Walking with suffrage in

Huddersfield

Huddersfield Station, St George’s Square

By Jill Liddington WALK A 2 The Market Cross, Market hough smaller than Place or Bradford, Huddersfield Huddersfield is perhaps ’s most Town Centre Among those heading for T Huddersfield in 1906 was Emmeline remarkable centre for suffrage history. With two hotly-fought Pankhurst. In her home Huddersfield Station, St three years previously she had formed a local by-elections in 1906-7, 1 George’s Square small, new suffrage group, the Women’s Huddersfield suffragettes were Social and Political Union (WSPU). regularly in the national news. Our walk begins at the station’s The WSPU had recently captured Alongside, an older-established impressive forecourt, its monumental newspaper headlines – interrupting suffragist organisation (which façade little changed since it was politicians by shouting their ‘Votes completed in 1850. Its magnificence for Women’ demands. This suffragette differed from the suffragettes reminds travellers of Huddersfield’s militancy, directed particularly at in using only constitutional prosperity among West Riding’s the Liberal Government, resulted in tactics) showed remarkable textile centres. By the early 1900s, the severe prison sentences. In October creativity and a talent for town centre was packed with great international networking. stone-built commercial offices and warehouses. In mills on the outskirts Now, a century later, we can walk long wool fibres were spun into yarn their streets, pace their neighbourhoods, which was then woven by women into visit their houses. Our first walk (A), a worsted and woollen cloth – often short circular route, takes us to the tweeds to be sewn into ready-made suffragettes’ campaigning locations suits and coats in nearby Leeds. in Huddersfield town centre itself. Huddersfield was a strongly The second walk (B) is a longer linear Liberal town, returning a Liberal MP, route, leading us out of the town and Sir James Woodhouse, in the January up into the industrialised , 1906 General Election when a new following the canal as it climbs through Liberal Government swept into power. the countryside into the Pennines. Every politician travelling up from Westminster, every visiting speaker arriving at this railway station, crossed its forecourt to reach the town centre.

22 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 Market Cross, www.herstoria.com Market Square 1906, after a demonstration in the book, kept in the family sideboard for House of Commons lobby, a dozen decades, was only deposited very suffragettes—including Oldham mill recently by the granddaughter of Edith worker Annie Kenney—had been Key. Edith was branch secretary (see sent to prison for two months. Bradford Road, below) and a highly In November, Sir James Woodhouse efficient business woman. Edith’s MP was appointed as a Railway minute book opens with a meeting held Commissioner. A by-election was called, on Tuesday 14 May 1907, and includes and all eyes turned to Huddersfield. her annual report 1907-8. Suffragettes spotted a golden opportunity for political propaganda. Huddersfield Town Hall Emmeline Pankhurst was among the first to arrive; she spoke that Their aim was to found a WSPU night from the town’s ancient market branch in this key Yorkshire town. cross (still there, even if the Market Emmeline proclaimed: ‘Women Place streetscape has altered). As this went to prison… and will continue was a Government that locked up to go to prison until the Liberal women merely for demanding the party is compelled to carry the vote, she stated angrily, the WSPU principle it professes, and to would oppose all Liberal candidates. enfranchise women of this country.’ Other suffragettes also arrived, Adela proposed the women’s chalking the pavements and bill-posting citizenship resolution, and Annie the town. The Government panicked Kenney urged ‘young women of the – and sprang the early release of the town to… join the movement’—all imprisoned suffragettes. This was a to applause. At the end of the propaganda gift for the WSPU. Annie meeting no fewer than fifty local Kenney and others freed from Holloway women put their names forward. jumped straight on a train, sped north The Huddersfield WSPU branch was and exploded into the by-election. formed and soon emerged as one A crowd of 4,000 gathered of the most energetic in the country. outside Huddersfield station to So who were the local members? greet the released suffragettes, to the delight of the popular press and 4 Huddersfield Library and news photographers. Yet polling Archives Edith Key’s annual report 1907‑8, day with its all-male electorate still Huddersfield WSPU branch. West resulted in yet another Liberal victory. Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS) However, suffragettes, buoyed up by Clarion Club rooms, 27 their by-election experience, gained 5 new local recruits in the town. Albion Street Edith Key’s WSPU minute book Walking: A few minutes carefully lists where the branch held its along pedestrianised New Street meetings, including open-air venues brings us to the Town Hall. such as the Market Cross and St George’s Square. One of the favourite meeting 3 Huddersfield Town Hall places was just above the Town Hall on Albion Street. Sadly, this street was The late-Victorian town hall might Just below the Town Hall, Huddersfield completely rebuilt in the late-1960s. lack the spacious grandeur of the earlier Library (opened in 1937) houses key Number 27 was the site of the station façade, but its interior certainly evidence about Votes for Women Clarion Club rooms, named after the impresses. In December 1906 Emmeline campaigners. The excellent Local Studies Clarion, a popular labour movement Pankhurst returned to the town and Library includes street directories and paper, reminding how close the addressed a meeting in its large hall. local newspapers, plus the links were between the early WSPU She was accompanied by the full WSPU autobiography of Colne Valley suffragist and labour politics. In her minute panoply, including Annie Kenney Florence Lockwood (see Walk B). In an book, Edith Key also kept a list of and Emmeline’s youngest daughter, adjoining room, Archives holds WSPU members and their addresses twenty-one year old Adela Pankhurst. not only Florence Lockwood’s so we know a great deal about the manuscript diaries 1914-8, but also an early WSPU suffragettes and can extremely rare minute book which has visit their neighbourhoods. We will rather miraculously survived and which go and look at the house of two key records the early years of Huddersfield branch members, pausing on the WSPU branch.This handwritten minute

HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 23 Huddersfield’s older buildings often feature attractive and enigmatic decorations such as this one

old Dora Thewlis. Her mother Eliza weaver in a local mill and earning nearly Thewlis was a key member of the £1 a week. Her mother Eliza had joined WSPU branch, and a ten-minute walk the WSPU branch and Dora followed her. takes us to their family house. Then, in March 1907, the WSPU invited women to march on Parliament. Walking: at the foot of Ten Huddersfield women decided to go, Northumberland St cross the dual including Dora. But in the scrimmage, carriageway and turn left along a handful of local suffragettes were this main road (which becomes arrested, including Dora, the youngest. Northgate). Pass under the viaduct She was remanded in Holloway and into Bradford Rd, then branch right the magistrate wrote to her mother into Alder Street, towards an open and father, both of whom remained space with a small playground. unrepentant. But Dora found her photograph on the front page of the Hebble Street and Alder Daily Mirror, and herself dubbed ‘Baby 7 Street area suffragette’. She was sent home in the care of an elderly wardress. Dora’s At last, we have left behind all the notoriety did not end there; the image way to look at another WSPU venue. town-centre rebuilding and entered of her arrest was turned into a picture a neighbourhood that Edwardian postcard—albeit inaccurately labelled— Walking: this is a five-minute walk – suffragettes would recognise. It was in by a firm seeing popular interest in over Kirkgate, alongside the churchyard, stone-terraced streets like these that suffragettes as a marketing opportunity. to the foot of Northumberland Street. most Huddersfield WSPU members lived. The branch sprang from such Huddersfield Friendly and tightly-knit textile communities, here 6 Trades Club, sandwiched between trams going Northumberland Street up busy Bradford Road, the noisy railway viaduct and beyond it the canal dotted with woollen mills. Among such a ‘nest of suffragettes’, women could pop round to see a neighbour or could discuss a political emergency in the open space between the rows of houses. Hawthorn Terrace is further down Alder Street, third terrace from the end.

