Use your vote! She couldn’t!'

4.  Miss Ann Briggs of 51 Wade Lane, Leeds was born in1815 in Ferry Lincolnshire. She was a baby linen maker and had a Baby Linen Repository.  She was one of the very few women who signed the Suffrage Petition who lived quite alone, at least in the censuses from 1851 to 1891.  When she retired she lived in retirement in High Street ,Temple Newsam

This frock for a new-born child is entirely stitched by hand- you need a magnifying glass to see the tiny stitches. Ann Briggs would have given employment to local women as seamstresses, embroiderers and knitters.  One of her neighbours' daughters, aged 14, was a cap maker.

In the very months that the Petition was collected, in April 1866, two sisters who also ran a Baby Linen shop  in Leeds were declared bankrupt-  In the street where Ann lived, only two doors away at no 55 Wade lane , Hannah Bolton also ran a baby linen business, and also asked for the vote by signing the petition.

1861 census Registration District: Leeds Sub-registration District: West Leeds ED, institution, or vessel: 49 Household Schedule Number:

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