To All Women All Over the World

As I write Diary of A Confirmed Spinster, the follow up to Threshold Girl, (a free ebook about a college girl in 1911/12, the Titanic era) I am reading Votes for Women, the magazine of the Women’s Social and Political Union, or WSPU, and one issue in particular, the issue for April 19, 1912, published a few days after the Titanic sank. I will have this issue drop into Edith Nicholson’s hands, and that will partly explain why she takes Flora to a suffrage meeting in early May 1912. It’s described in Threshold Girl.

This issue is perfect for my needs. It has an article on Teachers and Suffrage and a letter to the editor from an Alberta Minister, defending St. Paul – but in a pro-suffrage way. And it also has some first hand accounts of the Suffragettes being Tortured in Jail… for breaking windows and going on a hunger strike.

In May 1912, Edith is also organizing her fellow teachers at Westmount Methodist, in a mass strike – or exodus. This following article will be her inspiration.  I’m going to have her read it out to her fellow teachers.

(I have written a play about my grandmother’s trials as a Prison of War in Changi Prison during WWII. She was tortured in an infamous incident called the Double Tenth. All true, she wrote it in a diary. Looking for Mrs. Peel. I wonder if reading accounts like this, as a teenage girl, inspired. But she did not believe in female solidarity, as her prison diary shows.)

Here’s the testimony of one Dr. Ede. Just like in Changi, doctors were given special status.

I was put straight into a ‘room’ which remained mine thenceforward. This room had a many-paned iron-framed window, and four panes open, given about eight inches by eight inches for ventilation. These cells are a little larger, and much superior to those in Holloway, where I had just previously been roomed for twelve days. Arriving late, most formalities were left till next day, when the doctor listened to my chest (with my consent0 and the Governor told me that we were just ordinary prisoners, without the privilege under Rule 243a (Mr. Winston Churchill’s vaunted clemency), but we were allowed to wear our own clothes.

The pillow I had brought (a most essential comfort, not a mere luxury) was taken away, all books, knitting, even one’s brush and comb and many small possessions we taken and I began ‘to do time.’ But I was thankful for the sight of real country, fields and looked out of the window, the fresh country air which we all revelled in at exercise time and the songs of the birds. The food was ample in quantity, and the vegetarian diet, which I had, was in quality and variety sufficient, though not quite satisfactory for a healthy person. Whether I should have said the same after four months, I do not know. We ten exercised by ourselves at first, but were soon allowed exercise in common with those who had arrived before and came in after us. Chapel was also common ground. Associated labour was deferred for several days till we had settled in and knew better what was allowed and what forbidden. Then it was for two hours every afternoon. We did coarse needlework, each in her cell, in the mornings after chapel and exercise. During this time our doors stood open and the Governor and Doctor went their rounds.

Once or twice a week a Lady Visitor paid us a very welcome short visit, and once to local Justices came and asked if we had complaints to make. They were not red-tape officials, but seemed quite human. We all, I believe, sent up the formal humble petition for the privileges Mr. Winston Churchill had given and Mr. McKenna had withdrawn, but the earlier arrivals had done this without success and we did not get an answer up to the time we were released. After allowing the Home Secretary a week and carefully deliberately discussing matters, twenty five out of the twenty eight suffragette prisoners decided to begin a Hunger Strike as a means of getting these privileges. Thursday’s supper was to be the last meal: With Good Friday we began. We had thought out how to keep it quiet for a few days , and about the usual amount of waste bread, fragments and so forth appeared on our plates which we always washed ourselves. We drank an amount of water that might have drawn attention, but apparently it did not. Chapel, exercise work, associated labour, all went as usual. We showed cheerful faces, hid up the pangs of hunger, endured sleepless nights, various forms of pain, and we shrank daily visibly in face and body. It was curious to note the marked contrast in the step of one (for adequate reasons) was not striking, and any of us walking with her. The spring was quite gone out of our step. Our clothes became loos, then began to slip down around us. Still nothing seemed to be noticed by the Governor or the Doctor in her daily rounds.

