The Hidden Herstories of The Scottish Suffragettes

In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, women suffragettes fought for change and played a leading part in the battle for equal rights. The movement was most prominent in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, but there were smaller groups of suffragettes in other parts of Scotland too. 

In this blog post we will tell some of their fascinating stories, celebrate their lives and outline some of their many achievements.

Scottish Suffragettes marching for the female Vote

Scotland's first Suffrage groups appeared in the late 1860s. Suffragists demanded the vote as a basic human right and as a means of improving women's lives in the workplace, at home, in courts of law and in education. They demanded justice and equality for all women, and the Suffragists used peaceful, legal tactics to try to win support. They sent petitions to Parliament, wrote letters to MPs, distributed leaflets and organised meetings. They wanted to win equal rights through discussion and debate.

Comparatively little work has been done on the organisation and achievements of the non-militant Scottish suffrage societies, particularly the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies of which the Glasgow Association was a branch. The Glasgow and West of Scotland Society for Women's Suffrage was a non-militant suffrage society. Their work continued after that of the many militant societies who ceased campaigning in 1918. With close ties to the Scottish Council for Women's Trades, these women were of a certain social class. They attracted a number of Liberal Lord Provosts and Town Councillors, as well as MPs. The Society's emphasis was upon fundraising, this usually involved flag days and whist drives.

When the Society was wound-down in 1933, it was due to a lack of funds and former members would meet at the Queen Margaret Union in the University until the 1960s. Non-militant 'suffragist' groups were also found countrywide in Scotland - from Ayrshire to Orkney - and involved thousands of Scottish women of all ages and from all backgrounds. Most of these women fought not only for the right to vote, but also for the right to higher education, to separate legal existence from their husbands, and to be actively involved in local government.

However, thirty years of peaceful campaigning produced only minor change, and so-in the 1900s-- more militant campaigners began to emerge. Suffragettes and Suffragists wanted the same things, but Suffragettes were prepared to break the law and go to prison for their beliefs. Scottish Suffragettes poured acid into pillar boxes, chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and slashed portraits of the King. They also set fire to important buildings such as Leuchars Railway Station, and the Whitekirk in East Lothian. All these acts were linked to areas where men were allowed and women were not.

Catherine Taylor

At Ayr Racecourse, suffragette Catherine Taylor, a Glaswegian cinema cashier, caused £2000 worth of damage to the Western Meeting Club stand when it was set on fire. Although many suffragists condemned the use of  violence in their struggle, others saw it as necessary. On the night of 21 May 1913 a suffragette bombed the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh’s Blackford Hill. Masonry was smashed; windows were shattered though none of the astronomical equipment was damaged. Blood was found at the scene, but no-one was charged for the attack, Ralph Sampson, Astronomer Royal labelled it an “outrage”. A small fragment from the explosion is now kept as an artefact by the Royal Observatory.

Helen Crawfurd Anderson

Helen Crawfurd Anderson was a Scottish suffragette who was imprisoned in both Holloway Prison and Duke Street Prison during a prolific career of window-breaking.  Born Helen Jack, at 175 Cumberland Street in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Helen's parents moved to Ipswich while she was young, before moving back to Glasgow when she was a teenager.

Her father, a Master Baker was a Catholic but converted to the Church of Scotland and was a conservative trade unionist. Initially religious herself, she married widower Alexander Montgomerie Crawfurd, a Church of Scotland Minister, at 9 Park Avenue in Stirling on 19 September 1898.

Crawfurd first became active in the women's suffrage movement around 1900, then in 1910 during a meeting in Rutherglen, she switched her support to the more radical Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) of the Pankhursts. In 1912, she smashed the windows of Jack Pease, Minister for Education, and received a one-month prison sentence. In March 1914, Helen was arrested in Glasgow when Emmeline Pankhurst was speaking, received another month in prison, and went on an eight-day hunger strike. Following one more arrest, she left the WSPU in protest at its support of World War I and joined the Independent Labour Party.

During the war, Crawfurd was involved with the Red Clydeside movement, including the Glasgow rent strikes in 1915 when she led the South Govan Women's Housing Association to resist rent increases and prevent evictions, and became secretary of the Women's Peace Crusade. She organized on 23 July 1916, the first demonstration of the Women's Peace Crusade, attended by 5,000 people.

