One Man’s Terrorist is…a Suffragette

My improvised work station.

I have set up a workstation where my arms and wrists and gaze are all properly aligned. Hopefully, I can get to typing Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, my story about Edith Nicholson of Richmond, Quebec, a prim and proper Presbyterian teacher who was all for the militant suffragettes.

The other day I listed to some installments of a BBC Radio Four re-run, called History We’ve Forgotten to Remember.

The series reminds us that history gets rewritten, often by omission, and often on purpose.

I listened to the episodes called “The Suffragettes.” I wondered what part of the Suffrage Movement they’d focus on, so much of it has been rewritten and/or forgotten.

Well, they focused on that fact the suffragettes were militant, even committing ‘acts of terrorism’ over and above the window-breaking that has been remembered in popular culture such as TV shows like Upstairs Downstairs etc.

Well, nothing I don’t go around telling people. The suffragettes were the militant arm of the suffragists.

As I Canadian I learned NOTHING about the suffragettes at school. *I’m pretty sure, anyway. I took two years of British History in High School.

Indeed, I only started learning about them when I started researching the background to the Nicholson Family Letters I found in 2005.

I couldn’t help it. The Nicholsons left behind plenty of Montreal press clippings about the suffragettes. Some I transcribed and put on the Tighsolas website.

One such clipping told the story of British suffragette Barbara Wylie’s September 1912 trip to Canada.  As she detrained at Montreal’s Place Viger reporters asked her about the hurling of the axe at Asquith. (It would have knocked some sense into him had it landed, she replied.) Also about a bombing at a Dublin Theatre.

1912/13 was when the militancy was at its height, over and above the famous theatrics of Pankhurst’s WSPU.

Indeed, the suffragettes became militant because the government over-reacted and sent them to jail for acts that were not criminal, just effective in getting good press, in getting the word out. If they were going to be persecuted for non-criminal acts, such as chaining themselves to buildings, they  might as well do criminal acts. That was the thinking.

Asquith getting ‘pied’ with flour

The BBC Four Story focused on a possible assassination attempt by some suffragettes on Asquith. Not all the scholars interviewed agreed this happened for certain. Somewhere on this blog I have an press image of the suffragettes throwing flour at his car. Today that would be considered an act of terrorism – and not  mere theatrics.

One scholar who disagreed thought that the Pankhursts were far too image conscious to allow this to happen. That’s another thing, apparently, forgotten by history about the suffragettes.

Again, nothing I haven’t figured out myself. The suffragettes were masters of the media image, for their time.

Hence this Miss Wylie a fairly unknown almost rogue spokesperson, dazzled reporters with her wit and good looks. Suffragettes made sure to dress well. Even their magazine was full of dress ads. The WSPU magazine is online and I just had to read a few issues to realize how clever these suffragettes were.

I have put something about Wiley’s visit in Threshold Girl  my story about Flora Nicholson in 1911/1912. I will put something from WSPU magazine in Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. I have her reading the article on Russian Treatment of Women in Prison, the force-feeding.

On her trip, Wylie tells reporters that there are many members of the WSPU in Canada. I know Edith was a militant suffragette supporter because she writes so in a May 1913 letter. I guess I have to go through all era issues to see if her name is listed as a donor.

All to say, there is a great deal to be learned from History, REAL history. The protests happening right now in Quebec could be analyzed from that angle, but won’t be.

Edith’s clipping of the Wylie Visit from September Montreal Daily Star. “Will Canadian suffragists adopt militant tactics?” the headline asks.

ell, I also listened to another edition of the History program on BBC. This one about the Great Depression. Their conclusion, the New Deal did not end the Depression, WWII did. Hmm. I read so much about the mass youth unemployment in the Western World. It scares me because they had the same problem in the 1910′s… and that’s probably why there was a War. To kill off these excess souls rendered unemployable by the change over from an agrarian to industrial economy. (At least some historians say.)