We expected the weakest to faint in chapel, but though the Chaplain, as it happened, hold forth on the duty as well as the pleasure of man that it is to protect women, he also seemed oblivious of what was going on. On Easter Monday, I thought matters had become so serious that with some of us it was medically wrong to allow it to go on unobserved. Several had become so utterly exhausted that I feared grave permanent injury and their condition at this time would have, in my opinion, justified anyone in asserting that their offence had been dearly paid for. However, there seems to be absolutely no bottom to the supply of courage and endurance in our women, and they refused consent. I had often admired the pluck of our members, but I now saw such heroism in frail and tottering bodies, such forgetfulness of self in the interests of the Cause, as amazed me once more.

Suffragettes 1912 from Pankhurst’s 1913 bio.

Next morning I took the responsibility of telling the Governor and we were thenceforward confined each to her cell and kept strictly apart, chapel and exercise being stopped.Those who had not struck, and one or two who absolutely could not keep on any longer, were exercised together. The relief of having these trying meals off our hands was great, and the feeling that we need no longer keep up. But when Tuesday’s dinner had been refused by us, and the tea, we became anxious as to what the next step would be, and when it would be taken. About five o’clock we began to hear sounds of struggling in cell after cell, pleadings and remonstrances, sounds of choking and gasping, moans and distressful cries. I have never head, in all my professional experience, anything so agonising.

And we had to hear this, recognising which our comrades was being tortured and waiting for our own turn to come. Let no one pretend that to be fed forcibly is either safe or free from suffering; it is neither, and it is inexpressibly revolting. Many were fed by tube through the nose and one at least by tube through the mouth, and others by feeding cup forced between teeth , the mouth pulled about, the nose held nearly to suffocation. The Suffragettes throw Flour at Asquith’s car My turn came. Some half dozen wardresses, in a body, came quickly into my cell. But I had thought out how best to resist, and I was standing on a table with my arms out of two upon panes, elbows bent and hands well up the sleeves of my coat. I refused to come down so a wardress on each side of me tried through the other two open panes to get at my hands. The small openings made this impossible and they had to give it up, and went away. I remained on my table, for a frequent eye at the spy slit in the door shoed that once I drew in my arms, I was done for. I had put a strap round my body and up both sleeves, buckling it outside the window, and I got some rest by leaning back on it.

After two hours of this they came in again, tried as before, in vain, and said men were coming with ladders to undo my hands from outside. My cell was on the first floor. Two men and two ladders appeared, my sleeves were with difficulty pushed up so that my wrists could be grasped, the strap was cut and I was seized, lifted down into a chair , bound down with towels and a sheet and firmly held. I then saw the Governor and the doctor waiting to feed me. I was by this time gasping deeply for breath and was allowed a minute in which to recover it and then, refusing to accept food from a cup, I had the rubber tube passed through my nose and on and on until the loathing and feeling of insult injury and foul wrong was inexpressible.

When it was over, withdrawal of the tube was nearly as distressing, and one felt as if a bruised and degraded body had been in the hands of fiends. I do not think the wardresses had used unreasonable force, and one even pitied them for having to do such hateful work. But one could not feel that a man who could inflict such horrible cruelty at the bidding of any human authority, our offence being merely that we claimed our political rights, must be wholly blind to divine law and justice. Indeed, I could not help asking the doctor, “Are the thirty pieces of silver worth it?” I was very sore in mind and body next morning and for reasons not told me, the tube was not used on me again, but wardresses tried their best, morning and evening, to force food down from a feeding cup. I think they got down about a tablespoonful in an hour, and they were nearly as tired as I was. On Wednesday evening a special Medical Inspector of Prisons came round to five of us; asked questions and made observations.

After his visit, all water was taken away from our cells and a mug of milk left instead, fresh means of breaking down the strike, for we were very thirsty. The milk went promptly out of the window, and I heard a voice say, “This is the last straw.” After this they may grind me to powder and I won’t give in. “ In the morning, we had access to water as usual. On Thursday afternoon, ostensibly for reasons of health, five of us were sent out of the prison. How were the five selected? Two were really seriously ill, but it struck me as remarkable that the other three were sound, strong, medical women, who of course, knew too much and were too determined for easy victimization. A woman about whose identity and relationships they had shown themselves puzzled and curious- neither of those having reached the limits of their strength, and a nurse.

