My Grandmother was a Suffragette – Friday 17 August at Central Library
August 16, 2012 by Phyllis Stephen · 1 Comment
Peter Barratt is to give a talk about his grandmother’s work in the suffragette movement at the Central Library tomorrow Friday 17 August 2012 at 1p.m.
Alice Hawkins was a working class lady and mother of 6 who worked long hours in a Leicester shoe factory yet campaigned for women’s fights throughout her life.
Joining the suffragette movement in 1907, Alice went onto form the local branch of the WSPU with the help of the Pankhurst sisters and was to be imprisoned 5 times in her fight for the vote.
We spoke to Peter about his grandmother and her links with Edinburgh:-
Alice’s local MP was Ramsay MacDonald whom she came to know very well. In January 1913 Alice visited Lloyd George at Westminster together with a depututation of fisherwives from Newhaven. The two newspaper photographs of Alice and the women from Newhaven standing on the steps of the Houses of Parliament are taken from Alice’s own book of press cuttings almost 100 years ago.
The family today still have much of the suffragette memorabilia that once belonged to Alice, including her sash, hunger strike medal, prison notes and more, perhaps one of the best collections in the UK still with the descendants of those valiant women.
This will be a stirring and passionate account of her fight for the rights of women and will appeal to a broad cross section of the community. The story is backed up by the web site set up in her memory www.alicesuffragette.com
The event is part of the season of free talks organised by the Ragged University.
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] August 26th isn’t Women’s Equality Day in the UK because they didn’t have to amend the constitution like we did with the 19th amendment. But there’s an upcoming grandmother celebration in the UK that’s worth featuring for several reasons: 1) the family’s pride in sharing the archive of Grandmother Alice Hawkins’ suffrage memorabilia 2) public interest in the subject matter. Alice’s great grandson Peter Barratt has a variety of digital resources on the web site devoted to Alice Hawkins, family member, working woman, and suffrage activist. Peter speaks at community events about his great grandmother. In the U.S., events like this are increasing, but they’re by no means as developed as in the U.K. as with this news item from Edinburgh. [...]