In 1918 she was also elected as Vice-chair of the Scottish division of the ILP. Shortly afterwards, she was a founder member of the ILP's left-wing faction which campaigned for it to affiliate to the Communist International. When this policy was defeated, she joined the new CPGB, within which she served on the Central Committee, and was involved with various journalistic projects. She also became secretary of Workers' International Relief.

Crawfurd ran in 1921 as the first Communist Party Candidate in the Govan Ward, she stood for the CPGB in Bothwell at the 1929 general election and Aberdeen North in 1931, but did not come close to election, During the 1930s, Crawfurd was prominent in the Friends of the Soviet Union. In 1944 Helen remarried, to widower George Anderson, Blacksmith and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. She retired during World War II but was elected as Dunoon's first woman Town Councillor, shortly after the war, retiring in 1947 due to poor health. Helen died at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.

Suffragette Poster

Janie Allan was a leading Scottish activist in the militant suffragette movement of the early 20th century. She barricaded herself into her cell at Holloway and allegedly stood against several police officers with crowbars in a stand against the practice of force-feeding within that prison. Janie Allan was born into the wealthy Glasgow family that owned the Allan Line shipping company. In common with many of her family, Allan held socialist political views. She was an early member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and she edited a column covering women's suffrage issues for the socialist newspaper Forward.

In May 1902, Allan was instrumental in re-founding the Glasgow branch of the National Society for Women's Suffrage as the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage (GWSAWS), and was a member of its executive committee. She was a significant financial supporter, and as one of the GWSAWS vice-presidents she took up a position on the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) committee in 1903, in order to represent the association following their affiliation.

In 1906, Allan was among the audience when Teresa Billington (who had been arrested and jailed following a protest in London earlier in the year) toured Scotland, although the GWSAWS themselves refused to invite Billington to speak. In December of that year she attended a lecture by Helen Fraser as she expounded the militant principles of the newly formed Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1907, concerned that the non-violent GWSAWS was not being as effective as it should have been, Allan resigned from their executive committee and joined the WSPU, although she maintained her subscription to GWSAWS until 1909.

Over the following few years, Allan provided at least £350 (approximately equivalent to £32,800 in 2016) in funds to the WSPU, as well as donating some funding for the Women's Freedom League (WFL) following their split from the WSPU. In addition to her monetary contributions, Allan was an active participant in the WSPU's militant activism.

In early March 1912, along with over 100 others Allan participated in a window smashing protest in central London. The women secreted large stones and hammers under their skirts and, once in position, in a coordinated action they destroyed shop windows in Regent Street, Oxford Street, and the vicinity. Following this, the women patiently and calmly waited for the police to arrive. While police attention was diverted elsewhere by the protests, Emmeline Pankhurst and three others managed to get close enough to 10 Downing Street to throw stones through four of its windows. In the aftermath, along with many of her associates Allan was arrested, tried, and sentenced to four months in Holloway Prison.

Her imprisonment was widely publicized, and around 10,500 people from Glasgow signed a petition to protest for her freedom. While in prison Allan used her privileged position to improve the levels of comfort for her inmates, including distributing confectionery and fruit to fellow suffragettes. Two months into her sentence, she barricaded the door to her cell, and it reportedly took three men with tools around three quarters of an hour to break into the room. Following this action, Allan started a hunger strike. Allan was force-fed for a full week. Forcible feeding was an ordeal described by Pankhurst as a "horrible outrage", and has been likened by women's history scholar June Purvis to "a form of rape."

In a later letter to a friend, Allan herself stated that:

 "I did not resist at all ... yet the effect on my health was most disastrous. I am a very strong woman and absolutely sound in heart and lungs, but it was not till 5 months after, that I was able to take any exercise or begin to feel in my usual health again – the nerves of my heart were affected and I was fit for nothing In the way of exertion ... There can be no doubt that it simply ruins the health."

Allan was a key part of the campaign against force-feeding, and as well as publicly protesting met with the Medical Prison Commissioner, Dr. James Devon, to advocate against the use of a method that she regarded as likely to "injure permanently a woman's health." In July the same year Allan again intervened at the highest level, in support of Fanny Parker following her imprisonment for attempted arson on Burns Cottage. Fanny's story is told futher on in this article.

