WSPU Archives | Lucienne Boyce

Don’t call them Lympne-pets: the suffragettes at Lympne Castle

On Sunday 5 September 1909, suffragettes Vera Wentworth, Elsie Howey and Jessie Kenney assaulted prime minister Herbert Henry Asquith when he was staying at Lympne Castle in Kent. Lympne (pronounced …

Lyndsey Jenkins, Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class and Suffrage, 1890-1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)

This is a fascinating account of the lives of the Kenney sisters and their involvement in the militant suffrage movement. Annie and Jessie Kenney are probably the best known sisters, …

Jack and Eve: Two Women in Love and at War, Wendy Moore, Atlantic Books, 2024

Jack and Eve is an enthralling biography of Vera (Jack) Holme and Evelina Haverfield, the actress and the Hon who met and fell in love during the militant suffrage campaign. …

Spotlight on…Flora Drummond

Flora McKinnon Drummond (1878–1949) (née Gibson) was born in Manchester and brought up on the Isle of Arran. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, she qualified as a …

Forcible feeding the kind way: Dr Helby of Winson Green Prison

Many suffragettes went on hunger strike in prison and were forcibly fed by prison doctors. A number of the hunger strikers published descriptions of their experiences in horrifying detail: the …

Mrs Fischer’s War, Henrietta Leslie (Jarrolds, 1930) (Gladys Schütze)

Mrs Fischer’s War tells the story of a married couple, Carl and Janet Fischer, during the First World War. Carl was born in Germany but to escape a stern father …

Being a Secretary

One of the subjects I’m interested in is the history of women office workers, and how it came about that women to this day dominate secretarial and clerical jobs. Many …

‘Those wanton imbecile women’: the Gatty Laboratory and the Militant Suffragettes

This article is based on research and conversations with Edward Warington Shann’s daughter, Hebe Welbourn. Quotations by Edward Warington Shann are from his letter to his mother dated 22 June …

No Surrender: Constance Maud and the Suffragette Novel

Constance Maud’s 1911 suffragette novel No Surrender tells the story of a group of suffragettes, particularly Jenny Clegg, Lancashire mill girl, and aristocratic Mary O’Neill. It’s unashamedly a propaganda novel, …

Suffrage Autographs: Cicely Hamilton

I’ve often wondered why owning the signature of someone you admire or are interested in is so appealing. I supposed it is because a signature feels like a part of …

Spotlight On…George Abraham Gibbs (1873–1931)

Tyntesfield, near Wraxall, North Somerset This is the view from our picnic spot when we had a day out at Tyntesfield just outside Bristol recently. Tyntesfield is now …

“Cheap and easy railway traffic”: Suffragettes and the Railways, Part 3: Arson on the Railways

In Part 1 of these three articles exploring the way in which the rail network influenced the suffrage campaign, I looked at how trains were instrumental in facilitating suffrage campaigns, …