Use Your Vote 2 Emily Davies

Use your vote!!!! 

Emily Davies (1830-1921)

Emily Davies fought tirelessly for the education of women and girls.  She is particularly remembered for founding Girton College, opening Cambridge Local examinations to girls and improving the aspirations and education of schoolmistresses.  In 1866 she organised and delivered the petition for women’s suffrage with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.   She was elected to the School Board for Greenwich in 1870.  She first asked for the vote when she was 36 and did not get it until she was 88. This collaged felt shows her when she first asked for votes for women.

 Thank you Emily.

Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography  B. Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College (1927) · The cause: a short history of the women’s movement in Great Britain (1928) · A. Rosen, ‘Emily Davies and the women's movement’, Journal of British Studies, 19/1 (1979–80), 101–21 · · M. Bradbrook, ‘That infidel place’: a short history of Girton College, 1869–1969 (1969) · P. Hollis, Ladies elect: women in English local government, 1865–1914 (1987) · D. Bennett, Emily Davies and the liberation of women, 1830–1921 (1990) ·

Use your vote! She couldn’t ……  

1.     Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) 

With Emily Davies she organised and delivered the 1866 petition for votes for women to Parliament.(Here she is seen surrounded by the names of some of the 1,499 women who also signed.   

Educated at Miss Browning’s School in Blackheath, Elizabeth Garrett later trained as a doctor and encouraged others to do the same. She founded a teaching hospital for women and practicing herself.  She was elected to the London School Board in 1870 and was first woman Mayor of Aldeburgh 1908-10.  She died the year before some women could vote in parliamentary elections. Her sister Millicent Garrett Fawcett was too young to sign the petition, but went on to lead the constitutional campaign for votes for women.  

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography   J. Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1965) · L. Garrett Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1939) · E. M. Bell, Storming the citadel: the rise of the woman doctor (1953) · M· M. G. Fawcett, What I remember (1924) Elizabeth Crawford  · Enterprising Women: The Garretts and Their Circle (2002)

Augusta Johnstone Actress and Writer

Johnston[e] Augusta 59 Herbert Street North Shoreditch

Actress, music and Comedy teacher and writer, 
Someone I would have liked to have met!

Mary Ann Augusta Johnstone was born in Marylebone in 1818. Her parents had married at St Paul Covent Garden in 1809.  Her father Thomas Oswald Johnstone was in trade at the time of her baptism.   In November 1824 when he was made bankrupt he was in business as a dealer in music and musical instrument dealer at Great Queen Street Lincolns Inn Fields . In her later article on Debt Augusta clearly speaks from experience, and who knows what the parents and their 5 year old daughter went through in the following years.   . It appears that her father  died by 1851.   In the 1851 census Augusta was a teacher of Music and Comedy, living with her widowed mother who was totally  dependent on her for support.  

In 1857 she published A Woman’s Preachings for woman’s practice, essays addressed to women on a range of topics, which were apparently first published in a weekly magazine from 1854. http://dbooks.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/books/PDFs/600077362.pdf  The first essay, addressed to men,  is graphic in its descriptions of the violence which women can suffer from their husbands in marriage. On page 80, in the chapter on Art and Artistes she describes the drudgery a middle ranking actress as well as discussing the fate of young ballet dancers who are at risk of becoming prostitutes .  On page 131, in the article on Debt she  advises single women on the dangers of getting into debt. The  article on Suspicion is particularly interesting on the double standards which might exist in the Victorian marriage.  She herself did not marry, but one wonders if it was  her parents'or friends' relationship which informed her strong opinions.   She suggests that it is foolish to marry a rake expecting that he will be reformed by marriage.  On Page 150 she says .’it is a terrible thing to find you share his affections(?)[sic] with your own house maid …[or that] a discarded mistress [comes to your home asking for help]   In 1859 she published A few out of thousands their sayings and doings and in 1864 A message from Whitechapel which I have not seen, but which are in the British Library.

 ]In the next census, in 1861 at 59, Herbert Street, Shoreditch, she describes herself as a theatrical performer and, as well as her mother, the household includes a boarder, widow Louisa Belyer, a German writer of light literature, and a 17 year old maid.  They are one of five households at this address.  She appears at her petition address in the 1866 street directory as a Professor of Music.    By 1871, her mother having died,  she is lodging with a family at 41 Herbert Street, and is still a teacher of music, again sharing her lodgings with language teacher Louise Belger.  In that census Augusta says she was born in 1827! 