Allan was back in court in 1913. In addition to direct suffragette action, she was involved with and supported the Women's Tax Resistance League, which argued that as women could not vote and therefore were not represented in parliament, they should not be subject to taxation. These beliefs led to her refusal to pay the super tax due on her income and investments in March 1913. She lost her case when it came to trial.

By early 1914, Allan had become one of the principal organizers for the WSPU in western Scotland, based in Glasgow. On 9 March 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst, the WSPU national leader, was to address a public meeting at St. Andrew's Halls in the city, and Allan was in attendance. Pankhurst had recently been released from prison under the terms of the new, so-called 'Cat and Mouse Act', introduced by the government to counter the suffragette hunger strikes. In accordance with the Act, once Pankhurst was returned to full health she was due to be rearrested and re-incarcerated.

Glasgow police decided to use the occasion of the public address to effect the arrest. However, the WSPU activists anticipated their action and increased security coverage for their leader, including enforcing strict secrecy surrounding her movements and erecting a concealed barbed wire barrier across the front of the stage. A short time into Pankhurst's speech, around 160 police officers stormed the hall and began to move toward the stage. They were met by a barrage of thrown chairs and plant pots, and soon fights broke out between the police and members of the audience. During the commotion one of the women present drew a revolver and fired several blank cartridges toward the ceiling. The police attempted to apprehend her, but she managed to slip their grasp and escape. Although not positively identified at the time, many since have stated that Janie Allan was the woman with the revolver.

At the outbreak of World War I later in 1914, the WSPU suspended their suffragette activities and threw their weight behind a concerted national effort in the conflict. Allan herself donated a large sum of money that enabled the founding of the Women's Hospital Corps.

Marion Wallace Dunlop

Marion Wallace Dunlop, from Inverness, was the first and one of the most well-known suffragettes to go on hunger strike. She had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and had illustrated books such as Fairies, Elves, and Flower Babies and The Magic Fruit Garden. Marion became an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union and was first arrested in 1908 for "obstruction" and again later in the same year for leading a group of women in a march. In 1909 she was arrested a third time, this time for stenciling a passage from the Bill of Rights on a wall of the House of Commons which read: 

"It is the right of the subject to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal."

Choosing to go on hunger strike was her own idea. Behind bars, she sent a letter to the then Home Secretary, Mr. Gladstone, demanding an application to be placed in the first division as befitted one charged with a political offence. She announced that she would eat no food until this right was conceded.

She endured 91 hours of fasting before she was released on the grounds of ill health. Hunger striking went on to become official WSPU policy and as a result, in September 1909, the British Government introduced force feeding in prisons.

Dorothea Chalmers Smith court documents

Dorothea Chalmers Smith was a pioneer doctor and militant suffragette. She was among the first cohort of medical students at Queen Margaret Medical School. she graduated in 1894 worked at the Glasgow Samaritan Hospital for Women. In 1899 she married William Chalmers Smith a minister.

Dorothea and her sister Jane developed an active interest in the suffrage campaign. They joined the WSPU in 1912. On 24 July 1913 Dorothea and Ethel Moorhead were caught with fire lighting equipment in the Park Gardens mansion house. They were arrested and went on hunger strike. They were released after five days under cat and mouse act and failed to return. Dorothea then was found at Tighnabruich.

At their subsequent trial the women said that they would defend themselves. They were found guilty and got eight months imprisonment. Again they went on hunger strike and were released after five days and failed to return again. Dorothea's house was put under 24 hour watch but she escaped and was never apprehended again.  All of this was too much for the church who demanded that William Chalmers Smith either control or divorce his wife. He was not supportive so Dorothea left him, but she was forbidden to see her sons. She resumed her career as a doctor and was highly regarded in the community.

Ethel Moorhead

Ethel Moorhead was considered the finest Dundee woman artist of her time and ‘most turbulent’ of Dundee’s suffragettes. She was the daughter of an army surgeon, and had been brought up in various parts of the Empire. Ethel studied art in Paris under Mucha and at Whistler’s studio and exhibited in prestigious galleries. Her first paintings exhibited at Dundee Graphic Arts Society in 1901 were described as ‘gems of the collection’. A couple of years later, when her parents and brothers arrived in Dundee, she went home to act as housekeeper, but she kept her portrait business going at her studio in King Street Arcade.

