Blue plaque for 100 years of women’s votes

A blue plaque commemorating Bristol campaigners for women’s votes is about to be unveiled 100 years almost to the day after women voted in UK Parliamentary elections for the first time.

THIS coming Saturday, December 15, sees the unveiling of a plaque remembering Bristol’s campaigners for votes for women.

The ceremony will take place at no. 3 West Mall, Clifton, and will be led by Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire.

The event marks 100 years since women first voted in UK Parliamentary elections for the first time, and the plaque commemorates the first Bristol organisation to demand the women’s vote.

The Bristol and West of England Society for Women’s Suffrage was set up when Florence Davenport Hill (1828/9– 1919) invited a group of likeminded individuals to a meeting at her home at 3 West Mall (formerly 3 The Mall), Clifton, Bristol on 24 January 1868.

Florence Davenport Hill would have been in her thirties at the time, but she still needed her father’s permission to hold the meeting.

The Bristol society joined the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in 1896. Although many women over the age of 30 gained the vote in 1918, the society continued campaigning until all women won the vote on equal terms with men ten years later.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the leader of the NUWSS, was honoured by a statue in Parliament Square earlier this year.

Women voted in Parliamentary elections for the first time on December 14 1918. In Bristol, more women voted than men. This was partly because even though the war was over, many men were still in uniform and away from home; while members of the armed forces got the vote, many ballot papers were undelivered because of administrative problems.

Other soldiers, disgruntled that they had not yet been demobbed, deliberately spoiled their papers.

But in Bristol, many women queued up before the polling stations opened. Some of the women who voted for the first time in their lives were in their nineties.

Thangam Debbonaire said: “As a woman voter as well as a woman MP, I know how far we have to come before we have true equality in all aspects of life. But without the dedication and struggle of the women who campaigned for the right to vote, we would have no representation. We would be left out of all decisions affecting our lives. I am proud to be part of celebrating these women’s achievements.”

The plaque is the idea of local writer and historian Lucienne Boyce, author of a series of historical novels (the Dan Foster mysteries) as well as a detailed and dramatic account of the Bristol women who fought for the vote in the decades before 1918, ‘The Bristol Suffragettes’.

She has set up a crowdfunding page for anyone who would like to contribute towards the cost of the Blue Plaque. See www. justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ lucienne-boyce-1

The installation ceremony takes place at 11.30am on Saturday, December 15, at 3 West Mall, Clifton, Bristol BS8 4BH. Everyone is welcome to attend.

» To sign up for Lucienne’s newsletter and to get a free ebook, ‘The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign’ see www.lucienneboyce.com/ newsletter