There were others in greater need of release, in my opinion. And the whole of this suffering could have been stopped instantly by restoring to use the privileges under Rule 243a, and giving us the status of political prisoners instead of that of ordinary criminals. Frances Edes M.D.

Where 1927 and 1910 Meet in Montreal… with Motion Pictures and Morality

Mack Sennett bathing beauty. Late teens or twenties. The card and the model, I imagine. In 1910 Mack Sennett was a player in D.W. Griffith’s Biograph silent shorts.

In 1900 Mack Sennett was Michael Sinnott of somewhere near Richmond, perhaps Danville. He was the same age as Edith, but their paths didn’t cross I imagine, as she was Presbyterian and he Catholic. In his memoirs, Sennett says he hung around with the Irish Catholics – and mostly went to funerals.

My Edwardian and Pre-World War I story about my husband’s great aunts,

< Threshold Girl

and The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, Militant Suffragette Sympathizer and Inadvertent Opium Addict…and Milk and Water, by 1927 Prohibition era story about my grandfather Jules Crepeau, come together in many places, the hygienist movement and with motion pictures. My grandfather was the first to give testimony at an inquiry into the 1927 Laurier Theatre Fire. He also dealt with social reformers a lot, especially with respect to the City Improvement League. In 1921, some mostly anglo social reformer groups got together for force any inquiry into Police Corruption. My grandfather, Director of City Services was named outright, as someone who allowed underage kids into theatres, or, more to the point, forced the cops to cast a blind eye upon such infractions.

Here’s a bit I wrote a while back, on The Morality Ladies of the Montreal Council of Women

Blame it on the movies. Most people’s idea of these Canadian Council of Women Reformer types at the turn of the century, is of some ridiculous looking old woman (in a HUGE hat) going from book store to book store trying to get some fabulous work of literature banned. (I just saw this in the Life of Emile Zola, with respect to his Nana.)

But as I show on this blog and in my book Flo in the City, these Women’s Groups were responsible for improving the lives of many a disenfranchized city dweller – and for getting women the vote.

Not that some of them didn’t waste their time going from book store to book store trying to see if the establishments carried ‘immoral’ material -although they would have been better served just checking out their husband’s secretaries, I imagine. (The desk, I mean.)

It seems in 1912, postcards were wicked, (we can all imagine the type, probably available for purchase on eBay today, for a big price).

And there was a list of censored books. The Canadian Council of Women had to get special dispensation from Canada Post to be able to get these immoral books in the mail so these ladies could judge for themselves.

Yes, this is reform at its silliest. (Sort of like protesting over Katy Perry’s Sesame Street cleavage. I mean, when I was four I was given this Rosemary Clooney children’s album. Now, that was world class cleavage- and singing talent for that matter.)

In 1912, just like today, many people blamed the ‘bad behavior’ of adolescents on the motion pictures. The Montreal Council report quoted an expert who claimed to know of such incidents, where kids imitated the robbers in movies.

To be fair, I visited the Bibliotheque Nationale a few years ago to check on what they had in their fonds about the Montreal Council of Women. They have very little, but one item was of special interest. The Social and Moral Reform League of Canada, or some such organization, was lobbying to make it a criminal offence for unmarried people to co-habitate, but Julia Parker Drummond, after consulting experts, replied that ‘you can’t make people moral by law.’ She saw this initiative as unfairly targeting the poor, for it was the poor and new immigrants who lived together outside of wedlock. In those days, it wasn’t youths who lived together, it was older people with families and such who moved in common law. (The Canada yearbook shows only a few divorces in Canada for these years, but in those days, people ‘just broke up housekeeping’ and moved somewhere else.) In order to get a divorce you had to apply to Parliament. (I assume some rich people just walked away from their marriages. My husband’s grandmother did. Twice.)

Here’s a snippet from the Montreal Council of Women’s Committee Report on Immoral Material.

