18 Telling the story
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Jill Liddington
Abstract
The 1911 census boycott has till recently been regarded as a fairly minor theme within the wider suffrage narrative. Retrospective accounts began in 1913 (Margaret Nevinson); and in 1914 Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story claimed ‘many thousands of women all over the country refused or evaded’. Sylvia Pankhurst's 1931 The Suffragette Movement ignored the boycott (she was in America at the time); but Laurence Housman's 1937 The Unexpected Years gives a telling account of how ‘the women had come off victors from the field’: ‘Honest John Burns…climbed down in a night’, and there was not a single arrest. From the 1980s, demographic historians began analyzing anonymized 1911 schedules, but census historians generally did not look at Votes for Women. By the 1990s however a new generation of suffrage historians had emerged, who wanted to look beyond Sylvia Pankhurst's The Suffragette Movement well-known version. Family historians and others waited for the hundred years to elapse ~ till January 1912 ~ for the individual schedules to be released by the National Archives.
Abstract
The 1911 census boycott has till recently been regarded as a fairly minor theme within the wider suffrage narrative. Retrospective accounts began in 1913 (Margaret Nevinson); and in 1914 Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story claimed ‘many thousands of women all over the country refused or evaded’. Sylvia Pankhurst's 1931 The Suffragette Movement ignored the boycott (she was in America at the time); but Laurence Housman's 1937 The Unexpected Years gives a telling account of how ‘the women had come off victors from the field’: ‘Honest John Burns…climbed down in a night’, and there was not a single arrest. From the 1980s, demographic historians began analyzing anonymized 1911 schedules, but census historians generally did not look at Votes for Women. By the 1990s however a new generation of suffrage historians had emerged, who wanted to look beyond Sylvia Pankhurst's The Suffragette Movement well-known version. Family historians and others waited for the hundred years to elapse ~ till January 1912 ~ for the individual schedules to be released by the National Archives.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents 237
- List of maps vii
- List of figures viii
- Acknowledgements xi
- List of abbreviations xiii
- Chronology xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Part I Prelude: people and their politics
- 1 Charlotte Despard and John Burns, the Colossus of Battersea 13
- 2 Muriel Matters goes vanning it with Asquith 24
- 3 Propaganda culture 36
- 4 Parallel politics 48
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Part II Narrative: October 1909 to April 1911
- 5 Plotting across central London 63
- 6 The battle for John Burns’s Battersea revisited 71
- 7 The Census Bill and the boycott plan 78
- 8 Lloyd George goes a-wooing versus Burns’s ‘vixens in velvet’ 86
- 9 The King’s Speech 97
- 10 Battleground for democracy 108
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Part III Census night: places and spaces
- 11 Emily Wilding Davison’s Westminster – and beyond 125
- 12 The Nevinsons’ Hampstead – and central London entertainments 132
- 13 Laurence Housman’s Kensington, with Clemence in Dorset 145
- 14 Annie Kenney’s Bristol and Mary Blathwayt’s Bath 154
- 15 Jessie Stephenson’s Manchester and Hannah Mitchell’s Oldham Road 169
- 16 English journey 183
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Part IV The census and beyond
- 17 After census night 197
- 18 Telling the story 209
- 19 Sources and their analysis 219
-
Front matter
- Contents 237
- Introduction 239
- Abbreviations 242
- Key mass evasions 243
- London boroughs and Middlesex 245
- Midlands 300
- Southern England 333
- Northern England 342
- Notes 363
- Select bibliography 389
- Index 395
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents 237
- List of maps vii
- List of figures viii
- Acknowledgements xi
- List of abbreviations xiii
- Chronology xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Part I Prelude: people and their politics
- 1 Charlotte Despard and John Burns, the Colossus of Battersea 13
- 2 Muriel Matters goes vanning it with Asquith 24
- 3 Propaganda culture 36
- 4 Parallel politics 48
-
Part II Narrative: October 1909 to April 1911
- 5 Plotting across central London 63
- 6 The battle for John Burns’s Battersea revisited 71
- 7 The Census Bill and the boycott plan 78
- 8 Lloyd George goes a-wooing versus Burns’s ‘vixens in velvet’ 86
- 9 The King’s Speech 97
- 10 Battleground for democracy 108
-
Part III Census night: places and spaces
- 11 Emily Wilding Davison’s Westminster – and beyond 125
- 12 The Nevinsons’ Hampstead – and central London entertainments 132
- 13 Laurence Housman’s Kensington, with Clemence in Dorset 145
- 14 Annie Kenney’s Bristol and Mary Blathwayt’s Bath 154
- 15 Jessie Stephenson’s Manchester and Hannah Mitchell’s Oldham Road 169
- 16 English journey 183
-
Part IV The census and beyond
- 17 After census night 197
- 18 Telling the story 209
- 19 Sources and their analysis 219
-
Front matter
- Contents 237
- Introduction 239
- Abbreviations 242
- Key mass evasions 243
- London boroughs and Middlesex 245
- Midlands 300
- Southern England 333
- Northern England 342
- Notes 363
- Select bibliography 389
- Index 395
