Secret Missions of the Suffragettes: Glassbreakers and Safe Houses

Posted by Verity on July 26, 2024 in Book review, feminism, History, Human rights, Politics, society, Women's equality issues | 2 comments

Jennifer Godfrey, Pen and Sword History

It seems a long time since all the festivities of 2018, celebrating the centenary of (some) women getting the vote. The low turnout in the recent General Election suggests that many women do not feel obliged to honour the sacrifices of the sisters that went before them by exercising this hard-won right.

I think if I had not voted I would be feeling rather guilty, so vivid are the trials and tribulations that leap out from the pages of Jennifer Godfrey’s new book.

Behind the parades, the rosettes, and the imposing figures of the WSPU’s leadership – the Pankhursts, the Pethick-Lawrences – loom the walls of Holloway Prison and others around the land, alongside the Herculean work of orchestration and administration needed to propel a national movement. It takes an awful lot of order and discipline to generate disorder and disobedience effectively.

The foot soldiers of the window smashing campaign of 1912 are given flesh and blood in this book, often speaking to us all across the years in their own words. Women of all types and classes find solidarity in the cause, from domestic servants to aristocrats and all ranks in between – and all of them behaving in a most unladylike way, according to the startled bystanders, shopkeepers and policemen witnessing their actions.

One can understand why the glassbreakers caused such consternation. There were no indications that the inconspicuous women indulging a passion for window-shopping along Oxford Street would in an instant transform into hammer and stone wielding Furies, leaving some of the largest sheets of plate glass in the world in shards on the ground. And so it was all across London and elsewhere.

But in another instant, the Furies were transformed back again, graciously submitting to arrest and detention, and refusing bail so as to clog up the prisons as much as possible.

One of the points to emerge from Godfrey’s research is the inconsistency in how the women were treated, both in the length of their sentences and the conditions in which they were held. Where one was swiftly moved to a new cell because she could not be expected to occupy one whose former tenant had been a prostitute, others had their complaints about icy cold and cockroaches ignored.

Yet despite such privations – and let’s not mention the force feeding – there were moments that transcended the horror of their experiences, and even occasions for humour: Frances McPhun, Honorary Secretary of the Glasgow WSPU, who received a sentence of two months’ hard labour and was force fed, noted in a letter to the organiser of her branch, ’It was fun to see Dr Ethel Smyth packing away cigarettes in the legs of her combinations.’

There is a fascinating glimpse into the degree of support the women had from men in some quarters. Unswayed by the rabid headlines, when it came down to it, there were some shop owners who became inexplicably vague when asked to supply a witness statement about the breaking of their windows, as well as experienced police officers who contrived to get the paperwork wrong so that charges were dismissed on a technicality. And here is David Wilkie, Scotland manager of a major soap manufacturer, urging a solicitor to plead the cause of Janet Barrowman: ‘… she must have exercised her abilities and resources in connection with that movement [Votes for Women] somewhat to the same extent as she does in connection with my business.’

Secret Missions of the Suffragettes is a treasure trove of information – the code language used for communications, the aliases used by the women, and much more – and as such it is an invaluable reference book, but it is the voices of the women themselves that shine, and that we must thank Godfrey for retrieving. I leave you with the words of Theresa Gough: ‘And within the walls? Ah! There too, the love that shines through the sun and the skies and can illume even the prison cell, was round us, and worked through us and miracles were wrought. We have each been witness of some wonder worked by that omniscient love which is the very basis of our movement.’