal.’  A short story, Two Bush Lovers, was published a few months later, a story of Sydney. Over the next two years, Constance was a regular contributor in Australia, England and New Zealand.

Constance was arrested in March 1907. She wrote an account of her experience published in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Constance called it ‘a woman’s battle,’ one which was ‘purely physical.’ The policemen in ‘that hysteria to which this class of men are liable, hustled and arrested innocent people who did not even know that a suffrage riot was in progress.’ The English press had only given ‘a mild account of the trampling and confusion that led to the arrest of fifty-seven.’ She wrote of the arrest of mill workers to Charlotte Despard, who had been ‘left alone by the police in previous riots because of her great popularity.’

This experience, Constance contrasted with a procession the previous week she joined which had passed peacefully with no arrests, observing ‘it is the custom of the suffragettes to give an occasional peaceful demonstration in order to show that their violence is of malice prepense, and not innate.’ She was struck by women such as Lady Frances Balfour or Lady Strachay walking side by side with mill workers and the participation of ‘timid bourgeois daughters’ or ‘prim teachers’ whose bravado in joining in made Constance believe that the vote ‘may really be at hand.’ Constance slipped into the procession just past Hyde Park feeling that ‘for sixty seconds after that the eyes of all London were upon her.’ A favourite cry from the watchers was ‘Go home and do housework’ or ‘What is England coming to?’ One policeman admonished an onlooker for pointing their finger at the woman, but did not question ‘the rude tongue.’

Describing herself as ‘a shy little novelist’ Constance refused to pay the fine and found herself in prison. The Sydney Daily Telegraph reported it would teach her to have only complained a few days before of life being ‘dull and bereft of excitement.’  She was fined 20 shillings or 14 days in prison.  Constance’s experiences were reported in New Zealand and Australia. Constance wrote she had resolved to show solidarity and ‘admiration for those brave women who chose this method of warfare at a time when all England was against them’ adding that it was a respectable way to gain access to prison suggesting it was her journalistic curiosity that led her to refuse to pay the fine.

Prior to her arrest, Constance left Caxton Hall after the normal rally, but being a novice strolled around not knowing what to do. She returned to the hall and sought advice. They advised Constance to rescue a protestor in the clutches of the police. An experienced suffragette explained that a protestor will push and remonstrate until seized and then the ‘amateur’ tells the police to let go of her friend, who probably she has never met before. By dusk, Constance, following the advice, found herself at the police station charged with obstruction. Frederick Pethick Lawrence stood bail for all the women who returned to court the following morning. The women were held in a yard with one bench for seven hours as, one by one, they were brought before the court. The police watching over them were largely in favour of suffrage, explaining that the bringing in of police from the East end of London who did not understand their methods had caused the problem.

Constance, in contrast to many, did not mind the journey to Holloway, but objected to being held in a reception cell, three to each one, for three hours with only one chair. Sitting on the floor was objected to, and the women were taken to a new cell with no chair. Fearful of the consequences of sitting on the floor, the three walked round the cell for four hours until they were led out for a medical.

Clad in prison boots and a loose uniform, Constance did not reach her cell until 2am in the morning, only to be woken by the morning bell three hours later. Cleaning her cell followed morning ablutions and then, breakfast of tea and ‘an excellent wholemeal bread and butter’ – an innovation. More cleaning the cell followed and then chapel and exercise, during which no speaking was permitted. Periodically, the wardress would shout ‘Reverse’ and the line of women would traverse the yard in the opposite direction. Third division prisoners would deliver lunch to the cells in dinner tins. Normal fare was potatoes with pea stew, boiled beef or pork with a roll. The rest of the day was spent in the cell read, knitting or in contemplation. Constance reported that it was only by the second week that ‘the monotony preys on our spirits’ and ‘physical weariness’ set in. Until 6pm the women had to sit on backless stools. It was only after then they could lie on their beds. The electric light was good and the cell warm so much so that Constance would stand on her stool to get some fresh air through the grill. After the clocks changed, no light was allowed and as the gloom of the evening descended, the women had several hours when they could not see sufficiently to do any activity.

Each cell was equipped with a Bible, hymn book, prayer book and a piece of cardboard attached to which was a morning and evening prayer. A slate and slate pencil was also provided. Constance’s request for pen and paper was denied. The WSPU sent a newspaper in each day. In a wicker basket, one a week, a library was brought round. Periodically the prison doctor, visiting magistrate or the governor would do rounds of the cells. Once a week the women were allowed to bathe.

​On release their supporters gave them a tube ticket and one for Eustace Miles restaurant where they had breakfast. At each place lay a bunch of narcissi. It was widely reported that Constance was writing a second novel which ultimately became a play which is discussed below. She wrote an article ironically published in the Gentleman magazine in which she reflected that perhaps women as outsiders ‘feels free to criticise what she has not helped to make.’
 

Margaret Clayton was arrested in March 1907 and her husband, Joseph, in February 1909.
Margaret, whose maiden name was Souter, was born on 25th April 1863 in Stirling, Scotland to Robert and Margaret, one of seven children. Margaret’s mother died in 1876 and by the time of the 1881 census, the family had moved south to Southampton where Margaret’s father worked as a supervisor for the Inland Revenue. The census return records Margaret as her father’s housekeeper. Ten years later, the family is still living in Southampton and Margaret is earning a living as a dressmaker.

