2012 Gender Gaps and 1912 Suffragettes

In my ebook Threshold Girl I have Flora and Edith Nicholson visit St. James Methodist Church in Montreal in early May 1912, a few days after the Titanic sinks, to see a ‘real British Suffragette’. The suffragette is Barbara Wiley, one that has been forgotten by Herstory and History.   Wiley had a brother who was an MP out West and she visited Montreal and Canada  in 1912 and probably said more than she should have. (I guess she was a bit of a rogue suffragette.) You see, the militant suffragettes had to be careful what they said in their speeches in Canada, as ‘militants’ were not looked well upon.

Barbara Wiley

Most suffragettes visiting Canada began their speeches by saying “I am not militant”. Not this Wiley, who told reporters in Montreal that British Prime Minister Asquith deserved getting an axe hurled at him.” I quote her in my Threshold Girl book, for the Nicholson women cut out an account of her arrival in Montreal in September 1912. From the Montreal Standard. The Suffragettes were careful about many things, including the way they dressed. They were media savvy, that’s for sure. (Read my book for more.) Anyway, as we all know, women got the vote in Canada (some during and all after the First World War).  But despite the high hopes of the suffragettes, who believed that women would change the world because ‘all men cared about was making money’,  did anything really change? Many have argued “NO.” Women vote like men. For the most part.

But there’s an interesting article in Salon today.  According to an ABC New Washington Post statistic, if only men had the vote, Romney the Republican Nominee would win handily over President Obama.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/the_biggest_gender_gap_ever/singleton/

So today, almost 100 years, later the suffragettes appear vindicated. All men do care about is money. And women do care about more than money. Maybe.

Except it’s more complicated than that:  the suffragettes were right wing when it came to some social policy (as I’ve explained elsewhere on this blog.) The Woman Suffrage Movement was strongly aligned with the Temperance Movement, especially in the States and Canada. And here in Canada, Miss Carrie Derick, a suffrage leader, was a proponent of eugenics.

 

As I wrote on another post on this blog, Christabel Pankhurst believed that prostitution would end if women got the vote, but it didn’t. Indeed, brothels are now legal in Ontario. (Sort of.)

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.ca/2010/11/votes-for-women-chastity-for-men.html

Emily Davison throws herself under the Kings Horse, by mistake, maybe. The ‘first suffragette martyr” claims the press.

Here’s a clipping from the 1910 Montreal Witness, a letter to the Editor that one of the Nicholson women, probably Edith, clipped. “There is no suffragette movement in Canada, but there is an movement for the enfranchisement of women.” You see, ‘suffragette’ meant militant, and many women, even those who wanted the vote, distanced themselves from the militants. Edith Nicholson did not. She liked the militant suffragettes. http://www.tighsolas.ca/page27.html

Titanic Fashion, so to speak. A fashion advert from Votes for Women, the magazine of the WSPU, in the UK, April 1912. Hmm. Sunshine Girl.

Shades of Winston to Come…

Churchill at Yalta with some cronies… My son visited Yalta a few weeks ago.

I have been reading an awful lot about Churchill lately, as I have been reading about England in the Edwardian Era and he was Home Secretary.

I also listen a lot to the BBC where it’s all War all the time and I researched and wrote my own grandmother’s WWII story, Looking for Mrs. Peel, published at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html.

It’s only a recent interest, although a while back, many years ago indeed, I enjoyed a production called Young Winston, with, I think, Simon Ward.

Anyway, I found this little article as I was poring over the November 28, 1910 Montreal Gazette. I was looking for a report on Laurier’s speech on the Naval Bill, which led to his Liberals losing the next election and messing up Norman Nicholson’s life on the railroad.

“Suffragists committed serious disturbances at a meeting at Lambeth tonight, at which Winston Spenser Churchill was speaking.After several men (sic) had been thrown out, Mr. Churchill strongly denounced the suffragist’s tactics and said “I am told that individuals are to be singled out for violence. If that is their language, there is only one answer and that is ‘Come On’”.

Hmm. Edith Nicholson, and I have mentioned often in this blog, was a militant suffragist (suffragette) sympathizer. I wonder how she would have held up in a one-0n-one with Sir Winston. She was Commandant of the Quebec Red Cross during WWII.)

The December 1, 1910 newspaper also has an article about a pro suffrage talk given by a Dr. Charles Zueblin of Boston to the Montreal Women’s Club. He says that the Anglo Saxon woman is more than ready for the vote and has proven it with her public service and community activities. He says that although there isn’t a man on the street who does not feel himself to be superior to a woman, that is protozoan thinking. (ouch!)

He says that women are suffering a similar plight to the Negroes. He cites the trials of the brilliant Booker T. Washington as an example of how Negroes have been oppressed. Well, he used the word ‘handicapped’ rather than oppressed. (In a 1905 letter from Normal School Marion Nicholson writes about attending a talk by Booker T. Washington. She says he is a terrific speaker and that he told some great jokes.

The Dr. also said he believed women should be educated, although they should take different subjects, perhaps meeting at meal times, as men seemed to have lost the art of conversation.

Tell that to the great orator Winston Churchill.