In 1911 Ethel joined the suffragettes and became their most boisterous member, smashing windows, attempting arson and refusing to bow to male authority. According to Prof Sarah Pedersen, Ethel Moorhead was one of the most militant Scottish suffragettes: 

"If there was damage being done to property you could probably guarantee Ethel Moorhead was somewhere there. Every time she was arrested she gave a false name so it is difficult to know everything she was involved in." 

Ethel became a symbol of the movement in Scotland, frequently in jail and one of the first women in the country to be force-fed through a tube. 

"They had been force-feeding in English prisons since 1909 but they refused to do it in Scottish prisons," Prof Pedersen says "I think they just finally lost their patience."

Prof Pedersen says the militant attacks by the suffragettes made some people turn against the cause.

"In the initial period in the early 20th Century you get a lot of detail in newspapers about why women were saying they should have the vote and a lot of people were quite sympathetic. As it becomes much more militant that's when you get people not agreeing so much. They would say 'how can we trust these shrieking harridans that are destroying public property?'

Some small bombs, some made from tin cans and pipes, were found when the Kibble Palace in the  Glasgow Botanic Gardens was targeted in January 1914. The Glasgow suffragette movement also allegedly attempted to blow up the aqueduct serving the city's clean water supply from Loch Katrine. Two powerful bombs had been placed next to one of the structural supports leading from the Loch, about 42 miles outside the city, to the reservoir at Milngavie. At the time this reservoir supplied over 50 per cent of Glasgow's water. The explosions never took place. One failed to ignite and the second was spotted by a watchman near to an abandoned handbag, two trowels and a sign, which stated that the destruction of the aqueduct was in protest against Emmeline Pankhurst's imprisonment.

Flora Drummond in Uniform

A significant point for the suffragette movement in Scotland was the large rally in Edinburgh during 1909. It was led by the formidable Flora Drummond, riding on horseback. She was a key figure in the Scottish movement, who although she had been born in Manchester, had grown up on the Isle of Arran.

Standing at 5 feet 1 inches, her personality was bigger than she was. She had wanted to become a postmistress, but was refused as she was one inch shorter than the height requirements. She took a business training course in Glasgow and also attended lectures on economics at the University of Glasgow and went on to gain a Society of Arts qualification in shorthand and typing. Despite this, she still carried resentment about the discrimination which meant that women, because of their smaller average height, were prevented from taking on certain jobs.

Flora Drummond and others under arrest

 When the suffragettes came calling, she answered loudly. She was quickly nicknamed The General for her habit of leading women's rights marches wearing a military style uniform with an officer's cap and epaulettes, whilst riding on a large horse. Flora was known for her daring and headline-grabbing stunts, including slipping inside the open door of 10 Downing Street in 1906.

She was pregnant when she was imprisoned for her campaign stunts but later released on health grounds.Several hunger strikes and eventual force feeding took a physical toll before she returned to Arran to recover and later concentrated her efforts on public speaking. Flora remained prominent within the movement and in 1928 she was a pall-bearer at the funeral of Emmeline Pankhurst. 

Bessie Watson was the young girl piper who joined the suffragette movement at its peak and attracted the attention of some of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. She was also one of the youngest suffragettes to protest. 

Bessie was born on 13 July 1900 to parents Agnes Newton and Horatio Watson, who raised her in their small house on the Vennel in the heart of Edinburgh.  Horatio Watson was a bookbinder at George Waterstons, a printing firm established in 1752. As a young girl, Bessie was described as small, frail and “bandy-legged”, but of good nature. Because of her bow legs, Bessie was sent to Highland dancing, when she was 4 and it was at these classes that she first fell in love with the sound of the bagpipes.

When she turned seven, Bessie’s Aunt Margaret, who worked as a furniture varnisher, contracted tuberculosis. This was an incident which would change the youngster’s life forever. Margaret lived with the family, and Bessie’s parents, worried that she might fall ill to the contagious disease, encouraged her to take up playing the bagpipes in a bid to strengthen her weak lungs. Her first set of pipes was specially-produced according to her diminutive stature.

The half-sized set of pipes was purchased from Robertson’s pipe makers at 58 Grove Street. Edinburgh:

“It wasn’t easy to fit me out with a set of bagpipes because I was so small. I hurried home from school and carried them, in a brown paper parcel down to my (music) teacher”, 

As one of the very few female bagpipe players in the world at that time - not to mention one of the youngest - Bessie took to her new instrument with great enthusiasm. Within just a couple of years she would be showcasing her talents up and down the country to thousands of spectators.