Joseph was born on 28th April 1868 in Islington, North London, the son of Francis, a collector for companies and onetime manager of St James Gazette, and Julia. Joseph joined three elder sisters: Julia (known as Dorothy), Mary, and Margaret. Four more children followed Jane, Thomas, Edith and Ralph. Joseph and Jane, a year younger than her brother, were both baptised on the same day. By the time of the 1871 census, the family was living on St Thomas Road, Finsbury Park, a few miles north of Islington.
Ten years later, the family moved to Upper Holloway, again in North London. Joseph went to Oxford University. His entry in the Oxford Men and Their Colleges 1880 to 1892 states he attended North London Collegiate School but given it is a girls’ school, it may mean he sat exams under their auspices. Joseph attended university as a non-collegiate, meaning he was not affiliated to any college, a scheme founded to allow students to attend but pay lower fees. Two years later, in 1895, Joseph moved to Worcester College.

While at Oxford, Joseph became involved with the Christian Socialists which led him to join the Independent Labour Party (ILP). He moved to Leeds becoming an active member of the city’s ILP branch. The Leeds Branch appointed Joseph secretary in April 1894 and he stood as the party’s candidate for election to the local school board. Joseph, prior to his time in Leeds, worked for a short while as a fire raker at the Vauxhall Gasworks in south London.  In consequence, the Gas Workers and General Labourers proposed Joseph as a delegate to the Leeds Trade Council Union; a proposal which was rejected after much-heated debate as he did not currently work in the industry and in the past had only done so for a month. Joseph declared in a letter to the local newspaper that he was a genuine working man, but the council did not believe him as he was not wearing corduroys or a silk hat.

Meanwhile, Joseph campaigned for election to the local school board with the agenda of free education and free breakfasts which he combined with local and national political activism. The Leeds Mercury published a long letter Joseph wrote regarding the actions of John Burns, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Battersea in south London. Burns started his political career as a member of the Social Democratic Federation and Trade Unionist, but although seen as an independent radical in Parliament, he aligned with the Liberals. Joseph observed that Burns as an agitator and rioter is ‘admirable’ but ‘as a political and social oracle is ridiculous.’ In his opinion, one shared with many others including Charlotte Despard, there were two John Burns. During October 1894, Keir Hardie, then the Member of Parliament for West Ham South and a founder of the ILP, travelled to Leeds to lend his support to the campaign for the up-and-coming election. Despite a vigorous campaign, Joseph was unsuccessful.

He was appointed the General Secretary for the Leeds branch the following year.  A position he held alongside heading up the Unemployed Committee formed within each branch of the ILP across the country to campaign for work and support for those who did not have jobs.  In a letter to a local newspaper, he vociferously questioned the figures of unemployed provided by the Liberals arguing that the ILP’s research estimated there were 8000 in that position in Leeds alone.  Across the country, the ILP lobbied for a holiday on 1 May to be known as Labour Day.

Reverend Percy Dearmer and a management committee founded a new socialist magazine, The Commonwealth, in 1896. Joseph contributed an article to the third edition published in March of that year. This marked the start of Joseph’s career as a writer. Shortly afterwards the Manchester Press published Before Sunrise and Other Pieces described as ‘a distinct contribution to the poetry of Democracy’ drawing on his own experiences ‘with remarkable force and imagination.’ Interviewed for Liberty, Joseph said he wrote the pieces ‘in the storm and stress of political agitation … in the dim, grey dawn of the Coming Day.’

An active member of the Fabian Society, Joseph gave a series of lectures in the east of England, which opened with Tom Paine and Early Radicalism given in Norwich.  In April 1897, he was appointed the organising secretary of the ILP Southampton Branch. A few months later, Joseph and Delmar Bicker Caarten were accused of libel. Bicker Caarten, a commercial traveller, campaigned against poverty in Southampton for many years. An article he wrote, published in the Southampton Times, led to the publication running a series of articles investigating conditions. Greeted with horror, an inquiry followed, leading to one of the first slum clearances. The case eventually came to court in February 1898. When Joseph entered the dock, his guard informed the judge that the prisoner had refused to be searched and possibly owned a gun. The judge humorously asked Joseph if he intended to shoot him before insisting, he be searched. They did not find a gun. Found guilty, the court fined Joseph 5 shillings for libel.

Joseph campaigned in Southampton for the school board election which saw an ILP member successfully elected. During 1898 and 1899 Joseph suffered from ill health which necessitated several operations followed by a lengthy period of convalescence. Only by September was he able to resume giving lectures. In 1898 he wed Margaret. Joseph’s writing career began to take off with the publication of Grace Marlow and The Under Man. This he combined with the editorship of Labour Chronicles from 1896 to 1898 and later he owned and edited New Age from 1906 to 1907.
Joseph practised as an Anglo-Catholic and authored two biographies of leading Anglo-Catholics: Bishop Westcott and Father Dolling, Father Stanton of St Alban’s, Holborn. In 1910, Joseph converted to Catholicism and contributed to a variety of Catholic publications.