But they can’t do that now, right? They learned their lesson. WWI killed off many unemployable men and then also the best and the brightest.

My BBC Program claims that  history has forgotten the militancy of the British Suffragettes because it was soon followed by the carnage of WWI that made the violent actions of the militants seem like harmless child’s play.

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.

Me in the Press

In was on the Front Page of the Sherbrooke Record this Easter Weekend. The story: Century Old Townships Letters Capture Titanic Era Life. I was promoting Threshold Girl my ebook, the first in a digital trilogy as the Record Reporter Corrinna Pole described it.

Last November I got some press in Cornwall promoting the second book in the trilogy: Diary of a Confirmed Spinster. I had expected to have that book finished by now, indeed, I gave myself until the Anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, but I got sidetracked with injuries and a trip to California. Lucky for the trip, I got my hair done so I had a decent pic for the Record Story. I was on the front page, yikes!

The Cornwall Story is still online, without the pic. Here’s the pic. Edith and her beau Charlie, who died in a 1910 hotel fire in Cornwall.

Anyway, I am getting to the story. The Cornwall Standard Freeholder reporter will likely report on it when it is posted, just like Threshold Girl, on my www.tighsolas.ca website for free.

Anyway, another reason I haven’t finished the Spinster story is because I was missing a piece. I finally found it! An article from the April19, 1912 Votes for Women Magazine about Teachers and Suffrage.

I will have Edith get this issue and read this article and be incensed at a certain part, where an older teacher mocks younger ones for being so radical. (Edith was a radical suffragette, but never did anything about it. )

Here’s the article.

From Votes for Women Magazine, April 19, 1912: The Question of Women’s Suffrage was again discussed by the national congress of teachers at Easter. As was the case last year there was a very heated debate.

 

The Yorkshire Observer refers to Women’s Suffrage as “the great bone of contention at Aherysteryth in 1910 and as the topic hotly discussed by local associations throughout the year and, again, as the dividing whirlwind at Hull. ‘No man,’ it said, “could hold the storm. It broke with the violence of a northerly gale. Again and again the meeting was stopped by rival cries and calls. The assembly heaved with crosswinds and currents of feelings churned by an angry sea.”

 

Eventually, the previous question was carried and the discussion was once more shelved as far as the Congress is concerned.

 

But we shall be greatly disappointed if the women teachers, who are in an enormous majority as members of the NUT allow the question to remain where it is.

 

When the Congress arrived at the motion of Parliamentary Franchise for Women, it was met with deafening applause.

 

Miss Isabel Cleghorn, M.A. ex President of the Congress, moved the following resolution.

That this conference expresses its sympathies with those members of the National Union of Teachers,

who desired to possess and exercise the Parliamentary Franchise, but because they are women, and for that reason alone, are by law debarred from it.

 

She remarked that there were three reasons given last year why the suspension of standing orders should not be carried so that this resolution could be discussed: 1)That the motion had been sprung upon the executive; 2) that the associations had not had the opportunity of discussing it; 3)that this was a political question and should not be discussed by the National Union of Teachers.

 

This year they could not advance these reasons.

 

The association had discussed the motion and the result was that the motion was now sent forward by 17, 062 votes for its discussion and 6,728 against it. (Applause)

 

In addition, the associations had sent it up as the number 3 resolution to be discussed among the members.

 

 

Parliament from the London Eye, 2006. Taken by Me.

 

With reference to the argument that it was a political question, she said that the conference would agree, that  the parliamentary influence of their union was one of their greatest assets (Applause) that they were continually in their meetings and in their conferences discussing politics. They had not only discussed the question of the franchise but they had expended union money to extend the franchise to people who resided in their schoolhouses. (Applause.) And in the past they had discussed education bills. It seems to her that if their political power (and they had political power)depended on the vote, then if they were going to add more of their members as voters it must increase their political power. (Applause). Women were earning their own living. They were teaching in the schools of the country. They had to teach their children citizenship, loyalty patriotism and all that was necessary to make them good citizens of the future and  yet they had not the power of the vote which made for the good of the  country in the making of its laws. (Applause)

 

Mr. Dakers VP seconded the resolution and amidst cries of dissent reserved his remarks.