At the height of the UK suffragette movement, Bessie was playing at major demonstrations and parades for the Women’s Social and Political Union, including the famous procession through Edinburgh on 9 October 1909. On that day a large crowd watched as hundreds of banner-laden ladies, wearing the suffragist colours of purple, white and green, marched down Princes Street before congregating at Waverley Market for a rally led by Emmeline Pankhurst.

During the parade Bessie, with her distinctive ‘Votes For Women’ sash, played at intervals as she rode on a float beside a lady dressed as Isabella MacDuff, the Countess of Buchan - a 14th century heroine from Scotland’s Wars of Independence. How this all came about was explained by Bessie herself a number of years later: 

“We were walking down Queensferry Street and we stopped at a shop window. It was the window of the WSPU. When we came out my mother and I were members of the WSPU and I was booked to play the pipes in the Historical Pageant in October. “They asked me because there I was, a girl doing something which they always associated with men.”

 

Bessie’s parents had always been keen for their talented daughter to show off her abilities and make her mark on history. They were also ardent supporters of the women’s suffrage movement, no surprise perhaps when you consider that the Salvation Army’s women’s shelter was on their doorstep. Bessie would wear the colours of the suffrage movement in ribbons on her pigtails at school, arousing her teachers’ disapproval.  The official colours were purple for the suffragettes’ royal blood, white for purity and green for hope. Her class mates on the other hand considered her daft, not only because of the ribbons, but also because of being a female piper.

On 17 June 1911 Bessie was invited to lead the Scottish contingent with other female pipers at the Great Pageant in London:

 “(It was) just five days before the Coronation of King George V. The procession was five miles long”, 

Just a few weeks later, for George’s state visit to Edinburgh, Bessie, leading the 2nd Edinburgh Company of the Girl Guides, received recognition from the king himself as she raised her salute. Having secured regal acknowledgement in time for her 11th birthday, Scotland’s youngest female piper continued in her quest to support women’s rights, accompanying inmates bound for Holloway Prison to Waverley Station and playing the pipes as their trains departed. Bessie’s rousing skirl also made a regular appearance outside the walls of Edinburgh’s infamous Calton Jail in an attempt to raise the spirits of the suffragettes locked up inside. And during the Great War, while the suffragette movement was put on hold, a teenage Bessie, dressed in full Highland garb, joined ranks with the Scots Guards to aid the call to arms for volunteers. 

For the part she played in Edinburgh’s historic women’s rights pageant of 1909, young Bessie received a special gift from one very prominent individual: 

“A few weeks later Christabel Pankhurst (daughter of Emmeline) came to Edinburgh to address a meeting at the King’s Theatre and I was invited to attend. “During the evening I was presented with a brooch representing Queen Boadicea (Boudica) in her chariot, as a token of gratitude for my help in the pageant.”

The huge significance of this symbolic gesture was not lost on the 9-year-old girl piper. In 1979, Bessie passed the brooch on to the newly-elected Margaret Thatcher. As a young woman, Bessie had fought for the right to vote, a fight which took until 1928 to be resolved. Now, here she was, more than fifty years later, passing on this poignant token bearing the image of a heroic Iron Age queen to Great Britain’s Iron Lady and first ever female prime minister. 

Later life In 1926 Bessie moved with her parents to a new house on Clark Road, Trinity where she would remain for the rest of her days. Following her marriage to electrical contractor John Somerville at the end of the Second World War, Bessie devoted her life to teaching music and foreign languages. Former neighbours recall that, even into her late eighties, Bessie continued to play her bagpipes at 11am every morning. It was something she had always done. 

Bessie died in 1992, two and a half weeks short of her 92nd birthday. Over the course of her long life she had experienced almost a century of social progression and upheaval, and had played her part in changing the world for the better. Bessie’s exploits are as relevant today as they were when King George V appeared on our coins - yet now her name has been mostly forgotten. Some say if there’s anyone who deserves a memorial in Edinburgh, it’s Bessie Watson.

