On Friday 18 September, 1908, a green wooden caravan painted with the words ‘Votes for Women’ and ‘Women’s suffrage’ rumbled into Whitstable. The Women’s Freedom League (W.F.L) caravan stayed until the following Tuesday.1 This is the first recorded visit of a women’s suffrage group to the town.

The following summer, Rose Lamartine Yates, Gertrude Wilkinson and Margaret Barry arrived in Whitstable as part of a ‘holiday campaign’ conducted by the Women’s Social and Political Union (W.S.P.U). On arrival, Rose Yates erected the distinctive purple, green and white flag of the W.S.P.U. from the roof of her cottage at Preston Parade, Seasalter, placing a notice outside announcing meetings.2

Things did not start well for the women and at an open-air meeting on West Cliff the three women fell victim to some rough treatment from the ‘lowest elements’ .3 In a letter to the editor of the Canterbury Journal, Gertrude Wilkinson and Rose Lamartine Yates wrote: ‘We persisted as long as it was humanly possible, but when dastardly attempts at personal injury to the speaker were indulged in, it became perilous to life to continue.’4 A commentator in the Whitstable Times earlier that year had described suffragettes as “riff-raff” revealing the mood of some members of the town. The newspaper bragged that whatever the suffragettes could achieve in other parts of the country ‘Kent was more than they could handle.’5

Undeterred, Yates and Wilkinson continued to hold ‘at homes’ and invite women to listen to their speeches. Wilkinson recited suffrage poems written by the American poet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Yates spoke of her stay in Holloway prison after her arrest for obstruction in 1909. Posters were displayed in newsagents, and the determined women paraded along the streets of Whitstable with W.S.P.U flags and wearing sashes.6 They also gave open-air speeches in the high street to the passing townsfolk.

On Saturday 4th September 1909, a perfect but still day, a procession of women set off from Whitstable Town Station towards Tankerton Hotel where a ‘large and very orderly’ suffrage meeting was held during the annual Whitstable regatta.7 It was an audacious act at such a public event. With 5,000 spectators and the committee boat moored just to the eastward of the hotel, Rose Yates and Gertrude Wilkinson had chosen a prime location. As the restless crowd, watched and waited for the sailing to commence on the becalmed sea, the suffragettes gave speeches. The carnival which followed the regatta included a parody of the movement as ‘Bundock’s suffragettes: Mrs and Miss Pancake’ (a pun on Pankhurst) joined the procession.8

After the meeting Yates received several enquiries about future meetings and had to put out a call for additional speakers from neighbouring towns to assist her.9 At least two further unannounced meetings were held in the streets.10 Another suffragette, Marion Gibson, branded one of the ‘shrieking sisterhood’, and noted for setting up street corner meetings also arrived in Whitstable that summer.11

After three weeks in the town, Gertrude Wilkinson’s cottage Belrapar was advertised as a six-months let and she and Rose Yates returned to London.12 The holiday campaign was over. Nevertheless, the suffrage spirit may have lived on as the Votes for Women magazine continued to be sold in Whitstable newsagents.13 Rose Yates returned in 1911 staying at her holiday home, the Cottage, Seasalter, where she spoiled the census. She wrote on it “Till votes for women, no census. So long as women are arbitrarily excluded from Franchise Acts, they must exclude themselves from the Census Act”. The census enumerator noted “On Friday, March 31/11 I handed this schedule to Mrs R.L. Yates and her husband was with her. She is rated in my rate book as occupier. I found this schedule tied to the front door on Monday morning April 3/11. I have reason to believe they were both in occupation for the weekend the house was empty of the flag taken down when I called. Mr Yates is a barrister”. 14 Rose continued to own the cottage on Allan Road until at least 1917.15

Shortly after this time, a Conservative Women’s movement was established in Whitstable in 1910 by women who supported women’s suffrage. Mrs Fynn recalled meeting at the house of Mrs H.K. Daniels, where an ex-officio Ladies’ Advisory Committee was established to promote the Conservative cause.16 However, the “quiet serenity” of Whitstable was not greatly disturbed by militant suffragism over the next few years and the Whitstable carnivals continued to parody the suffragettes, although they now they included a Suffragette Band.17

By 1913, the mood was changing and in May the newspapers reported a “Suffragette bomb hoax” outside the Limes, the home of the liberal M.P. Robert Turnbull Lang. A small tin, packed with string, shavings, paraffin and mud was labelled with the threatening words ‘Worse to follow’.18 It was brushed off as a practical joke, however after a summer of suffragette bombing campaigns across the country, the fear surrounding the affair was palpable.