​By 1907, Joseph was an active participant in the campaign for the vote and a member of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage of which he became Honorary Secretary.  At a meeting in Kensington, he humorously rebuked the men heckling in the audience by observing the ‘impatience set by the male voter.’ Joseph spoke at meetings arranged by the Women’s Freedom League, often sharing the platform with Amy Hicks. At one meeting in Colchester, a somewhat flustered Joseph welcomed the audience to Norwich and caused the audience to heckle when he pointed out that a woman had been handing out handkerchiefs to the poor of Manchester. In March of the same year, Margaret was arrested in connection with an attempt to deliver a petition to the House of Commons. Seventy-six women and one man were arrested and charged. Margaret, like the majority, was fined twenty shillings or fourteen days in Holloway prison. She elected to go to prison. A vegetarian, Margaret wrote of the prison food: ‘Dinner is supplied in two tins. In the deeper one lurk two potatoes in their skins; in the shallower; which fits into the top of the other, are an egg, and some cauliflower or other vegetable.’

The police arrested Joseph, alongside eight women, one of whom was Charlotte Despard for his actions in connection with an attempt to present a petition to the Prime Minister at the House of Commons.  At the first court hearing, Frederick Verney, the Member of Parliament for Buckingham, appeared as a witness. Joseph had acted as Frederick’s agent at the General Election in 1906. He informed the court that Joseph attended the House of Commons to visit him. Frederick said that he would have met with him and invited Joseph inside if he had been informed of his presence. The case was adjourned.  At the next hearing, Joseph told the court he had been present as a journalist. The court dismissed the charges against him.

Margaret also wrote. In 1910, she wrote a pamphlet called Mary Wollstonecraft and the Women’s Movement Today in which, she argues, that Wollstonecraft’s arguments were still relevant to the campaign for the vote in the 1900s. Margaret writes ‘to end the mastery of man over woman, and no less the mastery of woman over man.’
During the 1910 General Election campaign, Joseph campaigned North Kensington.  In April 1910 the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies decided to run candidates at the next General Election in constituencies “where the sitting member holds his seat by only a small majority and is an Anti-Suffragist”. This, of course, required that men should put themselves forward on a suffrage platform. In June the League’s paper reported that Joseph Clayton was “selected by” the National Union to stand as an independent to fight “that notorious Anti-Suffragist, Mr Hilaire Belloc, the present MP for South Salford” - infamous for such remarks as: “I call it immoral...bringing of one’s women...into the political arena disturbs the relation between the sexes.” In the end, for reasons which are unclear Joseph did not contend the seat.

Through the years, Joseph regularly appeared on platforms alongside members of the Women’s Freedom League. He also spoke at the rally in Trafalgar Square held in March 1914 by the Men’s Federation and the East London Federation of Suffragettes which saw Sylvia Pankhurst, out on licence under the Cat and Mouse Act, rearrested. During the First World War, Joseph joined the London Irish Rifles and served in the Rifle Brigade in Burma and India. In 1917, he served in the Labour Corps in France until peace was declared.
Joseph went on to write biographies of Pope Innocent III and Thomas More alongside Economics for Christians, Cooperation and Trade Unions. In 1926 The Rise and Decline of Socialism in Great Britain was published. Insightfully, Joseph observed that the militant leaders of that campaign were ‘socialists who laid aside their socialism to get the reform they had set their hearts upon accomplished,’ and their activities ‘withdrew from the socialist movement certain forces which never returned.’

​Joseph died in 1943 and Margaret in 1944.
 
 

​

The police arrested Edwy Godwin Clayton in May 1913 and charged him with conspiracy alongside Annie Kenney, Harriet Kerr, Agnes Lake, Rachel Barrett, Laura Lennox and Beatrice Sanders. Before the trial started, George Lansbury, Johnston Forbes Robertson, Henry Nevinson, H J Gillespie and Henry Harben signed a letter published in the newspaper, Votes for Women, asking readers to donate to the costs of Edwy’s defence as he had ‘no private means out of which to pay for an adequate defence.’

Their trial opened at the Old Bailey the day after Emily Davison had died at Epsom Races. Despite the trauma of the trial, Edwy and his co-defendants attended. Fifty women dressed in white, the clergy and Sylvia Pankhurst, Ben Tillett, Frank Smith and Edwy preceded the hearse, which was covered in flowers. Behind the hearse were Edwy’s co-defendants.  

​At the trial, the police produced a document found at Annie Kenney’s flat in Mecklenburg Square purportedly in Edwy’s handwriting outlining a scheme to smash fire alarms or attack Government buildings, timber yards or cotton mills. They presented a document written by Edwy suggesting that the proportions, presumably of chemicals, were not yet correct but this would shortly be resolved and would be ready in a few days. Annie asked the inspector who presented the evidence if he knew for sure the document was hers. The inspector admitted he did not know. Another witness, whose tea hut in Kew had been damaged by fire, alleged that one of the other defendants had informed them that the only way was to attack Government property. All the defendants were found guilty. Edwy was sentenced to twenty-one months in the third division. Each was ordered to pay one-seventh of the costs, an unusual step in a criminal case.

While on trial Edwy had sold the furniture at the family home to Ethel Purdie, the first woman to qualify as an accountant. Her firm was the auditor to the Women’s Freedom League.  The Director of Public Prosecutions took Ethel to court alleging that the sale had taken place to prevent Edwy having his furniture seized to meet the court costs. The Director of Public Prosecutions did not serve a writ on Edwy as they could not locate him. A letter was produced in which Ethel offered to buy the goods. The prosecution stated: ‘that this sudden offer required explanation.’ In addition, there was no sign of a cheque made payable to Edwy. The defence argued Ethel, who had been told of the furniture for sale by Dr Jessie Murray, was not a militant suffragette and the sale had taken place in the ordinary way of business. Ethel Purdie issued a bearer cheque, in effect cash, and sent a further sum to Clara. Ethel had paid less than Edwy had originally asked. The prosecution asserted that even this was too much as the goods, less seven kept pictures, had fetched even less at auction. Ethel pointed out that this was probably because of the presence of a plain-clothes police officer and a Treasury official at the auction. The pictures had been held back not because they were to be returned to Edwy but because Ethel had been advised it was not the right time to sell. The judge held that ‘the sale was genuine’.