8 29 Hawthorne Terrace This Victorian building might now be designated ‘Creative Lofts’, but its stone inscription proclaims it as ‘Mechanics Institution’ and by the turn-of-the- century it was the Friendly and Trades Club. The WSPU branch meetings were occasionally held here, and the issue of affiliation to the Club was discussed by members. But questions of party Dora Thewlis postcard (Shamrock). political allegiance proved vexatious. The WSPU in Huddersfield might have Walking: from Hawthorne Terrace, strong labour movement links, but walk down Calton Street back to the suffragettes valued highly their junction with Bradford Road, and the row independence. Hawthorne Terrace still provides family of nine shops built in the 1880s. Second An even trickier issue erupted in spring accommodation, just as it did a century shop on the left (now a Caribbean café) 1907. WSPU marches to Parliament led to ago. In one of the central houses lived was the home of Edith Key, WSPU branch mass arrests, including those of a number the Thewlises, a family who had secretary. Backing onto the railway of suffragettes from Huddersfield. With migrated to Huddersfield from the viaduct, it must have been noisy. local women sentenced to seven days Holme Valley (see Walk B) and who in Holloway, townspeople suddenly worked in the woollen mills. discovered that suffragettes lived down Dora Thewlis, born at Honley in their street, even on their very doorstep. 1890, probably left school at eleven to Huddersfield suffrage notoriety grew – twelve years old; by 1907, sixteen year at the centre of which was sixteen year old Dora was living here, working as

24 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 www.herstoria.com 9 68 Regent Place, Bradford Health Bill, allowed women out of prison Road to recuperate for a specified number Bradley Street South of days; when the licence expired the (opposite Huddersfield security forces could pursue them University) again.) With its skylight, the attics were perhaps pokey rather than rambling. One final suffragette house is not marked on the map as Walking: take the footpath up the little of this area survives, so Bradford Road slip-road, past retail outlets, close is it to Kingsgate shopping to Castlegate. Cross at the traffic lights, centre and the ring-road. and branch right up suburban Cambridge After her notoriety, ‘Baby Road. At the top, continue on, up a narrow suffragette’ Dora Thewlis went footpath. At the top, turn left, then very quiet. By 1911, when she immediately right into Highfields Road. was twenty, she and her elder sister Evelina (also a woollen New North Road and weaver), had left Hawthorne 10 Edgerton Terrace. The five-room house was still home to her parents, Highfields and New North Road two younger sisters at school, are at the lower end of Edgerton plus a cousin. Perhaps wishing to 68 Regent Place, Bradford Road, home of Edith Road. Here can be seen the grand escape the domestic congestion, Key, Huddersfield WSPU secretary. houses of the town’s merchants and preferring town-centre and bankers. Indeed, the residential independence, they moved Edith Key lived here with her suburb of Edgerton was even dubbed to Bradley Street South. talented blind husband, Frederic ‘the Kensington of Huddersfield’. Here the Thewlis sisters Key and their two sons, and here Here lived one of the few well-to-do became boarders with a widow, the Keys ran a music shop. A century members of the WSPU branch Bertha a theatrical landlady whose ago, other shops in the row included Lowenthal, daughter of a prosperous twenty-two year old daughter a Post Office, a tripe dresser and a German-born wool merchant in worked as charwoman for a hairdresser. It is here that Edith wrote Huddersfield. The Lowenthals lived at nearby theatre. One of the her minutes after branch meetings, the spacious Grange (about 1/3 mile other boarders in 1911 was and here that one of the early WSPU further up Edgerton Road). With Bertha even a professional music meetings was held, on 28 May 1907. and her brother lived another unmarried hall artiste. But this taste of By the time of the 1911 census, sister and three domestic servants (with urban glamour was just a step resourceful Frederic was recorded as a undoubtedly outdoor staff living nearby on a more ambitious journey self-employed ‘Musical Instrument and as well). Bertha had originally been a for the sisters. Some time Sewing Machine Dealer’, with thirty- NUWSS suffragist (see Walk B), later before 1914, along with about nine year old Edith Ann Key ‘assisting joining the WSPU branch and becoming twenty other Huddersfield in the business’; their teenage sons one of its very few members who could girls, they both emigrated to worked as a tailor’s cutter and as a cycle help with its financial difficulties. Australia in search of a better shop assistant. Unusually, it appears life. Dora worked in blanket- to be Edith who has signed the census Walking: back down New North weaving near Melbourne, not form, rather than her blind husband. Road and turn left into Fitzwilliam Street far from where Dora’s elderly The house had five rooms, and over the Castlegate flyover, keeping to daughter and other Thewlis years later Edith’s sons remembered the pavements. Turn right into John descendants still live. how, in its rambling attics, ‘our house William Street to return to the station. became a refuge and hiding place’ for sheltering fugitive suffragette ‘mice’ after the 1913 ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act. (This controversial piece of legislation, the WALK A ENDS Prisoners’ Temporary Discharge for Ill-

