Weak-minded and Degenerate Women

Mrs. Pankhurst arrested in May 1913.

The May 1, 1913 Montreal Witness pretty well sums up Flo in the City, my novel in progess about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

It has an account of the raid on the WSPU offices in London. The headline says the raid is an attempt to ‘destroy the fabric’ of the WSPU. (How perfect!) The newswire report out of London calls the raid ‘decisive’ and the suffragette movement as ‘a menace’ and the suffragettes as ‘inciting the weak-minded and degenerate to crime.’

In her memoirs, published the next near, Emmeline Pankhurst writes: the front page of The Sufffragette, instead of the usual cartoon, bore the single word in boldfaced type:”RAID.” Our headquarters, I may say in passing, stayed closed for 48 hours.

In this same Montreal Witness is a large announcement for the 20th anniversary meeting of the Montreal Council of Women, the meeting I have blogged about extensively.

Proof Edith saw it. The meeting was held in the Lecture Hall of St. James Methodist and the Witness was to print out a daily schedule.

That’s where Edith saw Mrs. Philip Snowden talk. She wrote in a letter home that she “she is not militant and for this I am very sorry.”

And this despite the way the militants were described in the paper. Edith was not weak-minded or degenerate, and she was for the militant suffragettes!

Edith.

Also in the Witness, an announcement that the President of Dominion Textiles was returning from a trip in Europe… Also many job ads for teachers (but with qualifications) with the biggest box blurting PRINCIPALS WANTED. This is the year Marion was turned down for the vice-principalship of her elementary school because she was a woman. (The ad didn’t say Men Only Need Apply, but everyone likely knew.)

Also: fashion tip of the week: How ribbons can bonny up a spring bonnet. Also a pattern for a corset cover.

(Also an article saying that steel prices had rebounded because the threat of war had lessened. See! They knew a war was imminent.

Also an article about how 1/4 of the Montreal Population changed living quarters each May 1, based on an estimate that the average family had five members and that ONLY families were tenants. Ha! (Marion and Flo and two friends shared an apartment on Hutchison since September, but moved out in May to some place called The Mansions on Guy.)

Yes, all the themes of Tighsolas and Flo in the City in one place.