They released Edwy on 23 June 1913 under the Cat and Mouse Act after he went on hunger strike. He then disappeared. A little over a year later Votes for Women published a letter sent from Edwy with a foreign postmark. He wrote: ‘I neither received nor desired to receive, payment for any help given by me to the women’s movement. My sole reward has been the happiness derived from personal participation, as a volunteer helper, in this campaign against prejudice, ignorance, disease and brutality.’ Soon after the advent of the First World War Edwy was ‘pardoned’ under the amnesty agreement.

Edwy was born in 1858 in Lambeth, south London, the son of Alfred, an architect and Elinor. Edwy’s grandfather was also an architect who worked on the building of the Corn Exchange in London from 1827. His son Alfred and Edwy’s father designed the railway station at Tynan in County Armagh and another at Glaslough, again in Ireland. Initially the family lived in Lambeth but by 1871 they have moved to Islington. The 1881 census return stated that Edwy, who appears to have been an only child, was a qualified chemist and teacher of chemistry. Edwy and Clara Tilbury had the banns for their marriage read on three consecutive Sundays in their parish church, St Mary’s in Islington during the same month as the census was taken. A newspaper announcement connected Edwy to two naval ancestors; this militaristic connection was to prove in later years poignant.

During the 1880s, many advertisements appeared in the newspapers for a variety of products citing the tests they had been subject to. For example: the Western Times, 28 December 1883, included an advertisement for the Well Park Brewery. Their ale had been submitted for testing by ‘the great Analyst’, Arthur Hassell, and found to be ‘bright, clear, and sparkling, and possessed the true hop flavour’. Hassell and Edwin Godwin Clayton, Edwin signed the advertisement perhaps sounding more professional than Edwy. Arthur Hassell was a well-regarded physician and chemist who wrote The Microscopic Anatomy of the Human Body in Health and Disease. Published in 1846 it was the first text of its kind. Hassell researched water quality and the adulteration of food which led to the Food Adulteration Act 1860. Ill-health led him to spend most of his time abroad. Hassell described Edwy in his autobiography, The Narrative of a Busy Life: An Autobiography, as a ‘dear friend’, describing research the two had undertaken together.

Edwy continued to advertise using Hassell’s name for several years after his death. Edwy appears to have been trading as The Analytical Sanitary Institute based in Holborn Viaduct until around 1906. Three years later, Edwy published a work entitled ‘A compendium of food-microscopy with sections on drugs, water, and tobacco’. 
 
 Edwy and Clara first lived in Southwark. The family was completed with the arrival of Hilda Faith, known by her middle name, in 1883, who joined Cuthbert Edwy Ansell born the year before. By the 1891 census the family had moved to Richmond, living at 3 Bath Terrace. Edwy was working as an analytical chemist, thus his work with Arthur Hassell. Around this time, Edwy joined the volunteer rifle corps rising to second lieutenant. Faith attended the Richmond School of Art where she won a prize in 1901. She went on to win several more prizes over the years at a variety of competitions.

The suffrage campaign was a family affair. Clara was appointed secretary of the Richmond Branch of the WSPU in 1909 by Votes for Women. Their home, Glengariff, Richmond Road becoming a hive of activity. Faith advertised art lessons in the suffragette newspaper to be delivered at the family home. During the summer of 1909 Faith and two other women distributed pamphlets in Chesham, Buckinghamshire announcing a meeting of the WSPU. Faith chaired the gathering which explained the ideals of the campaign manfully carrying on despite torrential rain which fell as the meeting opened. As the weather cleared Miss Jacobs delivered her speech. The following month, Faith presided at a meeting in High Wycombe, narrowly avoiding injury when the box she was standing on gave way.

After an Autumn and early winter of meetings the January 1910 General Election saw Faith and her mother, Clara, campaigning in the Fulham constituency where the WSPU band paraded to draw attention to the cause. Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Christabel Pankhurst addressed the voters. On polling day, a wagon and car decorated in WSPU colours toured the constituency as over forty women, including Faith and Clara, to rally support. The result, a defeat for the Liberal candidate and success for the Conservative, was hailed by the Votes for Women newspaper as ‘magnificent.’
 
Edwy joined the Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement alongside his membership of The Men’s League for Women Suffrage. In 1910, the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies nominated Edwy as their candidate in the forthcoming election for South Salford in opposition to the Liberal Hilaire Belloc. A seat, he lost. By 1912 Faith had joined the Church League for Women’s Suffrage becoming the organiser for Richmond and Kew.

​For a brief period in 1900, Cuthbert worked as a clerk on the Great Western Railway. Cuthbert was then employed as a pupil assistant in 1903 to number and label books for the Royal Society of Medicine; a job he held for two years. From there he was appointed the librarian at the Manchester Medical Society at whose heart was the library. Cuthbert appears to have been involved in the founding of the UK British Medical Library. He is the only one of the family to be recorded in the 1911 census; living in Manchester employed as the Chief Librarian of the Scientific Society. Five years later, Cuthbert appeared before a tribunal as a conscientious objector. He had converted to Catholicism and was currently working as a social worker having moved south from Manchester. By this time Edwy was living in Hampstead.