1861 census Civil Parish: Shoreditch St Leonard Ecclesiastical parish Holy Trinity County/Island: Middlesex Country: England Registration district: Shoreditch Sub-registration district: Hoxton New Town ED, institution, or vessel: 7 Household schedule number: 61 Piece: 236 Folio: 145 Page Number: 9

Boughey, Mrs Josephus, Seedley Road, Pendleton, Manchester. A heavily pregnant young wife from Manchester. 

Mary Fernie McMichael was born in Manchester in about 1843, In 1861 she was living with her widowed mother at 55 Upper Brook Street, Chorlton on Medlock.  ( In 1866 two neighbours from Upper Brook Street signed the petition, Sarah Steinthal an Unitarian Minister’s wife and Mrs Elizabeth Hope Grundy, whose husband was a professor of Music.)  . Mrs McMIchael had two middle aged boarders (a calico printer and a Drysalter) and a servant . She remarried the next year and Mary married Josephus Boughey in Cheshire in 1863.   Her daughter Mary Fernie Boughey was born on 7^th July 1866 , just a few weeks after Mary had signed the Womens’ Suffrage Petition.  In the 1871 census her husband was a  Bolter Down in a forge (A bolter (belter) down was the first man to receive the hot billet from the furnace he would then shove it into a pair of steel rolls with his hand tongs  .When it went through the rolls it was made smaller in diameter by stretching, i.e. a hot 3" bar going into a cold 2/12" square hole stretched it and reduced the diameter. When it went through the rolls a man at the back(cog backer) would catch it with his tongs and shove it through a smaller hole in the rolls. Each time the billet would get smaller in diameter and longer in length until the required size was reached then the long bar would then be passed to the next set of rolls until the require size was reached.)

 On 24 Sept 1872 the business partnership of Josephus Boughey in Boughey Burgess and Co was dissolved.  In 1879 Josephus Boughey appears in Slaters Directory of Manchester and Salford on page 42 as a householder at Victoria Terrace 201 West High Street, Cross Lane Pendleton. In 1881 the couple had moved back to Cheshire and he was an Agent for Gas Apparatus.  When Mary died in Altricham in 1917 she left £135..9s

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/23901/pages/4469/page.pdf

1861 census Mary McMichael Registration District: Chorlton Sub-registration District: Chorlton upon Medlock ED, institution, or vessel: 18 Household Schedule Number: 30 Piece: 2880 Folio: 6 Page Number: 6

 

1871 census Registration District: Warrington Sub-registration District: Warrington ED, institution, or vessel: 28 Household Schedule Number: 127 Piece: 3907 Folio: 107 Page Number:28

Another Manchester radical, Mrs Hannah Boswell was born Hannah Blakeley in about 1816 at Prestwich, Lancashire.  Her father was a Book Keeper.  She married in 1849.  Her husband was George Boswell an Omnibus proprietor with 2 live in omnibus coachmen.  In 1861 their address was Omnibus Office Clarence Terrace, Rusholme.  George Boswell died in 1863 leaving £800.  In 1866 she was probably running the coach business as her children were still quite young  On the Rushholme and Victoria Park Archive  http://rusholmearchive.org/a-tour-of-wilmslow-road  there is a photograph (taken by Helmut Petschler 1860-70) of a horse-drawn omnibus of the City Omnibus company that travelled through Rusholme on its way to Didsbury.  The omnibus seen in front of the Didsbury Hotel is presumably awaiting passengers for the return trip.  In the 1871 census she describes herself as a Coach Proprietress and in 1881 she still owns the business with her son George as manager, as she does in 1891.  When she died in 1900 Hannah left £1,450..6s..3d

1861 census Registration District: Chorlton Sub-registration District: Ardwick ED, institution, or vessel: 35 Household Schedule Number: 23 Piece: 2874 Folio: 92 Page Number: 5

A Hard Life

Sarah Ann Bebbington signed the petition from 31 White Cross Bank, Salford.  When she signed she was 35 years of age. At the time she was a widowed cotton spinner in a cotton mill.   

Sarah Ann Brogden was apparently born in Salford in about 1831.  Her much younger 'brother' William Henry Brogden is living with her in 1861.  this 'brother ' was born in 1847, born to John and Hannah Brogden, a young couple. 

