The Tower Suffragette by Penny Dolan

Inside Harrogate Library, at the start  of March,a new display was put up, decorated with small flags and  badges, and arranged by the Local Studies group. As I studied the labels, printed images and photocopied extracts,  the story seemed like a glimpse an exciting Edwardian detective adventure. Secret meetings? Foreign infiltrators? Concealed figures hurrying across the dark and lonely moor? Undercover surveillance? What made the incident interesting was that, I learned, it involved a famous local Suffragette.

I had learned about the Votes For Women movement many decades ago, after seeing the horrifying posters about force-feeding and the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act inside  Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham, London. Whenever my grandmother took there - one of her favourite outings, I stared at the images again, had nightmares again, and was felt revolted by the thought of food. Those images still have that awful power. And, in addition, searching for this image today, I noticed that many of the poster images seemed to be without their original wording.

                                                 

 Recently, I spent time with the Suffragettes again, reading ‘Old Baggage’, author Lissa Evans' enjoyable historical novel, set in the twenties and thirties. Though the book looks back at the bravery of the women, the plot also speaks about the mix of ideology, ‘sisterhood’, money and class within the organisation, and at the lives of all those unmarried women once the 'European War' was over. Evans' novel also warned me of the biased descriptions and attitudes I read in a local newspaper article (June 1914) quoted below.

                                                      
The main subject of the display was Leonora Cohen, who was known as 'The Tower Suffragette', born in Leeds in 1873. Canova Throp, her father, who was a sculptor and stone carver, died when Leonora was five. His wife, Jane Lamie, worked  long hours as a seamstress to support Leonora and her two younger brothers. As a child, Leonora worked alongside her mother, and at sixteen, trained as a milliner. She went on to become a milliner’s buyer, travelling from Yorkshire to London.                                                        

                                                         

 These experience taught Leonora about the working conditions of women, and the inequalities of men and women's wages. Her mother, who had suffered from poverty and injustice, was the one who inspired her radicalism, saying “if only we had a say in things”. Leonora’s telling statement was that “a drunken lout of a man had the vote simply because he was a male. I vowed to change things.”

In 1900, aged twenty-seven, she married Henry Cohen, a jeweller’s assistant, and childhood friend. He was Jewish and Leonora was not, so his parents disapproved of the marriage. Leonora’s mother disapproved too, fearing that marriage would distance her daughter from the Suffragette cause, in which the women were both now involved. However, Henry knew and supported Leonora's beliefs and married her, despite being warned by a friend that “if I had a wife like yours, I should tie her to the table leg.” In 1902, she gave birth to their son, who died at a year old and then a surviving daughter. For a few years, the family lived quietly. 

Then, in 1908, Leonora joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), popularly know as the Suffragettes, and at one point became one of Emmeline Pankhurst’s bodyguards.Three years later, In 1911, Leonora was arrested after throwing a rock against the window of a government building. She was pummelled on the jaw by a police officer, knocked down by a police horse and sentenced to seven days in Holloway prison.

In 1913, Leonora made headlines again when she staged an angry public protest after Asquith’s capitulation and dropping of the Reform Bill. Taking the tube, she went to the Tower of London where because of her quiet elegance, she was assumed to be a lady teacher escorting a group of visiting school boys into the Jewel Tower. On reaching the display of jewels, she drew out the iron bar concealed under her coat and smashed the glass case containing the Insignia of the Order of Merit and other treasures. Sent to Leeds Assizes and again imprisoned, the press named her "The Tower Suffragette.'

After this incident, the Cohen family moved from Leeds to Harrogate, a thriving spa town whose health facilities, churches, concerts and entertainments brought many visitors - and an ideal place to conceal a few extra visitors. They set up The Reform Food Boarding House, a vegetarian establishment, at Harlow Moor Drive, as a refuge for fellow suffragettes and sympathisers. 

Number 31 is one among a long row of impressive four and five storey boarding houses, situated just by the Valley Gardens where visitors promenaded after taking the waters, and close by the Royal Baths and the busy main centre of town. However, across the road, in the other direction, was a wild uphill expanse of open moor, pasture and woodland. In fact, the boarding house was an ideal situation in more ways than one.