Caroline Phillips

The Aberdeen Art Gallery holds a collection of correspondence and papers that belonged to a woman journalist called Caroline Phillips. Most of the correspondence dates from between 1907 and 1909 and deals with the organisation of the Aberdeen branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) where Caroline Phillips was honorary secretary. Phillips was not just a suffragette; she was also a journalist at the Aberdeen Daily Journal. Journalism was beginning to open to women as a career in the early days of the 20th century, but she would still have stood out in the press room as one of only a handful of women.

In Aberdeen, Phillips organized militant action such as attacking the musical hall when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Herbert Asquith was speaking in December 1907. Asquith, the MP for East Fife, who would become prime minister the following year, was a vehement anti-suffragist.The Aberdeen WSPU branch appeared to be riding high, with flattering attention from key members of the national leadership; and well-attended and controversial events. However, for Caroline Phillips, this was probably the high-point of her association with the WSPU.

The first indication of the trouble to come was a letter from Helen Fraser in August 1908 explaining that she had been removed from her role as organiser of the Scottish WSPU branches after she had criticised the growing militancy of the Pankhursts. Lamenting that she could no longer work together with Phillips, Fraser described how ill she had been after her dismissal and how she had now agreed to work for the constitutional NUWSS and had been ‘caravanning for the cause’ during the summer months of 1908.

Phillips seems to have fallen out of favour with the WSPU leadership by 1909, and her various suggestions of meetings and other events were ignored or dismissed. Instead, Christabel Pankhurst wrote complaining that not enough Aberdeen suffragettes were travelling down to London to take part in militant operations such as the smashing of glass windows.

Nonetheless it seems to have been a total shock when Phillips received a telegram on 5 January 1909 that stated that Sylvia Pankhurst was being sent to Aberdeen to take charge of the WSPU branch.

Caroline Phillips’ association with the suffragettes ended soon after Sylvia Pankhurst arrived in Aberdeen. A letter from Sylvia Pankhurst to all branch members made it clear that the local branch, with its claims to independence, was to be closed and all members would now be directly enrolled in the national organisation, and organised from headquarters. A new office was to be set up and a new organiser appointed. While there was a final sentence applauding the ‘excellent work already done by the local workers’ Caroline Phillips was not mentioned by name.

Janet "Jenny" McCallum

Scottish suffragette Janet "Jenny" McCallum was put in prison after storming the Houses of Parliament in 1908 Jenny, the eldest of the 13 children, was born in Dunfermline in 1881. She worked in a linen weaving factory as well as being active in organising the women's suffrage movement in West Fife.

By 1908, she had broken away from the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the militant suffragette movement run by the famous Pankhurst women, and had joined Anne Munro in the Women's Freedom League.Jenny abandoned her job in Dunfermline to take up the fight in London. During the demonstration at parliament some of the women got into the corridors of the Commons while others "created a scene" in the Ladies' Gallery by shouting "votes for women" slogans. Jenny was arrested outside parliament where a newspaper report says "four very athletic suffragettes clambered on a statue".

The women were taken away by police and fined £5 by the court, which they refused to pay, so they spent a month in Holloway prison. Jenny McCallum was unusual among suffragettes in that she came from a working-class family. Professor Sarah Pedersen, of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, says most Scottish Suffragettes were middle class women. 

 "The suffragettes were asking for the vote as men had it. Only 60% of men had the vote and very few of those were working class. The idea was that once the middle class women had the vote they would use it to ameliorate the suffering of their working class sisters."

Prof Pedersen says the activities of the Scottish suffragettes have been largley overshadowed by what went on in London. "Initially most of the militant action took places in England so we get Scottish suffragettes travelling down to England to become involved.”

The Representation of the People Act 1918, which came into law 100 years ago, gave women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications the vote for the first time. Full electoral equality for women would take another decade, by which time Jenny McCallum had emigrated to South Africa. 

Fanny Parker AKA Janet Arthur

Fanny Parker was the niece of Lord Kitchener, She had been the organiser of the Women's Social and Political Union in Dundee until 1913 and had been imprisoned on several occasions for causing damage to property. Using the alias, Janet Arthur, she appeared in court in Ayr on 9 July 1914 accused of trying to blow up Burns' Cottage in Alloway. She refused to enter the dock and would not recognise the court's jurisdiction. She shouted quotations from Scots Wha Hae and stated:

 'You Scotsmen used to be proud of Bruce. Now you have taken to torturing women.'

