Women in The National Archives, Kew
Original documents on the Suffrage Question in Britain, the Empire and Colonial Territories combined with a Finding Aid to Women's Studies Resources in The National Archives, Kew.
Consultant Editor:
Martin Pugh, author of Women and the Women's Movement in Britain 1914-1959 (Macmillan,1992, 2000), The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women's Suffrage, 1866-1914 (OUP 2000) and The Pankhursts (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2001).
Source Library:
The National Archives, Kew
Nature of the Material:
This resource is comprised of two distinct elements:
- a massive and unique finding aid to women's studies resources in The National Archives at Kew
- original documents on the Suffrage Question in Britain, the Empire and Colonial Territories
HO 45 Color Files:
Four significant HO 45 files on the suffrage question were discovered at Kew in the second half of 2009 by Charles Tattersall, who was engaged in a further cataloguing project. These files had never been listed before and a recent update to Women in The National Archives makes them available in full color.
HO 45/10345/141956: This dates from 1906 and contains details of the arrest and imprisonment of four suffragettes, including Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, as a result of two separate protests which occurred outside the house of the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, in Cavendish Square. The file contains two resolutions from the Women’s Social and Political Union, one of which is signed by Christabel Pankhurst, while the other includes a handwritten note by Sylvia Pankhurst.
HO 45/10349/147337: This records the imprisonment of 6 suffragettes in 1906 following a protest at the Houses of Parliament. This file also includes details of a later incident when 5 suffragettes began a protest in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons. This led to a further 11 arrests.
According to Charles Tattersall, the last two files, HO 45/10417/183577 and HO 45/10418/183577 probably comprise the most important discovery. Undoubtedly, they were originally a single file, but because of their size, these documents are now divided into two clusters. As Charles Tattersall writes:
“The subject matter covers the arrest and imprisonment of nine prominent suffragettes, including Mary Leigh and Charlotte Marsh, following well-organized protests outside Bingley and Curzon Halls in Birmingham, where the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, was addressing two meetings on 17 September 1909. During the protests missiles were thrown from a roof and there were violent confrontations between the suffragettes and the police and members of the public. When Asquith boarded his train to return to London after the meetings, two of the train’s windows were also broken by suffragette supporters.
The nine suffragettes were imprisoned in Winson Green Prison in Birmingham, with sentences ranging from one to three months, on various charges of wilful and malicious damage, disorderly conduct and assault on members of the police. They immediately refused all food and drink, and were consequently subjected to force-feeding.
As well as detailed newspaper coverage of their trial and imprisonment, the files contain a large number of medical reports on the health of the prisoners, medical opinions from a number of doctors on force-feeding (including a large typescript book on medical evidence) and a number of parliamentary questions from the Labour MP Keir Hardie on the prisoners’ welfare. There are also signed letters from Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, and various petitions, including two from Charlotte Marsh. The petitions are of particular interest as they show that the reason for the hunger strikes was the refusal of the authorities to grant the imprisoned suffragettes the status of political prisoners.
The files cover the whole period from the initial reports of the incidents in Birmingham up to the release of Charlotte Marsh some three months later on 9 December 1909. They provide a detailed overview of one of the major incidents in the history of the suffragette movement.”
Scope of the Collection:
This is a unique resource that will be of great value to anyone who sends graduate students to The National Archives at Kew to research topics concerning women’s studies.
At its heart is a massive 2,000 plus page guide to all sources relating to women at The National Archives. This is the result of a five year project by staff at Kew and enables researchers to quickly locate details of documents relating to women in the public records. It is far more detailed and extensive than anything available elsewhere on the web and has the benefit of ranging across all of the classes held at The National Archives. It was originally intended as a printed publication and would have run to four or more volumes – we are delighted to be able to offer this exclusively online – a format which greatly enhances the searching capabilities of this guide.
Subject topics within the finding aid include: Abortion, Clothing, Conditions of Service and Trade Unions, Divorce, Domestic work, Education and Training, Employment, Equal Opportunities and Pay, Health, Marriage, Maternity and Child Welfare, Nursing and Midwifery, Prostitution, Single Parents, Teaching and Teacher Training, Widows, Women's Organizations, Women's Suffrage, and Women's Rights and Status.
There are hundreds of entries per topic and browsing through these will suggest countless research topics. They will also provide a shortcut for researchers. For instance, there are 42 hits for ‘forcible feeding’; 99 hits for a search on ‘shopping’; 41 hits for a search on ‘women in South Africa’; and 134 hits for a search on ‘women in Kenya.’
This finding aid is greatly enhanced by the provision of immediate access to original documents covering two main areas:
(1) A majority of sources concentrate on the women’s suffrage movement in the UK between 1903 and 1928. The documents contain papers on government and police handling of the suffrage question, photographs and descriptions of leading suffragettes, police reports on suffrage meetings and disturbances, including attacks on the Wallace Collection and death of Emily Davidson after throwing herself under the king’s horse at the Derby in 1913. There are petitions, newspaper clippings, extracts from Parliamentary debates, Cabinet opinion and Committee reports on franchise bills, including the work of the Equal Franchise Committee of 1927-1928. There are also various sources relating to the arrest of suffragettes, their transit in police vans and treatment in prison. Accounts from suffragettes and their supporters, and reports from prison authorities provide details of hunger strikes, the 'Cat and Mouse' campaign and forced feeding.
(2) Documents from the Colonial Office and the Dominions Office relate to the subsequent debate and development of universal suffrage throughout the British empire, 1930-1962. We include a report on the ‘Status of native women in Colonies and Protectorates, 1930’ (DO 35/349/10), which looks women’s living conditions in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, East Africa , Fiji, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Uganda and Zanzibar; as well as a very revealing report by the Six Point Group on the ‘Extension of the franchise to women in the colonies’, 1939 (CO 323/1694/2). We also include a sequence of substantial files from CO 1032 on suffrage arrangements in Colonial territories, 1954-1962.
These sources will be a great asset for anyone wishing to teach a course on women’s suffrage in Britain and throughout the Empire, 1903-1962. Copies of the documents can be included in course packs or attached as links in teaching materials. Students will respond to the strong visual content provided in many of the images, as well as to the graphic descriptions of the police treatment of suffragettes or of descriptions of forced marriage in Africa and India.
Our consultant editor, Martin Pugh, provides a contextual essay with hypertext links to many of the source documents.
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