Teen’s future vision opens up a window into the past

WITH its ambitions for equality and dreams of writing a great novel and travelling the world it could have been written by any clued-up 21st Century teenager.

But remarkably this poignant, inspiring letter was penned by a 13-yearold girl in Rochdale in 1920 - eight years before universal suffrage.

Handwritten by Lillian Coope in a school exercise book, it has been uncovered by historians in the local archives in Rochdale.

And on Saturday it’s going on display at the town’s Touchstones gallery as part of a major exhibition of work by prominent female artists.

Titled ‘What I intend to be when I am a woman and how I can then serve my country best,’ it’s been described as a ‘stirring vision... filled with unbridled hope.’

The letter (printed in full below) paints a vision of sporting prowess, gender equality, education for all and literary ambition.

Nowadays a teenage girl expressing similar sentiments would barely raise a eyebrow.

But in working class, industrial Rochdale in the early 1920s it would have ●●Mark Doyle, art gallery curator and collections manager at Touchstones Rochdale with the letter written by a 13-year-old schoolgirl Lillian Coope in 1920 been pretty radical.

However Lillian was reflective of a seismic shift in attitudes towards class and gender which, hastened by the First World War, would change the UK forever.

When fighting broke out in 1914 Britain’s women mainly faced a life of domesticity.

Some, like the Suffragettes, led by the Manchester-born Pankhurst sisters, were campaigning vocally for change, but a woman’s place was still largely in the home

But with hundreds of thousands of working-age men fighting overseas, women took their place en masse in factories, shops and offices across the country.

Having proved they were a match for the demands of the wartime economy when peace returned in 1918 it brought with it demands for better rights and greater freedoms.

Just under two years later on February 24, 1920, she Lillian would write about establishing libraries ‘for the poorer sex’, travelling the globe and writing a book which will give readers a ‘greater store of knowledge about the world than they ever had before.’

“I intend to be the perfect athlete, to be strong in body and mind, to be muscular, keen and determined,” wrote Lillian.

“I would like to establish a lot more libraries, where the poorer sex could get books and knowledge for nothing.”

Intrigued by Lillian’s letter, which was donated to the local archives in 1984 by someone whose name was not recorded, and lack of information as to her life afterwards, exhibition organisers began searching for clues as to what became of the teenager and, specifically, whether she went on to achieve her dreams.

Their research uncovered a marriage certificate, to Samuel Marsh, the apparent emigration of her family to America, and also a life cut tragically short.

Aged 29, on Monday October 5, 1936, Lillian died of cancer.

And now curators are appealing to the public to fill in the gaps in her life between school and death, as well as those of her relatives and widower.

Born in a end terrace house at 2 Blanche Street, in Hamer, Rochdale, to Charles R Coope, a builder and her mother, Agnes, she had a sister, Edith, four years her senior.

Census records from Berkeley, California record Charles and Agnes in residence in the United States, suggesting that they moved there four years after the death of their youngest daughter in 1940.

But happened next to Lillian’s parents, Edith and Samuel is a source of intrigue for gallery staff.

Mark Doyle, art gallery curator and collections manager at Touchstones Rochdale said: “Lillian’s vision of her own future, for women and children and of England is buoyed by youthful hope and ambition.

“Considering that her short life was lived during a period of significant, global challenge and it was early in the enduring struggle for gender equality, her aspirations seem all the more remarkable.

“There was to be no holding her back.

“It’s sad that Lillian’s own story ends in her death at a very young age, yet the donation of her letter to our archives in the mid-1980s, and our brief research into her family, means her story has continued.

“To fill in the gaps in the family’s story, if not finding out more about Lillian’s life between her school days and brief, married life, would help us satisfy our curiosity and perhaps give the story new dimensions.”

Lillian’s letter will be displayed as part of the Herstory exhibition on gender equality at Touchstones.

Running until September 29, it includes work loaned to Rochdale by the esteemed art collector, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.