In 1914, notoriety arrived: Leonora Cohen gave shelter to the “tiny, wily, elusive Pimpernel” known as Lilian Lenton. A famous firebrand, Lilian had already been imprisoned for window smashing, and in 1913, was involved in several arson attacks, the most famous being on the Tea House in Kew Gardens.

                                               

Imprisoned in Holloway, Lilian had gone on hunger strike, refusing food and liquid, and was force-fed until she became seriously ill. Though Lilian was then released, under the notorious ‘Cat and Mouse Act’, she was to be re-arrested after seven days, when her health would be said to have 'improved'. 

Instead, Lilian left London, travelled to Harrogate avoiding any re-arrest, and took refuge with Leonora at the Reform Food Boarding House, among friends and sympathisers. However, wisely or unwisely, while speaking at a meeting on The Stray, a large grassy area in the town, Mrs Cohen, told listeners “We have Lilian Lenton in Harrogate.” As soon as word got out, the authorities made plans to swoop on the boarding house and, attracted by “the hysterical wantonness of the militant’s misdemeanors”, the raid made news.

The account quoted below, appearing in the loyal, local newspaper ‘The Harrogate Advertiser’, and is very much written in the populist and racist language of the time. Ot also reflects that the piece was written at a troubled time, at home and on the continent, and as what was then known as the European War began.  

Reporting on the Harlow Moor Drive incident, The Harrogate Advertiser described how: “The front door opened and two men took up positions at the gate, holding it ajar. Another went across the road to a gate a few yards down the Drive which opens on to Harlow Moor. He pushed the gate back, and wedged it. That was the setting of the scene.

A small group of spectators, including two plain clothes officers, had not long to wait for the actors, for in a few moments there emerged from the house a most laughable and grotesque company. Like as the animals are recorded to have entered the Ark, so these latter day fanatics came down the steps two by two.

There was a man for every woman and several of those doughty cavaliers, it was noted, were of a marked semitic cast of countenance. The women without exception advertised a quite new and unexpected suffragette trait - modesty. They had shrouded their their faces with wraps, with antimacassars, with tablecloths and impenetrable veils. No Moslem woman was ever more chary of exposing her features to the gaze of men than these bashful suffragettes! Quite 40 people engaged in this masque, Then over the Moor in divers directions, they scuttled like so many rabbits and were quickly swallowed up in the gathering gloom. Then follows a typical press law-and-order press complaint: Might not they have been arrested for obstructing the police in their duty of watching a criminal? It has been said that a coach and four can be driven through every Act of Parliament. To the police who perforce stood by impotent at the time the extraordinary procession passed, we can only say - ” (Extract from The Harrogate Advertiser, June 1914)

One can almost imagine what was said, when it was revealed that the police, arriving to capture that wily female Pimpernel, were outwitted. Lilian, dressed in a boy's suit given to her by Leonora, had slipped out of the boarding house and escaped, racing over Harlow Moor to freedom. Lilian was not re-arrested  and survived in liberty for that day, at least.

                                       

In 1916, Leonora Cohen and her family returned to Leeds, where she remained active in both the Suffragette and the Trade Union movements, and by 1924, was appointed the first woman Magistrate in Yorkshire. Many years later, Leonora appeared with two other still-living Suffragettes on the cover of the Radio Times, to publicise the BBC's ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ series about Votes for Women story.  Her scrapbooks and memorabilia are now kept in The Abbey House Museum in Leeds. 

                                        

Leonora Cohen, the Tower Suffragette: a most amazing woman! 

 

However, I want to end this post by mentioning the 'Tower Suffragette' display that so caught my attention, and thank the Local Studies team for the work that created those three boards at Harrogate Library, building shown below.

                                

 The display is part of a year-long local project, celebrating the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage through the lives of Leonora Cohen and two other local women: Dr. Laura Soby Veale, a pioneer lady doctor, and Lady Frainy Bomanji, wife of a shipping magnate and local philanthropist. 