From left to right: A typical house on New North Road; Highfield House, New North Road; The Grange, Edgerton Road

HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 25 8

To

Linthwaite Tanyard Road 7 Whiteley St

To Huddersfield 9 Bankwell Road 15

B - Canal side walk from Huddersfield to Marsden, via To Milnsbridge, and . Milnsbridge 10 These maps show details of detour routes in each town only. Lowestwood16 Ln

Bargate Steps Linthwaite To 6

Slaithwaite Manchester RoadHoyle House Fold 1

Chapel Hill Waingate 17 2

Platt Ln To Slaithwaite Linthwaite

11

Bridge St 19 To 3 4 5 Marsden Manchester Road

Linfit Fold 12

13

Linfit Ln 18 To 26 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 www.herstoria.com Milnsbridge 14 Maps of Suffrage Walk 8

Calton St

Alder St 7 A - Huddersfield Town Centre and start of Walk B, to Canal 9

Lower Viaduct St

Northgate

Bradford Road Cambridge Rd

Highfields

10

Lower Fitzwilliam St Highfields Road New North Road

Broadway

Fitzwilliam St

6

Northumberland St

John William St

1 Lord St Station St

Pedestrianised or limited access areas Trinity St Westgate Kirkgate Cross Church St

Inner Ring Road 2

Market Pl King St

Old South St

New Street 11 Springwood St Ramsden St Victoria Lane 3 4 5

12 Water St Albion St

13

To Bankfield Road Manchester Road Milnsbridge HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 27 14 WALK B: Along the Colne Valley to Slaithwaite/Marsden

Edith Key and Dora Thewlis do formed in 1904. No Edwardian woman Studdard who ran his own shop. not represent the whole of the Votes exemplified local NUWSS activism The Studdards are a reminder that for Women story in Huddersfield. Walk better than loyal Liberal activist Edwardian Liberalism was not just the B introduces a second suffrage strand. and suffragist, Helen Studdard. political faith of the mercantile elite Also starting in front of the station, the living up Edgerton Road, but that route leads in a different direction – Walking: facing the station façade, the Liberals’ 1906 landslide victory out of the town, down to the canal turn left and then walk up Trinity Street, promised sweeping welfare reforms to towpath and up into Colne Valley, site crossing by the traffic lights at the tackle those scourges of respectable of a fiery by-election in June 1907. Catholic centre; walk across Castlegate working-class families – child In the 1870s, a generation before and then along Old South Street, parallel mortality, unemployment, poverty. Emmeline Pankhurst formed the with the dual carriageway. Pause just Helen Studdard, secretary of WSPU, suffrage meetings had been before the green Supersave shop. the Huddersfield Liberal Association, held in Huddersfield. Campaign tactics also became secretary of the kept well within the law, and in 1897 11 44 Springwood Street Huddersfield NUWSS branch; she suffragists formed the National Union even travelled to Copenhagen, of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Helen Studdard was married to Amsterdam and Stockholm to attend In Huddersfield a NUWSS branch was self-employed cabinet-maker Joe International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) congresses. Sadly, no NUWSS branch minute book survives; so the local press remains a key source for evidence of Helen Studdard’s activism. She was a hard- working suffrage secretary, always on the look-out for new recruits, including those living up the Colne Valley – reached by walking along Water Street.

12 Spring-Grove Board School

Spring-Grove Board School, 1880.