Following the tribunal, Cuthbert went to work for the Quaker Friends War Victims Relief Committee. Initially, he undertook farm work but then he was posted to Holland and later Poland and Belgium providing ‘medical care, education and economic support to vulnerable people and communities.’ Cuthbert continued with this work until 1921. The same year he gave a lecture in Sunderland about his eighteen months working in Poland and the conditions there and in central Europe. It was an insight Cuthbert provided on several further occasions. He then travelled to Russia, an experience he also spoke about, in part to raise awareness and also to raise funds. Cuthbert was at pains to point out that he could confirm relief did go to the intended recipients. At one talk alone Cuthbert raised over £16. One newspaper reported that Cuthbert spoke harrowingly of ‘the famine area and of the unhappy refugees flying from hunger and walking hundreds of miles in search of food.’ Over the next two years, Cuthbert continued to raise funds and awareness.

Later in life, Cuthbert worked as a travel lecturer and organiser. He died in 1966, Faith having predeceased him by six years. Sadly, Faith became incapacitated and spent many years in Claymore Mental Asylum in Ilford, Essex.

​Edwy died in 1936.
 

May or Mary Clarke was arrested three times between 1908 and 1910. Mary Jane Goulden was born in 1862 to Richard and Sophia. One of eleven children: six sons and five daughters, Emmeline, later Pankhurst, was her eldest sister born four years earlier. Rachel Holmes in her far-reaching and excellent, recently published biography, of Sylvia Pankhurst, observes that Mary was Emmeline's favourite sister.  Both of their parents were socially and politically active. By the time, Mary was nine; the family had moved to Seedley, part of the Salford where her father ran a printing firm employing over two hundred and fifty people. Although, forward-thinking her parents set little store by girl's education. Mary attended Seedley Castle School, passing the Government Art Examinations in 1877.

Emmeline, by now married with four children, moved to London in 1886 and Mary joined them. The two sisters opened art furnishers and decorators, Emerson & Co. Alongside retailing furniture and soft furnishings, they offered art classes. In time for Christmas 1890, they printed and distributed a trade catalogue explaining their reasons for embarking on 'the tempestuous billows of commerce', the primary line was white furniture which the purchaser could decorate themselves. Trade, however, was not brisk and by 1893 the shop closed. Emmeline's husband had already returned to the northwest, and the family and Mary followed. Mary began teaching dressmaking.

Two years later Mary married John Clarke – the 1901 census describes his occupation as a credit draper working for himself. The couple settled in Camberwell in the south of London. It did not turn out to be a happy union. Rachel Holmes writes that John was abusive, and, on at least one occasion, Sylvia Pankhurst, Emmeline’s daughter, rescued her aunt. By 1904 Mary had fled for good, returning to the north of England and joining Emmeline to fight for women's votes.

​On June 21st 1908 the WSPU organised Women's Sunday – a suffragette march followed by a rally in Hyde Park. It was estimated that half a million people attended. Women wore white dresses embellished with suffragette colours. Within the environs of the park, the speakers were allocated to platforms. Mary was assigned to platform 1 alongside Georgina Brackenbury, Nancy Lightman and Mrs Morris, a health visitor from Manchester.
Mary was first arrested the following month. Many campaigners gathered at Caxton Hall. After several resounding speeches led by Emmeline, they marched towards the House of Commons to present a petition to Herbert Asquith. Mary was one of twenty-nine women arrested. Emmeline and Sylvia attended the court at Bow Street when Mary and all but two of her fellow arrestees were brought before the courts. Found guilty, Mary was ordered to pay a fine or face one month in prison. All elected to go to prison. There are no reports of Mary's first time in prison in the official files online.

Mary and fourteen fellow prisoners were released from Holloway prison at the end of July. A large crowd greeted the women along with a brass band and a hefty police presence. The women travelled to central London for a welcome breakfast. Several spoke during the meal, including Mary, who observed how much she would miss the women she had left behind in prison.

​In February 1909, Mary was arrested for a second time alongside Lucy Norris. The two went to Downing Street to try and have a meeting with Asquith. They repeatedly knocked on the door despite being informed he was away. Eventually, the police intervened arresting the two women. Charged with obstruction, the court found them guilty. As before Mary refused to pay the fine and was sent to prison for one month. Ada, her sister, wrote to the governor of Holloway Prison, requesting a visit to discuss a family matter – permission was granted. From prison Mary wrote a letter which was published in Votes for Women:
​
'Before we are set free, the Women's Parliament, which meets in Caxton Hall on February 24th will be over. I know our comrades will on that day do their duty as we have tried to do ours. Let our motto be 'Never let I dare not wait upon I would.'