This August, their stories, and others, will inform 'Winning Women', a specially-designed walking tour led by enthusiastic local expert Harry Satloka and friends, probably starting opposite Betty’s Cafe and close by the War Memorial. Visitors can enjoy a slice of the town’s history as well as a slice (or two) of delicious local cake. Though please note that many other establishments are available.                            


Penny Dolan

READING IN SELF-ISOLATION by Penny Dolan

So far, in this time of enforced isolation, the Dunnetts, the Mantels, the Sansoms and other historical tomes have stayed on the bookshelves. 

My need was for something brisk to stand against the media’s outbreak of “war words” and writing that reminded me of the quiet cynicism with which my parents and grandparents – who had had real experience of such things - regarded such “patriotic” stances.

In consequence, I have been reading the novels of Lissa Evans: OLD BAGGAGE, CROOKED HEART and THEIR FINEST HOUR AND A HALF*, set during the first half of the twentieth century, and blessed with a dark, quirky and benign humour.

Evans has a way of creating characters that are slightly at odds with society, people trying to survive in a world that has moved on and not always to their advantage. Her plots are not about dealing with heroic events on a world stage, but about coping with snobbery, prejudice, poverty, petty cruelty, boredom and tragedy during the hard times.

However, bit by bit, despite sometimes doing a wrong or stupid thing, things work out almost right for her main characters - and almost right, Evans seems to suggest to me, might be the best we can hope. 

OLD BAGGAGE is set in London in 1928. Women have now been granted the right to vote, so what lies ahead for the Suffragettes, now older and stouter, who were shaped by their experiences of direct action? 

 

Miss Mattie Simpkins will be gathering with her fellow radicals, for Emmeline Pankhurst’s funeral. As she walks, pre-occupied, on Hampstead Heath, she is robbed by a young man. Still adept in lobbing objects at full strength, the furious Mattie throws a bottle after him, striking an ordinary young woman, Ida, in the face.

 

Partly in retribution, autocratic Mattie sets up The Amazons, a club for young, disadvantaged women, providing opportunities for strong, healthy, physical outdoor activities such as “Javelin throwing. Archery. Use of the slingshot.” along with lectures on feminism. 

 

Her intention is to encourage female confidence and independence, but despite her years of campaigning, Mattie - from a more privileged background - does not really understand the lives of ordinary girls and women:

Now she could see Ida toiling up the hill from Parliament Fields, head down . . “Well done,” she called as Ida came within earshot. “Couldn’t you persuade anyone to come with you?”

“I tried my friend Vesta, but she says today’s her only lie-in,” said Ida, trying to keep the resentment out of her voice, seeing as exactly the same thing applied to herself. 

 

Meanwhile, Mattie’s best friend, Florrie Lea - nicknamed “The Flea”- offers more practical solutions and better employment to Ida. Unlike Mattie, with her wealthy background, The Flea knows what it is to be poor.

While Mattie’s militant energies help the group to thrive, its status is soon threatened by a more glamorous and miltaristic organisation: the well-funded “Empire Youth League” led by an old Suffragette acquaintance who has now become a fervent supporter of Mussolini. 

 

Mattie also threatens the group herself, unwisely favouring a new recruit - the flighty, sly Inez - above her more ordinary Amazons because Inez is the daughter of a fellow Suffragette and a young man that Mattie once admired.

 

In her idealised pursuit, Mattie breaks her promise to Ida, the original protege and thoughtlessly offends “The Flea”, through whose quietly determined visits we glimpse life in the poorest districts of thirties London.

OLD BAGGAGE, set within the rising shadows of the Thirties, is a study of the gaps between idealism, intentions, practicality and human frailty. 

 

CROOKED HEART

Although this title would come second in a historical time sequence, in terms of publishing, this is the earlier novel of the pair.

 

The year is 1939, with Hitler actively threatening, London’s school-children are to be evacuated for a second time. Meanwhile, out in St Alban’s, Hertfordshire, Lissa Evans introduces us to Veera.  

"Vee", thirty-six, lives with a domineering, ailing mother and Donald her selfish nineteen-year-old son.

