Wall order Suffragette’s spell in slammer honoured
TO Horfield Prison for the unveiling of a blue plaque commemorating suffragette Theresa Garnett who was imprisoned there in 1909 after attempting to strike government minister Winston Churchill with a whip at Temple Meads station. (See last week’s BT for the full story.)
Unless someone can prove any different, it’s the first blue plaque to be placed on a working prison. It came about as a result of an art project between Weston College and some of the prisoners looking at women’s rights and the prison’s place in the suffragette story.
The unveiling was done by three of Bristol’s more senior female councillors, Helen Holland, Asher Craig and Nicola Beech, all of whom made little speeches.
Cllr Holland said how she had known Jessie Stephen, who had also been a suffragist as well as trade union official and that she felt as though she was “holding the hand of women through the years who have paved the way for what we do now”.
Cllr Beech said that Garnett’s activism made her much more than just “being a woman who almost hit a man”.
Inside the prison itself is a mural inspired by Garnett and which references three of the other suffragettes who were in Horfield at the same time. The art project has also inspired written and spoken work by some of the prisoners.
The plaque is on the old main gate, visible to passers-by on Cambridge Road. Even more visible is a huge great QR code on the wall close by. Scan it with your smartphone to find out more about Garnett and the project.
Artist Mary remembered
Another blue plaque unveiled late last month remembers the artist Mary Fedden (1915-2012).
The Civic Society plaque is at 52 Downs Park East in Westbury Park, where she spent the first five years of her life.
Fedden is one of those wonderful figures from the Bohemian edges of mid-20th century Britain, an artist and print-maker whose whole life seems to have been lived surrounded by colourful and eccentric figures. For many years she and her husband, fellow artist Julian Trevelyan, lived beside the Thames at Chiswick where their home became famous for parties which attracted guests including Stanley Spencer, Cyril Connolly, WH Auden, Christopher Isherwood and (of course) Dylan Thomas, who could probably be relied on to turn up anywhere that free drink was on offer.
Fedden herself grew up in a very conventional home, though she was born into a family that was anything but. Her uncle Roy Fedden was the famous aircraft designer while another uncle, Romilly Fedden (1875-1939), was an artist and author of a book on watercolour painting.
She attended Badminton School, and at the unveiling the head of art at the school revealed that it has an original Fedden painting and that art pupils there compete for a prize bearing her name.
When she went off to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, she was, at 17, its youngest student.
Returning to Bristol in 1936 she painted and taught and served in the Land Army, WVS and NAAFI during the war. It was only after the war (during which she said she lost much of her enthusiasm for painting) that her career took off.
She lived mostly in London from then on though she retained her Bristol links, exhibiting at the Armolfini and serving as President of the Royal West of England Academy from 1984 t0 1988.
Museums news
While the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and M Shed are now opening normally, the city’s museums service has announced that the Georgian House, Red Lodge and
Mary Fedden was well known for her colourful murals, painting this one at Highridge Infants School in 1956
Blaise Museum are now closed until April 2022.
This is “to support the wellbeing of our staff and to ensure visitor safety” though the attractions usually shut for some of the winter months anyway.
Meanwhile, October is Black History Month and M Shed has a few events coming up, some of them online. This includes talks about evidence of early Black Bristolians in Bristol Archives and on Black and Asian soldiers with West Country connections in WW1. Details of these and other events are at https://tinyurl.com/6fkn59aw
This coming weekend, October 9 and 10, it’s also Docks Heritage Weekend, albeit one overshadowed by the sad death this year of Andy King, who did so much to preserve and promote the history of the City Docks.
Events at M Shed will include trips on the John King tug, visits to the Fairbairn crane and the chance to look at the electric cranes. Characters from the docks’ past will also be on hand, thanks to Show of Strength theatre co.
Over at the SS Great Britain there will be lots going on, and the Brunel Institute will be open from 11am to 3pm free of change.
Activities at the Underfall Yard include blacksmithing demonstrations and the chance to try your hand at tying nautical knots. All this and loads else mean a nice day or weekend out (weather and Covid permitting!) – full details at https:// tinyurl.com/9knw8mbt
Keep Britain (and Bristol) Tidy
After several tours of duty as a council road-sweeper in my student days, I take a passing interest
Comedian Eric Morecambe poses for a Keep Britain Tidy campaign in 1972. Like the War on Drugs, the War on Litter never ends in the amount of rubbish in the streets.
They’re currently the worst I’ve seen since the (previous!) Winter of Discontent.
You can’t just blame the pandemic or casual litterbuggery. Much of it is down to stuff being dropped from, or blown out of, recycling boxes.
There’s also the brown bins being raided by the wildlife, plus pavement litter bins not being emptied regularly.
Then also the fact that they haven’t yet introduced the death penalty for fly-tippers, despite my demanding this in a stronglyworded letter to my MP. I used green ink and everything.
It’s an old, old problem. Saying “Keep Britain Tidy” dates from the 1920s; it may have been coined by the Boy Scouts.
It really took off with the Festival of Britain 70 years ago, when government ministers used the festival to start a campaign against littering. Local Government Minister Hugh Dalton spoke of the “horrible habit … of leaving a filthy and ignominious trail of litter behind them as they move from point to point in our beautiful island”.
The campaign included posters bearing the Keep Britain Tidy slogan on litter bins and on public transport in London.
The Women’s Institute started another campaign in the mid1950s which led to what’s nowadays called the Tidy Britain Group being set up as a charity, and which used the same slogan.
Like the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, the War on Litter drags on and on. The latest development has seen lots of people up and down the country volunteering to pick up litter in their own communities.
Mrs Latimer has signed up for this, as have many others in recent months. Everywhere we go we now see sprightly pensioners in yellow vests picking up drink cans and crisp packets with their special long-distance tongs and putting them into bags.
Mrs Latimer herself appears to have reached the rank of sergeant, or at least lance-corporal, in organising the local effort.
She has all the gear, including a high-vis vest. It’s all I can do to prevent myself getting a black marker pen while she’s out and writing COMMUNITY PAYBACK on the back of it.
Some will deplore the fact that volunteers are doing this because overstretched council budgets don’t allow for it to be done properly. But somebody has to do it. And if it wasn’t for these splendid volunteers we’d all be drowning in garbage.
Cheers then!