Did Fanny Vote? by Sheena Wilkinson

In just over a week, on 14th December 2018 it will be the centenary of the election where some women in Britain and Ireland had the right to vote for the first time in a parliamentary election.

Last week in Dublin I saw commemorative posters of Constance Markievicz on almost every lamp-post. Markievicz was of course the first woman elected to Westminter, though as an Irish Republican she never took up that seat, recognising Dáil Eireann instead. I knew then that I’d have to find something fresh to say about the 1918 election for my upcoming History Girls post.

commemorative posters in Dublin 

Fresh? How? I’ve been living with this date for over two years, since I started writing my 2017 novel Star By Star which focuses on that election. I’ve done suffragist-themed events from Aberdeeen down to London, and from Derry to Kerry. I've written lots of relevant articles and blogs. I’m pretty much electioned-out, especially as during that time I also found myself campaigning in real life during both NI Assembly and UK Westminster elections. 

So today I’m thinking not of Constance Markiewicz, not even of Winifred Carney, who stood for Sinn Féin in an east Belfast seat she hadn’t a hope of winning, but of an obscure woman in a terraced parlour house in that same East Belfast electoral ward.

Fanny Duff 

Fanny Duff was my great-grandmother. I know very little about her. She was, according to my grandmother, her daughter Frances, a gentle and quiet woman. She brought up a large family. She saw her sons off to good skilled shipyard jobs like their father, and one to emigration. Two daughters went into shirt factories, and one died in her teens. Fanny was widowed young, and took in sewing to help provide for the family. She died suddenly in 1936, the day after my grandmother's 28th birthday. 

Was Fanny eligible to vote in 1918? I assume so. She was over 30, and married to the householder of a respectable three-story terrace house whose rateable value would have been over the necessary £5 threshold. 

She lived in an area that was then more mixed than it is today, but even so it was a safe unionist seat and Fanny’s family were unionists. The newspapers -- it is most likely the Duffs read The News Letter -- were full of exhortations to vote and instructions on how to do so. I love the idea of her defying family tradition – and possibly her husband, James, and casting her vote for a woman, feminism trumping tribal identity, but that was even less likely in 1918 Belfast than it would be today, and there is no evidence that Fanny was a feminist. 

Maybe she didn’t vote at all. In December 1918 the flu pandemic was still raging. It affected both the election campaigns and turnout. Fanny may have been nursing one of her children, or have been ill herself. Or she may have been well but reluctant to queue up at a crowded polling station and risk infection. 

I talked to my own granny a lot about what we both called the olden days. But I never asked about that election day when she was ten years old. I never asked if her mother went to vote or if politics was talked about in the house. There can be nobody alive now who remembers Fanny Duff, who died in 1936. She’s just one more working class woman who may, or may not, have played a part in that historic election. But she was my great-grandmother, and next Friday, on the 14^thDecember, I choose to think of her striding proudly down Beechfield Street, perhaps on her husband’s arm, perhaps alone or with a group of neighbours, ready to cast her vote for the first time. 

WORDS - AS WELL AS DEEDS by Sheena Wilkinson

In December 1913, the Irish suffragette, Republican and socialist activist, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, wrote to Lady Ishbel Aberdeen, the writer and philanthropist, thanking her for the ‘great act of kindness’ in providing Christmas dinners to prisoners and suggesting that she might do so again.  Having recently been imprisoned herself, Mrs Sheehy Skeffington appreciated ‘what such a treat must have meant…something that drew Christmas Day nearer…’

Hanna Sheehy Skeffington 

One of the joys of Christmas is receiving hand-written cards. I have two old friends with whom I exchange ‘real’ handwritten letters during the year, never having grown out of the habit established in student days, but by and large, the art of the handwritten letter is dying out. That this is a matter of regret to many was suggested by the recent BBC Radio 4 programme Pen Pals, in which people wrote to strangers abroad. The resulting letters were appreciated for their tangible nature, the pleasure of something personal arriving by post, as much as for their content.

Reading Hanna Sheehy Skeffington’s letter to Lady Aberdeen, I wondered what it might have looked like as a physical entity, whether it was typed or handwritten, how long it took it to travel from Dublin to Scotland, how Lady Aberdeen received it. It is a letter of request, but also of thanks.

Sometimes it’s too late to thank people. I’m reviewing the collected political writings of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington for the Dublin Review of Books, and so many times, putting a post-it note beside some little fact or witticism, I’ve thought how grateful I am to radical, brave women like her, and what a pity she’ll never know. It’s the same gratitude which inspired my novel Star By Star which focuses on the 1918 General Election when women in Britain and Ireland voted for the first time.

Though one of the suffragette’s slogans was Deeds Not Words, words are important. This year, I’m going to take time every month to thank a woman who deserves it. I’ll remember women from history, women today, and even fictional women – who doesn’t feel gratitude to Jo March? My lovely publishers Little Island have produced these beautiful postcards, with space on the back for a message ‘for a woman who inspires you’.  On the 14^th of each month they’ll print my postcard on their blog at www.littleisland.ie. The last postcard will be printed on 14^th December 2018, the centenary of the 1918 election. 

Thanks to Little Island for the wonderful postcards 

You can join in! The postcards will be distributed to selected bookshops, and I’ll be giving them out at school visits. Or if you ask the good people at Little Island very nicely, they might send you one… as long as you promise to send it on with a message, and take a picture to share with us. Or of course, you can use your own postcard. All you need are the words, and a woman to thank. 

There’ll be more information about the project on the Little Island blog on 14^th January, so do call in and have a look. I can't wait to share my twelve thank you messages, and I can't wait to read yours.