It was not until July 1913 that the residents of Whitstable received another visit. This time from the Kentish Pilgrims who were associated with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (N.U.W.S.S). Marching through Tankerton and Whitstable, the pilgrims held an open-air meeting, which attracted an audience of several hundred, at The Cross. Mrs Packman, the President of the Herne Bay Branch, and Muriel Matters, who had been involved in the 1908 caravan tour spoke eloquently on the need for women’s suffrage. Mr Lang, who was in attendance was called upon to give an impromptu speech, and acknowledged that although he was opposed to the tactics of the militant suffragists, he believed that the time would come when the suffrage would be extended to all men and women.19 The meeting was marred when the speakers’ carriage was pelted with missiles as it left. A sign that not everyone was ready for women’s suffrage.20

In the same month, the Women’s Freedom League (W.F.L) launched another holiday campaign in Kent, starting this time from their headquarters at 37, Claire Road, Tankerton.21 Speakers for the cause included Mary Katherine Trott, Mrs Merivale Mayer, Miss Underwood and Miss F. Taylor who held daily meetings on ‘The Lawn’. Two evening meetings were also held in Whitstable on the 25th and 28th .22 Katherine Trott, the spirited 24- year old organiser of the meetings, wrote that the women ‘made a number of friends among the fishermen’ who bought copies of the W.F.L’s newspaper. Two weeks later, on the 30th July, the W.F.L campaign moved to Herne Bay but returned to Tankerton in August when Miss Nina Boyle addressed an audience.23

With the arrival of the First World War, Whitstable women became involved with the war effort and agitating for suffrage was suspended. Mr Todhunter reporting to the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry said that “the towns down the coast from Whitstable to Ramsgate were being subjected to air raids pretty frequently, and as a result there was an exodus of women from these towns to the factories.”24

After the war, women’s suffrage was back on the political agenda and women over 30 got to vote in their first UK election in December 1918. It was the first general election in 8 years. There were around 3,000 names on the new register in Whitstable but only 1,600 voted as many men were still away in the Navy or Army or on naval reserve. The outstanding feature of the election, according to the Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald was “the large number of women voters who exercised their franchise privilege for the first time.”25

References

  1. Jennifer Godfrey, Suffragettes of Kent. (Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2019), 71. ↩︎

  2. Votes for Women, August 27, 1909, 1113. ↩︎

  3. Votes for Women, September 10, 1909, 1162; The Whitstable Times and Tankerton Press, Sep 4, 1909, 5. ↩︎

  4. Canterbury Journal, Kentish Times and Farmers’ Gazette, September 4, 1909, 5. quoted in Godfrey, 137. ↩︎

  5. The Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, March 13, 1909, 2. ↩︎

  6. Votes for Women, September 3, 1909, 1138. ↩︎

  7. Votes for Women, September 10, 1909, 1162. ↩︎

  8. The Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, August 28, 1909, 2. ↩︎

  9. Votes for Women, September 10, 1909, 1162. ↩︎

  10. Votes for Women, September 17, 1909, 1187. ↩︎

  11. Betty Jerman, ‘In the beginning: Miss Bigmore recalls her days in the headlines’, Times, 23 August 1968, 13. ↩︎

  12. Votes for Women, September 17, 1909, 1170. ↩︎

  13. Votes for Women, September 17, 1909, 1187. ↩︎

  14. 1911 Census, NUmber of Schedule 142. ↩︎

  15. Canterbury and District Directory, 1917-18. (Kent: Garnett, Mepham and Fisher Ltd) ↩︎

  16. The Whitstable Times and Tankerton Press, January 30, 1937, 3. ↩︎

  17. Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, Saturday 24 August 1912, 5. ↩︎

  18. “Suffragette Bomb Hoax at Whitstable,” The Whitstable Times and Tankerton Press, May 17, 1913, 4. ↩︎

  19. “The Kentish Pilgrims Visit Whitstable.” Canterbury Journal, 12 July 1913, 8. ↩︎

  20. “The Kentish Pilgrims Visit Whitstable.” Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 12 July 1913, 8. ↩︎

  21. Jennifer Godfrey, Suffragettes of Kent. (Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2019), 205. ↩︎

  22. The Vote, July 18 1913, 202. ↩︎

  23. The Vote, July 18, 1913, 201, quoted in Godfrey, 205. ↩︎

  24. War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, S.52. ↩︎

  25. Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, December 21, 1918. ↩︎