2018 is the centenary year of the Representation of the People Act. This allowed some women – those owning property and over the age of 30 – the right to vote for the first time. At the general election on 14 December 1918, 8.5 million women and 5.6 million men were enfranchised. It took another 10 years until the age qualification was abolished, putting men and women on a more equal footing.
The women’s suffrage movement reached every part of the country and cut across all classes. Some of the stories about individual suffragettes and their struggle for the vote are well known to us. Other stories lay untold, forgotten or hidden.
This fascinating exhibition presents the wonderful stories and research about local women who campaigned for the vote more than 100 years ago. These stories, artefacts and photographs have been kindly shared with Collective Exchange and Bruce Castle Museum & Haringey Archive by relatives proud of these pioneering women in their families. The exhibition tells us more about the lives of these women - such as the Spongs of Muswell Hill - who made their voices heard in their fierce struggle to get the right to vote.
Location: Old Kitchen at Bruce Castle Museum.
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One of the WW1 soldiers from St Paul's Harringay was married to Beatrice Spong - I've not researched her much yet. And another soldier's sister was Kathleen Pepper, who was secretary of the local suffragette branch and ended up being personal secretary to Christabel Pankhurst in the 1930s. According to a local newspaper report, the local suffragettes leafleted the congregations leaving St Paul's Harringay and St Peter's (now the Greek Orthodox Church on Wightman Rd) one Sunday morning and found that they got more sympathy and a better reception at St Peter's than St Paul's!
The Spong kitchen appliance factory was in Tottenham and it's from that address that Norman Parley, married to Irene Spong a trained singer who reputedly sang to imprisoned suffragettes from outside Holloway Prison, registered his address as a member of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (see his entry on the Haringey conscientious objectors website at: https://hfwwpf.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/norman-ireson-parley/). He was in Holland from 1915, joining his mother AgnesParley who was already there, staying until 1918.
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