Author’s talk on struggle of Suffragettes
Scholar hopes her Smith visit will stir memories
A Scottish emigrant to the USA is returning home to help commemorate 100 years since the first British women won the vote.
Author and independent scholar Bernadette Cahill is hoping her talk in the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum tomorrow (Thursday) will lead to the emergence of new material about the Suffragette movement.
Bernadette, an MA honours graduate of history from Glasgow University, is the sister of Dr Catherine Smith-Mason and sister-in-law of Cairns Mason of Stirling.
She is the author of ‘Alice Paul, the National Woman’s Party and the Right to Vote: The First Civil Rights Struggle of the 20th Century’, and ‘Arkansas Women and the Right to Vote: The Little Rock Campaigns’ (both 2015), with numerous published articles and talks on women’s rights and the United States suffrage movement to her credit.
She is currently completing her third history of women’s suffrage in the United States, about the American women’s campaigns for female suffrage 150 years ago.
Her talk draws on a unique tape recording she made with a source in 1984 after hearing, during the 50th anniversary of the now century-old Voting Rights Act, a woman’s story of a summer job alongside one of the most notorious of the pre-First World War militant Suffragettes.
Smith director Dr Elspeth King said: “Her talk sheds light on a largely forgotten episode in Scottish suffrage history and fills out some of the story behind what is just a name in the record. She hopes to stir forgotten memories and lead to the discovery of further unknown sources, particularly photographs of Suffragettes in action.”
“So much of women’s history has suffered a fate worse than death,” said Bernadette.
“Women who took part and remain only as surnames, if at all, in reports are completely forgotten. It’s so sad. When these women died, documents and photos have been discarded because people didn’t know what they meant – especially when the women remained single, as was so often the case.”
The campaign for votes for women, which can be traced back to at least 1866, culminated with passage of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which received Royal Assent that February 6 when older married women and property owners were enfranchised. All women finally won equal voting rights with men only in 1928, however.
The talk at the Smith at 2pm will be followed by tea, and admission and parking are free. The event follows a centenary talk in the Bute Museum about the campaign that one of the leading Suffragette and women’s rights organisations, the Women’s Freedom League, conducted for years when Rothesay was its headquarters.