The imposing scale of the board school on Water Street suggests how busy the Springwood area then was. Just below the Studdards’ house were large Matt Calderwood, Untitled, 2008 • courtesy of the artist, photo copyright the artist woollen and cotton mills, while in front Huddersfield Art Gallery (and still standing) were two large brick ventilators for the railway tunnel running between the station and Spring Wood junction, for trains heading up the Colne material intelligence Valley. Below lay the canal and more mills. clAire bArclAy KArlA blAcK Walking: at the end of Water Street, MArtin bOyce there is a set of steep stone steps. The top MAtt cAlDerWOOD 1 August - 3 OctOber 2009 of the steps offers panoramic views (see tOny FeHer WADe guytOn opposite). Huddersfield Art Gallery iAn KiAer Princess Alexandra Walk, Huddersfield, HD1 su2 sHirley tse gallery open: Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, sat 10am-4pm, sun closed 01484 221962 • [email protected] www.kirklees.gov.uk/art 28 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 www.herstoria.com Walking: it is a half-hour stroll up the tow path to Milnsbridge, the countryside interspersed every few minutes with a lock gate or an old stone mill, some now converted into apartments. Milnsbridge town centre is just a few minutes’ walk from the canal.

15 Milnsbridge

Suffragette Elizabeth Pinnance, born at Paddock in 1879, left school at ten to work as a rug weaver. She married Florence Lockwood, watercolour, 1922, Slaithwaite, Colne Valley. Huddersfield Art Bob Pinnance, a cloth-presser and Gallery, Kirklees (see adjacent advertisement for address and opening times). active trade unionist, and with their By permission of Kirklees MBC. three children they moved to near Milnsbridge. By the 1911 census, they lived at 13 Longwood Road, Royds Hall, just above the viaduct, with their two The Holme and Colne 14 Canal towpath walk surviving children (one had died). 13 Valleys This small bustling town had not only a Liberal Club but also its own Below is the confluence of the River Socialist Club (now closed down) Colne (right) which runs east from sandwiched between the canal and the Pennines, and the River Holme Bankwell Road. Here the Pinnance (centre) flowing northwards to join children attended Socialist Sunday the Colne. Along the Holme Valley lay School, learning about ethical socialism. Honley, Holmfirth and Wooldale – home Elizabeth Pinnance was also of suffragettes such as Ellen Brooke, The Huddersfield Narrow Canal arrested at Westminster in spring arrested at Westminster aged twenty- combines rural tranquillity with 1907 and was sentenced to fourteen two at the same time as Dora Thewlis. signs of its intense industrial past. days. Her grandchildren still live In Honley, local suffragist dowager Immediately beyond the short tunnel in the Huddersfield area; in the Emily Siddon of Honley House was and lock gates is Paddock Viaduct home of one is proudly displayed founding NUWSS branch president. (above) which dominates the view. an illuminated testimonial, signed A long stone wall runs beside the by Emmeline Pankhurst on behalf Walking: descend carefully down tow path, and as the canal bends of the WSPU, and presented: 119 steep stone steps which, then and round, the railway viaduct looms now, linked the town and canal. Turn high overhead while the River Colne To Elizabeth Pinnance, right at the bottom, and at the end turn flows underneath. Beyond the viaduct right into Manchester Road. The high lies Paddock Mills, plus two smaller On behalf of all women, who will railway viaduct is now clearly visible woollen mills and their mill ponds. win freedom by the bondage ahead. Immediately after the main To the left of the canal, the streets which you have endured for road curves left at the traffic lights, turn rise steeply to Lockwood and Crosland their sake… We, the members of sharply left down a cobbled snicket Moor; here lived another small ‘nest the Women’s Social and Political leading to the canal; at the grassy picnic of suffragettes’, Ellen Beever and Union, herewith express our area, turn left onto the towpath. her niece Annie Sykes, ten minutes deep sense of admiration for walk apart, both sentenced to seven your courage in enduring the days in Holloway in spring 1907.