Sarah Ann apparently  married John Bebbington a tailor whose father was a farm labourer in Cheshire..   They had son Samuel John in spring 1856 and her husband died in April 1856.   Samuel appears to have been brought up in Spurstow Cheshire by John’s parents Samuel and Kitty Bebbington.  He works as an agricultural labourer like his grandfather and lives with them for more than 20 years.  In 1861 Sarah Ann working as a cotton winder and is living with younger brother William Henry Brogden born 1847.. Alone in 1871 she is again a cotton winder in cotton mill. 

 

She married again in 1875.  Her husband was William Gill.   He was a railway guard with a young son John.  She works as a dressmaker.  In 1891 she is again a widow.  Her son Samuel John Bebbington and her nieces,(William Henry Brogden’s daughters) Sarah Ann and Hannah Moreton (with her new husband Charlie) living with her. She died in April 1792 and her son Samuel, farm labourer, was executor of her will- she left just £14.10.00.

 

I have not been able to trace her parents, or her marriage date.  Her life seems to have been one where she was responsible for dependents, needing to work, and separated from her son for many years.  She was one of 63 women who signed the petition in Salford, including a Chief Constable's wife , but also several widows, shopkeepers etc.

Mary Ann Barton, pioneering Kindergarten teacher, who signed the petition from her home and school premises at 11 Lime Grove, Chorlton on Medlock, Manchester, was born in Manchester in 1831.  Her mother died before she was twenty and in the 1851 census she is living with her father and two siblings.  Her father had a very chequered business career, which meant that by 1861 she was the breadwinner with a Kindergarten in the family home.  John Wrigley Barton was at times a cotton spinner and cotton waste dealer.  With his brother Horatio he went in and out of various partnerships.  One was dissolved in 1830, another in 1837.  In March 1840 he was declared bankrupt, and in 1852 having been allowed to trade again, was declared insolvent (Insolvent no 74,8720)  Only months before Marianne signed the petition, her father had died, leaving an inheritance of under £20.

Around 1856, however, Marianne had been trained in the Froebel system of education by Madame Ronge, at the Home and Colonial Training School in Grays Inn Road..  Presumably her father must have paid for this course, which shows more evidence of foresight than his own career reveals.  She set up one of the earliest Kindergartens in Manchester in 1857 at 15 Cecil Street Greenhays.   Mr and Mrs Ronge came to Manchester to lecture on Frobel’s methods in 1857 and as a result a Manchester Committee for the Extension of the Kindergarten System was formed.  It would be interesting to find the list of members of this committee.  I imagine that Marianne must have been involved.  Mme Ronge set up a training school at Whalley Grange shortly afterwards. (see Lawrence, Evelyn (ed.)  Friedrich Froebel and English Education RKP 1952 p41 )  By 1861 Marianne had a 15 year old assistant, Minnette Walker, and was running the nursery from her father’s home at 11 Lime Grove.  In 1867 she joined Manchester Board of Schoolmistresses.  The 1871 census shows that she had expanded her staff and had three assistant teachers living in, including Minnette and Anna Snell from Dresden.  Several Froebel teachers came over to Manchester to help spread the Kindergarten methods, and Anna may have been one of them.  Minette Walker went on to run her own school in Halifax for many years.   By 1881 Marianne had one teacher boarding with her and 2 servants and had moved to 171 High Street Chorlton on Medlock  It appears that by 1891,  like many unmarried  teachers, she had retired to a modest boarding house – in her case in Penzance- and was living ‘on her own means’

 

As a single woman, with a modest business, it was particularly admirable that she felt confident enough in 1868 to subscribe to the local suffrage society  The Manchester Society for Women's Suffrage, whilst continuing her pioneering teaching career.   Several hundred teachers signed the petition, but only a few went on, like Marianne, to publicly support the Suffrage Societies formed following the petition.  I suspect that they had not imagined the opposition that the proposition would provoke when they signed.   Fired by the success of the printing of the petition for University Local Examinations in 1865, it must have seemed an excellent strategy to distribute the list to the press and MP’s.  But for many of the women, running schools, shops and businesses, the publicity must have been problematic and threatening to their livelihood. However the publicity does not appear to have affected Marianne’s career.