Mary was soon back on the campaign trail and was now the salaried organiser for the Brighton branch of the WSPU.  In September, Joan Dugdale Clara Morden and Mary, addressed a meeting at the Council Rooms in Christchurch, Dorset, as part of a tour of the south coast. One newspaper described Joan’s speech as ‘most interesting’ but questioned whether the message was being dimmed by militant action. At Boscombe, Joan, Mary, and Clara were pelted with eggs, over-ripe bananas and tomatoes. The women took refuge in the Salisbury Hotel, leaving by a side entrance in the hope of avoiding the crowd which was loitering at the front. The women’s efforts were in vain and they were followed along the High Street forcing them to take refuge in a shop from where they left by taxi. The meeting the following day in Branksome was cancelled. Later Joan commented that the meeting had ‘ended rather disastrously’ and that the troublemakers ‘were rather rough with her,’ observing she was in awe of Mary’s fortitude.

Meanwhile, Joan returned to the south coast to attend an At Home organised by the Hove branch. Mary, Jane Brailsford and Joan Dugdale addressed an At Home organised by the Hove branch in January 1910. Joan closed the meeting with a recitation of ‘The home is her sphere.’ In July 1910, Mary again addressed a suffragette rally in Hyde Park from platform 16 speaking alongside Dr Christine Murrell, who in 1924 was the first woman appointed to the British Medical Association Council, and the Honourable Mrs Haverfield.

​While organising the Brighton branch, Mary lived with Minnie Turner at Seaview, 13 Victoria Street. Minnie ran the house as a holiday bed and breakfast, a facility a suffragette could avail herself of to rest and recuperate. During September Mary arrived in St Leonards ahead of a visit by Emmeline Pethick Lawrence. To advertise the event, a parade was organised. Several women gathered in their carriages, one sporting a banner which read 'Women's Suffrage Propaganda League,' others were on foot. Elsie Bowerman headed the procession. She and the other women carried banners with messages such as 'No surrender' and Face to the Dawn.' Mary accompanied Mrs Darent Harrison, a member of the Tax Resistance League, in her carriage. The local newspaper reported that during the town's circuit, which took an hour and a half, there were few outbursts against their cause.

​The following week the well-publicised meeting was held at the Royal Concert Hall. Before this, Emmeline and Christabel visited Mary, who was staying in the town. The Hon Mrs Haverfield whom Mary had occupied a platform alongside in Hyde Park chaired the meeting supported by Emmeline Pethick Lawrence and Mary who moved a motion in support of the Woman Suffrage Bill.
 
Mary was arrested again in November alongside Greta Allen, Laura Armstrong, Gennie Ball and Grace Chappelow (see earlier blogs) and charged with criminal damage. Emmeline requested to see Mary at Cannon Row Police Station. When the visit was denied, Mary broke a window.  She was sentenced to a month in gaol.

Mary telegrammed the WSPU branch in Brighton 'I am glad to pay the price for freedom.' She was released on 23 December. A welcome home lunch was held in her and other released prisoners’ honour at the Criterion restaurant. Joan Dugdale, who had been in prison, at the same time as Mary but was released the week before also attended the lunch. It would be the last time the two campaigners saw each other.
Mary spent Christmas Day with Herbert, her brother, and his family at their home in Winchmore Hill. Sadly, Mary passed away during the evening. She was buried at Southgate Cemetery. One observer wrote 'Without approaching her sister's power as an orator, she did an immense amount of splendid service, and she was the leader of the women's franchise movement in Brighton.'

The 6 January 1911 edition of Votes for Women includes a memoir written by Emmeline entitled The Utmost for the Highest. She recollects being in Holloway prison at the same time as Mary was first imprisoned, describing her as a 'Prisoner of Hope' with her' extreme patience' and 'extreme gentleness.' Emmeline writes that Mary had been ill before she travelled to London to stand in solidarity with the women who had been ill-treated on Black Friday by throwing a stone to get herself arrested.

It has been widely written over the years that Mary was force-fed during her final time in prison. In her tribute, Emmeline alludes to the procedure but does not directly assert that Mary was subjected. The official files online are blank which, perhaps, in itself speaks volumes.

There is currently an appeal in Brighton to raise funds to erect a statue in her memory. https://maryclarkestatue.com/

​Emily Clarke was arrested in February 1914. Emmeline Pankhurst, from a balcony at Glebe House in Chelsea, addressed a crowd of around one thousand. Emmeline was out on licence under the Cat and Mouse Act, so the police were out in force. At the conclusion of proceedings, women exited the house surrounding a woman they wished the police to believe was Emmeline Pankhurst. The police stated that the women used Indian clubs to attack them and protect the decoy.
Later, the 'real' Emmeline exited accompanied by a small number of bodyguards and managed to depart in a taxi. Emily and Norah Neville were part of the bodyguard. Emily, described as elderly, was charged alongside Norah with disorderly behaviour. A constable gave evidence stating that the women shouted ‘Charge girls’ as they rushed towards plainclothes officers brandishing Indian clubs and rolling pins. The two other women charged were Cicely Sewell and Ruth Underwood.

Emily had a head wound that the police testified had been caused by an accidental blow by Norah. Both women denied speaking or striking anyone accidentally or not. The constable produced a rolling pin which, he claimed, had blood on it. The magistrate responded ‘I don’t want you to be too realistic, constable. As long as there is no blood on your truncheon, it’s alright’.

Emily was clear this evidence was untrue, and she had been struck by a plainclothes officer. Found guilty Emily was bound over to keep the peace and fined £10. Refusing to accept this, Emily was sentenced to three days in gaol.

There is insufficient information to find anymore information about Emily but if anyone knows any more please do get in touch.

The references/footnotes have been removed but if you require any further information we are happy to provide them.