Mr. A E Cook NW London was loudly cheered on rising to move the previous question. He belonged to a large association in connection with which was an active ladies committee and they unanimously decided that it was not part or parcel of the union to interfere in this question. One of the objects of the association was to unite the member and this would bring disunion. Another object was to extend influence and dignity of the profession. The only cause of their object which touched the question was that which referred to securing of effective representation in Parliament. But this was not an education question: it was absolutely a political question.

 

Mrs. Bergwin seconded. She said all the sophistry, all the arguments of the suffrage association dissolved when she thought of the  actualities of life as she knew them. (Loud and prolonged applause and one call of Traitor). She had been asked if her position was not illogical. She reminded council that she had to support illogical things before when common sense opposed them.

It was no argument at all to say that because men had the vote women should too. What women would have the vote? ( Cries of ‘That’s the question’ and an interruption from some young women delegates who Mrs. Bergwin addressed as ‘dear girls’, adescription which created great laughter.

 

They might soon be happy wives but they would commence their married life with a grievance. “See what I have had to give up? I am not fit to have a vote now.”

I have a personal grievance, said Bergwin. We have had a government who would have carried social reform, remedied evils burning to be remedied.(Applause). But that government has been hampered and hindered…(Cries of dissent drowned out final words of sentence..

And this in atime that men’s passions may have been easily aroused. It was the job of her sex to shout PEACE. Peace with honour. Because her sex, womanhood and motherhood convinced her that this was not the time, nor was it opportune to give votes for women.

Mrs. Allan Croft said he was responsible for the appearance on the motion on the agenda. And he was proud.

Mr. Cook had missed out the very object of the NUT which was the justification for the motion on the agenda.  Object number 5 is to secure effective representation of education in Parliament. What better way could we devise to secure effective representation of education in Parliament than by greatly largely augmenting the ranks of voting members of the NUT.(Here. Here.)

 

The women members of the NUT provided the greater part of the parl. Fund. (Here here.) Over 4,000 pounds went every year into the fund directly from the pockets of the women members of the union.

 

Mr. Dakers pointed out that there was one department of social life in which women had a special interest. The department of the home. Therefore he claimed women had a special interest in the laws and regulations which determine the education of their children. Children were the shuttlecocks .of the party politicians. With their special interests in the welfare of the children who were a part of the home women would make a much better case of it.

 

 

Suffrage and Quebec and Temperance

A temperance pledge signed by Herbert Nicholson, around 1910, when he was in his early twenties, to please his parents no doubt. He moved out West and was always in debt, so they feared he had fallen into bad habits. Since he roomed with a bartender and, yikes, a young woman stenographer, he probably did!

“I hereby promise with the help of God to abstain from the consumption of intoxicating liquor including wine beer and cider.”

Anyway, here’s another quote from Anna Howard Shaw, US Suffragette that reveals the close ties between women suffrage and the temperance moviement.  Herbert’s sister Edith clipped a picture of this famous woman from a newspaper for posterity, but Edith wanted women to get the vote for more personal reasons: they wanted more from life. She wanted more opportunities for women and security outside of marriage.

“We do not fear that little band of professional anti-women going around the country advocating home, heaven and mother. The only purpose they serve is that by holding out their skirts they act as a screen for the liquor traffic, the gamblers, the vicious, and those interested in dance halls, and places where young girls are ruined.”

As I write my play, Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, and as I read the report of the 1925 Coderre Inquiry into Police Corruption and, more to the point, incompetence, where my grandfather, Jules Crepeau, Director of City Services,  was implicated, personally. The charge of corruption centered around the cops turning a blind eye to dance halls and taverns  breaking by-laws by staying open after 1 am, thereby allowing prostitution and gambling to flourish. (Because after midnight is when all the bad stuff begins.)

