Blog | Lucienne Boyce

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 1

In February 1912 the Bristol Liberal MP Charles E H Hobhouse addressed a meeting of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage in the city’s Colston Hall (now the Bristol …

On Gender, Writing, and Not Being Published

I’ve just read On Gender and Writing, a selection of essays edited by Michelene Wandor published in 1983. It was a fascinating look back at the 1980s, the era of …

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) : An Inspirational Woman

It’s International Women’s Day today and I’ve been thinking about the women who inspired me. On Friday I was at the unveiling of a Blue Plaque to one very inspirational …

No more pushing around of Mrs Pankhurst

When I was in London a few days ago I spent an enjoyable afternoon strolling around the Houses of Parliament and viewing the statues of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of …

You Daughters of Freedom by Clare Wright

In my last blog, I looked at the question of the British press’s “boycott” of the suffragette movement. The piece was prompted by reading Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom: …

The Suffragettes and the Press Boycott

When Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were sent to prison in 1905 after interrupting a Liberal politicians’ meeting in Manchester, one of the victories they claimed was that for the …

Death Makes No Distinction Blog Tour – 25 November to 1 December 2019

Death Makes No Distinction is on a blog tour this week. The novel is the third in the Dan Foster Mystery series, which follows the fortunes and cases of Bow …

History’s Blind Spots: The Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux

Women’s history is, broadly speaking, about putting women back into history by, for example, telling the story of forgotten and marginalised women or reassessing women’s contribution to history. I think …

Goo Goo Eyes: Advertising and the Suffragettes

In The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign, I wrote a piece about how businesses made money from the suffrage campaign (Making Money From the Suffragettes). In …

Spotlight On…Mr and Mrs F W Rogers of Bristol

Frederick William Rogers (1859–1927), who ran a firm of Bristol stone masons, and Blanche Mary Rogers (1866–1951), were married at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol in 1889. They were supporters …

“Madder than ever”: The Tollemache Family of Batheaston

In 1894 Reverend Clement Reginald Tollemache (1835–1895) moved to The Villa, Batheaston with his wife, Frances Josephine, and three daughters, Mary, Grace and Aethel. The family had been living in …

‘A Reformer’s Wife ought to be a heroine’: Women in the London Corresponding Society

In The Butcher’s Block, the second Dan Foster Mystery, Bow Street Runner Dan Foster infiltrates a fictitious, extremist branch of the London Corresponding Society (LCS) in Southwark, London. The LCS …