 

Edith Clarence was arrested in March 1912. She was born in 1876 in Sri Lanka. Her father, Lovell, a colonial judge, retired to England by Edith’s stepmother, Elizabeth. Edith’s mother, Blanche, died in 1888 when Edith, one of five children, was eight years old. On their return, the family settled in Axminster, Devon. By 1911, Edith’s two sisters had married, leaving her living with her father and stepmother.

The first mention of Edith’s involvement with the WSPU is a donation in August 1908. During the summer months, the WSPU encouraged volunteers to target seaside towns to raise awareness of the cause. The women were advised to take a sufficient supply of literature and Votes for Women for distribution together with membership cards for those who wished to join. Ideally, a second helper would be present to copy the membership details down so the head office had the information on their files. Edith spent a week, it was reported, working ‘indefatigably’ in a shop opened by the National Union of Suffrage Societies in Sidmouth, not far from Axminster. Edith also travelled to Oxford to attend a course specifically aimed at women which presented an opportunity to raise awareness of the suffrage campaign. Part of the plan was to hire a boat from which literature and the newspaper, Votes for Women, could be handed out. Edith attended few of the lessons for which she had signed up; most of her time was taken by ‘organising processions, open-air meetings,’ many of which she spoke at.

The following spring, Edith and Elsie Howey addressed a series of meetings in the Penzance area with Edith providing support. During the 1910 election campaign, Edith was joined in Torquay by, amongst others, Annie Kenney, Jessie Smith and Jane Malloch. By the autumn of the following year, Edith was appointed the honorary secretary of the Axminster Branch. In a speech, in February 1912, Edith expressed some of the reasons why she wished to gain the vote which echoes so many other campaigners: infant mortality, poverty and sweated labour. Through Edith’s campaigning, she met Hope Malleson who with Mildred Tucker, had settled in Devon. This led to a friendship with Hope’s sister, Mabel. A month later in March 1912, Edith was arrested and charged with obstruction, an alternative report states the charge was insulting behaviour. A fellow arrestee was Constance Bray (see earlier blog). Found guilty, Edith was sentenced to one month in prison. Following her release from gaol, Edith spent two weeks in July assisting the campaign in Glasgow and West Scotland. Over the coming months, Edith continued to work hard for the cause.

The following year, a letter was published in Common Cause, the newspaper of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, in which Edith objected to an assertion included in an article titled the National Union and Militancy. The writer had contended that ‘Militancy has introduced into the Suffrage Movement elements of revenge, of contempt for others, of unreason, of deafness to honest and considered criticism, which in a movement which stands for peace and justice and humanity are tragic.’ In a robust response, Edith argued that responsibility for the militant element lay with the Liberal government who had ignored the campaigners’ peaceful approach responding with ‘contempt, deafness and unreason.’ This attitude introduced ‘the elements of bitterness … which has deepened into rebellion.’ While the newspaper published the letter, in a note underneath, a strong response was published: ‘We do not feel that Miss Clarence’s statement touches our argument at all.’

It was a spat which spilled into the next edition of the newspaper. Edith submitted a further letter attempting to clarify her position arguing that militants accepted responsibility for their actions, but it was not correct to attribute to them the errors of the Government. The Editor, again, responded by pointing out that in her view the sentence in the original letter did not mean what Edith contended.
Around 1916, Edith moved to Dixton Manor in the village of Gotherington, near Cheltenham, the family home of the Malleson sisters. Edith and Mabel lived there until about 1925 when Mabel purchased the nearby Detmore House, Charlton Kings. At some point, Alice Fison, another suffragette, moved in with Mabel and Edith.  Mabel died in 1931.

The 1939 register records Alice as the owner of Detmore House and Edith as the housekeeper/farmer. Edith remained politically active, often writing letters to the local press. In one she commented that to her socialism was ‘a practical embodiment of the truths enumerated 2000 years ago by the teacher whom the majority of the citizens of this country profess to follow.’ Edith became involved with the Tewkesbury and District Labour Party providing entertainment at social gatherings with recitations. During the General Strike in 1926, in a repeat of her activities for the suffrage movement, Edith sold the Gloucester Strike Bulletin. A man, the local managing director of a company, gave Edith the money to buy all the copies but, when it dawned on her what he was attempting to do, refused to hand over more than one copy. Angered, he attempted to wrest the remainder from her. The matter ended up in the Magistrates Court with the man charged with assaulting Edith. The charges were dropped after the man gave an apology. In an insight into Edith’s character, she instructed her solicitor to accept the apology and to make it clear she did not wish the matter to proceed but she took the opportunity to make it clear that the principal at stake was the freedom to sell newspapers for a political purpose without interference.

Edith was a memorable figure, ‘small rosy-cheeked, and very alert’ who cycled everywhere, often wearing clothing she felt was appropriate to the task in hand such as leather breeches. Interested in cultural and social affairs she founded a local Bulb Show which was held annually. Committed to the idea that education could improve a child’s opportunities she was, for many years, a manager of the local Holy Apostles’ School. A member of the National Council of Women, founded in 1895 to lobby for improved working conditions for women.

In an impassioned letter to the Gloucestershire Echo, Edith called for support of the Miner’s Relief Fund – ‘Our Christian religion bids us to feed the hungry – not the hungry with whose politics we agree.’ By May the following year, Edith was chairman of the Cheltenham Labour Party, often writing to the local newspaper, in that capacity, which led to some lively responses. The following year Edith stood for election as a councillor for the Charlton Kings Urban Council, a seat which she did not win. Over the coming years, Edith continued to support socialist politics; endorsing the formation of a child guidance clinic; speaking on agriculture and its associated difficulties and campaigning for a local theatre.