“Your convenor reports an average increase in the number of moving picture shows, there being 69, more than in all Canada 5 years ago. Many of these have been visited more than once by members of the Committee. The Chief of Police has been most courteous in interviews regarding important matters. The Pictures are somewhat improved, but the vaudeville is still of a very ordinary tone (sic.)Some managers interviewed would like to exclude vaudeville, as it is expensive, but the public demands it.

Objections are expressed resulting from darkened halls where the pictures are shown. There is a menace to morals in this and it should be prohibited.

Posters and postcards are undersupervision but the latter are found, especially in smaller shops.”

The King is Dead; Long Live Militantism

New Zealand and Australia petition the new king for votes for other women in the the Commonwealth.

This is taken from the WSPU Votes for Women Magazine of May 26, 1910. 

As the New Prince of Wales was still a minor, the WSPU was hoping that the Queen would be appointed regent in the case of this new king, George, dying suddenly.

The first meeting of the WSPU after Edward’s death was held at the Scala theatre.  Miss Pankhurst talked of the political situation and a Reverend Start-Up made the following speech, which I will have Edith read or here, or hear someone read out loud, with passion.   As she has just lost her chance at love she will be converted to militanism with this speech.

It is a terrific speech (just the first part printed here) and if you don’t believe it, read it out loud..

We meet under the shadow of a great national loss. None of King Edward’s subjects were more loyal to him or hold him in more affectionate memory than the members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, comprising, as they do, women of all classes and of every shade of political opinion. At this our first public meeting since his death, we turn again to the task to which we have set our hand, animated by the same principle that ever animated our beloved King, the love of country and fidelity to public duty. Because, let there be no mistake about it, this women’s cry for enfranchisement is not the clamour of self-interest, nor the rebellious shout of those who fell their rights are being refused them. These elements enter of necessity into their thoughts; but, in the main, the movement springs from a deep conviction that the interests of the State demand the frank and equal co-operation of men and women, and that the gravest problems in front of us are only to be solved when men and women have entered together upon their common inheritance of civic and national responsibility. Like all great movements this is essentially unselfish; it comes not from a keen sense of individual wrong, but from a wider outlook, a profounder sympathy, a deeper appreciation of the claims of all around us to a fuller and richer and more joyous life.

The characteristics of unselfishness should make us all  hesitate very much before allowing ourselves to be found in opposition to it. The granting of the vote to women is the crow and seal of a long process of emancipation, to be discerned by every student of history. In this process some part of the human race had to lead and since life is an evolution form the lower and physical to the higher and  the spiritual, it is natural that the lead should have been taken by those who, in the primitive stages of the race, exercised the lordship given by simple brute force. Thus it came to pass that the emancipation of men, the recognition of their civic responsibility and of their consequent right to civic power has preceded the emancipation of women. But it would be easy, I think, to show what the process in the case of women , thought slower and more imperceptible, has really been  going on , until today , women all over the world are demanding, as the men have done before them, the recognition of their rights. They have acquired not only a sense of civic and national responsibility, but they have qualified themselves in every way for the fulfilment of that responsibility. They now ask for the vote, an instrument without which that work cannot be accomplished.

 They do not, however, attack any exaggerated value to the vote; the simple fact is that it is the instrument of political power. There is no perfect government under heaven, either democratic or autocratic. The only perfect government would be the perfect behaviour of every individual citizen without control from anybody, and that would be anarchy in the ideal sense. But we have ot reached that point yet, and in the meantime, our government is the resultant of many forces – it is the outcome of the instincts and the self-interest of the mass, a sort of ‘general average of the community’. In the striking of that average, in the expression of those human instincts , in the guarding of those interests – women have hitherto been left out of account. Perhaps they were not ready for it before, but whether that be so or not, they can now no longer be left out of account without serious injustice to themselves and serious injury to the State. The process of emancipation in the case of men would have been vain if in the end they had not won the recognition of their citizenship; aspiration, mental and moral struggle, education, and development would have been useless if they had not culminated in higher responsibilities and more arduous tasks.