Quebec didn’t give women the vote until the 40′s and that seems backwards. We have always been told it is the Catholic Church’s fault. But, frankly, maybe Quebec was wary of this link between the Presybterian Social Reformers and Women’s Suffrage. Maybe the didn’t want their fun curtailed. (Winston Churchill hated the suffragettes for that reason: he thought it appalling that anyone might keep him from drinking.)

(My grandfather’s relation, Therese Forget Casgrain, fought for suffrage for women in Quebec. Indeed, my grandfather always told my mother women could do anything they wanted.)

Anyway, I just happen to have a blow- by -blow account of a Town Hall in 1921, during the election campaign, in Richmond Quebec, where the Nicholson’s neighbor asked an indiscreet question about that very question: Why doesn’t the Province of Quebec give women the vote.

It embarrasses the politicians. And the crowd.

Wednesday, November 23, 1921 Dear Edith and Flora and Marion, I thought I must jot a few things down while they are fresh in my mind. We had the Tobin meeting last night and Tobin was first speaker. . He made a very fine speech and said he wanted to thank his friend Mr. Crombie who opposed him in 1917 that he did it convincingly and after the war returned to his party. “The Applause hearty and long.” Then the Honorable Mitchell. His speech was grand. He was speaking about the conservatives claiming they gave women the franchise. He said how Dougherty in the House argued that women were not persons. Said he had always been in favour of it. Just then Mrs. Montgomery who was in the center of the hall said the Quebec government thought they were not persons. Mitchell stopped and asked her what she meant. As she repeated he said, I will explain that Madam. Mr Ginn and myself were in favour of it but we did not want a minority to force anything in a majority that did not want it. Said Roman Catholic church did not want it. We were all disgusted at hearing her voice; I’m sure he did not like it. It was the only interruption at the meetings. I asked Mrs. Fraser to go. We were on the elevated. Father went with Mr. Ginn. I do hope the Liberals will win out. Mrs. Farquharson takes no interest, but I will make sure she gets to the polls and votes for Tobin. Take care of the little ones. I am anxious to see them but must stay here until after the election. I may be so sorry I will need a change. Mother

Pageants and Webpages.

 

My wix website at www.wix.com/dottynixon/frontpage

leading to Threshold Girl at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

and to my Flo in the City blog at

http://flointhecity-aworkinprogress.blogspot.com/

and I hope to put a page on Red Room the author’s site.

 

All very complicated.

As I write The 1912 Diary of Edith Nicholson,

a first bit posted at www.tighsolas.ca/page11.pdf.pdf

I’m not in a very focused or creative mood. So, I just plug away. I described the 1908 Tercentenary today, in Edith’s Diary.

 

A huge pageant, a military show of force, on the Plains of Abrahama, totally forgotten for some reason, probably WWI, the event that likely was anticipated what with the Prince of Wales coming in on the battleship Indomitable…

 

 

 

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.

Brigette, the Modern Canadian Suffragette!

Suffragettes throw flour at Brit P.M. Asquith’s car.

You know, Winston Churchill was voted the greatest Briton of the century for his aggressive stand against Hitler in WWII.

But people may not remember that he used the same trademark angry confrontational rhetoric against many others, including that evil-doer Gandhi and the nefarious group of social misfits the Suffragist/ettes.

I thought of the Suffragettes when reading a CBC article about page Brigette dePape’s protest at the Throne Speech Ceremonies.

With some calling dePape’s act of defiance “a black eye against the page program” and almost everyone else (in Parliament) saying it was ‘impolite’ at the very least, I have to think there is something of the suffragette about Brigette.

And we modern enlightened types admire the suffragists/ettes, today, right? Would even Stephen Harper dare declare otherwise?