​Alice and Edith lived together until Edith died suddenly in September 1941. Her obituary was headed ‘Miss E Clarence Dead Feminist Leader in Cheltenham’. She was described as having held ‘a very individual part in the life of the community’ – ‘a personality’ who ‘will be remembered chiefly for her own kindliness to and interest in others.’ 

Olive Clapton or Clapson was charged in March 1913, alongside Jane Cooper, with breaking windows at Schomburg House and the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Refusing to pay a fine they were both imprisoned for ten days. Olive appeared for a second time in the courts the following month, charged, alongside Helen Clarke, with causing an obstruction when selling Votes for Women. Found guilty, they were both fined ten shillings and sixpence.

Olive May Bartlett Clapson was born in 1892 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. She had two elder sisters, Violet and Clarissa. Her father, Edmund, was an auctioneer’s clerk, and her mother, on the 1891 census, is recorded as a hotel proprietor to which the word pub has been added. Five years after Olive’s birth her father died. Alice and her three daughters moved to Brighton. By 1911 Olive is living near Regent’s Park employed as a children’s nurse.

In February 1912 she joined the Kensington Branch of the WSPU volunteering to sell the newspaper, Votes for Women. Following her release from prison, Olive who was now living in Finchley, north London, placed an advertisement in the Suffragette seeking a position looking after a child; it seems likely that her prison sentence left her unemployed.

Sylvia Pankhurst, who opposed the arson attacks, fell out with her mother, Emmeline, and sister, Christabel, turning her support to the Labour Party and the East London Workers Socialist Federation. Like many, particularly after the outbreak of World War I, Olive supported the Federation. At one fundraising gathering where one of the speakers was Charlotte Despard, Olive ran the fancy goods stall.

​For many years, Olive continued to live in north London. She died in 1975 in Staffordshire.

The next entry is Georgina Fanny Cheffins who was born in 1864 in St John’s Wood, London. Georgina was the daughter of Charles, a civil engineer, and Mary. The family lived at 72 Boundary Road. Georgina was their eldest child, followed by three sons and two daughters. When the 1881 census was taken the family had moved to live in Dulwich. During the following ten years, the family moved to an area of Gillingham in Kent known as the Grange. The reason for the move was that Charles had entered into a partnership to manufacture Portland cement at a new plant to be built in Gillingham. Mary, their mother, passed away just before the census was taken in 1891. The family continued to live there, although, the cement business was acquired by another company in 1893, until Charles’s death in 1902. Georgina’s younger brother, George, died in 1898.

​The 1901 census records Georgina and Eva Lewis living in Lower Gornal, just to the west of the town of Dudley in the West Midlands. The two were running the St James’s Mission which appears to be affiliated with the parish church. They described themselves as lay sisters. Evangeline (Eva) was born in Brockville, Canada. Her father ultimately was appointed Archbishop of Ontario. He made frequent trips to England to raise funds for his work and for the sake of his health. One daughter married Llewelyn Loyd, who owned the Lillesden estate in Kent, and another lived in Cheltenham. Following Eva’s mother’s death and her father’s remarriage, it may be that the sisterly ties brought Eva to England.

​Both Georgina and Eva successfully evaded the 1911 census. Georgina was arrested in March 1912 for breaking eleven windows at Gorringe’s department store valued at £110. I
In court, Georgina explained that she was ‘a suffragist absolutely by conviction’ because after living and working among the poor for more than twenty years she had come to the conclusion that all efforts were absolutely futile without the benefit of the franchise.’ Her militancy was the way of the WSPU and she was ‘firmly convinced’ it was the only way. Georgina closed by saying ‘her protest [was] because of the sweated women and the women and children ruined and broken every day of the year.’ She was sentenced to four months in prison.

Georgina and Eva had, by then, moved to Hythe in Kent and joined the town’s WSPU branch. At a meeting, held while Georgina was in prison attended by Eva, the Hythe branch resolved to form a club, The Suffrage Club, which would bring together, for discussions, both the WSPU and the New Constitutional Society for Suffrage with aim of all suffrage campaigners being welcome. It would commence as soon as Georgina, who was appointed treasurer, was released from prison. Muriel de la Warr, accompanied by her daughter, Idina, officially opened the club, located on Hythe High Street with a shop and a room at the rear for meetings of The Suffrage Club, in August 1912. The window ‘was hung with purple, white and green’ with a counter and tables draped in the same colours.

​Georgina went on hunger strike, while in prison, and was forcibly fed. She was, on release, awarded the hunger strike medal. While in prison, Georgina was one of the signatories whose name was embroidered on the Suffragette Handkerchief now held by the Priest House in West Hoathly. 

​Kate Perry Frye, a suffrage campaigner, wrote a diary, published by Francis Boutle Publishers and edited by Elizabeth Crawford, which mentions both Georgina and Eva and the support they gave to the campaign.
 
In 1916 Georgina successfully passed a First Aid exam held by the St John’s Ambulance in connection with the war effort. At some point, the two women moved from Seabrook Road to a smaller bungalow called Hymora where they lived until Eva died in 1928.
 
Georgina died in 1932.