Fanny was committed to Ayr Prison pending further inquiry. While in prison, she went on hunger strike and refused food or drink for four days before she was transferred to Perth Prison to be force fed. She was examined by the prison doctor and judged fit for feeding which took place on seven occasions over the following four days. News of her condition reached her influential family, who negotiated her release from prison on 16 July to a nursing home where she was medically examined and found to be ‘in a state of pronounced collapse’. Her case never came to trial as war was declared the following month and all suffragette prisoners were granted amnesty. Fanny wrote an account of her personal experience in the suffragette newspaper Votes for Women.

Fanny's account of force feeding

Six wardresses held me down and one of them reached forward and slapped my face with, I suppose, the approval of the doctor, as he said nothing. The assistant doctor held my head in a most painful grip. 

Dr Watson then tried to force my teeth open with the steel gag, and said that if he broke a tooth it would be my own fault. As he was unable to open my mouth he called for the nasal tube. He tried to force it up one side which is defective, but with all his strength could not force a passage. He succeeded in forcing it down the other nostril, and left it hanging there while he went out of the room. As it was extremely painful, I asked the assistant to remove it, but he only laughed. 

Dr Watson returned and fed me. The wardresses continued holding me down so that I couldn't move, and the assistant doctor continued to hold his hands over my mouth and whenever the food came up tightened his grip to prevent me letting it out.

Maude Edwards

Maude Edwards was sent to Perth Prison in July 1914 to serve a three month sentence for slashing a portrait of King George V which was hanging in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. She acted in response to Mrs Pankhurst’s failed attempt to lead a deputation to the King at the gates of Buckingham Palace.

She went on hunger strike expecting a medical certificate, confirming she had a weak heart, would exempt her from force feeding. Her case demonstrates the dilemma faced by the authorities while under the scrutiny of the public and the press, and their handling of the situation.

STORMY COURT SCENES EXTRAORDINARY: PROCEEDINGS AT EDINBURGH TRIAL - SUFFRAGETTE SENTENCED

Extraordinary scenes were witnessed in Edinburgh Sheriff Court to-day, when Maude Edwards, the suffragette who was charged with slashing the King's picture in the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, came up for trial. Sheriff-Principal Maconochie was on the Bench.

The accused immediately on being put into the dock commenced a running fire of commentary on the Court procedure, which she kept up during the course of the trial, which lasted for twenty minutes.

Over a score of police were on duty in various parts of the Court, while a similar number of plain clothes constables were also prepared for eventualities.

On entering the Court loud applause from a large number of suffragettes, who occupied the Court, greeted the accused, while cheers were raised on her name being called.

When asked to answer the indictment, which charged her with having, on 23rd May, in the Royal Scottish Academy, wilfully and maliciously struck and cut with a hatchet and damaged a portrait of his Majesty King George V, by John Lavery, RSA, the accused shouted to his Lordship, "I will not be tried. I am not going to listen to you or anyone whatever."

The Sheriff - I take this as a plea of not guilty. (Applause in Court.)

Maude's letter from prison

On July 10th 1914, Maude wrote a letter from her prison cell, asking to be released on medical grounds and promising not to engage in any militant activity:

I herewith beg to make an application to be liberated on licence on the understanding that I give an undertaking to refrain from militancy in the future. My special reason for making such an offer is the fact that the medical officer of the prison tells me that excitement is injurious to my health.

The most comprehensive history of the Scottish Suffrage movement is Leah Leneman's book 'Guid Cause: the women's suffrage movement in Scotland' (1995) which covers the period 1867 until after World War 1 and includes a list of Scottish women who were active suffragettes.

‘The Suffragettes in North East Scotland’ is a Heritage Lottery Fund project led by Professor Sarah Pedersen of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. The project explores the activities of the suffragettes in Aberdeen and the surrounding county through the correspondence of suffragette and journalist Caroline Phillips. 

Visit http://www.scottishsuffragettes.co.uk/ for more information.

Scotland's suffragettes played an important role in the fight for women's votes. World War One is often credited with bringing some women the vote in 1918, but the valuable work of Scottish women campaigning for that right cannot never be underestimated or forgotten.

This news report from STV which aired on Feb 5th 2018, on the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote, also tells the stories of some of the suffragette's mentioned in this article, and includes contributions from Professor Sarah Pedersen and some of the Scottish Suffragette's living relatives.