We don’t have Winnie the Pugnacious to entertain us with scathing but witty putdowns of page dePape. Politicians today are comparatively inarticulate and controlled by spin doctors and adept only with soundbytes.

But according to the CBC article, we have people like Guy Giorno, Harper’s election campaign boss to send shivers down our spine.

According to Giorno, this theatrical act of dissent by an intelligent, thoughtful young woman, is a serious security issue. “This time it was cardboard, but it could have been anything.” the CBC says he wrote on TWITTER.

Why am I scared? Because it’s just so easy to play the security card in an effort to quash criticism of the government. Today it’s a young female page with a colourful STOP Harper sign, tomorrow, maybe, it’s this blog, or others like it.

Indeed, equating WRITING (whether on a placard, or in a blog, or in a book) with ARMS is the most dangerous thing you can do in a free democratic society. (And Giorno was cagey enough in his Twitter twit (whatever it is) to avoid those exact terms.) Still, this statement is more outrageous than anything this page did. Considering the source.

That’s my opinion, anyway, and I’ll express it while I still can.

So, You GO Girl, Brigette. Your actions weren’t politically correct. But neither were the suffragettes’.

Worse than the Men?

1905 on lsd.

In a New York Time’s Editorial today, Bigger is Easier, David Brooks says it’s time for US lawmakers (in these polarized times) to marry ideas on the left and right in an intellectually coherent way. He describes how this might be done in the area of social welfare.

Funny, I immediately thought of the Lord’s Day Act of 1908, in Canada.

The conservative elements in the Presbyterian Church joined with the labour union leaders to pass this law that made it illegal to conduct business between 12 pm Saturday and 12 pm Sunday.

Well, Ministers of the Church were allowed to work. As were others in ‘mercy’ callings.

Jews, whose Sabbath was a day earlier,were not allowed to break the new law, even to sell bread.

And the motion picture shows, which were supposed to close, mostly stayed open, illegally, probably paying fines to the police. If you give tired, overworked young people the day off, they will need something to do.

It’s the law of unintended consequences.

Of course, suffrage got passed through an unholy alliance between ‘new women’ and temperance types, although the division isn’t as cut and dry as I once imagined.

I still haven’t figured out if the suffragettes believed that women were so superior to men that if they got the vote, the world would suddenly become a better place, because ‘all men thought about was making money,” or if they just said it in their speeches to rouse the righteous, who did not believe, in any way, that women should be able to work in most any profession, alongside the men, should they so chose.

They did believe, however, in making the world a better, purer, whiter place.

My God, things have changed so little. There are few women in high places in politics, and the ones that are there are just as bad as the men. Or in some illustrious cases, much worse.

1913 Orgy of Undressing

Well, I thought that the 1920′s shake your booty fashions were an outcome of WWI: With few marriageable men left, women had to flaunt what they had in a frenzied competition for sperm donors.

I also thought that the new lighter fashions were a result of women donating their corsets to the war effort or something.

I knew that Coco Chanel started her fashion house before the war, moving to the South of France in 1914.

Anyway, I found a 1913 article in the Gazette archives (special to the Montreal Gazette and the New York Times (We were something in those days, we were a contender

This article is so entertaining I wish I could just transcribe it here. It has a tongue in cheek tone, too.

As it were, the militant suffragists were being blamed for yet something else subversive, the ‘undress craze’ where women were wearing ‘almost nothing’ under their gowns, and where the dresses were so sheer you could see the leg muscles through the material (just like with the Nike taking off her sandals in the Acropolis Museum) and slit so that you could see the leg HALF WAY to the KNEE!!!!

This craze, more pronounced in North American than England was scaring people, who wondered how far it could go. (Let me tell you…)

An expert explains the craze: women in their quest for equality with men had so turned men off (my words, of course) that women had to undress to get men’s attention back. Another expert has another take, that only woman who oppose the movement dress provocatively, so as to differentiate themselves from the militants who like to dress like men.