 What is true in their case is true in yours, and therefore I say the political enfranchisement of women is the crown and seal of a long process of emancipation that has always been going on, and that can no more be kept back than the stars can be hindered in their course, or the tides in their flow.

When this enfranchisement comes, women will bring to bear upon the problems of the day just those qualities in which women most excel. These problems are communal, not individualistic. The community is something more than a mass of individuals, it is a living entity; the individual is not a separate creation, fashioned apart, the community itself precedes and shapes the individual; none of his characteristics, both good and evil, have any meaning except in the light of his relationship to those around him. This being so, it is of some importance to remember that the qualities of which women excel are just those that are most needed in the solution of the grave and difficult question with which today the world is face; those qualities are patience, enthusiasm and perception.

Dark Secrets

Old Brewery Mission: A card from the Nicholson Collection. 1912

Well, I read the sections of Mariana Valverde’s book Light,Soap and Water, on “Social Purity, Sexual Purity and Immigration” and on the “The City as Moral Problem” and it bothered me all night, because it was even worse than I had figured out from reading the articles of the era in the online archives.

(She mentions two pamphlets (on these two subjects) by an influential Canadian ‘pundit’ of the times which I immediately searched for and found them on archive.org. More reading for me.

Now, Valverde says in her book,published in 1991, that this ‘immigration/racism/social purity’ issue has been covered by Canadian historians; she says she just clearly connects the dots between gender/race/class and Canadian Immigration Policy of the 1910 era.

But, frankly, this social purity/eugenics issue hasn’t filtered down into the consciousnes of Canadians, or into the high school history books, so it all still is effectively censored.

I think, anyway.

Case in point, In 2007, I attended a workshop given by the Quebec Anglo Heritage Network, where experts in the history of Montreal’s Chinese, Black, Italian and Native Communities gave talks about their people’s place within Quebec, and no one mentioned the social purity thing. The woman representing the Chinese Community mentioned the head tax, and that Chinese immigrants (men) who were decontaminted upon their arrival in Canada and the Aboriginal representative said that Native history has effectively been erased from Quebec culture despite earlier friendlier connections between the French and the natives, and the Black Historian told how their men only could work as porters and their women as maids. But that’s it.

No mention of the White Slavery hysteria or the eugenics movement or that dark subject underlying slum social work: suspicion of incest.

So with these two chapters, I have gained even more insight into the Nicholson experience, although it is not an especially pleasant insight. Tighsolas: House of Light, indeed. Were the Nicholsons racist? Most probably, since the Presbyterians Ministers were racist and the Nicholsons dutifully attended sermons, sometimes twice day. And Margaret was a member of the Missionary Society of her church, although she did not like the work or the Missionary Ladies. (They shunned her actually… Maybe because she was vain and loved to look good and wear nice dresses. A love of finery was considered a sin among the more conservative church types.)

The 1908-1913 letters reveal little racism against immigrants: the Nicholsons saved their ire for Englishmen (loathed and despised because they got the top jobs on the railway) and Methodists, (on occasion) and Conservatives, especially relations who voted Conservative, because these relations were likely more well off than they were.

And of course, in 1913, Marion Nicholson married Hugh Blair who had Cree blood and he looked it too. He also had a French Canadian mother. (Norman Nicholson mentions natives a few times in his letters from the bush, and he clearly admires them. And Herb Nicholson says this in a 1915 letter from out west “Sometimes I think we should never have taken the land away from the Indians. ” This is quite heretical as the fact the Indians were here first was generally ignored in the era. Natives were discussed in the same breath as new immigrants.

One interesting and relevant point I learned from Valverde’s book: between 1906 and 1919 in Canada the average salary for a man actually went down. Well, Norman fell on hard times right about 1906 and he never did get back on his feet. He died in 1922, still on the job.

And Valverde mentions how the Methodists tried (usually in vain) to convert RC Italians to their faith. Well, when Edith worked at Ecole Methodiste Westmount in 1912, she was successful in converting at least one Italian boy, because this man, Pascal Diflorio, kept a journal and his descendant has created a blog around it. Diflorio wrote he did try to resist, but that Edith’s arguments were too powerful, but in a good way.