The Votes for Women campaign in Tunbridge Wells
On 6th February 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed, extending the right to vote in parliamentary elections to all men over the age of twenty-one, and for the first time giving the vote to some women: if they were aged over thirty and either they or their husbands were property owners.
The campaign to win the vote had been long and controversial. The country was passionately divided on the subject, and even those who agreed that women should be able to vote disagreed about tactics. From 1866 onwards suffragists demanded the vote through constitutional and peaceful means like petitions and lobbying MPs. In 1903 the Pankhurst’s formed the Women’s Social and Political Union and in 1905, losing patience with waiting, these suffragettes began to use militant tactics, including arson, damage to property, interruption of meetings and anything likely to gain publicity for their cause.
Langton Green has its own connections to the women’s cause. Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Louise, who lived at Dornden, was in favour of women voting. Despite her mother’s opposition, it was said that the princess, “quietly received suffragists and was connected to prominent figures in the women’s suffrage movement.” The bestselling and controversial Victorian novelist, Sarah Grand, lived in The Grey House on Langton Road in 1901, and was for many years the president of the constitutional National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ branch in Tunbridge Wells.
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies shop in Crescent Rd
Tunbridge Wells itself was a hive of activity in pursuit of the vote for women. From 1910 the NUWSS had a shop at 18 Crescent Road, which one of their supporters, Ethel Sargent, helped them afford. Her mother wrote about the positive effect of involvement in the suffrage campaign in letters to her sister; “This is doing Ethel all the good in the world and throwing her with young and interesting women. The shop is getting much appreciated and several ladies have given teas there so we hope it will become quite a centre.” By 1913 the branch had 165 members and a further 278 ‘friends’ (who registered but didn’t pay a subscription). There was also a branch of the WSPU based in the Pantiles, where the café Chocolatl was. Tunbridge Wells was certainly pulling its weight in the national campaign!
In April 1913 the Nevill Cricket Pavilion was destroyed by arson. A photograph of Emmeline Pankhurst was pinned to the ground outside, alongside scattered Suffragette literature. “Tunbridge Wells is declared to be a hot bed of militants!” cried the mayor, and local author Arthur Conan Doyle also condemned the action, saying, “Outrages like this must be stopped because they mean neither more nor less than anarchy!” A protest meeting against suffragette militancy was held at The Great Hall, and members of the NUWSS were encouraged to go to demonstrate their opposition to non-peaceful tactics. Members of the WSPU demonstrated outside the building, and Suffragette Olive Walton went in to question the speakers before her arguing led to her being evicted. She described her experience to a reporter for The Courier. “Then we felt the crowd hustling…I simply folded my arms and felt myself being pushed about. An egg hit me in my face, and its contents ran down all over my clothes. My two companions, who were being somewhat similarly treated, kept close to me. I felt my head being pulled back and my hat was dragged off.” They were forced to go to the police station, “followed by a booing, jeering crowd.”
The Nevill cricket pavilion after the arson attack.
Feelings were running high, but when war was declared in 1914 the WSPU and NUWSS both suspended their campaigns to get behind the war effort. It is said that giving women the vote in 1918 was their reward for their war work, although this isn’t strictly true. The mainly young, and low paid women working as nurses or in munitions factories had to wait until 1928 to get the vote on equal terms with men. In 1918 the government knew they could no longer deny all men the vote after their sacrifice in the war, but they were worried that once the majority of voters were working-class socialism would be inevitable, and so they enfranchised propertied women thinking that they would increase the Conservative vote. Nevertheless, the tireless, inventive and self-sacrificing campaigning of the women of the early nineteenth century had a lasting impact, and eventually the demand that all women should be able to vote on the same terms as men became impossible to ignore.
In the Spring of 2022 The Amelia Scott building is due to be completed, and will include a new home for Tunbridge Wells library and museum. It is named after Amelia Scott, one of the most prominent campaigners for the vote in Tunbridge Wells, as well as a social reformer. You can find out more about the project and Amelia herself here.
Anne Carwardine has written a book about the suffrage movement in Tunbridge Wells called Disgusted Ladies - available at Waterstone’s and other bookshops.
There is a blog by Anne Carwardine about the suffragist’s part in looking after Belgian refugees in Tunbridge Wells during World War One here.