Of course, another explanation might be that women were working and to negotiate the CRAZY traffic is the city (take a look at era films on YouTube) a woman had to be freed up a bit. And then they liked the feeling. I have an article posted on my website, showing what women in 1910 had to wear under their dresses. Many layers. In Flo in the City, my book in progress, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I have Flora dressing in the morning. (Chanel explained the success of her looser clothing in this way.)

And more unmarried middle class women were working and buying clothes or material for clothes and they could now influence the fashion of the day and not leave that to the matrons. And young women like to attract men…militant suffragist or not. Just take Edith Nicholson of Tighsolas as a real life example of someone who wanted it all, her emancipation, nice clothes (and a job to buy the clothes) and a man to love.

But hindsight is 20 20, as they say.

In this article they mention ‘the pneumonia blouse’ which must have been someone’s nickname for a low cut blouse. I guess health was a reason given for covering women up.

Evangelical Progressives? Not a contradiction in terms in 1910

I’ve been having fun reading the different articles on Women’s Suffrage in the Montreal Gazette published between 1908-1914, (not all as the archives contain only a sample of the newspapers published). Still, what interesting stuff and great fodder for an essay on “Spin: then and now.” La plus ca change, indeed! I’ve read quite a bit about the “Mrs. Snowden” who Edith hears talk in 1913 and of whom she says, “But she is not militant, and for this I am very sad.” Oddly, this Mrs. Ethel Snowden, wife of an MP Philip,is sometimes call a ‘suffragette’ which has come to mean militant suffragist. Anyway, she was a very lovely looking woman, smart (as ‘clever’ as her socialist MP husband who even attends meetings in his place when he is ill, according to a blurb from Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, 1910) and a terrific speaker. All which goes to prove Edith Nicholson, my husband’s prim and proper great aunt, was VERY in the thick of things, with respect to her social activism as a young woman.

The articles are often wire-stories and such, and many letters to the Editor quote other newspaper reports and people, so these articles illustrate a broad view of the debate in the newspapers. Quite a remarkably silly debate, or so it sounds in retrospect, although the tone taken (and illogic spewed) is all too familiar to me as a modern media watcher.

(Yesterday, I happened to catch an interview on CNN of a policeman in Arizona, who was all for a serious crackdown on illegal immigrants. He mentioned that ‘the crime rate has risen in his area’ but didn’t actually say illegal immigrants were responsible and the interviewer didn’t ask him to be more specific. He also said something like “Who knows what these people are doing here?” and framed the crackdown as a security issue. So it’s not about poor people coming to America because they want a piece of the American pie, because they admire the US way of life, it’s, well, the OTHER thing. But nothing was stated outright, indeed, no mention of the word Mexican at all. Just THEM, THOSE PEOPLE. All very scary, I think. And terrible journalism.)

No one has come a long way, baby in 100 years. My first observation: if an article’s spin was pro-suffrage, the article almost always mentioned how ‘good looking’ the speaker, the marchers, were.

Remember, editorially speaking, the Gazette was against women’s suffrage. The Montreal Witness, an evangelical anti-temperance newspaper the Nicholson’s read, was all for it.

Here’s an link to a 1911 letter about a mock parliament at McGill, where women’s suffrage was voted down 4 to 1. The Nicholson letters, refer to this mock parliament. Too bad about what happened at McGill. (I’m pretty sure. I’ve got to check the dates.)

Odd, the other mock Bill introduced was to have further restrictions on Oriental Immigration, which passed as well. Indeed, only ‘a few socialists’ voted against it.

Hmm.

In 1909, Marion attends a talk at Knox Church where Peter Hing, the first Chinese graduate of McGill, is being feted by his fellows and others. President Peterson of McGill speaks and says restrictions should be lessened to allow more brainy Chinese to attend McGill.

The Chinese have never felt at home in Montreal. No wonder.