Panoramic view from the end of Water Street, over the Colne and Holme Valleys

HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 29 long period of privation and Black Rock House. Shortly after, she solitary confinement in prison sketched her new neighbourhood, for the Votes for Women Cause. a thicket of stone cottages with the mill chimney behind. Walking: it is about thirty to forty Over a century later, Black Rock minutes’ stroll along the canal up has become hemmed in by new to Titanic Mills and Linthwaite. houses, its entrance overgrown and barred by security fences. Although Tolson Museum is a fine Victorian 16 Linthwaite: the tale of two she would certainly recognise mansion set in parkland with fascinating mills Linthwaite’s older buildings, it displays of archaeology, natural history, is probably better that Florence the Romans, the textile industry, Edwardian Linthwaite was a closely- Lockwood cannot see her home now. knit textile community. One of its largest transport and much more. It has an mills, built in 1911, was optimistically exciting programme of exhibitions and named ‘Titanic’. It is among the events, plus Ronnie the Raven’s canal-side industrial buildings that Puzzlepath, a special interactive trail have been recently converted into around the museum for under fives. apartments (and, in this case, a spa). Since the demise of the woollen textile industry, some older mills www.kirklees.gov.uk/museums have faced less elegant alterations. Black Rock, its entrance barred. One, which bears directly and vividly on the local suffrage story, requires Victor Grayson and the Colne Huddersfield NUWSS banner our route briefly to leave the canal. Valley by-election, 1907

Walking: with Titanic on your left, Florence had married into local cross over the river and climb Bargate patrician Liberalism. The Colne Valley Steps up to Manchester Road. Turn right constituency, like Huddersfield, was seen along the busy main road, over the by the Liberals as their rightful territory. crossing and next left up Hoyle House In the 1906 General Election, Sir James Fold. Fork right into Chapel Hill, then bend Kitson MP, a major Leeds employer, had left into Waingate. This detour to view been returned unopposed. However, the the remains of Black Rock are only for local labour movement soon had other those with a strong stomach for scenes ideas. Victor Grayson, idealistic socialist of industrial dereliction and decay. orator from Manchester (where he knew the Pankhurst family well) was adopted Linthwaite: Black Rock Mills as the Colne Valley Labour candidate. 17 Then in June 1907 Kitson was made a peer. A by-election was hastily called. Aged twenty-four, debonair and handsome, Grayson proclaimed himself as not only the socialist candidate but also the one supporting Votes for Women. As well as the Huddersfield WSPU branch members, other suffragettes now began to head for the Colne Valley – including Emmeline and Adela Pankhurst. Florence Lockwood’s Huddersfield NUWSS Soon Victor Grayson brought banner, now in Tolson Museum, Huddersfield. The approach to Black Rock House, Linthwaite, By permission of Kirklees MBC. from a sketch by Florence Lockwood, 1903; his revolutionary message even illustration from An Ordinary Life (1932). to Hoyle House in Linthwaite. The From 1908, suffragist artists Pankhursts came right to Florence’s embarked on a wave of glorious Florence Lockwood remains own doorstep too. She encountered banner-making. Florence Lockwood best known of all Huddersfield’s an exhausted Adela who wanted a was inspired too – both by the Colne local suffragists. Not only was she an cart for her WSPU speakers. Josiah Valley landscape and by her own artist (she had trained at the Slade lent the cart – and Grayson won the design skills. The original wording in the 1880s) but she also wrote her by-election. Local Liberals like Josiah on her banner was ‘Votes for Homes’, autobiography, An Ordinary Life 1861- were aghast. For Florence it proved stressing something more domestic and 1924 (1932). She married Linthwaite a turning moment. She immediately respectable than Grayson’s fiery oratory, manufacturer Josiah Lockwood in joined the local NUWSS branch, but this was altered. It remains difficult 1902 and came to live by his mill, at putting her artist’s skills to good use. to date Florence’s banner precisely; or