Constantly in debt, Vee struggles over rent and bills, surviving by whatever means possible. Unexpectedly offered an unwanted evacuee with a limp, she sees the boy as an extra way of extracting money and sympathy and takes him in. Besides, with Donald working as a watchman, the boy can sleep in her son’s empty bed..

Ten year old Noel, however, is not a simple idiot. He has been trained by his godmother Miss Mattie Simpkins to be observant, self-reliant and suspicious of authority. 

 

Noel surprises Vee, not only with the ammonite he lugs around in his suitcase, but by his responses. Slowly, ill-treated Vee and Noel become a team, even if this involves some petty crime on the way.

Gradually, after her harsh introduction, the reader starts to understand Vee’s behaviour and situation, and to admire young Noel’s single-minded stoicism and determination as well as recognise some of the outcomes of wartime officialdom.

OLD BAGGAGE and CROOKED HEART will be followed soon by VICTORY, the third in Lissa Evans trilogy.

THEIR FINEST (HOUR AND A HALF)

When this earlier novel was bought and made into a film, the original title was adapted in response to other films out in production at that time, particularly a film about Churchill, called THEIR FINEST HOUR.

Both book and film were released around the anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, and about the same time as the spectacular film DUNKIRK hit the screens. In many ways, this change almost echoes the storyline of this novel, which is about the making of a “Dunkirk” wartime propaganda film, the lives of some of those involved, and the wider issue of what happens to facts when they meet the needs of fiction.

The book includes passages of typed script, and moves between the writing team’s cramped studio, location filming off the Norfolk coast and the film studio. Although there are many characters in the book, the story mainly centres on three main roles.

The first is Catrin Cole, a young Welsh woman who has run to London with her lover, a war-artist, Initially a copy-writer, she becomes a script writer, creating the “slop”: the pieces of film script that appeal to women. 

Searching real-life news for inspiring national stories, she discovers a pair of twin sisters who took a boat across to Dunkirk, but finds, face to face, that their adventure was less heroic but in some ways as bold as the newspaper reports. Returning to work, she witnesses the “film twins” life and adventure altered in almost every respect to suit industry and national needs for a “good story.”

Another is Edith Beadmore, a middle-aged dressmaker, bombed out of her home and her job at Tussaud’s Museum, now living and working uncomfortably with family, but fortunately close to the film location. Unfortunately, ordinary Edith and her story has not leapt from page to screen.

Thirdly, we see the events through the eyes of Ambrose Hilliard, a vain, selfish, elderly actor, who cannot accept he is no longer leading-role material and is forced into the demeaning role of the twin’s drunken uncle. Once again, the needs of the film re-shaped Ambrose, who was played by the much-loved actor Bill Nighy.

 

This new Ambrose had a far larger role, more interaction with Catrin, and was more kindly drawn, script-wise, than Lissa Evan’s original novel - all of which rather fits the theme of the book, the power of the media and the need for effective images. 

 

These books have been just the right reading for me at this time. What is harder to convey in this History Girls post, is Lissa Evan’s clever sideways look at the society and events of these past times, and, implicitly, at our own too.

For example, at one point, Lissa Evans describes Ambrose, forced to take ownership of his agent's dog, struggling down a wartime street in London.

“It dawned on Ambrose that he’d been mistaken, not only for a dog-lover but for a bombed-out vagrant toting his remaining possessions in search of a nice cup of tea and a chit for a public bath.

He jerked the lead, and Cerberus trotted after him, past the rest centre, where a photographer was loitering – waiting, presumably, for a subject of the requisite crass symbolism. The yellow press seemed permanently plastered with pictures of dusty but defiant grandmothers, and bandaged urchins signing “V” for victory. England, apparently, could “take it”, though whether she could also dish it out was a moot point. . . 

 

It was all an utter disaster, and yet if one were to read certain of the newspapers, one might believe that an invasion could be forestalled by a few pallid bank clerks armed with cobblestones, and that a nation could be fed on allotment carrots and the odd can of beans lobbed over by Roosevelt.”

Penny Dolan