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.

THOSE AWFUL SNOWBANKS! 34th installment

Scene from Those Awful Hats, a short played before the start of the main features to remind women to remove their big hats. At this Nickelodeon, people are seated at chairs, and the piano is on the right. The movie is up at left. (I imagine ‘the movie’ was not a motion picture, but real people for the purposes of this film.

The 1908-1913 era was the Nickelodeon Era in Toronto and Montreal and other big cities in North America. With the young middle class people like Marion and Edith moving to the city, there had to be suitable entertainment. Supply and demand.

According to the Cinemateque Quebecoise website, there were 180 entertainment venues in Montreal’s city center in the 1910 era, including two fancy theatres and many lesser establishments that played movies, (whoops, motion pictures. The term ‘movies’ seems to have been used by the Nicholsons only since 1917) or housed vaudeville acts, or cabaret acts, or musical acts and maybe all of the above within any given stretch of time. The first silent showing in Montreal was in 1897.

Movie halls were just plain rooms with small touches added to make them seem special, such as painted proscenium arches around the screen. Some venues were very steep, unlike the one in the Those Awful Hats. They would often have gawdy exteriors though, to attract viewers.

Flora was in the sitting room finishing her hat, trying out arrangements of ribbon and feathers, pieces of which were all lined out on the top of the piano. She had finished her practicing early.

Margaret came in to ask why she had stopped playing, for Margaret enjoyed Flora’s music each evening as she worked in the kitchen. Today she was scrubbing out the sink with salts of lemon.

“Why have you stopped? Flora,” she asked. “You were sounding so nice.”

“Oh, because I know the piece now and I thought I’d work on my hat, but I can’t decide where to put the orange wings, on the one side or at the top.

Margaret eyed the hat suspiciously. “Bella brought a Ladies’ Home Journal. She seems to think you will find some inspiration there,” she slyly said.

“No, I have been looking at Delineator Magazines for ideas. The hats are very big this year, in the city. Marion says. Did you read the letter she sent me? About her trip to see Man in the Box, at the Lyric Theatre? She said they started the evening’s entertainment with a short film asking women to remove their huge hats so other people could see the screen.

It was hilarious, she said. A big hook came down from the ceiling and grabbed the hat off the woman in the seats, or grabbed the woman, I’m not sure.”

Marion would find that amusing, Margaret replied. No, she only wrote me about coming home next weekend. And about the giant snowbanks lining every side street and how she fell in a snowbank running for the streetcar on her way to work and how she caught her heel in her hem, how she needs me to repair her skirt as it was a nasty tear.

Who did she go to the nickel with? asked Margaret, forgetting about Flora’s hat-making. You know, in some places in the States, these places are open on Sunday! It’s appalling.

Flora smiled up at her Mother, who was wiping a stain off the woodwork around the door with the cloth she kept thrown over her shoulder.

With the Clevelands. Dr and Mrs.

Ah, well that’s fine then. It must have been a proper establishment. It’s wonderful to have such good and respectable friends in Montreal. I wish they lived closer to her school, then Marion might be persuaded to board with them for the rest of the year.

The Dr. drives Marion crazy with his demands over his family, you know that. And Marion is far too independent.

Yes, I know, said Margaret, with a hardening expression.

But there are so few suitable places for young women to live in the city, even for workers with good salaries, and Marion was, finally, making a very good salary. She sent money home every month.

So it was an exchange, with one worry gone, another popped up elsewhere, like dandelions in the garden, in summer.

She decided to sit down and write Marion a letter and send it tomorrow along with her daily letter to Norman. She walked to the secretary, positioned her pad, picked up the pen and poked it into the inkwell.

“My, you are very gay, going to see Man in the Box, at the Nichol,” she wrote for her first line. Misspelling Nickel. Not thinking that the word reflected the 5 cents it cost to see a motion picture. But Marion would get the message anyway, that it would be nice if she kept her mother better informed about her social life in the city. Especially since Edith was keeping uncharacteristically silent, lately.