30 HerStoria magazine Autumn 2009 www.herstoria.com to suggest exactly which part of the trees now flourishing on the hillsides. canal she had in mind with her design. 19 Marsden. Walking: catch a train back from Walking: from Black Rock, drop back Slaithwaite station or a bus back into Both Slaithwaite and Marsden were down to the canal; it is about twenty to Huddersfield. Alternatively, if time fiercely independent communities. On thirty minutes’ stroll along the towpath permits, continue up the canal to 29 June 1907, Emmeline Pankhurst, to Slaithwaite. To catch the viewpoint of Marsden, the last station before the accompanied by Edith Key, arrived in Florence Lockwood’s landscape, walk up Manchester train enters a tunnel. Slaithwaite to begin the suffragette from the canal and across the main road campaign with an open-air meeting. On to Linfit Fold; then climb up Linfit Lane. Suffrage campaigning 1909-14. polling day itself, Victor Grayson, pale with the shock of winning, was taken through 18 Slaithwaite By early 1909, Edith Key’s the Slaithwaite streets by his supporters, WSPU minute book ends, the wild with jubilation. It was socialist voters branch struggling for survival. By like Bob Pinnance who ensured Grayson the time of the 1911 census, local was elected, and suffragettes like his wife suffragettes seemed no longer in Elizabeth who made summer 1907 so the mood for resistance or evasion memorable. Could the WSPU really bring of the enumerator – though down the Liberal Government? (Grayson Edith herself went on to shelter proved short-lived as an MP, though he suffragette ‘mice’ during 1913-14. later opened Marsden Socialist Club in On the other hand, the NUWSS front of equally enthusiastic crowds.) branch sustained its activity right The WSPU branch also held open-air up the war. Florence Lockwood meetings in Marsden. In 1907, a crowd even travelled to Budapest for the gathered to listen to Eliza Thewlis. Slaithwaite, its viaduct visible beyond the mills. 1913 IWSA congress. Campaigning But hecklers jostled Ellen Beever, in early August 1914, she came Elizabeth Pinnance and others, who Slaithwaite is an attractive Pennine home to Black Rock to finish her new were pelted with old vegetables and town and many of its woollen or suffragist banner, embroidering the banana skins. They sought refuge in the worsted mills by the canal are well words ‘A New Age demands new house of Marsden suffragette, Mary restored. Dominating the landscape is Responsibilities for Women’. But Scawthorne, barring the door to the still Crimble Viaduct, seen from up Linfit Florence’s high hopes were dashed rioters, who threw stones and half- Lane. Here in 1922 Florence Lockwood within hours: ‘War will not help bricks. Married to a woollen spinner, sat to paint her evocative watercolour. human liberty, I thought, as I folded Mary was a woollen weaver who had Clearly, since then the polluting smoke up the banner and put it away’. had seven children. By 1911, five were of mill chimneys has disappeared, with still living. The family lived in four rooms: No 4 Gladstone Buildings in Marsden. Need to Know… Travel suggestions If you enjoyed these suffrage walks, or would like to read more before setting out, try: Rail: Huddersfield has an excellent train service from both Jill Liddington, Rebel Girls: their fight for the vote (Virago, 2006) Manchester and Leeds. which has chapters on Dora Thewlis, Edith Key, Florence Lockwood and the two by-elections. (Rebel Girls is reviewed in this issue.) Car: the town is only three miles from Hilary Haigh (ed), Huddersfield: a most handsome Exit 24 on the M62. However, parking town (Kirklees Cultural Services, 1992). can be expensive – and you may have Mrs Josiah Lockwood, An Ordinary Life 1861-1924 (Echo Press, 1932). to park some way from the station.

Acknowledgements: Pam Riding, Cyril Pearce, Brian Haigh, Nina Boyd. Return: at Huddersfield station, check train time table back from Jill Liddington, Honorary Research Fellow at Slaithwaite and Marsden. the University of Leeds, is co-author of One Hand Tied Behind Us (Virago, 1978) which Walking: for Walk A, allow about 2 quickly became a suffrage classic. hours, and for Walk B roughly four Jill will lead a short guided town trail hours. For route B up into Colne in Huddersfield, ‘Walking with Rebel Girls’, Valley, strong shoes or walking on Thursday 1 October, meeting at the boots are strongly advisable as the station forecourt at 6.30pm. Further details tow-path can be very muddy. can be found at www.jliddington.org.uk

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