Moderate words as women’s fight came to town
Here is the first of a four-part feature in on suffrage in Rochdale and the surrounding area, written by local studies assistant at Touchstones, Rochdale.
IN the 19th century men and women were not seen to be equal.
Women were seen to be weak and their rightful place in society was the home in which they had a duty to serve the husband, rear children and to take care of all domestic duties.
This mainly affected middle class women because they had no reason to leave the home or go to work.
The middle classes took the role of women very seriously because they did not have to worry about things like poverty.
Women were gradu- ally becoming aware of the lack of involvement and rights they had.
They realised that they did not have a voice and began demanding their rights through mass demonstrations and so came about the suffrage movement.
The word ‘Suffragette’ was first used in 1906 in a newspaper article by Charles E. Hands, to describe women campaigning for the achievement of citizenship and for the right to vote in Britain.
Suffragettes were members of women’s organisations in the late19th and early-20th centuries which supported the right to vote in public elections for women.
It particularly refers to members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was born in Manchester and founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903.
Women had had enough of being treated as second class citizens.
They fought intensely for the right to vote, the achievement of citizenship and for the betterment of women in all conditions of life.
Emmeline Pankhurst set up a WSPU branch in Rochdale in 1907.
The Rochdale Observer stated …’some people who attended the meetings addressed by Mrs Pankhurst and other suffragettes in Rochdale on Saturday and Sunday were agreeably surprised by the moderation of the speakers.
‘It is not their programme but their method of advertising that has been ‘extreme’.
‘In advocating the extension of the Parliamentary vote to those who possess the municipal suffrage they do not go beyond the pledges of a majority of the members of the present Parliament and by Rochdale Liberals.
‘Again and again the franchise extension, which they demand has been approved by the Rochdale reform Association and supported by the member of the borough’. (Votes for women – a talk given at Touchstones on August 24, 2003)
One eager follower for women’s rights in the late 1800’s was a female named Betty Brindle.
She was a resident of Rochdale and was well known for her challenging behaviour after a few pints at her local ‘Roebuck Inn’, where she would go about making demands for women to have a role in the running of the town side by side with the opposite sex.
As per usual, she would be carted away in a wheelbarrow and plonked on the duckling stool in the River Roch.
Despite this continuous embarrassment, it did not deter her continuous support for women’s rights!